Guild Wars 2

PopeUrban.2578:

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?

I automatically win all such systems. Now where’s my vendor to trade them in?

Ohoni.6057:

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.

It’s not the same. In your system the rewards are supposed to change with time, remember that? Also, they need to balance a very limited amount of tokens, for examples you cannot use Geodes to buy CoF gear therefore there is no point in calculating those. That’s why exclusive rewards make for an easier balancing of a reward system, if all content types only had exclusive rewards (extreme options) there wouldn’t even need to be any kind of balancing in the first place.

Everything in this game works within a shared economy, even things that cannot be directly traded.

But they only need to add it once, while in your system they’d need to re-consider everything every single time since all the tokens will be used for each and every reward. There is a huge difference here.

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.

It’s not a “better” reward mechanism though. Raids have a much more viewable benefit than a variable reward system. And really what’s worth and what’s not is not your decision to make.

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.

It is if you want your argument to be considered. There is a difference between being constructive and being unreasonable. Have a look how to give constructive feedback:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback/first#post3383470

Ask yourself: “How can I make this content better?"
Consider: How have you seen this particular problem solved in other games?
Consider: How do you think this particular element or aspect of the game could be improved?
Tell us why: If we ask a specific question, don’t just answer it—tell us why you answered that way.

You’ve done none of this with your I want a system that uses variable rewards and I can’t bother to tell you how it will work, figure it out yourselves.

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.

You need to convince them that your idea is actually worth considering which you aren’t doing it if you respond like that. I presented problems with your idea and all you say is “I will let the devs decide on those”, that’s admitting defeat. That’s admitting that your idea has flaws that cannot be fixed. Provide a solid argument that gets rid of the flaws first.

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

And you want to add an extra layer of complexity on top of that? Congratulations.

Once you start being constructive maybe even the devs will listen to you. Until then argue on the wall.

Ohoni.6057:

Why should higher difficulty result in superior reward?

Because this new, harder content pushes players to their limits. In what world do you live where you feel that all players deserve the superior reward without putting in the effort worthy of such rewards?

Ohoni.6057:

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.

It’s fine, because if only 90% of the Raid party does their job, then all 100% won’t deserve the high quality reward. Again, it’s a team effort. You don’t play for yourself, but rather the whole.

Ohoni.6057:

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.

Unfortunately, all the suggestions you put up lead to “less effort” for players like you who wish for an alternative. Back to your token idea. Someone who puts in minimal efforts could one day be rewarded as much as someone who put in god-like effort. That is inherently unfair.

Ohoni.6057:

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.

1) Everyone has a reasonable path to take. Play Raids or not. Two paths to pick from. Anet doesn’t stop anyone from trying, regardless of skill level.

2) Exclusive rewards encourage players to try content. That’s good for the game.

3) If you don’t enjoy the activity, simply don’t play it. If you force yourself to play something you don’t want to, you only have yourself to blame.

Ohoni.6057:

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.

So since you agree once you achieve a goal and you tend to lose interest, why would you advocate for a system that helps everyone lose interest faster? You’ve just admitted to wanting to kill the game. Players without a reason to play, are no longer players.

Ohoni.6057:

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.

To the other points – Offering the best items or gear to everyone is an insult to those who actually worked hard to get them. Professional game developers understand this, and that’s why certain rewards have gates. Those gates preserve the integrity of the luxury goods.

Ohoni.6057:

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.

This. I don’t even. You realize that no one on the Trading Post ever gets screwed over the price of an item they purchased? If you willingly pay 10 Gold for an item worth 8 Gold, you didn’t lose 2 Gold. You got the item you wanted. If you wanted it cheaper, put in a Buy Order. TP players profit off of people who have little patience to wait for a lower price. Paying here and now for instant gratification.

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.

Except he won’t be. Not really. Liking/being more able at raids don’t make you a better person. It just means you have more time to spare on getting geared up, and learning the strat, and are in a group of similarily minded people.

The real cutout for raids have never been a personal skill level.

mulzi.8273:

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)

It’s not a mecca of skillful players. That would be PvP. It’s a heaven for hardcore players.

