Guild Wars 2

Am I only one who dont mind missing out raids because I am in full Soldier’s Exotic gear even after playing three years on same character? Folks who claim that wearing top tier gear makes one more “skillful” than others and thus “worthy” of raids, I say; good for you. Keep grinding. Although having best gear indeed makes you worthy of raids and thus reap its rewards. I would suggest to break the illusion that Gear = Skill.

PS: Raids, like Fractals and Dungeons are just something I have no interest in. But for folks who like to work and update their gear, thumbs up.

BaconofPigs.1683:

It proved everything that ascended was planned before launch.

Sigh… They admitted few months ago that it wasn’t and that ascended were a result of a design change.

All activities should have exclusive rewards. So you can look at player and tell that he’s good in pvp/www/pve.
Legendaries should require player to be good in ALL aspects of game: Pvp and www for gifts, raid for precursor, open world for mats. Only then it will be truly Legendary.
In HoT Anet made right decision in making precursor accbound and requirement for every aspect of game to be beaten.

Limenox.8320:

Running a few dungeon paths on daily basis can hardly be called grind.

Sure, seeing as they are going to nerf dungeon rewards to the point where people will run them only for fun. Grind will migrate to other places

Limenox.8320:

I just can’t understand how can he say that everything is subject to change and still refusing ascended as a top tier (which is also subject to change with hot release and legendary armors).

Not every change is good. This one isn’t.
“everything is sublect to change” doesn’t mean that we should support changes we do not agree with. It does mean that if something changed not to our liking, we can argue against it and have a hope of it being changed again.

Limenox.8320:

It was sarcasm. Dunno how you didn’t get that.

Maybe because it looked more like intentional misrepresentation of Ohoni’s arguments to make yours seem stronger.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Since most people already have ascended, I seriously doubt there will be much in the way of exclusion. lol

I’m pretty sure you are mistaken here. On both counts.

VictorTroska.3725:

Am I only one who dont mind missing out raids because I am in full Soldier’s Exotic gear even after playing three years on same character? Folks who claim that wearing top tier gear makes one more “skillful” than others and thus “worthy” of raids, I say; good for you. Keep grinding. Although having best gear indeed makes you worthy of raids and thus reap its rewards. I would suggest to break the illusion that Gear = Skill.

PS: Raids, like Fractals and Dungeons are just something I have no interest in. But for folks who like to work and update their gear, thumbs up.

But you CAN do raids in exotics:D you are welcomed in my party any day! As Long as you Rez me when I die and I Rez you when you die we can be friends!

Because A. it doesn’t fit thematically

It could. Remember, you wouldn’t be earning them directly, you wouldn’t be earning Silverwaste badges from CoF, but there would be an NPC that wants CoF tokens, and he’s got some Silverwaste tokens, and he’s willing to give you one for the other. If you accept that the guy in LA will trade you CoF tokens for CoF armor, why couldn’t you accept another NPC offering to exchange these tokens?

B. it leads to easy mode grind (just like gold). Imagine this, someone manages to do CoF easy mode, why would he go to Silverwastes to get Carapace and not just stay doing what he was already doing (farming CoF) if it’s easier/faster to do so?

Because the balance would be designed so that if that were the case, you would get less Silverwaste badges in exchange for CoF tokens, so that it would take you longer running it in CoF. It would not be 1:1, it would not be even between activities of varying difficulty. It would not be easier/faster to farm CoF to earn Silverwaste rewards, it would just be possible.

The only case in which it could potentially be easier/faster is if you are especially bad at a certain type of content, and have no chance of becoming good at it, in which case, the alternative might be easier. If you do have the potential to “get good” at the default content, then even including the time it would take you to do so, it would remain the more efficient path to the reward.

But if you do want to stay and do one activity over another, then you should, that’s a good thing, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t.

A company like Anet WANTS their newer releases, their newer zones and LS content to attract players.

Then they should make them fun to do, and they often are. Now I’ve pointed this out in the past, I have no problem with them having exclusive “try me” rewards. To meet that definition, it has to be something that can be accomplished in only a few hours of work at most, by any player earnestly attempting the content.

So you can say “spent a few hours running this event in Verdant Brink, and get a reward you can’t get anywhere else,” and that’s fine. It gets players to try alternate content that they might not otherwise, which is valuable, but it also respects that once they have tried it, they can make their own decisions about whether they want to continue doing that activity. This is why long term rewards, the rewards for hours and hours of hard work, should not be exclusive to specific activities, because these rewards do not respect the player’s right to not want to do that activity.

Grind is when you repeat things a lot of times. It has nothing to do with fun. There are lots of players who even say it out loud that they “love the grind”.

They are saying “I enjoy this thing that other people do not.” They are still “ironically” referencing that the activity they are doing is a grind to others, just not to them. “The grind” is still entirely about people not enjoying the activity.

That’s true. However there are limits to this for a video game that wants to expand. When they add new content they want that new content to have people running it even though running older content that you have more experience at running might be faster to get your gold.

But see the points above. You can still have “try me” rewards to get heads through the door. What should keep the players there is the fun and unique gameplay experiences being provided, not the new loot chase. But even so, since the rewards would be balanced so that the default method is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS the most efficient way of progressing towards that reward, if they are only interested in efficiency then they will stick around and do that new activity to earn the new rewards. The only reason they would farm the old content for the new rewards is if they so enjoy that old content and/or so hate the new stuff that it’s worth the loss in overall efficiency, and if that’s the case, then that’s exactly what they should be doing with their time, because they are having fun, and they are not not having fun, and they are working towards the goal they’ve set for themselves, win/win/win.

Ohoni.6057:

It could. Remember, you wouldn’t be earning them directly, you wouldn’t be earning Silverwaste badges from CoF, but there would be an NPC that wants CoF tokens, and he’s got some Silverwaste tokens, and he’s willing to give you one for the other.

Tokens do not exist thematically, they are just a way to show that you’ve done some specific content.

Because the balance would be designed so that if that were the case, you would get less Silverwaste badges in exchange for CoF tokens, so that it would take you longer running it in CoF.

That’s not possible. Someone might find CoF harder, another might find Silverwastes harder.

But if you do want to stay and do one activity over another, then you should, that’s a good thing, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t.

It’s not a good thing and there are lots of reasons not to do it, read the rest of the post for details.

Then they should make them fun to do, and they often are.

And they can’t guarantee that everyone will like their new content. That’s why they add exclusives to them.

Now I’ve pointed this out in the past, I have no problem with them having exclusive “try me” rewards. To meet that definition, it has to be something that can be accomplished in only a few hours of work at most, by any player earnestly attempting the content.

There is no such thing as “try me” rewards. A reward cannot be a “try me” reward, otherwise it’s not longer a reward.

They are saying “I enjoy this thing that other people do not.” They are still “ironically” referencing that the activity they are doing is a grind to others, just not to them. “The grind” is still entirely about people not enjoying the activity.

No it’s not.

But see the points above.

See the responces to the points above.

The anger in this thread is real.

Can’t blame it, though. The first two posts were so condescending that I’m stunned I didn’t pick up my computer screen and give it a swirly in the hopes that the OP would feel it.

But even so, since the rewards would be balanced so that the default method is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS the most efficient way of progressing towards that reward, if they are only interested in efficiency then they will stick around and do that new activity to earn the new rewards.

That’s not possible either. You DO understand that an activity you’ve been doing for a very long time will always be a very efficient path to rewards right? At least until you understand and master the mechanics of the new content.

Will this “efficient” way account for mastering, trying and understanding of the new mechanics? Because, for example, mastering the Raid encounters might take whole months, sure you might put them on farm status if you are good enough, but getting to that point will take several months. Then the “alternative” will be balanced around that, and not the possibility of a “farm mode”. So if there is RNG behind it, it will be a huge difference if your “always more efficient” is to be true, otherwise you talk garbage.

If you have some solid examples of how that might work go ahead and post them. For example how many geodes to get CoF armor and how many CoF tokens to get Ambrite recipes.

Also, you do understand that allowing players to get Ambrite recipes with CoF tokens has the another major drawback, by the time Ambrite recipes are released someone might have a billion CoF tokens, so he won’t need to run Dry Top at ALL.

Allowing older content to give rewards of new content is an idea that simply doesn’t work. Too many variables, impossible to balance, and too many hoarding problems. I just can’t see a single benefit to it.

Finally, you do understand that when a game gets an expansion they will try to make players play that said expansion and not stay in their “comfort zone” right?

@Ohoni:

Am I deducting it right, when I say that all of your gripes with all content would be solved, if there was only one currency (eg.: gold), and you could buy any item for that?

Tokens do not exist thematically, they are just a way to show that you’ve done some specific content.

No, they exist. They are a thing that appears in my wallet when I complete a dungeon. I turn them in to an NPC in LA to get dungeon armor. It’s not some meta-currency that does not take up space in the game world. At one point it even took up main inventory space. Now, if you’re going to insist that you have some self-imposed blind spot to these facts, then you can just extend that blindspot to include token exchanging.

That’s not possible. Someone might find CoF harder, another might find Silverwastes harder.

It would be based on averages, with a significant penalty tacked on. Remember, the goal is not for the exchange rate to be even, for you to get the “fair” value for currency A in exchange for currency B, it would always be slightly stacked against you, like the gold/gem exchange process, and that margin would help soften out the difference between personal player skill differences.

Ultimately, sure, someone might have a certain activity so much more “on lock” than the average player that even with the exchange penalties they would come out ahead doing their own thing, and if that’s what they want to do then they can, but if they want to do something else, then they can do that too, and having the choice is ALWAYS better than not having the choice. Always.

It’s not a good thing and there are lots of reasons not to do it, read the rest of the post for details.

Nope. It’s in the game’s interest to get players to TRY as many things as possible in hopes that they will find multiple activities that they enjoy, but if a player only enjoys certain activities, then it’s in the game’s best interests to let him keep doing those activities as much as he wants, because if he’s forced to do activities he does not enjoy, then it erodes his overall enjoyment of the game to the point that he stops playing, or at the very least stops being generous in the gem store.

