Guild Wars 2

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.

And only a minority of players would repeat events if there was nothing of value dropping. That’s why there are mega servers. That’s why you only see players at moments in the game when something profitable going on.

I really doubt people mostly go to silverwastes or worldbosses because the encounter is so well designed when you trample over it with 50 players. It’s just for the reward.

Of course players won’t do raids if there’s an easier less complicated way of getting the reward. It’s like asking people to pick between taking the stairs or an elevator to the 100th floor.

Ohoni.6057:

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 of course depends on how easy the rest of the game is and what kind of combat system it uses. More complex combat systems might lead to very easy games (irony) but as the company and the players understand their own mechanics the content can become harder and harder. For example when nobody knew how to play GW2 (not even the devs) during BWE Ascalonian Catacombs was considered the hardest dungeon in gaming history (or close). Having an “easier” game is natural when the mechanics are new but it makes sense to make it harder with each release so the mechanics can be used more often.

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. . .”

Instanced content has always been the best way to present story in an MMORPG and raids more often than not tend to have good storylines. Of course Anet might fail even here and present us with just a couple of difficult encounters.

Eh, maybe. I kind of think that if they’re going to do that though, it should be sharing, not gifting.

Any system that might allow me to give the fractal dagger I don’t want to a friend that had been running fractals for years, only for that fractal dagger, is a huge plus. I know they are adding a token system but token systems have the other side effect of feeling like a grind.

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.

Even that would be better than the current system.

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.

Yet even in Mass Effect you have to do specific content to get specific rewards. You cannot get characters in your group without meeting them first and talking to them, they don’t magically spawn in your party. Different story maybe but it doesn’t apply to the rewards. There is no story reason for the two helms in your example to be the same item. Both Legendary maybe, but not the same item.

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.

Ok, well, I highly doubt Anet is just gonna say screw you exclusive rewards to all its content. HIGHLY

maddoctor.2738:

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.

[/quote]

Huh? The one ring is as much a RNG item as a special item. It can evidently be obtained by:
a) defeating Sauron
b) killing a human warlord
c) go fishing with your friend
d) take it out of the hands of a halfling and his bulky friend
e) defeating a creature that is half rat, half halfling
Put that on top of the description that the ring wanders from wearer to wearer in an attempt to reunite with Sauron, and yes, a random Goblin could have carried him at some point.^^

Ohoni.6057:

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.

You don’t call PvE things PvP things because you feel the mentality is the same between the players. Raids are PvE. PvP is player vs player. No regard to what their mentality is. If a player who hates PvP is in PvP area doing it for the rewards it’s not suddenly PvE because of that player’s mentality. The PvP rooms for the daily aren’t PvE rooms because of the mentality of the players in the room. It’s still PvP. Raids are PvE no matter what the mentality is behind the players who enjoy the content.

And we don’t know that you won’t be able to join in the raid at the last boss and get the rewards. You may not have to sit through the entire raid. We also don’t know how long they will take once everyone knows their mechanics like the back of their hand. It took a while for dungeon spot selling to take off. It will take some time for raid spot selling to take off.

Gold is a perfectly fine token system. You apparently have an issue with people who have put forth the time and effort to earn a lot gold, even if that time and effort was in real life. And short of the exclusive drops in dungeons and fractals, they aren’t that lucrative for players who run them from beginning to end.

I love how you glossed right over the friends and guildmates portion of my discussion on what players with real life limitations can do if they want the gear from raids.

And just because the means to earn Mawdrey and the Lumi gear isn’t raids doesn’t mean that raids shouldn’t have exclusive rewards.

Just because they aren’t vocal about their problem doesn’t mean it’s not a problem and one that ANet can overlook when deciding if something should change between exclusive and not exclusive.

No duh it’s not metaphorical. I’m not stupid. I know what an analogy is. Let’s stop insulting my intelligence, please. Thank you. I’m saying it’s a horrible one. Because there is no corrolary into the game. You can’t pay your brother to eat the food that you’re allergic to and give you the nutritional benefits. Your brother gets the nutrients.

You can’t claim in one instance that a meal can be analogous to a game and then tell someone else that it can’t be. You said food a child hates. 9 times out of 10, that food is a vegetable. Can you come up with a food that a parent may serve at dinner that has no nutritional value? If not, then you can’t claim raids are a nutrient free food. Not in your analogy of a dinner with a food a child hates.

Coulter.2315:

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?

No, I don’t think rewarding the challenge is part of their consideration.

I think incentivizing the gameplay is part of the consideration
I think giving players a new way to stand out that is part of the consideration
I think getting people into a long, expensive crafting process is part of the consideration.

Seera.5916:

You can’t claim in one instance that a meal can be analogous to a game and then tell someone else that it can’t be. You said food a child hates. 9 times out of 10, that food is a vegetable. Can you come up with a food that a parent may serve at dinner that has no nutritional value? If not, then you can’t claim raids are a nutrient free food. Not in your analogy of a dinner with a food a child hates.

A raw cucumber has 56 kcal per 100 g. A healthy man needs 8000 kcal(2000 kj) to hold his weight or 4800 kcal to avoid malnourishment. So a cucumber is basically just solid, dirty water. Best of luck with eating so much cucumber that you don´t starve or are at least not malnourished. And I know forst hand that many children hate cucumber.
A melon has 72 kcal per 100 g. Although love them, they are also solid, dirty water from a nutrition point of view.
So either if you hate cucumber or love melons, their nutrition value alone is not enough to keep a man alive.

And for those of you that think something dirty with cucumber and melons: Tsk tsk, naughty! ^^

Torolan.5816:

Seera.5916:

You can’t claim in one instance that a meal can be analogous to a game and then tell someone else that it can’t be. You said food a child hates. 9 times out of 10, that food is a vegetable. Can you come up with a food that a parent may serve at dinner that has no nutritional value? If not, then you can’t claim raids are a nutrient free food. Not in your analogy of a dinner with a food a child hates.

A raw cucumber has 56 kcal per 100 g. A healthy man needs 8000 kcal(2000 kj) to hold his weight or 4800 kcal to avoid malnourishment. So a cucumber is basically just solid, dirty water. Best of luck with eating so much cucumber that you don´t starve or are at least not malnourished. And I know forst hand that many children hate cucumber.
A melon has 72 kcal per 100 g. Although love them, they are also solid, dirty water from a nutrition point of view.
So either if you hate cucumber or love melons, their nutrition value alone is not enough to keep a man alive.

And for those of you that think something dirty with cucumber and melons: Tsk tsk, naughty! ^^

But it still has nutritional value. It does offer calories, which children need.

So if you eat a wagonload of melons and are still malnourished, you win this argument?^^

Seera.5916:

Torolan.5816:

Seera.5916:

You can’t claim in one instance that a meal can be analogous to a game and then tell someone else that it can’t be. You said food a child hates. 9 times out of 10, that food is a vegetable. Can you come up with a food that a parent may serve at dinner that has no nutritional value? If not, then you can’t claim raids are a nutrient free food. Not in your analogy of a dinner with a food a child hates.

A raw cucumber has 56 kcal per 100 g. A healthy man needs 8000 kcal(2000 kj) to hold his weight or 4800 kcal to avoid malnourishment. So a cucumber is basically just solid, dirty water. Best of luck with eating so much cucumber that you don´t starve or are at least not malnourished. And I know forst hand that many children hate cucumber.
A melon has 72 kcal per 100 g. Although love them, they are also solid, dirty water from a nutrition point of view.
So either if you hate cucumber or love melons, their nutrition value alone is not enough to keep a man alive.