It’s rather simple – there’s a group of players that wants to be recognized as “better” than others. And since their advantage lies not in skill (truly skilled players tend to lean to pvp more, there are also a significant number of skilled casuals) but rather the willingness to treat the game as a second job (coupled with enough time to spare on it), they want the content that will separate the players according to those values. And once they get it, then they can try to pass it as a skill.

mulzi.8273:

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.

Exactly. Because that’s what it really is. Not that the raiders will ever admit it.

It’s not the same. In your system the rewards are supposed to change with time, remember that?

Only specific to the raids, and it wouldn’t be happening constantly like the gem exchange or anything. It would just happen in a general sense over months and years, similar to how products start at a high retail price, and then gradually dip lower and lower as their value decreases. So when a raid first comes out, the alternate method for earning the raid rewards would be unavailable, though ideally you could start working towards it (ie you could start earning enough to buy them when they come out, but could not actually buy them until a later date). Then once players have begun legitimately earning the reward in question from the raid, and a reasonable amount of time has passed, the alternate method would unlock, at a rate that is reasonable in comparison to the effort it took the players to get there. Then, after a period of months, this is re-evaluated based on performance over that time span, and if it’s determined that players have having a much easier time of it today than when the system was first opened, they lower the costs accordingly (with full warning that they intend to do this periodically, and perhaps a partial refund for people that bought items within a week or so of the shift).

Once set up, that doesn’t seem like it would represent a huge amount of added work on their end, you would have automated data collection that would highlight the general trends, and they would just need to evaluate those over a period of perhaps hours to determine a target value. Assuming the first one works out well, they can basically copy and paste those results to subsequent rewards.

But they only need to add it once, while in your system they’d need to re-consider everything every single time since all the tokens will be used for each and every reward. There is a huge difference here.

They would only “have to” because you insist that they would have to, and I agree that they should, but the thing is, they should be doing that constantly in the core game, re-evaluating each content type very few months to see if the work/reward standard is still fair, but they don’t. So if they held this system to the same standard as existing content, they wouldn’t have to constantly tweak it, but we both agree that they should anyway, for both new and existing systems.

It’s not a “better” reward mechanism though. Raids have a much more viewable benefit than a variable reward system. And really what’s worth and what’s not is not your decision to make.

You think it’s not worth it. I think it is. Ultimately neither of us matter, I’m hoping that ANet agrees that it’s worth it, and I’ll assume you’re hoping that they don’t. We shall see.

Ask yourself: “How can I make this content better?"
Consider: How have you seen this particular problem solved in other games?
Consider: How do you think this particular element or aspect of the game could be improved?
Tell us why: If we ask a specific question, don’t just answer it—tell us why you answered that way.

You’ve done none of this with your I want a system that uses variable rewards and I can’t bother to tell you how it will work, figure it out yourselves.

I believe I’ve done every single one of those things, as much as anyone could expect of a player.

“How can I make this content better?” By making it less necessary for earning specific rewards, so that those players that enjoy it can play it and those that do not enjoy it can enjoy playing something else.
“How have I seen it solved in other games?” I pointed out games like Marvel Heroes that offer rewards that can be found in multiple locations, but the big picture of the system would be rather revolutionary.
“How do you think this particular element or aspect of the game could be improved?” I believe I’ve been quite exhaustive on that one.
“Tell us why: If we ask a specific question, don’t just answer it—tell us why you answered that way.” Nobody from ANet asked me anything, but I’ve done way more than could reasonably be expected in answering you guys.

You need to convince them that your idea is actually worth considering which you aren’t doing it if you respond like that

And if they ask for more, I’ll give them more, but you asking for more is not the same as them asking for more. I believe I’ve made my case plenty well for them to make a decision on it, I have no reason to convince you of that. Even if I were talking directly to an ANet employee, it would be unreasonable for them to expect me to do as much of the legwork as you seem to insist of me, not unless it were a job interview.

I presented problems with your idea and all you say is “I will let the devs decide on those”, that’s admitting defeat.

Not on principle. It’s saying that I am not in a position to make those decisions, and I am not, and you are not, but it doesn’t mean that those decisions shouldn’t be made.or can’t be made. Saying “I do not know enough details to calculate a precise result” is a far cry from saying that the result is unworthy of pursuit, or that it can’t be done. I mean, I think we should put people on Mars at some point, I couldn’t lay out an exact strategy to do that, but that doesn’t cause me to change my mind that it’s a worthwhile goal, because I know that there are other people out there that can find those strategies.