And they can’t guarantee that everyone will like their new content. That’s why they add exclusives to them.

And for those that don’t enjoy the new content, they should not be playing the new content. They should be encouraged to try it, but if they try it and do not like it, then they should feel free to go about their business. It’s better for ANet that a player be happy running around Queensdale than be frustrated and bored in Verdant Brink.

There is no such thing as “try me” rewards. A reward cannot be a “try me” reward, otherwise it’s not longer a reward.

Well, there are plenty of “try me” rewards already in the game, ones offered for fairly minimal investments of time and effort in a given activity. You’re given a loot chest for rolling through a dodge ring in the starter areas, for example. Again, these shouldn’t be the only reward, there should be rewards for long term effort, but these rewards should not be exclusive to specific content.

Ohoni.6057:

No, they exist. They are a thing that appears in my wallet when I complete a dungeon.

Tokens are a gaming idea, they do not actually exist in the game lore and setting. The rewards are based on doing content and finishing certain objectives, and the best way to “count” that is through tokens. Thematically tokens do not exist.

It would be based on averages, with a significant penalty tacked on.

It’s still impossible. How do you get those averages? Using what data?

Ultimately, sure, someone might have a certain activity so much more “on lock” than the average player that even with the exchange penalties they would come out ahead doing their own thing, and if that’s what they want to do then they can, but if they want to do something else, then they can do that too, and having the choice is ALWAYS better than not having the choice. Always.

No. It never is better. NEVER.

Nope.

So it’s to the game’s interest to have empty content after a while because players realize how much more efficient it is to get the rewards from their old habits, no matter how much they like the new content. Got it. With that attitude I hope you are never in charge of a video game.

Well, there are plenty of “try me” rewards already in the game, ones offered for fairly minimal investments of time and effort in a given activity. You’re given a loot chest for rolling through a dodge ring in the starter areas, for example. Again, these shouldn’t be the only reward, there should be rewards for long term effort, but these rewards should not be exclusive to specific content.

… so you indeed want a minimal investment. When I said you can’t make up your mind you said otherwise.

Bubi.7942:

@Ohoni:

Am I deducting it right, when I say that all of your gripes with all content would be solved, if there was only one currency (eg.: gold), and you could buy any item for that?

No because gold has TP flipping and real money conversion. Other than that yes that’s exactly the point since day one. It’s funny how someone can’t understand the problems of a universal currency

Ohoni.6057:

It could. Remember, you wouldn’t be earning them directly, you wouldn’t be earning Silverwaste badges from CoF, but there would be an NPC that wants CoF tokens, and he’s got some Silverwaste tokens, and he’s willing to give you one for the other. If you accept that the guy in LA will trade you CoF tokens for CoF armor, why couldn’t you accept another NPC offering to exchange these tokens?

There are two loot systems in mmo. Random drops from bosses or token system. Token system leads to less frustration because you decide which stat set you get in exchange for your effort. That’s why Anet made dungeons that way. But you can’t grind dungeons for tokens because of daily reset. Your idea of NPC exchange destroy the purpose of daily dungeon reset. You can do all dungeon and then exchange all tokens for one specific dungeon reward.

“The grind” is still entirely about people not enjoying the activity.

Grind is repetitive activities.
Fun has nothing to with it.
You don’t find dungeons fun, but that doesn’t make them grind, because of daily reset for tokens you can’t actually grind them (you can enter but you don’t get reward, so it’s pointless doing them more than once per day).
And if you are Silverwastes Knight and find it fun it doesn’t make this map not a grind paradise.

That’s not possible either. You DO understand that an activity you’ve been doing for a very long time will always be a very efficient path to rewards right? At least until you understand and master the mechanics of the new content.

Not really. I mean, if the reward is something you can earn in an evening, sure, it’s more efficient to stick with what you know, but if the reward is something that is meant to take weeks or even months to fully earn, as is the case with most rewards worth caring about, then yeah, you might not progress as fast over the first week or so, but you’ll get the hang of it, and from then on you’ll be progressing faster (given the deliberately unbalanced exchange rate) than you were in the previous task.

Think of it this way, the most recent Queen’s Jubilee was not really offering much unique, most people playing it were doing so because the gold rate there was good, but it took practice to achieve that rate, and yet plenty of people did that, and learned, and had fun doing it.

Now, if a task is designed to be deliberately very hard to master, so that you can’t even really get started at it for weeks and weeks, then the exchange rate would need to be absolutely terrible, so that it would take a months or years to earn the reward through alternatives, but honestly I don’t expect anything to be quite that bad.

If you have some solid examples of how that might work go ahead and post them. For example how many geodes to get CoF armor and how many CoF tokens to get Ambrite recipies.

Neither of us have access to the data needed to get overly specific. ANet does. They have data on how many [currency] players typically get per run, what the mix/max/average runs are for timed content, things like that, and can use that data to figure out the general exchange rates. It’s pointless to speculate from the outside, nor would I have to for the general premise to be a sound one, and you should know that.

Also, you do understand that when a game gets an expansion they will try to make players play that said expansion and not stay in their “comfort zone” right?

Yes, hence the “Try me” rewards. They would want to have rewards around that would get players to at least try everything that HoT has to offer in pursuit of those rewards, but each one should be attached to a relatively small amount of effort for a relatively small prize. The longer form prizes would still be most efficiently gathered there, so if they enjoyed the “taste” they had of the content then they will happily continue there, but if it genuinely isn’t for them, then it’s better for ANet that the player do what he enjoys doing than that he plays in the new content. If he enjoys what he was already doing more than he enjoys the new stuff, then clearly they failed to make the new stuff compelling.

I mean, when they first added Dry Top and Silverwastes, I played in those zones for hours, and at that point it had nothing to do with the loot exclusive to the zone, I just wanted to try all the unique experiences involved, and I settled into the ones that I enjoyed doing. I eventually got all the loot worth getting out of Dry Top, and at that point there was no reason to stick around, but if I could have converted Geodes into ANY other kind of currency, I would likely still be spending a decent amount of time there, working towards completing my dungeon armor sets or something.

Am I deducting it right, when I say that all of your gripes with all content would be solved, if there was only one currency (eg.: gold), and you could buy any item for that?

Gold doesn’t work because you can buy it with cash money, and because players can buy things and then resell them for higher, allowing them to make money from money. A proper exchange currency would be independent of other players, and based entirely on gameplay accomplishment.

Ohoni.6057:

Not really. I mean, if the reward is something you can earn in an evening, sure, it’s more efficient to stick with what you know, but if the reward is something that is meant to take weeks or even months to fully earn, as is the case with most rewards worth caring about, then yeah, you might not progress as fast over the first week or so, but you’ll get the hang of it, and from then on you’ll be progressing faster (given the deliberately unbalanced exchange rate) than you were in the previous task.

That doesn’t make any sense. How many repetitions it takes is irrelevant. Even if it takes weeks or months to fully earn, you will still have to spend more weeks/months to master it. Time you can spend doing the content you are familiar with and earn the reward in the process.

Now, if a task is designed to be deliberately very hard to master, so that you can’t even really get started at it for weeks and weeks, then the exchange rate would need to be absolutely terrible, so that it would take a months or years to earn the reward through alternatives, but honestly I don’t expect anything to be quite that bad.

For who? For casual joe it might be that bad. So who is going to be used for the exchange rate? Different for each player?

Neither of us have access to the data needed to get overly specific.

So you just want for the sake of wanting without actually offering any ideas. That’s what a so called “arm-chair” dev does. If the devs do have all that data and decided to make the game they did, don’t you think it’s quite possible that given the data that was the best option?

Yes, hence the “Try me” rewards.

Those do not exist we’ve been through this.

There is two loot systems in mmo. Random drops from bosses or token system. Token system leads to less frustration because you decide which stat set you get in exchange for your effort. That’s why Anet made dungeons that way. But you can’t grind dungeons for tokens because of daily reset. Your idea of NPC exchange destroy the purpose of daily dungeon reset. You can do all dungeon and then exchange all tokens for one specific dungeon reward.

So what if you did? That would mean that you’d be running all the dungeons, and that seems like a worthwhile activity to me. Now if all you care about is clearing out the rewards from one dungeon, then yeah, it would be faster to run all the dungeons and beat the daily lockout. On the other hand, if your goal is to get ALL the dungeon armors, then you’d be better off saving up all the tokens and spending each on their respective dungeons, because the exchange rates would make exchanging tokens less efficient.

Basically, if it takes 23 runs of CoF to get a full set of armor, over eight days if you do all three paths, then you might be able to accomplish the same thing in 2-3 days if you run all 24 dungeon paths each day, but you’d be doing a lot more work, so why shouldn’t you get the reward?

The point of the daily reset is to lock the maximum total rewards you can earn, and they would still achieve that purpose, no worse than the current system does. At most it would give you a little more flexibility.

Grind is repetitive activities.
Fun has nothing to with it.
You don’t find dungeons fun, but that does make them grind, because of daily reset for tokens you can’t actually grind them (you can enter but you don’t get reward, so it’s pointless doing them more than once per day).

Daily resets do nothing to make dungeons less of a grind if you don’t enjoy repeating them. Repetition is repetition whether it is 23 times over eight days or 23 times over one day, it’s still 23 times.

There will be gold sellers even w/o gem-gold exchange.
They are present in every mmo.

If there’s customers then there will be those who provide.

That doesn’t make any sense. How many repetitions it takes is irrelevant. Even if it takes weeks or months to fully earn, you will still have to spend more weeks/months to master it. Time you can spend doing the content you are familiar with and earn the reward in the process.

But you wouldn’t. You would be working towards the reward, but you wouldn’t get it faster. Think of it like a guy on a bike, verses a guy with a car, but it’s a stick shift car and he doesn’t know how to drive stick. If they have a several mile race, then the guy on the bike will have an early lead, certainly, he can just go, while the guy with the car might be struggling to figure out how to get in gear, but once the car guy gets it down, he can tear off, and well overtake the guy on the bike. The “distance” of the race would be balanced so that the cyclist’s head start would still not allow him to come in ahead.

For who? For casual joe it might be that bad. So who is going to be used for the exchange rate? Different for each player?