And for those of you that think something dirty with cucumber and melons: Tsk tsk, naughty! ^^

But it still has nutritional value. It does offer calories, which children need.

It’s more like, I dont know, a turduckin. It provides protein and calories (oh so many calories) but it’s still bad for you.

Things can be technically nutritive but still really really bad ><

Torolan.5816:

So if you eat a wagonload of melons and are still malnourished, you win this argument?^^

The analogy was a dinner. One meal. That had something a child didn’t like. A side of cucumber along with other things is not a wagonload of melons and would not lead to malnourishment.

Ok, then let´s indeed play a little bait and switch here.

Let´s assume that GW2 indeed is a meal. Open world is the flesh, raids are the vegetables, dungeons and fractals are candy bars wvw and pvp are corn flakes and sweets.
I personaly, like flesh, some candy bars and sweets, but I´ll eat a bowl of cornflakes then and when and also eat my vegetables if they are cooked in a certain way. Te largest majority of children is like me in this stuff, I know it because I see them every day, making long faces as I do inwardly too when vegetables are on the table.
Maybe you are a vegetables loving child. I know that they also exist, I see them every day with my own eyes.

To strengthen my point, I could say that meat was served longest in GW2, and so it should be served most and first as most persons reserved tables in this particular restaurant for this type of food, aka content.
You could reply that people got sick of meat and asked for vegetables.
We would both be right.

The debatable point, which I also broadly argued with or against maddoctor for example, is
a) have enough people asked for vegetables to justify the cook ordering large numbers of cucumbers and melons
b) should the people that have asked for cucumber get only a little golden star in their book, or a dessert for being a good boy and asking for vegetables
c) is Anet a Texan all you can Eat Steak Ranch or a French Noble Restaurant and, if it is the first one, does it want to shed that mantle and become a French Noble Restaurant with naughty and highnosed waitresses instead of tramply girls with big, uhm, melons…^^

Torolan.5816:

Huh? The one ring is as much a RNG item as a special item. It can evidently be obtained by:
a) defeating Sauron
b) killing a human warlord
c) go fishing with your friend
d) take it out of the hands of a halfling and his bulky friend
e) defeating a creature that is half rat, half halfling
Put that on top of the description that the ring wanders from wearer to wearer in an attempt to reunite with Sauron, and yes, a random Goblin could have carried him at some point.^^

Another one the misses the point entirely.
And for the silly one ring example you still can’t get it from multiple content at the same time. When it was on Sauron’s hand you couldn’t get it by fishing. Which is the whole point you and others intentionally miss.

Specific rewards behind specific content, it’s how the entire RPG industry work and always worked like. And you want to joke around find me a true RPG where it’s possible to get an item from multiple types of content.

I think the real problem is people PrePurchasing the expansions before Arenanet revealed what it offered to players. If that’s the case no one holds responsibility if someone ended up not liking the content or the way things are going to be but since there was a recent statement concerning rewards in raids in the official site I don’t think there is any point in discussing this anymore.

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

Huh? The one ring is as much a RNG item as a special item. It can evidently be obtained by:
a) defeating Sauron
b) killing a human warlord
c) go fishing with your friend
d) take it out of the hands of a halfling and his bulky friend
e) defeating a creature that is half rat, half halfling
Put that on top of the description that the ring wanders from wearer to wearer in an attempt to reunite with Sauron, and yes, a random Goblin could have carried him at some point.^^

Another one the misses the point entirely.
And for the silly one ring example you still can’t get it from multiple content at the same time. When it was on Sauron’s hand you couldn’t get it by fishing. Which is the whole point you and others intentionally miss.

Specific rewards behind specific content, it’s how the entire RPG industry work and always worked like. And you want to joke around find me a true RPG where it’s possible to get an item from multiple types of content.

Oh yes, I forgot. When it was on Saurons finger, you could only get it with a desperate swing of a broken sword that was wielded by a defeated king in the middle of the biggest zerg available in Middle Earth, the Elf/Human coalition. That indeed loudly screams 10 man raid content for me…

How about the Rattlesnake battleship in eve online? It was once a gem of pure rarity for the rich and vain, but was quickly made accesible for a faction in the form of the copied scorpion battleship and finally opened to the broad public with the opening of the pirate facton to players. Granted, the Rattlesnake was not one of a kind, but your copied raid ring would be neither as this is indeed impossible in an online game if you are not absolutely unforgiving and invalidate your raid by saying that this ring will drop only one, to the first lucky person that happens to down the last boss.

Torolan.5816:

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

Huh? The one ring is as much a RNG item as a special item. It can evidently be obtained by:
a) defeating Sauron
b) killing a human warlord
c) go fishing with your friend
d) take it out of the hands of a halfling and his bulky friend
e) defeating a creature that is half rat, half halfling
Put that on top of the description that the ring wanders from wearer to wearer in an attempt to reunite with Sauron, and yes, a random Goblin could have carried him at some point.^^

Another one the misses the point entirely.
And for the silly one ring example you still can’t get it from multiple content at the same time. When it was on Sauron’s hand you couldn’t get it by fishing. Which is the whole point you and others intentionally miss.

Specific rewards behind specific content, it’s how the entire RPG industry work and always worked like. And you want to joke around find me a true RPG where it’s possible to get an item from multiple types of content.

Oh yes, I forgot. When it was on Saurons finger, you could only get it with a desperate swing of a broken sword that was wielded by a defeated king in the middle of the biggest zerg available in Middle Earth, the Elf/Human coalition. That indeed loudly screams 10 man raid content for me…

How about the Rattlesnake battleship in eve online? It was once a gem of pure rarity for the rich and vain, but was quickly made accesible for a faction in the form of the copied scorpion battleship and finally opened to the broad public with the opening of the pirate facton to players. Granted, the Rattlesnake was not one of a kind, but your copied raid ring would be neither as this is indeed impossible in an online game if you are not absolutely unforgiving and invalidate your raid by saying that this ring will drop only one, to the first lucky person that happens to down the last boss.

Nice now you go to the 10-man raid part, try to stay in context. This one-ring argument is really getting silly. There was never the word raid mentioned for it, neither how to get it, neither if it’s 10-man or 20-man. Stay in context.

I’m still waiting for the RPG that allows multiple ways to acquire rewards but apparently it doesn’t exist so the first point I made is actually true.

And if you missed it the original point that has been derailed into oblivion is on page 23 over here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Instanced-Raids-Confirmed-merged/page/23#post5463042

How movies, books and stories got into it is everyone’s guess.

The best example on the topic is every other RPG ever released so far in gaming history, that doesn’t use a 100% pure random loot system. In every such RPG ever created, items are rewards behind content, very very specific content. Usually the hardest dungeons and the hardest bosses also have the best possible loot. That’s how every RPG ever works, video game or even not video games, like p&p RPGs.

A very specific point.

How about GW2?
Once you had made all necessary steps of a given episode of ls2, you can always buy the same ascended jewelry from vendors in SW for a pocket change.
Following this model you would have to do the raid once before you can access the gear by grinding it in the open world.
Stone Insects can also be gained through PvP or opening chests.

Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but I have not played enough enough online games beside GW2 to say that game X holds this or that.