It would be based on the average, with some penalty added in, so in practical terms it would be targeted at the top 30-40% or so of the people intended to be doing the content at all. Sure, some players would be hopeless at the content, and maybe those players SHOULD be pursuing the alternatives instead, and maybe some players would catch on really fast, and they would be ahead of the curve, and that’s ok too. All rewards, including those in the existing game, suffer from similar imbalances. The only difference here is that when players encounter them, they have options.

So you just want for the sake of wanting without actually offering any ideas. That’s what a so called “arm-chair” dev does. If the devs do have all that data and decided to make the game they did, don’t you think it’s quite possible that given the data that was the best option?

It is, but I won’t assume that without hearing them say it. The other possibility is that they just didn’t choose to go that route without seriously taking it into consideration, and in time might change their minds.

Those do not exist we’ve been through this.

They do exist, have always existed, and I can’t understand why you refuse to acknowledge that. I feel like I’m talking to a climate change denier.

There will be gold sellers even w/o gem-gold exchange.
They are present in every mmo.

If there’s customers then there will be those who provide.

Sure, but the whole point of this is that all these currencies would be account bound, completely non-interactive between players. There would be zero way for one player to transfer these currencies to another player in any form. The only way that a “gold seller” could get involved is to sell you an entire count with these currencies already filled out, and ANet seems to be on top of that sort of thing.

Ohoni.6057:

But you wouldn’t. You would be working towards the reward, but you wouldn’t get it

How wouldn’t you get it faster when doing what you already know and have mastered compared to something new?

It would be based on the average, with some penalty added in, so in practical terms it would be targeted at the top 30-40% or so of the people intended to be doing the content at all.

Average still wouldn’t work. What if a group wants to start doing the Raid after a couple of months and the first groups clear it? In the end they’ll realize that getting the rewards through other means will be way faster. And the more teams finishing the Raid, the lower the average, the harder for new players to do the new content. Overall loss-loss for the game.

It is, but I won’t assume that without hearing them say it.

Say what?

They do exist, have always existed, and I can’t understand why you refuse to acknowledge that. I feel like I’m talking to a climate change denier.

No they don’t. A “reward” that you get by “participating” in content without mastering/finishing it is not a reward anymore.

You still haven’t answered to those who are hoarding all old currencies.

Ohoni.6057:

Daily resets do nothing to make dungeons less of a grind if you don’t enjoy repeating them. Repetition is repetition whether it is 23 times over eight days or 23 times over one day, it’s still 23 times.

Grind is all about efficiency. Daily reset makes repetition inefficient.
In your example what differ is intencity. For many that’s a deciding factor.

Its going to be interesting to see how many more words get wasted on a done deal after HoT releases, and then after raids become available. Because right now this thread and the others infected with the same conversation on 4 fronts are going to reveal themselves as a tremendous waste of effort. It’s baffling really how hard people are engaging in it.

This system is NOT GOING TO CHANGE until it’s been proven a failure. No matter how much anyone want’s to prove it a failure before it’s even happened.

Ohoni.6057:

There will be gold sellers even w/o gem-gold exchange.
They are present in every mmo.

If there’s customers then there will be those who provide.

Sure, but the whole point of this is that all these currencies would be account bound, completely non-interactive between players. There would be zero way for one player to transfer these currencies to another player in any form. The only way that a “gold seller” could get involved is to sell you an entire count with these currencies already filled out, and ANet seems to be on top of that sort of thing.

If you can’t fight gold sellers (nobody can) then lead them.

Ohoni.6057:

And for those that don’t enjoy the new content, they should not be playing the new content. They should be encouraged to try it, but if they try it and do not like it, then they should feel free to go about their business. It’s better for ANet that a player be happy running around Queensdale than be frustrated and bored in Verdant Brink.

Yup, if a player doesn’t like raiding, they are not encouraged to raid. Can’t be put any better.

Well, there are plenty of “try me” rewards already in the game, ones offered for fairly minimal investments of time and effort in a given activity. You’re given a loot chest for rolling through a dodge ring in the starter areas, for example. Again, these shouldn’t be the only reward, there should be rewards for long term effort, but these rewards should not be exclusive to specific content.

But what you are advocating is giving these awesome rewards to those doing things with “minimal investments of time and effort”. Yay

I can’t understand why you refuse to acknowledge that. I feel like I’m talking to a climate change denier.

I feel the same.

How wouldn’t you get it faster when doing what you already know and have mastered compared to something new?

Because as I detailed several times, the exchange rate between the old method and the new would be designed to take the learning curve into account. You would advance towards the reward faster at first in the thing you already knew, but not enough to actually earn the reward, and once you figured out the new content, you would be earning towards the reward fast enough that you would overtake the “you” doing the older content, and reach the prize first.

Just as a simple napkin calculation, let’s say that the new content tends to take about two weeks to figure out. That means that for two weeks on the new content, you earn nothing (ideally I think in such a situation you should still earn a little reward, but let’s go worst-case here). Now in the older content, the stuff you have down, you would earn “1 reward point” per day towards the new content. There could be daily caps on it, so you couldn’t earn more than that. So in those two weeks, you could earn a maximum of 14 points. Then once you’ve figured out the new content, you’re earning two points per day at the new content. That means at the end of the third week, the new content earns you 14 points, while the old has earned you a total of 21. By the end of the fourth week, you’ve earned 28 in the new content, and so has the one doing the old stuff. By the end of the fifth week, you’re ahead by 7, and by 14 the next, and so on. If the prize requires 50 tokens, then you would be able to earn it first using the new content. If it required 100 points, you would earn it weeks ahead of the guy still running the older content. And of course if the content is offering multiple rewards, like several pieces of armor, then not only would you get the first piece first, but you would have the full set way before the other guy.

If the system was even being generous to the older content, and set the bar at 21 points, sure, the guy running the older content might get the first piece a week before you, but you would get every subsequent piece sooner.

Average still wouldn’t work. What if a group wants to start doing the Raid after a couple of months and the first groups clear it? In the end they’ll realize that getting the rewards through other means will be way faster. And the more teams finishing the Raid, the lower the average, the harder for new players to do the new content. Overall loss-loss for the game.

The more teams completing the content, the easier it is to pick up. You keep positing this content where people make zero progress for long periods of time, my response is that regardless of the reward structure, such content would be destructive to the game and should be avoided. It’s more realistic to think in terms of something that would take maybe a couple weeks to get through, and then potentially the next few months to truly master to the point that it’s on farm.

Say what?

You posed a hypothetical and asked if it were possibly true. I confirmed that is is possible for that to be true, but I do not believe it is the most likely scenario, so until I hear a direct confirmation of it, I will continue to believe that other scenarios are more likely true.

No they don’t. A “reward” that you get by “participating” in content without mastering/finishing it is not a reward anymore.

I think you’re engaging in semantics over what is and is not a “reward.” In this case I am using the term to refer to an ingame tangible item that is given to the player in response to achieving some gameplay benchmark. This could be beating a dungeon, it could be killing a mob, it could be just for playing in a given area over the course of an hour or of running up to and tagging a location. A “reward” is anything given in response to a player action.

There are numerous rewards along these lines already in the game, and have been since launch. I could list them but I don’t have the time right at the moment, maybe later, but in the meantime just think about it, think about any area of the game in which a player does not require any exceptional skill, and yet can earn a trinket, or armor piece, or bundle, or potion, or whatever for just spending an hour or two running the content in a generally haphazard fashion.

You still haven’t answered to those who are hoarding all old currencies.

I’ve been using older currencies for the convenience of discussion, but you’re right, they could pose a “hoarding problem” the same as karma and gold. I think if they were to implement this sort of system, it would probably best served using a fresh currency or currencies that starts at zero. You would still be able to use the old currencies to buy what was originally available, but would not be able to convert them into the new stuff, but running the content “post patch” would cause the new currencies to drop, either replacing the old, or in combination with it (which could help to make the content more efficient at it’s original purpose, as you might get half your token rewards in the new exchangable currency, and half in the non-exchange currency, making it much faster to earn the rewards directly tied to that content).

This system is NOT GOING TO CHANGE until it’s been proven a failure. No matter how much anyone want’s to prove it a failure before it’s even happened.

Sure. All of this is just planning for what happens next.

Yup, if a player doesn’t like raiding, they are not encouraged to raid. Can’t be put any better.

And yet, you seem to indicate (or at least plenty of others have), that raids should form a barrier between players and cool rewards, such as Legendary Armor, that players should not be able to earn these rewards unless they raid. You cannot say “raids should just be for people who want to raid,” AND “raids should reward armor and/or weapon skins that can’t be found anywhere else.” The two statements are mutually exclusive.

But what you are advocating is giving these awesome rewards to those doing things with “minimal investments of time and effort”. Yay

No, two separate things. The “try me” rewards would require minimal time and effort, but would not be especially “awesome.” These would be fairly basic stuff, interesting, worth going after, but not “omg, I just got this!” type stuff. The “awesome rewards” would require significant amounts of time and effort, as much or more than the current system requires, the only difference is that the type of effort involved, the things that you would be doing as you pursued that effort, would be more variable, so that you could choose to do very intense content for a reasonable amount of time, or you could choose to do far less intense content for a far longer period of time. I am not talking about requiring any less time or effort to earn the “awesome” stuff.

Ohoni.6057:

Because as I detailed several times, the exchange rate between the old method and the new would be designed to take the learning curve into account. You would advance towards the reward faster at first in the thing you already knew, but not enough to actually earn the reward, and once you figured out the new content, you would be earning towards the reward fast enough that you would overtake the “you” doing the older content, and reach the prize first.

Don’t you find this from impossible to nearly impossible to pull off? What kind of player are you going to balance it around? Not everyone has the same skill level and it cannot apply to everyone equally. So in the end it’s a lot of work for nothing. It might work for a subset of the playerbase but how many will actually benefit from it?

The more teams completing the content, the easier it is to pick up.

Not always. Not everyone will start raiding the day raids are available, and there will be new players joining the game too in the future. Those players will have a much harder time accepting the rewards of content they have no knowledge about over content that is both more rewarding and easier/faster. That’s why having an exchange rate based on average won’t work in the long run, and having a fixed exchange rate won’t work either because of the varied difficulty, therefore no exchange of currencies is possible and workable.

I think you’re engaging in semantics over what is and is not a “reward.” In this case I am using the term to refer to an ingame tangible item that is given to the player in response to achieving some gameplay benchmark.

Beating and mastering the content is what should give the rewards for it, not beating the first boss, nor farming 1 token or finishing the first jump in a jumping puzzle. You either complete the content or you don’t, therefore you either get the reward or you don’t.

And about getting some of the items without completing the content, yes, that’s how I expect raids to be. Each boss dropping a particular legendary armor precursor (specific) and not requiring everyone to beat the entire raid to get one. Same with the Carapace items, you got different pieces from each part of Silverwastes, yet you were required to finish the entire set of Silverwastes content to get the Lumi set, including all achievements, Vinewrath etc. That’s how I’d expect Raids to be.

I’ve been using older currencies for the convenience of discussion, but you’re right, they could pose a “hoarding problem” the same as karma and gold. I think if they were to implement this sort of system, it would probably best served using a fresh currency or currencies that starts at zero.

So you want a game with a billion currencies? Just to satisfy your idea of giving rewards to everyone?

Edit: I understand a system like the one you are proposing would work well in a single player game, although I can’t recall a single player game that follows that principle at the moment. Adapting the avenues to rewards to the skill of the player, much like selecting a “difficulty” setting, or tweaking game settings, a lot of games are already adapting the levels of the foes based on player level for example, the higher you are, the more powerful foes you face. But making rewards require a variable amount of rewards isn’t going to work in a multiplayer online setting. It causes more problems than it will ever fix.

Instead of talking about how to make other types content award rewards from Raids (or any other content giving rewards from other types of content) how about talking about how to make the rewards from said content more approachable instead?

For example, the way to acquire the Ambrite Weapons is ridiculous, it requires an insane amount of grind for the Fossils and is based solely on luck (or farming/grinding in PVP). Therefore, instead of adding the Fossils to other types of content, why not make them more fun and engaging to get in Dry Top? Why try to fix a problem with a solution that will bring even more problems and not fix the actual problem?

Don’t you find this from impossible to nearly impossible to pull off? What kind of player are you going to balance it around? Not everyone has the same skill level and it cannot apply to everyone equally. So in the end it’s a lot of work for nothing. It might work for a subset of the playerbase but how many will actually benefit from it?

Everyone.

Not always. Not everyone will start raiding the day raids are available, and there will be new players joining the game too in the future. Those players will have a much harder time accepting the rewards of content they have no knowledge about over content that is both more rewarding and easier/faster. That’s why having an exchange rate based on average won’t work in the long run, and having a fixed exchange rate won’t work either because of the varied difficulty, therefore no exchange of currencies is possible and workable.

But as most raiders have told me, raids will get easier over time, because a large portion of the difficulty is working out best practices. either that or the raiders have been lying to me, but I choose to take them at their word. So if they are not lying, then even if someone is starting a raid for the first time six months in, they would be doing so while able to watch videos and read strategies that would give them a significant head start, and assuming an equal level of base talent as the front line group, they would be able to beat the raid in significantly less time by standing on their backs. And that doesn’t even factor in that they could include several people who have already beaten it to even further smooth things out. They might not beat it on the first try, but they should beat it faster than the first groups did.

And here’s an idea, let’s say that there is a minimum learning curve, that even after all the strategies are public knowledge, it takes a while for a fresh group to catch up. What if the raid offered a “first time bonus?” Like what if the standard earning rate was X amount of tokens per run, so in the scenario I proposed it would be expected that you would outpace the other content over a matter of weeks, but let’s say that isn’t good enough, and the period of earning no reward is seen as too much of a handicap for new players. Well what if there is also a one time bonus, that the first time you beat the raid on an account, you get a bigger batch of tokens, enough to make up for that period of not earning anything, and then once you have the idea, you can continue to farm the raid for what would still be a higher amount of reward than the alternatives. Would that be good enough, or do I need to throw in a pony?

Beating and mastering the content is what should give the rewards for it, not beating the first boss, nor farming 1 token or finishing the first jump in a jumping puzzle. You either complete the content or you don’t, therefore you either get the reward or you don’t.

And beating and mastering the content would give the better rewards, nobody would be satisfied by just going around and collecting the “try me” rewards, that is not their point. Their point is to try and provide just enough inventive that you go and try it, they are not meant to be the main course, they are an appetizer. Think of it like those Jumping Puzzles that have multiple smaller chests along the way. No, you don’t get the biggest chest until you reach the end, but getting the first chest is usually not that big a hassle, and it gives you some idea of what you’re in for.

So you want a game with a billion currencies? Just to satisfy your idea of giving rewards to everyone?

I don’t know that a billion would be necessary, or even practical, but a few more couldn’t hurt. They wouldn’t need to double up the existing currencies either, they could just shift to shared currencies, for example instead of CoF having two currencies and HotW having two currencies, they could all be covered with “Dungeon Currency,” that could be used directly on any dungeon (different dungeon paths rewarding them in different amounts, of course), as well as some of their own unique currency. So for example, and the exact balance of this is just off the cuff so don’t even bother with “that’s too much/too little,” but you could complete CoF path 1, and instead of getting 60 CoF tokens, you would get perhaps 40 CoF tokens and 20 “Dungeon tokens.” Meanwhile, if you completed Arah path 1, which I assume is considered more challenging, then you would just earn 60 “Dungeon tokens.”

The Dungeon Tokens could be spent 1:1 for any dungeon rewards, while the individual dungeon tokens could only be spent on that dungeon, so if you wanted to spend them on the dungeon you were doing, then nothing would change, while if you wanted to spend them on other dungeons, then doing the harder paths would give you more flexible rewards than the easier ones. And then, while the traditional tokens could not be exchanged, the new “dungeon tokens” could be converted into tokens for other reward systems, so for example if a single raid run is seen as being worth ten times an Arah run, and Arah offers 60 tokens, then you could convert 10 Dungeon tokens into 1 raid token, or whatever.

Adapting the avenues to rewards to the skill of the player, much like selecting a “difficulty” setting, or tweaking game settings, a lot of games are already adapting the levels of the foes based on player level for example, the higher you are, the more powerful foes you face. But making rewards require a variable amount of rewards isn’t going to work in a multiplayer online setting. It causes more problems than it will ever fix.

No rewards system is every perfectly in balance. More talented players will always have an easier time earning the rewards than less talented ones, that is true of the current GW2 model, and of all games in human history. My system would not change that, neither for better or worse. All it would do is add flexibility, to allow players more avenues to pursue the rewards that they want, without having to spend their time doing activities that they hate.

For example, the way to acquire the Ambrite Weapons is ridiculous, it requires an insane amount of grind for the Fossils and is based solely on luck (or farming/grinding in PVP). Therefore, instead of adding the Fossils to other types of content, why not make them more fun and engaging to get in Dry Top?

You certainly could, and I would not oppose that, but “fun and engaging” is entirely subjective. I enjoy Dry Top, I would probably enjoy a more “fun and engaging” method within Dry Top to earn Fossils (although I actually have like a dozen of those things left over at this point), but other players might not enjoy the content in Dry Top at all, even the stuff that would be more “fun and engaging” to me. There can be no content that is “fun and engaging” to all players, and even making individual content that is “fun and engaging” to most players. is an uphill battle.

I think looking at content that nobody really likes and figuring out how to improve it is a worthwhile goal that they should be pursuing, but even as you do that, it’s important to offer as many alternatives as possible, for people that just do not enjoy anything about the core content path. You mentioned PvP, well there are now multiple ways to pursue PvP rewards, there is Conquest, and now Stronghold matches, and I’m sure that there are players that prefer one or the other, and for whom the existence of that choice means that they will enjoy pursuing PvP rewards more. But there are also people that dislike PvP on a conceptual level, who dislike competing with other humans, and for those players, there is likely NO form of PvP that they will ever enjoy. These players should have options for pursuing rewards that they seek that have nothing to do with PvP.

Ohoni.6057:

And I’m saying that this attitude is bad business. It’s forcing a lose/lose situation on the customer. Either lose by giving up entirely on something that you want, or lose by engaging in activity that you do not enjoy, making that portion of your life a negative rather than a positive experience. Who benefits from that?

Actually, you only lose if you give up. Sine you made the decision to give up, there’s no room for argument. It’s perfectly fine to reward players who are worthy of the reward itself. All players benefit from this, as luxury goods stay a luxury, and thus you constantly have something to desire.

Ohoni.6057:

And in the real world, we can both agree that this would be silly. But this is a game, the rules can be anything ANet says they are, and if they say you can get an economics degree without going to school for it, then sure, why not?

No, that would be Entitlement. It applies to both real and fantasy worlds.

Ohoni.6057:

Nobody is “worthy” of anything,. It’s a game. You are handed what the developers choose to hand you. The people that receive fancy things are not better or worse than other players, they just happen to fit into the right shaped hole that the things they are willing and able to do are the things that needed to get done to be handed that item. That’s it. I’m just asking that they widen the options for being given those items.

To correct you again, yes those player who earned the Legendary gear are now worthy of it. Its shows that they put in the efforts to play the content, and succeeded. They are better than other players who don’t have it, but I don’t mean that in a negative way. Just as the top PvP players will have the best Mini Llamas in the game, and have the rights to now win a share of $400,000 in our new E-Sports league, some players are just on a higher plane of existence that others. This should serve as inspiration to everyone else. Try hard enough, and you too can succeed.

On this point, I’m glad you did respond earlier with your idea that an alternate method would be from Open World content. But while you honestly think this would work, it again simplifies the content with an Easy Mode. If you remember the LA rescue events, players who would AFK benefited from everyone else doing the work. How does this justify giving them a Legendary armor piece, when the other players put in 10x the effort? And remember the fall out when GM Chris was going around and kicking these AFKers? Or take the Great Wurm. Some players will just tag a few mobs, and still get full credit when all 3 heads are killed. Open World is not a place to reward Elite gear, because there’s no way to judge effort of one player over another. Instanced Raids allow Anet to control how much effort needs to be put in to win. If you have 9 guys working hard, and 1 guy doing nothing, the content punishes the whole team. You’re only worthy if all 10 of you work hard and win.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

…They are better than other players who don’t have it…

Nope.