Torolan.5816:

How about GW2?
Once you had made all necessary steps of a given episode of ls2, you can always buy the same ascended jewelry from vendors in SW for a pocket change.
Following this model you would have to do the raid once before you can access the gear by grinding it in the open world.
Stone Insects can also be gained through PvP or opening chests.

Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but I have not played enough enough online games beside GW2 to say that game X holds this or that.

I said pure RPGs not MMORPGs. RPGs without the MMO part.

In a pen and paper, you can get a specific item in different ways if the DM allows it. You could find an ally that the owner of the items owns a substantial favor and agrees to part with it if X is done for him.
You could equal this with not doing the initial content but working or paying for it.

And maybe I get this wrong, but isn´t your scenario invalidated in every scenario that has factions which share the same loot table, but have other goals to achieve? You can either grid for points or try to take it from the faction by force. But I have to admit I can´t name a good example because GW2 is the only RPG I play on the computer, I am usually more of a war games player.

Torolan.5816:

In a pen and paper, you can get a specific item in different ways if the DM allows it. You could find an ally that the owner of the items owns a substantial favor and agrees to part with it if X is done for him.
You could equal this with not doing the initial content but working or paying for it.

Still specific content and not something that can apply to a game without balance problems. If wayB of getting the item is so much easier then it completely invalidates wayA. Doesn’t work especially in an online setting. And besides it’s only working once because you can’t -generally speaking- repeat content in pen and paper at a later date.

And maybe I get this wrong, but isn´t your scenario invalidated in every scenario that has factions which share the same loot table, but have other goals to achieve? You can either grid for points or try to take it from the faction by force. But I have to admit I can´t name a good example because GW2 is the only RPG I play on the computer, I am usually more of a war games player.

This is the point… there are no loot tables. Content A awards reward A, content B awards reward B. You can’t get reward A by playing content B. The whole argument is that every single RPG works this way and always had, and always will. Yet the only genre that players find it hard to accept is in MMORPGs

Just that I get you right here, what about Gothic 1?
There are 3 camps, you can join the camp you want. Each has different motivations, posibilities and goals until the endgame of Gothic 1 begins.
Have you not 3 different way to get to the endgame then?

Astralporing.1957:

And you have even noticed that killing the dragon is not an actual requirement. You can sneak in and steal the gemstone, you can barter with the dragon or even sometimes persuade it to part with the treasure. You can persuade a party of adventures to get the jewel for you. You can persuade an army of the nearby kingdom to take the matter in their hand (and just be sure to be around to collect the gem in the right moment). You can even think of something more exotic, something nobody even expected. There are many ways you can approach the problem – enough to satisfy people that like different gaming playstyles.

I just noticed this one I didn’t answer before.

And I wouldn’t have a problem if any other real ways were added to get the raid gear rather than getting it by killing the final boss (or any boss). It still involves the actual content of the raid and doesn’t in any way or form allows players to completely skip it.
If they added multiple ways to get the items and all of them made some story/lore sense then yes I would be fine with it. Maybe adding multiple wings to the raid with different encounters for different playstyles.

None of the other content types of the game called GW2 are actually helping in any of those “other ways” you mentioned. AT ALL. Farming chests in SW, farming World Bosses, collecting dungeon tokens, even playing in PVP and WvW has very little (if anything) to do with what you are advocating.

To use a GW2 analogy in your pen & paper example it would be like the DM giving to the players the jewel if they went and farmed a completely irrelevant goblin tribe. Or the got the jewel by defeating a completely irrelevant dungeon boss that is even on a far away continent. That’s how “multiple path rewards” feel like in GW2. Other types of content, outside of what is giving the rewards, is completely irrelevant story/lore wise.

Torolan.5816:

Just that I get you right here, what about Gothic 1?
There are 3 camps, you can join the camp you want. Each has different motivations, posibilities and goals until the endgame of Gothic 1 begins.
Have you not 3 different way to get to the endgame then?

You mean you get different loot in the end based on which camp you chose? Or the same loot. “Finishing the game” isn’t reward.

Torolan.5816:

A healthy man needs 8000 kcal(2000 kj) to hold his weight or 4800 kcal to avoid malnourishment. So a cucumber is basically just solid, dirty water.

Certainly, if the man was very tall and an extreme endurance athlete training 8 hrs a day. A regular male of average height, even with a pretty active workload, would have to weight near 400 pounds to maintain weight while consuming 8000 kcal. These numbers are double what they should be. Btw, Cucumber has medicinal and nutritional value. Everyone, unless allergic, should have a little cucumber each week.

As far as I can remember it does not matter which camp you had choosen, you get access to special items once things get heated in the game. It wasn´t important if you were an old camp, new camp or swamp camp guy for this, that I can remember well.

Torolan.5816:

As far as I can remember it does not matter which camp you had choosen, you get access to special items once things get heated in the game. It wasn´t important if you were an old camp, new camp or swamp camp guy for this, that I can remember well.

I didn’t play Gothic 1 but from a little bit of search I found out that the best one-handed sword (in terms of damage) is called Scar’s Sword and you can indeed only get it by killing Scar (the owner). If you do a search for any other named unique item in that game you will find out that most of them are gated behind very very specific content. The awards you get from the camps are random items.

The whole argument of ‘well many other games did it that way!’ isn’t terribly strong.

In the old old days, the logic was ‘well what would that person have on them?’ So you kill Scar to get Scar’s Sword.

In MMO’s, except for a few specific prestige items, that metaphor is pretty collapsed, and we just have the remains floatingi t along.

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?

If a small number of the players want to raid then they should be able to raid, but they have no right to drag other players into the raid with them. The only people raiding should be people who enjoy raiding, not people who do not enjoy raiding but feel compelled to do it anyways for the loot.

Yet even in Mass Effect you have to do specific content to get specific rewards. You cannot get characters in your group without meeting them first and talking to them, they don’t magically spawn in your party. Different story maybe but it doesn’t apply to the rewards. There is no story reason for the two helms in your example to be the same item. Both Legendary maybe, but not the same item.

Where do you think the mob in the raid got his helm? There aren’t a lot of people making legendary helms out there. Also, keep in mind that NO item in this game is actually “unique,” nothing is one of a kind, every item that exists once in the game exists at least a few hundred, if not many thousands of times.

You don’t call PvE things PvP things because you feel the mentality is the same between the players. Raids are PvE. PvP is player vs player. No regard to what their mentality is. If a player who hates PvP is in PvP area doing it for the rewards it’s not suddenly PvE because of that player’s mentality. The PvP rooms for the daily aren’t PvE rooms because of the mentality of the players in the room. It’s still PvP. Raids are PvE no matter what the mentality is behind the players who enjoy the content.

Again, you’re choosing to focus on the distinction of PvE vs. PvP as if that is the most important factor between the two, I believe that the difference between “hardcore challenge” and “casual challenge” is the more important factor, regardless of whether that challenge is provided by AI or by another human. I still believe that raids should be lumped in with PvP as “hardcore challenge” content, rather than with more casual PvE content.

You can’t claim in one instance that a meal can be analogous to a game and then tell someone else that it can’t be. You said food a child hates. 9 times out of 10, that food is a vegetable. Can you come up with a food that a parent may serve at dinner that has no nutritional value? If not, then you can’t claim raids are a nutrient free food. Not in your analogy of a dinner with a food a child hates.

I thought I should respond to this, but then I couldn’t think of anything that could make sense of it, so I stopped.

Another one the misses the point entirely.
And for the silly one ring example you still can’t get it from multiple content at the same time. When it was on Sauron’s hand you couldn’t get it by fishing. Which is the whole point you and others intentionally miss.

Yes, but again you are confusing linear narrative with interactive narrative. Think of it a bit like Schrodinger’s cat. In a game, the whole point is to make the one ring available to the hero, so the “actual location of the ring” is not in any of those places until the hero’s actions put it within his reach. The ring’s location is a superposition of all possible locations until the hero decides “I’m going fishing today,” at which point the ring’s location is inside a fish, and it turns out it was never in any of those other locations.

And btw, from a P&P scenario, if you have a magical macguffin item that will instigate some massive chain of events, and you predetermine that it has a singular location in your game world, and yet the players decide to avoid that location and do something else instead, and so you completely abandon that entire storyline rather than to adapt and shift the location of the item to be along their new path, then that is just some serious DM malpractice right there.

And you want to joke around find me a true RPG where it’s possible to get an item from multiple types of content.

I was playing this game called “Guild Wars 2” recently where the most prized drops, the “Legendary Precursors” could drop off pretty much anything in the game.

Ohoni.6057:

Yet even in Mass Effect you have to do specific content to get specific rewards. You cannot get characters in your group without meeting them first and talking to them, they don’t magically spawn in your party. Different story maybe but it doesn’t apply to the rewards. There is no story reason for the two helms in your example to be the same item. Both Legendary maybe, but not the same item.

Where do you think the mob in the raid got his helm? There aren’t a lot of people making legendary helms out there. Also, keep in mind that NO item in this game is actually “unique,” nothing is one of a kind, every item that exists once in the game exists at least a few hundred, if not many thousands of times.

Doesn’t mean anything. The prospect of an MMO is that multiple people will be able to get the reward. But that’s not a reason to not make something have a singular acquisition method.

Of course, to the majority of the MMO players it doesn’t matter a thing as long as thry can get their hands on the reward, story lore environment and such things are completely irrelevant and arbitrary when it comes to rewards.
/sarcasm

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

In a pen and paper, you can get a specific item in different ways if the DM allows it. You could find an ally that the owner of the items owns a substantial favor and agrees to part with it if X is done for him.
You could equal this with not doing the initial content but working or paying for it.

Still specific content and not something that can apply to a game without balance problems. If wayB of getting the item is so much easier then it completely invalidates wayA.

That is only when the destination is more important than the journey. That is often not the case in P&P RPG games.

maddoctor.2738:

To use a GW2 analogy in your pen & paper example it would be like the DM giving to the players the jewel if they went and farmed a completely irrelevant goblin tribe. Or the got the jewel by defeating a completely irrelevant dungeon boss that is even on a far away continent. That’s how “multiple path rewards” feel like in GW2. Other types of content, outside of what is giving the rewards, is completely irrelevant story/lore wise.

Nope. You are missing the important point here. No GM worth playing under would ever place that jewel beyond a content his players would be uncomfortable or displeased with. Railroading is considered a Very Bad Word in RPG community. See also my Caliburn/Mjollnir example earlier.
The only reason why early cRPG games engaged in it was simply because they were too primitive to do otherwise. It wasn’t something good that should be repeated. It was a limitation, an implementation flaw.
And yet i see now people gloryfying that flaw as if it were something great.

maddoctor.2738:

And you want to joke around find me a true RPG where it’s possible to get an item from multiple types of content.

Fallout. And the fact that many things could be acquired in multitude of ways, both easy and hard, was always considered a positive side of that game.

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

And you want to joke around find me a true RPG where it’s possible to get an item from multiple types of content.

Fallout. And the fact that many things could be acquired in multitude of ways, both easy and hard, was always considered a positive side of that game.

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

Remember we’re not asking for all item to be unique or exclusive, just like any RPG , you can buy the crappy standard gear from anywhere, but if you want Bobs magical sword, well you’re going to have to pry it from bobs cold dead hands. If you want the hat of the ultimate cook, then you’re going to have to become an ultimate cook etc.

If we’re using that silly analogy still , everything in your example RPG has to be acquirable multiple ways, while to prove our point only some of the items have to be. Since the argument is not all vs none its some vs none.

To the people holding up precursors as the GW2 example… it was pretty much the most complained about feature, it made getting a legendary feel completely unlegendary as did being able to trade legendaries and them having no story. It made a joke out of being a high end player (heck its the whole reason I was one and done with legendaries).
That’s why they’re being changed to unique acquisition untradeable items, with only one specific obtainment method, to give them that legendary feeling.

The analogies are getting out of hand, RPG’s are always about the prestige/glory being the hero all that ego boosting stuff. You start out as no one and build your legend up becoming a person of note, translating that into a multiplayer experience means someone has to lose out. In a good MMO, there’s enough different niches to fill that you cover enough people into the “elite” section, I.E elite crafter,pvper,Dungeon goer, explorer, pirate.
Sure they lose out a little, but they’re still part of an exciting and living virtual world, honestly outside of this game I’ve never seen people complain much, even if they miss out on an item they really wanted, there will always be something else, not the nicest way to phrase it but they get over it. (No I don’t buy that 1 specific item being perfect for the look and their whole game experience is ruined due to not getting, or the completionist argument either.)
There are ups and downs, it’s not all going to go your way, some times you’ll fail, sometimes you won’t get that rare drop you wanted, that keeps the world real. Succeeding constantly and falsely is not a satisfying game experience.

I would try to bring up the three reward pillars: Recognition(Rewards) , Satisfaction(progress) and Challenge(social pressure). But I’m sure we’re just going to end up in the same endless flow of debate.

Seera.5916:

Gold is a perfectly fine token system.

No its not, it reduces everything to the 1 common denominator, a gold grind. If GW2 has done anything its shown that this is not a good system.

Doesn’t mean anything. The prospect of an MMO is that multiple people will be able to get the reward. But that’s not a reason to not make something have a singular acquisition method.

No, but it is the reason why “Oh, the item is so unique and special that it can’t possibly come from anything other than one single location” is not a valid justification for the mechanic. The item is not unique or special, there are thousands of them out there, the one you have could come from anywhere.

If you’re talking about the conversation options as “different” paths I’d Argue that’s like dungeons, you’re still in the dungeon but you can choose p1,p2 or p3, it’s the same content to the same difficulty just with different flavors.

So you would be fine with a system where the raid offered a “hard mode” and also an “easy mode,” the latter being about on par in time and skill required with a CoF run. That would be about equivalent to a dialog system in which various options require different levels of character stats, currency, and prior effort to unlock.

(No I don’t buy that 1 specific item being perfect for the look and their whole game experience is ruined due to not getting, or the completionist argument either.)

Well, keep trying until you do get it, because whether it personally applies to you or not, accepting that it is an absolute fact to other players is vital to understanding why this is an issue to some people.

There are ups and downs, it’s not all going to go your way, some times you’ll fail, sometimes you won’t get that rare drop you wanted, that keeps the world real. Succeeding constantly and falsely is not a satisfying game experience.

That really isn’t for you to judge. If you don’t find that satisfying then pursue challenges that you do find satisfying, but if someone else enjoys that then you have no standing to tell them that they are wrong for doing so or that any other way of playing would be better for them.