Ashen.2907:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

…They are better than other players who don’t have it…

Nope.

When HoT Raids come out, you can prove me wrong by showing off your Legendary armor. I will praise you with all the Six’s glory, as I would anyone else who walks around with the armor on. Because at that point, you’re better than me.

Ohoni.6057:

And beating and mastering the content would give the better rewards, nobody would be satisfied by just going around and collecting the “try me” rewards, that is not their point. Their point is to try and provide just enough inventive that you go and try it, they are not meant to be the main course, they are an appetizer. Think of it like those Jumping Puzzles that have multiple smaller chests along the way. No, you don’t get the biggest chest until you reach the end, but getting the first chest is usually not that big a hassle, and it gives you some idea of what you’re in for.

In my opinion, this idea would just be a slap in the face of Raiders. The incentive to playing Raids is to not only beat it, but claim the exclusive rewards. There’s no need for small prizes for trying. By having token rewards, someone can just farm the easy sub-bosses over and over, and over a long period of time, get the same rewards that Raiders actually had to work hard for. Unless you make it so the easy tokens you get have absolutely no way of being traded up for Legendary armor. Then maybe it could work. But then what’s the point in having those tokens in the first place? So we’re right back at the current standard, which is to leave the exclusive rewards to those who are worthy of it.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Ashen.2907:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

…They are better than other players who don’t have it…

Nope.

When HoT Raids come out, you can prove me wrong by showing off your Legendary armor. I will praise you with all the Six’s glory, as I would anyone else who walks around with the armor on. Because at that point, you’re better than me.

Nope.

Ashen.2907:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

…They are better than other players who don’t have it…

Nope.

Legendary gear will not mean anything more than that you did some raiding. Big deal. People get carried in raids all the time, and there will be people wearing legendary armor that don’t play any better than the average casual joe gamer. So, no, raiding or wearing anything gotten from a raid does not necessarily mean a person knows how to play on a better than average level.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Ashen.2907:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

…They are better than other players who don’t have it…

Nope.

Legendary gear will not mean anything more than that you did some raiding. Big deal. People get carried in raids all the time, and there will be people wearing legendary armor that don’t play any better than the average casual joe gamer. So, no, raiding or wearing anything gotten from a raid does not necessarily mean a person knows how to play on a better than average level.

Over time, I’m sure Raids will be more doable with practice and Dulfy guides. However, I doubt that players will be able to carry others. I believe Anet set the bar so high, that all 10 players need to put in effort to win, and not just 8 or 9 of them. Remember, this isn’t a 50 man Raid. With only 10 players at a time, the pressure is divided more intensely. Big difference between having 1 out of 50 players screw up, as compared to 1 out of 10.

Edit – If Raids got so easy that players can carry others, thus allowing for paid Raid taxi services, then in my personal opinion, I’ll say that Anet failed. I have faith in Colin, though. I’m sure they’ve seen Fractal and Dungeon taxi LFGs, and considered this in coding the Raid difficulty levels.

Actually, you only lose if you give up. Sine you made the decision to give up, there’s no room for argument. It’s perfectly fine to reward players who are worthy of the reward itself. All players benefit from this, as luxury goods stay a luxury, and thus you constantly have something to desire.

No, I said Lose Lose. You lose even if you don’t give up, because while you might eventually get the reward you were going for, you would do so by subjecting yourself to an unpleasant experience, wasting precious time that you’ll never get back. I’ll give you an example from another game. There was a collectible costume based on an achievement. I wanted that costume. The achievement was to open 1000 treasure chests in the game, something where in normal play I might open one or two per week. The fastest possible way to complete that task was at one location there were two chests right near each other, and you could reset them by changing characters, allowing you to essentially open two chests every minute or so, but even this method ended up taking several hours of absolute tedium, going in, opening the chests, leaving, switching characters, repeat. I did it. I got the costume I wanted out of it, and I was happy about that, but having those hours of my life back would have made the whole experience so much better.

No, that would be Entitlement. It applies to both real and fantasy worlds.

The way you use the word, you seem to mean it as an insult. This is a game though, raiders are no more entitled to Legendary Armor than people chatting in LA, the developers just chose Raiders to be gifted Legendary Armor for doing what they enjoy. Raiders that defend that practice are no less “entitled” in doing so than players asking for alternatives.

To correct you again, yes those player who earned the Legendary gear are now worthy of it.

No, they are not. They were gifted it for performing the activity the devs chose to attach to that armor. They are no more “worthy” of it than anyone else, they were just lucky enough that the devs decided to attach that reward to that activity. They should be grateful, not entitled.

They are better than other players who don’t have it, but I don’t mean that in a negative way.

No, they are not better. They just performed a task that the other person did not. That makes the two of them different, but neither is better than the other.

Just as the top PvP players will have the best Mini Llamas in the game, and have the rights to now win a share of $400,000 in our new E-Sports league, some players are just on a higher plane of existence that others

This is complete nonsense talk.

Some players will just tag a few mobs, and still get full credit when all 3 heads are killed. Open World is not a place to reward Elite gear, because there’s no way to judge effort of one player over another.

But open world content is what makes this game great, it’s what this game does better than anyone else. I agree that “tagging” is an issue, but the solution is not to try and make other gametypes the focus, it’s instead to figure out better ways of rewarding in open world content that is less based on “tagging” and more based on individual accomplishment. I do think that they could do a better job of determining how much of a contribution individual players make to the success of an open world event, and part of that is reducing the purpose of the “everyone circle the mob and rain hell upon him” phases, but that’s a completely separate discussion.

Open World is not a place to reward Elite gear, because there’s no way to judge effort of one player over another. Instanced Raids allow Anet to control how much effort needs to be put in to win. If you have 9 guys working hard, and 1 guy doing nothing, the content punishes the whole team. You’re only worthy if all 10 of you work hard and win.

Two issues with this. First, what if 9 people are “worthy,” as you put it, and the 10th isn’t? Does that mean the other 9 suddenly cease to be “worthy,” for allowing this “unworthy” person to associate with them? Why should the content fail to reward those 9 people for doing an adequate or superior job, just because this 10th guy did not?

Second, why should it matter who gets credit for what? Why should ANEt be bothered if they can’t figure out who “deserves” credit in a zerg? That should be the least of their concern so long as everyone’s having fun. Rewards should be an individual thing, you should be happy for what YOU get, you should not be upset because someone else gets something that you don’t think they’ve earned. And before the almost inevitable comeback, no, I am not upset that raiders are getting Legendary Armor, and if you’ll notice, I’ve never suggested taking anything away from them. All I’ve suggested is ways that other players can also earn the armors.

When HoT Raids come out, you can prove me wrong by showing off your Legendary armor. I will praise you with all the Six’s glory, as I would anyone else who walks around with the armor on. Because at that point, you’re better than me.

Nope.

In my opinion, this idea would just be a slap in the face of Raiders. The incentive to playing Raids is to not only beat it, but claim the exclusive rewards.

And I don’t care. If your happiness can only come at the sadness of others, then I don’t care about your happiness. Learn to be happy within yourself, not only happy because other people have less than you.

By having token rewards, someone can just farm the easy sub-bosses over and over, and over a long period of time, get the same rewards that Raiders actually had to work hard for.

So? It would take them longer than it would take the Raiders, they would have to work harder for those rewards than the Raiders, and the Raiders would still get their rewards, so why should the Raiders care? Why should the other players care whether the raiders care if the raiders clearly don’t care about them?

Edit – If Raids got so easy that players can carry others, thus allowing for paid Raid taxi services, then in my personal opinion, I’ll say that Anet failed. I have faith in Colin, though. I’m sure they’ve seen Fractal and Dungeon taxi LFGs, and considered this in coding the Raid difficulty levels.

And if Raids are never at the point where the majority of players can complete them, then your opinion or no, ANet have failed.

I never understood how raiding is deemed the mecca of skillful players. Once the strat is figured out, it becomes just another dull routine. All raiding shows me is that some folks are willing to sink more time into one activity than another. (and yes, i do fractals/dungeons too, so i lump myself in there)

And raiding rewards is not exactly some sort of status symbol, at least to me. I see anyone with that, I don’t think ‘skilled’. I just think its another person with alot of time invested, with advantage of a decent guild backing them.

sadly, this game is moving away from its roots and going into the realm of time-invested=better rewards.

Ohoni.6057:

No, I said Lose Lose. You lose even if you don’t give up, because while you might eventually get the reward you were going for, you would do so by subjecting yourself to an unpleasant experience, wasting precious time that you’ll never get back.

No no no no. If you want something, you put in the effort to get it. You make the conscious decision to do it, and thus you’re not “wasting time”. In fact, once you get what you desire, all that time spent becomes meaningful.

Ohoni.6057:

The way you use the word, you seem to mean it as an insult. This is a game though, raiders are no more entitled to Legendary Armor than people chatting in LA, the developers just chose Raiders to be gifted Legendary Armor for doing what they enjoy. Raiders that defend that practice are no less “entitled” in doing so than players asking for alternatives.

It’s not an insult. It’s a description of a mindset where one person feels they deserve something when in fact they don’t deserve it.

Ohoni.6057:

No, they are not. They were gifted it for performing the activity the devs chose to attach to that armor.

Not sure if you understood what you responded with. Players who will beat Raids aren’t “gifted” something. Gifting implies it was free. Working hard to earn gear means they’re “rewarded”.

Ohoni.6057:

No, they are not better. They just performed a task that the other person did not. That makes the two of them different, but neither is better than the other.

There will always be players who are more skilled than others. If you manage to beat Elite content, that implies you have skill. Don’t try to short-change Raiders before Raids even come out.

Ohoni.6057:

But open world content is what makes this game great, it’s what this game does better than anyone else.