I think that is the major source of disagreement in this discussion, that some people just seem fundamentally incapable of imagining people who are unlike themselves.

morrolan.9608:

Seera.5916:

Gold is a perfectly fine token system.

No its not, it reduces everything to the 1 common denominator, a gold grind. If GW2 has done anything its shown that this is not a good system.

We don’t need new currencies to serve as a conversion between two other currencies. And for the person I told it to, served as the best token for what they want: absolutely no unique rewards for anything.

I can get gold doing pretty much whatever I want. Why should there be another token that’s gotten by doing pretty much whatever I want? Why shouldn’t it just be gold, if that’s the goal?

I do agree that it’s a horrible token system in that tokens are supposed to be for special things. Unique things. Not things you get by doing whatever it is you enjoy doing.

We don’t need new currencies to serve as a conversion between two other currencies. And for the person I told it to, served as the best token for what they want: absolutely no unique rewards for anything.

We can’t use gold though. I mean, in theory it would be fine, but in actual practice, the GW2 gold economy is fundamentally broken. It’s like the Zimbabwe dollar at this point. It’s too flawed for them to attach additional usage to it, and there’s really no good way to fix that anymore. If they wanted to use gold as this token currency, then they should not have allowed players to buy gold with cash, nor to take gold, buy things, and then sell those things for more gold than they spent on them. Whatever token system they use, it can’t be something you can turn a profit with, it has to be a system where the only way to acquire the tokens is by game content, and the only place you can spend them is to NPCs with fixed prices and infinite supplies.

Ohoni.6057:

We don’t need new currencies to serve as a conversion between two other currencies. And for the person I told it to, served as the best token for what they want: absolutely no unique rewards for anything.

We can’t use gold though. I mean, in theory it would be fine, but in actual practice, the GW2 gold economy is fundamentally broken. It’s like the Zimbabwe dollar at this point. It’s too flawed for them to attach additional usage to it, and there’s really no good way to fix that anymore. If they wanted to use gold as this token currency, then they should not have allowed players to buy gold with cash, nor to take gold, buy things, and then sell those things for more gold than they spent on them. Whatever token system they use, it can’t be something you can turn a profit with, it has to be a system where the only way to acquire the tokens is by game content, and the only place you can spend them is to NPCs with fixed prices and infinite supplies.

Your idea is an illusion. Are you gonna apply this retroactively? If not, then world completion can’t be a part of your new system, since some people have already completed the world on most of their characters, and i know that world completion is the main content some people in my guild like to do, so basicly you are excluding again(something you said you didn’t wanna do at all). If you do apply it retroactively, if that would even be possible, (what about deleted characters and so on) you will have a whole lot of people who have enough of this currency to directly buy rewards with it, directly. If you don’t, you directly punish some people for already having done most of the non-repeatable stuff and in a way you also punish the 4000 hours accounts over the 500 hours ones, since their past effort is measured differently now.

You can’t please everyone, no matter what. And there will always be an OPTIMAL way to do things, wich will result in the suboptimal ways being far less populated, no matter how fun they are. And since GW2 is a group game, not having enough people to play with does directly effect your experience of the game. Unique rewards give incentive to do different things, for the main population. Now don’t get me wrong, i personally don’t care, i want to be able to do all the content, that is what i care about, and having a certain optimal way to get all the rewards in the game, will drasticly effect the ammount of people i have to play with. Unique rewards, for all the different kinds of content we have in this game, is a system to keep players playing all kinds of different content, so that whoever wants to try that content, can always find a group/other people for it.

Ohoni.6057:

Where do you think the mob in the raid got his helm? There aren’t a lot of people making legendary helms out there. Also, keep in mind that NO item in this game is actually “unique,” nothing is one of a kind, every item that exists once in the game exists at least a few hundred, if not many thousands of times.

That doesn’t have to be the case. See how the new precursor system will work with collections, a player will be able to get a precursor through that only once. If those legendary armor precursors work in a similar way you might not get a second one. At least if there is loads of RNG behind I HOPE you can only get one before we get to the point some players cannot get their precursor after 100 runs while others will get 3 in 3 runs (the joys of the GW2 reward system)

Yes, but again you are confusing linear narrative with interactive narrative. Think of it a bit like Schrodinger’s cat. In a game, the whole point is to make the one ring available to the hero, so the “actual location of the ring” is not in any of those places until the hero’s actions put it within his reach. The ring’s location is a superposition of all possible locations until the hero decides “I’m going fishing today,” at which point the ring’s location is inside a fish, and it turns out it was never in any of those other locations.

Yes in your world maybe. The whole point isn’t to make the ring available to the hero, the whole point is to make the story available to the hero. If the story says the ring is in the hands of a powerful character then the heroes can’t circumvent it by going fishing.

And btw, from a P&P scenario, if you have a magical macguffin item that will instigate some massive chain of events, and you predetermine that it has a singular location in your game world, and yet the players decide to avoid that location and do something else instead, and so you completely abandon that entire storyline rather than to adapt and shift the location of the item to be along their new path, then that is just some serious DM malpractice right there.

That depends on the narrative and the story to bring the players to the right location and fight the main villain. Villains in stories exist for a reason, if the story isn’t compelling enough to draw the characters there then that’s some serious DM malpractise right there.

And you want to joke around find me a true RPG where it’s possible to get an item from multiple types of content.

I was playing this game called “Guild Wars 2” recently where the most prized drops, the “Legendary Precursors” could drop off pretty much anything in the game.

Nice try but I said not MMORPGs just RPGs

Your idea is an illusion. Are you gonna apply this retroactively? If not, then world completion can’t be a part of your new system, since some people have already completed the world on most of their characters, and i know that world completion is the main content some people in my guild like to do, so basicly you are excluding again(something you said you didn’t wanna do at all).

I’m not sure what your point here is, nothing I was talking about had anything to do with changing World Completion. For my part, I don’t see any reason to change World Completion, although since some people don’t enjoy doing it, I am open to the idea of providing alternative (equal or more time/effort consuming) methods of earning the Gift of Exploration for Legendary crafting though.

If you don’t, you directly punish some people for already having done most of the non-repeatable stuff and in a way you also punish the 4000 hours accounts over the 500 hours ones, since their past effort is measured differently now.

Ah, you mean “this new token would be impossible to earn for an already maxed out character.” No, I think any systems that reward these tokens should be infinite, like dungeon tokens or Fractal tokens. They would be something where everyone starts at zero, but in which all sorts of different content can reward them, such as world bosses or certain other events, perhaps JP chests if they implemented a system to prevent chest-camping them, none of the tasks should be “first time only” situations. If any are attached to Achievements, they would be to new achievements that even the most established players could still do.

and btw, didn’t they talk at some point about allowing players to do some sort of repeatable map-completion after HoT launches (like even if a character has completed a map, you can complete it again on the same character for new rewards)? If so, that could also be a token vector.

You can’t please everyone, no matter what. And there will always be an OPTIMAL way to do things, wich will result in the suboptimal ways being far less populated, no matter how fun they are.

Yes, but that’s a case where the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Sure, there will always be “optimal” ways to get something, and these should be balanced out as best as possible to be the “core” method, the original and most thematic, and the alternatives should always err on the side of being less efficient uses of time, but that’s ok. If you prioritize peak efficiency, then you do the “core” method for everything. But if you really hate a certain type of content, or really love another, then you can do the type you love, and still progress towards the goal you want. It presents a new option, you don’t have to take that option, but it’s there, and having a choice is better than having no choice.

And since GW2 is a group game, not having enough people to play with does directly effect your experience of the game.

This is true, but not your business. By that I mean, if you really love to do an activity, and that activity takes five people to complete, and there aren’t four other people who want to do that thing, then that’s a bummer for you. But it’s not your right to force four other people to play with you if they don’t want to. If there aren’t four other people who genuinely want to do that content, then they shouldn’t have to, they should be able to do content that they want to do. They do not exist to make your life more convenient. And so the game should not try to bribe those players into playing your preferred game type, against their own gameplay preferences.

ANet’s only interest should be in rewarding players for having a good time, for engaging with the content that they enjoy. They should not be “luring” gamers over to one type or anything, rigging the system. Some have said “but what if you want to get players to try a new thing?” And yes, there is a role for that, they can reward gamers for trying out a new element occasionally, but those rewards should come very quickly, as a true reward for JUST trying out the content, not for sticking with it for days, weeks, or months. Anything that takes days, weeks, or months to earn should be the player’s choice, not because this was the only option available to earn that thing.

If the lack of unique rewards mean that most of the game’s population gravitates towards a few specific activities, then that means that most of the game’s population finds those activities to be the most fun. Instead of trying to bribe players away from those activities, the appropriate reaction is to figure out how to make the other activities more fun for those players, so that they’ll actually WANT to do them, rather than just being WILLING to put up with them if it means getting the loot that they want.

That doesn’t have to be the case. See how the new precursor system will work with collections, a player will be able to get a precursor through that only once. If those legendary armor precursors work in a similar way you might not get a second one. At least if there is loads of RNG behind I HOPE you can only get one before we get to the point some players cannot get their precursor after 100 runs while others will get 3 in 3 runs (the joys of the GW2 reward system)

You might not be able to get a second one, but I guarantee you that you won’t be the only person in the entire game that has one. You can’t make elaborate stories about the snowflake uniqueness of an item when thousands of other players have it. Various items have characters’ names on them because they are themed after certain characters or areas, but you having Eir’s Longbow doesn’t mean that Eir is missing one of hers, it just means that you’ve acquired a bow that was patterned in her style. It’s the same with all the other items, not one of them is a true unique, they are all just infinite duplicates.

Yes in your world maybe. The whole point isn’t to make the ring available to the hero, the whole point is to make the story available to the hero. If the story says the ring is in the hands of a powerful character then the heroes can’t circumvent it by going fishing.

But again, that’s bad storytelling, because then if the hero decides to never go after that powerful character, then he never gets the ring and the story never advances. The only way around that is through linear, non-interactive storytelling, where the hero had no choice but to go and kill the character with the ring, but then you lose a lot of the power of interactive content and might as well write a novel instead. Ideally the DM adapts the world around the choices of the players, rather than making their choices for them.

Nice try but I said not MMORPGs just RPGs

In Dragon Age Inquisition, if you missed out on finding certain items in various locations and that map became unavailable later in the story, those items mysteriously appeared in a Val Royeux store for purchase. It was the less efficient option because they were often not cheap that way, but it was another option than “too bad, you missed out.”

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

In a pen and paper, you can get a specific item in different ways if the DM allows it. You could find an ally that the owner of the items owns a substantial favor and agrees to part with it if X is done for him.
You could equal this with not doing the initial content but working or paying for it.

Still specific content and not something that can apply to a game without balance problems. If wayB of getting the item is so much easier then it completely invalidates wayA.

That is only when the destination is more important than the journey. That is often not the case in P&P RPG games.

That’s true but there has to be an overarching story with some purpose, otherwise there is some serious problem with story telling.

maddoctor.2738:

To use a GW2 analogy in your pen & paper example it would be like the DM giving to the players the jewel if they went and farmed a completely irrelevant goblin tribe. Or the got the jewel by defeating a completely irrelevant dungeon boss that is even on a far away continent. That’s how “multiple path rewards” feel like in GW2. Other types of content, outside of what is giving the rewards, is completely irrelevant story/lore wise.

Nope. You are missing the important point here. No GM worth playing under would ever place that jewel beyond a content his players would be uncomfortable or displeased with. Railroading is considered a Very Bad Word in RPG community. See also my Caliburn/Mjollnir example earlier.
The only reason why early cRPG games engaged in it was simply because they were too primitive to do otherwise. It wasn’t something good that should be repeated. It was a limitation, an implementation flaw.
And yet i see now people gloryfying that flaw as if it were something great.

I’m not talking about railroading. You are making it so villains cannot exist in a story, because by definition a villain contains a certain aspect of railroading (the players need to fight them or defeat their plans) yet most stories in existence also contain at least one villain. That villain might have what the players seek and is part of good story telling ability to lead the players to actually confront them. If they choose to run away to a distant land then it’s a different story altogether, no reason to bring the jewel into play anymore.

You are advocating that stories don’t need an overall plot, they don’t need villains and they don’t need actual confrontations. Players might want just to raid goblin villages, that doesn’t mean they should get the rewards (the jewel) associated with defeating the main antagonist. A good story needs a good antagonist, and a good overall plot that ties things together, they are NOT raidroading. You are confusing what railroading means in an RPG sesne.

maddoctor.2738:

And you want to joke around find me a true RPG where it’s possible to get an item from multiple types of content.

Fallout. And the fact that many things could be acquired in multitude of ways, both easy and hard, was always considered a positive side of that game.

“Many” doesn’t mean much. Some simple googlekitten because sadly I didn’t play the original Fallout, reveals that the game lacks unique weapons altogether. So obviously you can acquire them in multiple ways.

Ohoni.6057:

You can’t make elaborate stories about the snowflake uniqueness of an item when thousands of other players have it.

It’s the same case with single player games where thousands of players have the item and it still has a story. Just because every player in the game can get the item doesn’t mean it can’t have a story behind it. If I get Eir’s Bow from an actual story, if Eir gave it to me during a personal story for example, it wouldn’t matter that thousand other players would also get it through the same story. The unique aspect of the item is diminished only because it is available through multiple paths (random drop), if it was just a story reward it would be different.

But again, that’s bad storytelling, because then if the hero decides to never go after that powerful character, then he never gets the ring and the story never advances. The only way around that is through linear, non-interactive storytelling, where the hero had no choice but to go and kill the character with the ring, but then you lose a lot of the power of interactive content and might as well write a novel instead. Ideally the DM adapts the world around the choices of the players, rather than making their choices for them.

Bad storytelling is when you don’t convince the hero to go after the villain that wants to destroy the world. if the players don’t go after him then you go for a different story, much like Astral you are confusing railroading with actual story telling. Stories need compelling villains, in order for characters to shine they need an antagonist (or they can be the bad guys). You are advocating a story without an overall plot and without antagonists because the characters may not choose to fight them. THAT is the bad story.

Nice try but I said not MMORPGs just RPGs

In Dragon Age Inquisition, if you missed out on finding certain items in various locations and that map became unavailable later in the story, those items mysteriously appeared in a Val Royeux store for purchase. It was the less efficient option because they were often not cheap that way, but it was another option than “too bad, you missed out.”

Quick googlekittenfor you too reveals that in Dragon Age: Inquisition the best items come from merchant (Black Emporium) and others through crafting using schematics which appear to be at very specific locations. Still reinforcing the argument

You are advocating that stories don’t need an overall plot, they don’t need villains and they don’t need actual confrontations. Players might want just to raid goblin villages, that doesn’t mean they should get the rewards (the jewel) associated with defeating the main antagonist. A good story needs a good antagonist, and a good overall plot that ties things together, they are NOT raidroading. You are confusing what railroading means in an RPG sesne.