I agree. Open World in GW2 is awesome. But we’re talking about Elite content. You can have rewards in the Open World, and rewards in Elite content. Just so happens the exclusive rewards in Raids won’t be available in Open World. And that’s ok.

Ohoni.6057:

Two issues with this. First, what if 9 people are “worthy,” as you put it, and the 10th isn’t? Does that mean the other 9 suddenly cease to be “worthy,” for allowing this “unworthy” person to associate with them? Why should the content fail to reward those 9 people for doing an adequate or superior job, just because this 10th guy did not?

There’s an old saying: There’s no “i” in “team”. You either win as a team, or lose as a team. So as a team working together for a common goal, and to achieve that goal, then all members of the team is worthy.

Ohoni.6057:

Rewards should be an individual thing, you should be happy for what YOU get, you should not be upset because someone else gets something that you don’t think they’ve earned.

Rewards can be an individual thing, if you’re doing content that rewards you individually (i.e. Clocktower JP). Rewards can also be for a team effort (i.e. Raids).

Ohoni.6057:

And I don’t care. If your happiness can only come at the sadness of others, then I don’t care about your happiness. Learn to be happy within yourself, not only happy because other people have less than you.

Sadness is a state of mind for the individual player. It doesn’t affect my desire to go out and be the best I can be. So take my own example of being bad at PvP. I went out and started to play. Now I’m fairly decent, and growing in rank day by day. I overcame my own sadness, and am walking to path to (hopefully) get exclusive PvP rewards.

Ohoni.6057:

So? It would take them longer than it would take the Raiders, they would have to work harder for those rewards than the Raiders, and the Raiders would still get their rewards, so why should the Raiders care?

Exclusive content is no longer exclusive if you allow everyone to have an Easy Button. That kills the content. It kills the prestige. And it hurts what Raiders worked hard for.

Ohoni.6057:

And if Raids are never at the point where the majority of players can complete them, then your opinion or no, ANet have failed.

Anet succeeds in introducing new content that pushes everyone’s skills to the next level. I’m not saying I wouldn’t love to see a lot of people getting Legendary armor. In fact, that would be a testament to Anet helping teach these players how to play difficult content through introducing Raids. As long as they’ve earned their Legendary armors, I feel they’re worthy to wear it.

Penguin. If your incentive to do raids is to show off your legendary armour and feel superior to those players who – for various reasons – cannot farm theirs, then you are missing the point of just about everything.

No no no no. If you want something, you put in the effort to get it. You make the conscious decision to do it, and thus you’re not “wasting time”. In fact, once you get what you desire, all that time spent becomes meaningful.

That is objectively incorrect. If you believe that applies to you, then that’s great, for you, but you cannot apply it to any human being on this planet who is not you.

It’s not an insult. It’s a description of a mindset where one person feels they deserve something when in fact they don’t deserve it.

You mean like if someone plays a raid instead of a dynamic event, and feels that they are entitled to better loot for it?

Not sure if you understood what you responded with. Players who will beat Raids aren’t “gifted” something. Gifting implies it was free. Working hard to earn gear means they’re “rewarded”.

Working hard and receiving something would not be a reward, it would be a salary. That the salary for doing a raid happens to be Legendary armor is a gift from the devs. It could have been anything, it could have been half a gold and a pat on the back.

There will always be players who are more skilled than others. If you manage to beat Elite content, that implies you have skill. Don’t try to short-change Raiders before Raids even come out.

Being more skilled is different than being better. A player can easily be more skilled than another, and be a far worse human being. Furthermore, just because a player completes a raid, does not mean that he is overall more skilled than a player who has not. It may not even mean that he’s more skilled at doing raids than the other. All it means is that he completed the raid and the other guy did not. For all you know, that other guy, who did not complete the raid, might be capable of balancing a spoon on his nose for upwards of five whole minutes, which is a significantly more impressive skill than just being one of a ten-man team that beat a raid.

I agree. Open World in GW2 is awesome. But we’re talking about Elite content. You can have rewards in the Open World, and rewards in Elite content. Just so happens the exclusive rewards in Raids won’t be available in Open World. And that’s ok.

Unless you 1. Want that reward, 2. want to play open world content, and 3. don’t want to play raids, in which case you’re kitten out of luck. That’s the problem, ANet should try to avoid such lose/lose scenarios.

There’s an old saying: There’s no “i” in “team”. You either win as a team, or lose as a team. So as a team working together for a common goal, and to achieve that goal, then all members of the team is worthy.

And if the team loses because one player is clearly not pulling his weight, then all of the members are unworthy?

What about in open world content? If 150 people beat the Wurm, then that means that all 150 of them are worthy? You would have no problem if they attached Legendary Armor to that?

Rewards can be an individual thing, if you’re doing content that rewards you individually (i.e. Clocktower JP). Rewards can also be for a team effort (i.e. Raids).

I think individual reward should be based on individual effort. It’s like how a movie is a team effort, but they also single out specific actors for individual rewards. The team should determine whether the event succeeds or fails, and everyone should get something if the event succeeds, but if they want to attach “high quality” rewards to events, then I do think it’s fair to only make eligible the players who contributed significantly, rather than just those “tagging and afking.” I believe that they can make it worth doing your best in open world events, without excluding anyone.

Sadness is a state of mind for the individual player. It doesn’t affect my desire to go out and be the best I can be. So take my own example of being bad at PvP. I went out and started to play. Now I’m fairly decent, and growing in rank day by day. I overcame my own sadness, and am walking to path to (hopefully) get exclusive PvP rewards.

Nice, but not relevant to anything.

Exclusive content is no longer exclusive if you allow everyone to have an Easy Button.

Then it’s no longer exclusive. That’s better than the alternative of it remaining exclusive.

That kills the content. It kills the prestige. And it hurts what Raiders worked hard for.

And it’s ok.

Anet succeeds in introducing new content that pushes everyone’s skills to the next level.

No. That’s not important at all. It doesn’t matter whether players’ skill levels improve, that’s entirely up to them. The game doesn’t benefit from player skill improving, ANet doesn’t benefit from player skill improving. ANet benefits from people having fun, and skill improvement just isn’t an objective for most players, it’s something that happens incidentally as they pursue fun, but not something they seek out.

In terms of difficulty, all they need to achieve is present opportunities to overcome challenge, situations in which you can do them well, or you can do them great. If you want to improve your skills, then you can do so. If another player does not care to, then that’s fine too, he is not penalized for that choice by missing out on fun rewards. The reward for improving your skill is the feeling of accomplishment from having done it, that’s all you should need, and all that you are entitled to.

Ohoni.6057:

Everyone.

Yet you didn’t explain how. Your example wasn’t accurate, try one with a few million players. Each player has different skill level, they are not all the same, so how are you going to add variable exchange rates?

And you want more? How about gaming the system and abusing/exploiting it? If it’s based on average completion time, make sure everyone logs in the raid, afk at the entrance and go for work. Do this for a couple of days then go run it on the Saturday, using your system they’d get increased rewards. Don’t you see how exploitable and abuse-able putting the reward system on the hands of players is? And sometimes they won’t even do it on purpose, someone might DC, need to put children to sleep, take a lunch break, or anything else.

You didn’t answer which metric are you going to use for your variable exchange. And what would the sample size be for it? Where are your arguments? You just answered “everyone” taking the last phrase into account and forgot to mention how it will benefit everyone. Are you so stuck up or you didn’t read the rest? Or you simply ignore what is hard to answer?

But as most raiders have told me, raids will get easier over time, because a large portion of the difficulty is working out best practices. either that or the raiders have been lying to me, but I choose to take them at their word.

What do you mean by “easier over time” in YOUR context? What is your metric for the variable exchange rate? How do you define “easy” for your variable exchange rate? That’s completely irrelevant to what I said. And even so, knowing the mechanics can help up to a point, you will STILL have to practice them first. Do you honestly believe that reading the raid strats will give you the same ability to run the Raid as someone who already did it multiple times in the past? And seriously, you still haven’t said which metric you’d use for your variable exchange system.

And here’s an idea, let’s say that there is a minimum learning curve, that even after all the strategies are public knowledge, it takes a while for a fresh group to catch up.

How would that work? Any specifics?

And beating and mastering the content would give the better rewards, nobody would be satisfied by just going around and collecting the “try me” rewards, that is not their point.

Non-sense. As explained, “try me” rewards do not exist.

I don’t know that a billion would be necessary, or even practical, but a few more couldn’t hurt.

It would hurt the game a LOT.

Your system has more holes than Swiss cheese. It’s full of abuse and exploits, putting the reward system in the hands of the community is a recipe for disaster, no sane developer of a multiplayer game would ever use it. I can understand why you cannot accept this at this point, even though you don’t say anything to help your argument anymore, after 100 pages of being wrong it take a lot of courage to come out and say it. But you can remain stuck in your dream land with your exploits and abuses.

More talented players will always have an easier time earning the rewards than less talented ones, that is true of the current GW2 model, and of all games in human history. My system would not change that, neither for better or worse. All it would do is add flexibility, to allow players more avenues to pursue the rewards that they want, without having to spend their time doing activities that they hate.

Actually your system would indeed change that. And no talented players don’t simply have an easier time earning the rewards, they also have more rewards (unique), that is true for the current GW2 model and of all games in human history.

Yet you didn’t explain how. Your example wasn’t accurate, try one with a few million players. Each player has different skill level, they are not all the same, so how are you going to add variable exchange rates?

How do they currently decide how much loot each event/dungeon/etc. drops? They just do their best. It won’t be perfect, it can’t be perfect, but not being perfect is no reason to not do it, because the existing system is less perfect. You keep saying “you can’t make it perfect” as if you think that’s any reason to not do it.

And you want more? How about gaming the system and abusing/exploiting it? If it’s based on average completion time, make sure everyone logs in the raid, afk at the entrance and go for work. Do this for a couple of days then go run it on the Saturday, using your system they’d get increased rewards.

A clever idea, so maybe the system should account for that. Maybe actual humans should monitor the logs for irregularities. Maybe it should automatically discard unreasonably long periods, like people taking five hours or more in a single run that most people complete in an hour. Maybe start banning people who go AFK without leaving the raid first, that would likely stop people doing it.