Yeah, but if you do have a group of players who insist on raiding the goblins, then you need to adapt to that, and start involving them in the most interesting goblin-raiding story possible, even if that means completely abandoning the story you’d wanted to tell. It’s like improv, "yes, and. . . " not “no, instead. . .” If the players have no interest in an epic world-saving adventure against some mechanically challenging boss, then its your job to not force them into that sort of story.

It’s the same case with single player games where thousands of players have the item and it still has a story.

No, it’s not remotely like a single player game, because in a single player game you’re the only player you encounter. If Mass Effect were in a shared world, and you were tripping all over other Commander Shepards on the same quest you were, it would be a completely different game. An MMO has to take into account that the world includes thousands of people just as capable as you are. You are not the single indispensable hero, you are just a strong fighter trying to help the world as best you can.

If I get Eir’s Bow from an actual story, if Eir gave it to me during a personal story for example, it wouldn’t matter that thousand other players would also get it through the same story. The unique aspect of the item is diminished only because it is available through multiple paths (random drop), if it was just a story reward it would be different.

But the point is that these items ARE distributed through multiple channels, and that’s a good thing. You might get your bow from Eir, but if another player did not have that opportunity, maybe he found his elsewhere, and that’s ok too. He doesn’t have to get it from the same place you got it.

if the players don’t go after him then you go for a different story, much like Astral you are confusing railroading with actual story telling. Stories need compelling villains, in order for characters to shine they need an antagonist (or they can be the bad guys).

Yes, and in an RPG, the GM/dev is NOT the storyteller. They are just a co-equal participant in the story. The players have full autonomy over their own stories, you just control how the world reacts to their choices (including ending, if that’s what happens). they are not being led through your story, you are helping them to write their own.

Now computer games often struggle with this, because they are less capable of adapting to “Crazy Eddy” choices, and often do have to funnel players towards certain objectives, but this is a limitation, a failing, not an ideal for which to aspire.

Quick googlekittenfor you too reveals that in Dragon Age: Inquisition the best items come from merchant (Black Emporium) and others through crafting using schematics which appear to be at very specific locations. Still reinforcing the argument

/sigh. I realize at this point that you’re just going to change direction any time you’re confronted with an unpleasant truth, so I’ll leave you to your happy delusions.

Ohoni.6057:

Yeah, but if you do have a group of players who insist on raiding the goblins, then you need to adapt to that, and start involving them in the most interesting goblin-raiding story possible, even if that means completely abandoning the story you’d wanted to tell. It’s like improv, "yes, and. . . " not “no, instead. . .” If the players have no interest in an epic world-saving adventure against some mechanically challenging boss, then its your job to not force them into that sort of story.

That’s true. Reaching that point probably means the story teller failed to tell a compelling story so the players got bored or lost interest or he underestimated what kind of story the players wanted. Still they won’t get the epic jewel by raiding the goblin town.

It’s the same case with single player games where thousands of players have the item and it still has a story.

No, it’s not remotely like a single player game, because in a single player game you’re the only player you encounter. If Mass Effect were in a shared world, and you were tripping all over other Commander Shepards on the same quest you were, it would be a completely different game. An MMO has to take into account that the world includes thousands of people just as capable as you are. You are not the single indispensable hero, you are just a strong fighter trying to help the world as best you can.

Sorry but last I checked during LS2 story missions I AM the boss and the only boss around, during the story part of the game I AM the indispensable hero much like everyone other player that plays the story. I AM the hero of Saemoor, I AM the commander of the pact, I AM the boss.

But the point is that these items ARE distributed through multiple channels, and that’s a good thing. You might get your bow from Eir, but if another player did not have that opportunity, maybe he found his elsewhere, and that’s ok too. He doesn’t have to get it from the same place you got it.

An epic item in much older MMORPGs were you spend days and days to create by undertaking epic quests, grinding crafting materials, accumulating gold etc in the end became as unique as any item in a single player game. Items can have as much story in an MMORPG as they do in single player games. What limits their story potential is how you get them, getting Eir’s Bow from a dying Eir after a failed rescue attempt against the Mordrem in a dungeon is much more impactful than getting it as a Mystic Forge reward.

Yes, and in an RPG, the GM/dev is NOT the storyteller. They are just a co-equal participant in the story. The players have full autonomy over their own stories, you just control how the world reacts to their choices (including ending, if that’s what happens). they are not being led through your story, you are helping them to write their own.

An RPG GM/dev IS also a story teller. If the story fails to grip the players and they go after random mobs instead that’s a failure of the story to be interesting for the players.

/sigh. I realize at this point that you’re just going to change direction any time you’re confronted with an unpleasant truth, so I’ll leave you to your happy delusions.

What truth? That the best item rewards even in DAI come from specific content, much like in any game ever? That’s how every RPG ever worked, work, and will always work, that’s the truth and I never made that statement as a question.

The only question is why Guild Wars 2 players when regarding Raid exclusive gear are so against it while it works in every other game AND in Guild Wars 2 itself.

Conski Deshan.2057:

If we’re using that silly analogy still , everything in your example RPG has to be acquirable multiple ways, while to prove our point only some of the items have to be.

Untrue. The argument was that the multiple ways to get objects (okay, let’s limit it to “important” objects, like uniques and key story items) are always detrimental to the game. All i needed to point out is a case where it’s not true.

Conski Deshan.2057:

To the people holding up precursors as the GW2 example… it was pretty much the most complained about feature

You did notice, however, that most complains was that the precursors still weren’t that easy enough to get? People were asking for precursor crafting to expant the acquisition options, not to limit them.

Conski Deshan.2057:

It made a joke out of being a high end player

Nah, it is usually “high end”players that make a joke out of themselves by overestimating their own importance.

Conski Deshan.2057:

The analogies are getting out of hand, RPG’s are always about the prestige/glory being the hero all that ego boosting stuff.

Sure, but you should be a hero because of what you do, not of what you wear.

Conski Deshan.2057:

translating that into a multiplayer experience means someone has to lose out.

There is a major difference between getting famous by helping others and being an example others would want to imitate, and getting ahead by throwing obstacles in front of others.

Conski Deshan.2057:

honestly outside of this game I’ve never seen people complain much, even if they miss out on an item they really wanted, there will always be something else, not the nicest way to phrase it but they get over it.

Either you weren’t playing much MMO’s, or you weren’t paying attention. It is actually way better in GW2 than in most other games.

Conski Deshan.2057:

(No I don’t buy that 1 specific item being perfect for the look and their whole game experience is ruined due to not getting, or the completionist argument either.)

And i don’t buy the argument that lack of exclusivity would ruin the challenge of the new content.

That’s true. Reaching that point probably means the story teller failed to tell a compelling story so the players got bored or lost interest or he underestimated what kind of story the players wanted. Still they won’t get the epic jewel by raiding the goblin town.

Why not though. They could. If it would make the players happy to have it, the DM should put the epic jewel someplace in the goblin town. They’ll never know it was supposed to be in the wizard’s tower instead, nor do they have to.

Sorry but last I checked during LS2 story missions I AM the boss and the only boss around, during the story part of the game I AM the indispensable hero much like everyone other player that plays the story. I AM the hero of Saemoor, I AM the commander of the pact, I AM the boss.