And sometimes they won’t even do it on purpose, someone might DC, need to put children to sleep, take a lunch break, or anything else.

Another fair point. Maybe they could have a method to either automatically or manually pause the “real” clock. Like have a visible “scoring” timer that runs continuously, but also have a background clock that is used for these calculations. If nobody attacks anything for 30-60 seconds, then that clock stops until someone does fight. If nothing dies for several minutes (outside of a boss fight) then the clock is stopped. If the players hit a “pause” button, then the clock is stopped, because sometimes players do have to take a break. It wouldn’t allow them to cheat down their leaderboard ranking, but it would prevent them from skewing the averaging calculations.

You didn’t answer which metric are you going to use for your variable exchange. And what would the sample size be for it? Where are your arguments? You just answered “everyone” taking the last phrase into account and forgot to mention how it will benefit everyone. Are you so stuck up or you didn’t read the rest? Or you simply ignore what is hard to answer?

I don’t have to answer those questions, it’s not my job to answer them. The goal is to make the system work out best for ALL players, including those that don’t raid. How that is achieved, I can suggest potential options, but it’s not for my to reach the final solutions. I don’t have to reach those final solutions myself for them to be of value to the game. The game’s future should not hinge on one random forum poster’s calculations.

Do you honestly believe that reading the raid strats will give you the same ability to run the Raid as someone who already did it multiple times in the past?

That’s been my experience, but admittedly that’s anecdotal, and may not apply to anyone. Still, if it takes a front line group 2-3 weeks of attempts to figure out the strategies needed, then wouldn’t you agree that any group coming after, being able to incorporate that knowledge, will likely take significantly less time than that, assuming an equal level of individual skill?

How would that work? Any specifics?

You cut out the rest of the paragraph where I explained the specifics.

Non-sense. As explained, “try me” rewards do not exist.

And as I explained, they do, all over, in this and many other games.

Your system has more holes than Swiss cheese. It’s full of abuse and exploits, putting the reward system in the hands of the community is a recipe for disaster, no sane developer of a multiplayer game would ever use it. I can understand why you cannot accept this at this point, even though you don’t say anything to help your argument anymore, after 100 pages of being wrong it take a lot of courage to come out and say it. But you can remain stuck in your dream land with your exploits and abuses.

So this is what it sounds like when you admit that you’ve been wrong? Kind of pathetic.

Seriously every topic about raids i come into i find Ohoni saying “but 1 currency for all game is the way to go”. You aren’t even on topic anymore. Read the OP.

Mate you made your topic about how rewards in this game should work, it fell down the pages, if you want to continue discussing that then revive that topic plz… Stop putting this bullkitten in every post you can. This is purely about raids and how they work in the current reward system. I’m sick and tired of finding you spouting the same nonsense in every topic in this forum, if you want to have an opinion, sure, make a topic about it, but stop making every kitten post on these forums about you.

At this point i’m considdering this spam and i will report all offtopic nonsense, i suggest other people do the same.

I want to be able to read the forums again without getting the EXACT SAME message in all these posts. We get it, we get what your idea is, we will never agree with it, stop spamming and discuss your idea in a topic specified for it, stop posting it in every single topic over and over again. I’m done discussing with you, and i want to ignore you, like you said, i’m not even worried because i do believe you are a very very small minority. That doesn’t mean that it’s not irritating that every topic i participate in about raids gets transformed into the ohoni show. I am trying to ignore you, but you are basicly screaming “if you aren’t worried then ignore me” at me, while jumping right in front of my face. The only way i can currently ignore you is by not visiting the HoT forums, and i don’t want to do that. Plz put your detailed idea about 1 currency in a post, discuss that opinion with everyone that cares in that post and stop bringing it up in other topics.

Ohoni et al. y’all really have put some words down; seriously, like book length long. It is kind of insane. Just a tad. This is a game. The xpansion you are talking about ain’t even out yet.

You have a lot of free time. Maybe you could take that energy and direct it to some important world need: choose any of the many real problems in whatever your country and type just as much and with just as much passion.

It is wasted here at the levels y’all are pushing. Good luck with your issue…I’m not even certain what the issue is, frankly. But I can assure you it is not that important.

Ohoni.6057:

How do they currently decide how much loot each event/dungeon/etc. drops?

I missed the part where the rewards they add are changing automatically over time. There is a variable amount of tokens in the game? That is based on how well the community as a whole is doing on that aspect of the game? Adding fixed rewards in any event is relatively easy, adding rewards that need to be re-balanced for every activity in the game is NOT easy.

A clever idea, so maybe the system should account for that. Maybe actual humans should monitor the logs for irregularities. Maybe it should automatically discard unreasonably long periods, like people taking five hours or more in a single run that most people complete in an hour. Maybe start banning people who go AFK without leaving the raid first, that would likely stop people doing it.

Another fair point. Maybe they could have a method to either automatically or manually pause the “real” clock.

So you add extra complexity, extra work by human GMs and you still justfiy it? More money spent by Anet to maintain the new reward system?

How would that work? Any specifics?

You cut out the rest of the paragraph where I explained the specifics.

I don’t see the variable reward system in action there. All I see is adding “dungeon tokens”, and how would those dungeon tokens be used to buy Dry Top rewards? Or Raid rewards? Or how you’d use Geodes to buy Carapce armor? And on that point, what’s the metric to compare Silverwastes and Ascalonian Catacombs, to be used in the variable exchange? The faster you complete AC I can understand, but what’s the metric for SW? Or worse, what’s the metric for DT and geodes? You will probably say it’s not your job to answer these questions which brings us to the next point.

I don’t have to answer those questions, it’s not my job to answer them.

No. It’s your job to give a complete argument. Your “want” in this manner is giving access to rewards from multiple types of content, and it’s a valid one. I won’t try to change your opinion on that, you obviously won’t, as much as mine won’t change. It’s everyone’s choice on this subject and I respect that, as you can already see I’m not even referring to it anymore, nor argue about it.

But your way of accomplishing this “want” of yours, in this discussion, using a kind of variable reward system, is simply not going to work. It requires extra GM work, more money spent by Anet, constant taking care off, re-balancing every aspect of the game, otherwise it’s open to exploits and abuse and so on and so on.

I will wait for the actual announcement of how we’ll get the Raid rewards before posting my mind on that, because I have my share of ideas to make the Raid rewards more “inclusive”. However, I don’t see a point posting it now, before we see the official stance on it.

Ohoni.6057:

You mean like if someone plays a raid instead of a dynamic event, and feels that they are entitled to better loot for it?

Yes, because Raids are harder than a dynamic event. Ergo beating a Raid deserves a much higher, more exclusive reward.

Ohoni.6057:

Working hard and receiving something would not be a reward, it would be a salary. That the salary for doing a raid happens to be Legendary armor is a gift from the devs. It could have been anything, it could have been half a gold and a pat on the back.

The spin you put on that would make American politicians green with envy. So basically, you feel by playing the game, Anet is gifting all players with stuff. And you wonder why I keep bringing up the “Entitlement” term?

Ohoni.6057:

For all you know, that other guy, who did not complete the raid, might be capable of balancing a spoon on his nose for upwards of five whole minutes, which is a significantly more impressive skill than just being one of a ten-man team that beat a raid.

If I could get Legendary armor for balancing a spoon on my nose, I’d work kitten hard to achieve that goal.

Ohoni.6057:

Unless you 1. Want that reward, 2. want to play open world content, and 3. don’t want to play raids, in which case you’re kitten out of luck. That’s the problem, ANet should try to avoid such lose/lose scenarios.

IF you don’t want to play Raids, THEN you don’t get Legendary armor. The concept is simple. Play the content, win, get the reward. It’s win/win situation for all players.

Ohoni.6057:

And if the team loses because one player is clearly not pulling his weight, then all of the members are unworthy?

What about in open world content? If 150 people beat the Wurm, then that means that all 150 of them are worthy? You would have no problem if they attached Legendary Armor to that?

1) Yes. If 1 person costs the team the win, then they all aren’t worthy of the reward. You don’t get an “A” for effort here. You win as a team, and you lose as a team. You also can grow as a team by learning from your mistakes.

2) In Open World content, you have have 130 guys working hard to earn the reward, but the other 20 are leechers who tagged a few mobs. That’s why it will never work outside of an instanced event. Anet can’t control the difficulty in Open World to make sure that everyone who participates actually deserves the reward.

Ohoni.6057:

Then it’s no longer exclusive. That’s better than the alternative of it remaining exclusive.

That idea only works for those who don’t want to put in the effort to play the content.

Ohoni.6057:

ANet benefits from people having fun.

Partly true. Anet has to make sure the game doesn’t give away everything, or the items become meaningless. And they can’t make it impossible where no one can get it. Raids are a good balance for high end exclusive rewards. Raids require coordination. Raids require knowledge of mechanics. Raids requires players to perform well. Do all that, and you start your journey to Legendary armor.

If Anet gave all the Entitled players what they wanted, they basically kill the game. One of the reasons people play is because they have goals. One you achieve those goals, you either find a new one, or you lose interest in the game. You would know this if you ever achieved something that took you a long time to get. For me, it was when I made my first Legendary weapon. After the joy of crafting it and showing it off, I got bored with the game for a few days. Why? Because I didn’t plan ahead, and think about what I should do next. For months, I worked hard to gather all the Mats for my Legendary. I had a purpose. Without a purpose, there was no reason for me to log into the game.

Mate you made your topic about how rewards in this game should work, it fell down the pages, if you want to continue discussing that then revive that topic plz…

That’s what I said, but then everyone’s like “well how would you do it then? If you, as a customer, cannot solve the entire game for it, then they should do nothing!” I’m right there with you though, I’d rather not have to explain myself again, particularly since most of the people “demanding answers” already came from the previous thread and already know the score.

At this point i’m considdering this spam and i will report all offtopic nonsense, i suggest other people do the same.

That would be harassment, I wouldn’t recommend it.