Yeah, which personally I see as a bit of a negative. The original personal story was a bit more in keeping with a proper MMO story, but players complained that they weren’t the Ultimate Hero, so s1 and 2 were more player-centric. Still, the role you play is not the ONLY role out there, other heroes are doing important stuff too, and it really only applies to the LW chapters. The stuff that happen during events, dungeons, and raids, you are just a cog in the machine, happy to be along for the ride, and the only importance you play is in the actual things that you accomplish, not in what the story tells you you accomplished. Unless you perform exceptionally, chances are a hundred people performed just as you did on that same night.

An epic item in much older MMORPGs were you spend days and days to create by undertaking epic quests, grinding crafting materials, accumulating gold etc in the end became as unique as any item in a single player game. Items can have as much story in an MMORPG as they do in single player games.

Sure, btu the story is how YOU got it, not have the game decided you should get it. Open loot systems create much MORe opportunity for storytelling, because each player will have his own story, whereas you advocate one where every player has the exact same story.
P:“Hey Frank, how’d you get your Legendary Helm?”
F:“I killed that raid boss a bunch of times and eventually he dropped it.”
P:“Yeah, me too.”
F:“Good story Phil.”

An RPG GM/dev IS also a story teller. If the story fails to grip the players and they go after random mobs instead that’s a failure of the story to be interesting for the players.

Not necessarily. Maybe they just prefer going after random mobs than linear narrative. In which case, the GM should focus on telling interesting random mob fighting encounters. The players aren’t “wrong” for wanting to do that, and the GM is only “wrong” if he fails to adapt to their interests.

What truth? That the best item rewards even in DAI come from specific content, much like in any game ever? That’s how every RPG ever worked, work, and will always work, that’s the truth and I never made that statement as a question.

The only question is why Guild Wars 2 players when regarding Raid exclusive gear are so against it while it works in every other game AND in Guild Wars 2 itself.

No, I said we’re done on that topic, you have your own mindset on it and it’s not beholden to reality so further discussion is not going to have any value.

Astralporing.1957:

Conski Deshan.2057:

To the people holding up precursors as the GW2 example… it was pretty much the most complained about feature

You did notice, however, that most complains was that the precursors still weren’t that easy enough to get? People were asking for precursor crafting to expant the acquisition options, not to limit them.

The complain about precursors wasn’t that they were “hard to get” because there is nothing hard about getting them, it’s just dumb luck. Players were asking for a 100% way to get them, without involving luck. I don’t think making them “easier to acquire” was any kind of point, getting them with a collection removes the “if”, it’s just a matter of “when”. It might take months, it might take years, but you WILL get it. With the old system you might never get a precursor in your lifetime.

Now, imagine them adding requirement for a precursor inside the raid instance

maddoctor.2738:

Ohoni.6057:

Yeah, but if you do have a group of players who insist on raiding the goblins, then you need to adapt to that, and start involving them in the most interesting goblin-raiding story possible, even if that means completely abandoning the story you’d wanted to tell. It’s like improv, "yes, and. . . " not “no, instead. . .” If the players have no interest in an epic world-saving adventure against some mechanically challenging boss, then its your job to not force them into that sort of story.

That’s true. Reaching that point probably means the story teller failed to tell a compelling story so the players got bored or lost interest or he underestimated what kind of story the players wanted. Still they won’t get the epic jewel by raiding the goblin town.

Only when GM is bad, or players are uninterested either in the jewel, or the goblin town.

maddoctor.2738:

Yes, and in an RPG, the GM/dev is NOT the storyteller. They are just a co-equal participant in the story. The players have full autonomy over their own stories, you just control how the world reacts to their choices (including ending, if that’s what happens). they are not being led through your story, you are helping them to write their own.

An RPG GM/dev IS also a story teller. If the story fails to grip the players and they go after random mobs instead that’s a failure of the story to be interesting for the players.

Yes, that’s what we’re saying. A GM that fails to incorporate player wishes in his storytelling is a failure.

maddoctor.2738:

/sigh. I realize at this point that you’re just going to change direction any time you’re confronted with an unpleasant truth, so I’ll leave you to your happy delusions.

What truth? That the best item rewards even in DAI come from specific content, much like in any game ever? That’s how every RPG ever worked, work, and will always work, that’s the truth and I never made that statement as a question.

The truth that what you claim (“every RPG ever”, lol) is simply not true. Do you know, that there are RPG systems that will let you start the game with a weapon that quite possibly will never be overshadowed by anything you might find later? Yes, they do exist.

maddoctor.2738:

The only question is why Guild Wars 2 players when regarding Raid exclusive gear are so against it while it works in every other game AND in Guild Wars 2 itself.

Perhaps because lot of them are in this game specifically due to raid exclusivity not working for them.

TL/DR;
You claim that exclusivity works in every other game, but fail to notice that it works for you, but not necessarily for others. Yes, we get that something you like works for you, but you have to realize it only works because you like it. And that many people think otherwise. And that you liking it doesn’t mean it’s automatically a good idea.

Ohoni.6057:

Why not though. They could. If it would make the players happy to have it, the DM should put the epic jewel someplace in the goblin town. They’ll never know it was supposed to be in the wizard’s tower instead, nor do they have to.

It always depends on how the item was depicted. If it was a ring that will allow the wearer after a ritual to conquer the world and the players already knew that, then it wouldn’t make any sense to put it anywhere else. But anyway. on the actual raid exclusivity discussion I’d rather see first if those legendary precursors have anything to do with the storyline of GW2 or not which I seriously doubt, but they may surprise us all with an epic storyline surrounding those items.

Sorry but last I checked during LS2 story missions I AM the boss and the only boss around, during the story part of the game I AM the indispensable hero much like everyone other player that plays the story. I AM the hero of Saemoor, I AM the commander of the pact, I AM the boss.

Yeah, which personally I see as a bit of a negative.

Instanced story is the only way a compelling story in an MMORPG, can’t have an actual story moving around in the open world because it lacks something important, permanency. In an instance you can see much needed NPC interractions and character development, something that is never done in the open world.

Open loot systems create much MORe opportunity for storytelling, because each player will have his own story, whereas you advocate one where every player has the exact same story.
P:“Hey Frank, how’d you get your Legendary Helm?”
F:“I killed that raid boss a bunch of times and eventually he dropped it.”
P:“Yeah, me too.”
F:“Good story Phil.”

At least the Legendary Helm was a reward from some actual story. The problem is, in GW2 what kind of “other ways” do we have? it’s good to have multiple ways to get rewards but it must make sense to get the rewards through them. Sadly there is no story in farming tokens in CoF, gathering geodes in DT, killing VW repeatedly in SW, playing PVP or WvW or any other content type in GW2, that has any kind of relevance to the raid content. Maybe they’ll adding something that makes sense in HoT that is outside of the Raid, but old content doesn’t look promising.

Astralporing.1957:

TL/DR;
You claim that exclusivity works in every other game, but fail to notice that it works for you, but not necessarily for others. Yes, we get that something you like works for you, but you have to realize it only works because you like it. And that many people think otherwise. And that you liking it doesn’t mean it’s automatically a good idea.

I don’t claim anything, exclusivity just works in every other game. And there is a good reason for it, exclusivity gives rewards what they otherwise lack, a story and a reason to exist.