. I’m done discussing with you, and i want to ignore you, like you said, i’m not even worried because i do believe you are a very very small minority. That doesn’t mean that it’s not irritating that every topic i participate in about raids gets transformed into the ohoni show. I am trying to ignore you, but you are basicly screaming “if you aren’t worried then ignore me” at me, while jumping right in front of my face.

You know, I’m only even participating in about half the threads of people complaining about “raids and/or Ascended armor and/or rewards,” right? But I welcome you to ignore any posts that bother you. I would also suggest that if you’re looking for threads without me in them, I would not go to one where the OP is basically telling anyone who doesn’t want to raid they can “kitten it.”

I missed the part where the rewards they add are changing automatically over time. There is a variable amount of tokens in the game? That is based on how well the community as a whole is doing on that aspect of the game? Adding fixed rewards in any event is relatively easy, adding rewards that need to be re-balanced for every activity in the game is NOT easy.

Nope, it’s the exact same thing. If you add a reward to an event, you are doing so in balance with the rest of the game. If a given event offers 5s and 5 Silverwaste badges, then that event has to be balanced in coin against every other content that offers coin, and the Silverwaste badges it offers have to be balanced against all other currencies. come to think of it, I can give you a first draft of a currency exchange right now, just based on existing fungible tokens.

A standard merchant sells an Ori pick for 4s. A DT merchant sells them for 2s+12geodes, therefore one geode is equal to 17c. The Silverwastes NPC sells a Bag of Stolen Goods, which has a TP value of ~5s, for 96c+10 crests, so each Crest must be worth around 40c. So that means you should be able to trade roughly 3 crests for 7 geodes, if I’ve done my math right. Now of course you’d want some lossyness to that transfer, so make it more like 3 creasts to 5-6 geodes, but you get the idea.

Everything in this game works within a shared economy, even things that cannot be directly traded. Every time they add a reward to something, they need to consider how that reward mechanism will interact with everything else, whether they are giving something away too cheaply, or asking more than it’s worth. The changes I’m making would ride on top of those existing calculations, nothing more.

So you add extra complexity, extra work by human GMs and you still justfiy it? More money spent by Anet to maintain the new reward system?

It’s well worth it. Look how much time and money they spent making the raid system in the first place. They could have spent that money elsewhere. You seem to think that this is likely to have been money well spent, and the same would be true of a better reward mechanism.

I don’t see the variable reward system in action there. All I see is adding “dungeon tokens”, and how would those dungeon tokens be used to buy Dry Top rewards? Or Raid rewards? Or how you’d use Geodes to buy Carapce armor? And on that point, what’s the metric to compare Silverwastes and Ascalonian Catacombs, to be used in the variable exchange? The faster you complete AC I can understand, but what’s the metric for SW? Or worse, what’s the metric for DT and geodes? You will probably say it’s not your job to answer these questions which brings us to the next point.

Doc, I don’t work for ANet, they are not paying me, and I certainly don’t work for you. It is not my job to detail the entire system down to the last decimal place, and no matter how specific I get, you just drill down for more specifics, and frankly you are never worth my time. I am a customer, and I am expressing my customer feedback. The token system is not my goal, my goal is to just have any system that allows for a wider variety of actions to allow access to all rewards, and the token system is the best path to that goal that I can think of, but not necessarily the best possible system and if they can find one better, then that’s great.

If they (not you) agree that the general idea is a sound one, then it is their job to arrive at the specifics, using far better metrics and inside knowledge of the game and its system than I could ever have access to from the outside. If they decide it’s a generally bad idea, then they won’t do it, and any discussion I put into it would become moot. I do not have to convince you that I’m right, and I especially don’t need you to admit when I have convinced you. You are not important, and you have stopped being interesting.

But your way of accomplishing this “want” of yours, in this discussion, using a kind of variable reward system, is simply not going to work. It requires extra GM work, more money spent by Anet, constant taking care off, re-balancing every aspect of the game, otherwise it’s open to exploits and abuse and so on and so on.

Congratulations, you have just described the existing ingame economy to a T, only theirs has the added problems of being open to TP manipulation.

Ohoni.6057:

Congratulations, you have just described the existing ingame economy to a T, only theirs has the added problems of being open to TP manipulation.

At the time of your post, John was fast asleep. But he face palmed so hard, he woke himself up. I’m not sure how or where you get that our current economy is abusive or exploited. And TP manipulation? That conspiracy has been debunked a long time ago.

This game economy hasn’t been better. The only reason why things are gonna go out of whack is because of all the speculation with the new recipes and other changes.

Back to the topic at hand. Raids will be introducing rewards that aren’t tradeable, so it’ll have zero effect on the economy.

Yes, because Raids are harder than a dynamic event. Ergo beating a Raid deserves a much higher, more exclusive reward.

That’s entirely your opinion, I disagree. Raids are likely to be harder than most dynamic events, true, but that doesn’t mean that they necessarily deserve a higher reward, and especially not a more exclusive one. Why should higher difficulty result in superior reward? It can, and I think that it typically should, to a reasonable degree, but it certainly doesn’t have to.

So basically, you feel by playing the game, Anet is gifting all players with stuff. And you wonder why I keep bringing up the “Entitlement” term?

Lack of self-reflection?

If I could get Legendary armor for balancing a spoon on my nose, I’d work kitten hard to achieve that goal.

Good for you?

IF you don’t want to play Raids, THEN you don’t get Legendary armor. The concept is simple. Play the content, win, get the reward. It’s win/win situation for all players.

I don’t think you understand what win/win means. “IF you don’t want to play Raids, THEN you don’t get Legendary armor” is a losing situation, you don’t get the thing that you want, that is a loss. That alone cannot possibly be a win/win, it has a built in loss. I get that you like that players are excluded from things, but those players do not agree, and so long as they don’t agree, you cannot classify it as a “win” for them. Whenever we approach this specific area of discussion, it just feels like I’m talking to one of those goateed mirror/mirror guys, where evil is good and good is evil, and they say perfectly evil things as if they’re proclaiming a virtue. Or maybe Gordon Gecko.

2) In Open World content, you have have 130 guys working hard to earn the reward, but the other 20 are leechers who tagged a few mobs. That’s why it will never work outside of an instanced event. Anet can’t control the difficulty in Open World to make sure that everyone who participates actually deserves the reward.

So in open world content, you have 86% of the players working hard, and the other 14% are “unworthy leechers,” while in a raid you might have 90% “worthy” players and 1% “unworthy leacher,” but the latter is fine while the former is good reason why none of those players deserve high quality rewards. Seems fair.

That idea only works for those who don’t want to put in the effort to play the content.

You’re using the wrong words here. You say “don’t want to put in the effort.” Nobody is talking about putting in less effort, and in fact the alternatives on the table would require more effort. Effort is not being debated here. The only thing being discussed is the type of effort being put forth, whether that effort is expended at completing a raid, or expended doing other tasks. The amount of effort would be in balance, only the variety of tasks available would shift.

Anet has to make sure the game doesn’t give away everything, or the items become meaningless.

True, and nobody is asking that they give anything away (that they don’t already give away, at least).

And they can’t make it impossible where no one can get it

Also true, and I would expand that to include that they can’t make it unreasonable for most players to get it.

Raids are a good balance for high end exclusive rewards. Raids require coordination. Raids require knowledge of mechanics. Raids requires players to perform well.

I agree. Where I disagree is that I don’t believe there should be high end exclusive rewards. There should be rewards that take more time and effort than others, but anyone should have a reasonable path towards earning them, regardless of skill level and interests. There should be no rewards that are intended for only a small portion of the population to ever have one, or that force players to spend significant amounts of time doing activities that they do not enjoy. The exact reasons you give for why raids make for good high-end content are the exact reason why they should not be the sole delivery mechanism for any rewards.

One of the reasons people play is because they have goals. One you achieve those goals, you either find a new one, or you lose interest in the game.

Totally agreed. That’s the central point of my system. As I noted earlier, the main reason I stopped playing Dry Top was because I already earned everything worth earning there. I’m sure players will earn every Legendary Armor found in the first raid too at some point, an then have no reason to ever do it again. Increased reward variety means that even if you tap out the rewards native to a piece of content, you can start working towards other rewards if you really enjoy it.

The systems I described would not make it any faster to earn “all items in the game,” and in fact, the more a player uses these options, the slower they would gain “all items,” because they would each be less efficient than the original path. The fastest way to earn “all items” would be to just do “all activities” as they currently might. The advantage to my proposal is not in increased speed, it’s in enjoying the journey more, because you can pursue it by doing activities you enjoy, rather than activities you’re forced into.

Because I didn’t plan ahead, and think about what I should do next. For months, I worked hard to gather all the Mats for my Legendary. I had a purpose. Without a purpose, there was no reason for me to log into the game.

And nobody is talking about removing any of that purpose. You would still have to set goals and work towards them, and that process would take at least as long as it currently does, typically longer. Nothing is being “lessened” as far as that goes.

At the time of your post, John was fast asleep. But he face palmed so hard, he woke himself up. I’m not sure how or where you get that our current economy is abusive or exploited. And TP manipulation? That conspiracy has been debunked a long time ago.

Only because people like John have a limited view of what constitutes “manipulation.”He doesn’t consider it “manipulation” when you buy an item at a low price, sell it at a higher price, and earn money in the process, for nothing more than taking items off the TP that could have gone to people that wanted to use them, and selling them to people who could have gotten a better deal.

The point is, the token system would not have those problems, because you could not sell or trade them between players, and the exchange rates could not be manipulated. If you have tokens, it is because you earned them, not because you cheated another player out of his.

I don’t want to pay attention to this thread any more. I don’t deserve less of Ohoni’s posts, however, as it’s just a forum and everyone deserves his posts equally, so I’m sure he will fairly distrubte them amongst the next three or five hundred threads even remotely close to the topic.

You know, it’s unfair to limit Ohoni’s masterful exclusivity nonsequiters to threads about raids. I believe all threads, in all forums, should have equal access to these posts. They signed up for the forums, so they obviously deserve to read more beautiful posts, and shouldn’t be excluded from them by not specifically opening a raid related thread.

Maybe we could invent some kind of volume or token system to ensure fair access, and award those tokens based on a measurement of average time spent to read one page of forum posts or something?