And you want to add an extra layer of complexity on top of that? Congratulations.

Nope, it’s a distinctly separate system, since every aspect of it is purely accountbound. You can’t buy anything off of other players with it, you can’t sell or trade anything to other players with it, it’s purely between you and the game and has nothing to do with the existing economy.

Astralporing.1957:

mulzi.8273:

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.

Exactly. Because that’s what it really is. Not that the raiders will ever admit it.

You mean a decent guild full of skillful players that successfully completed Elite content. Is there status? Heck yeah there is. Why else would Anet make Legendary gear to shiny and noticeable? To show it off.

And the apex of the skilled players are the ones who will play in our new E-Sports leagues. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them in the tourney rocking Legendary armor too.

Because this new, harder content pushes players to their limits. In what world do you live where you feel that all players deserve the superior reward without putting in the effort worthy of such rewards?

A game world, one in which nobody is “worthy” of anything, or “unworthy” of anything, it’s all just activities and rewards, and the developers arbitrarily decide to attach reward A to activity #4, and people that do activity #4 get reward A, but they are no more “worthy” of it than anyone else.

It’s fine, because if only 90% of the Raid party does their job, then all 100% won’t deserve the high quality reward. Again, it’s a team effort. You don’t play for yourself, but rather the whole.

And if 14% of the people doing the open world content don’t do their job, then all 100% of them aren’t worthy of reward either?

Unfortunately, all the suggestions you put up lead to “less effort” for players like you who wish for an alternative.

No, they don’t. Every solution I’ve offered or supported would involve doing MORE work than the original method, just work of a different variety.

Someone who puts in minimal efforts could one day be rewarded as much as someone who put in god-like effort. That is inherently unfair.

Not realistically.

I mean, for one thing, can we all have a good belly laugh at “god-like effort?”
lololololol

Ok, that out of our systems, Sure, someone who puts in minimal effort could eventually, say, earn one piece of Raid armor. Fine. But assuming the raider has kept playing, by the time someone could, with minimal effort, earn that one piece of raid armor, the raider would be most of the way through his set from the second full raid. It’s like you’re complaining that a player is able to earn coppers from killing moa and that devalues the golds you’re earning from a dungeon run.

In realistic terms, so long as they keep adding content to the game and the “front liner” player keeps progressing through it, a “minimal effort” player could eventually earn some of the things the raider has, but he could never catch up to him.

1) Everyone has a reasonable path to take. Play Raids or not. Two paths to pick from. Anet doesn’t stop anyone from trying, regardless of skill level.

“Play raids” is not reasonable to all players, And I said “reasonable options for earning the item,” which means at least two or more option in which you end up with the item at the end.

2) Exclusive rewards encourage players to try content. That’s good for the game.

We’ve been over that one. You do not need content locked exclusives to get people to try new content, you only need shallowly buried exclusives that are enough to get people through the door, like “door buster” sales at retail stores. Once they are through the door, the content itself should be fun enough to keep them there. Long term goals should not be used as a method of attracting players to new content, because if they do not enjoy that content then they have no options other than to keep playing, and not enjoy themselves, or quit, and never get that item, neither of which is a positive outcome for anyone involved.

3) If you don’t enjoy the activity, simply don’t play it. If you force yourself to play something you don’t want to, you only have yourself to blame.

But again, if you don’t play it, you don’t get the reward, and are sad that you don’t have the reward. The positive solution is one in which you both 1. have the reward at the end, and 2. don’t have to do the thing that you don’t enjoy. Any solution in which either or both of those things is not true, is a negative outcome.

So since you agree once you achieve a goal and you tend to lose interest, why would you advocate for a system that helps everyone lose interest faster

I don’t. The system I’m advocating for is one in which people can retain interest longer. The more you aim for alternative methods of earning rewards rather than the original methods, the slower you gain them, since every exchange would be inefficient. If a player wants every reward available, and pursues them primarily using the alternative methods (say, just from grinding CoF as often as possible), then it would take him years longer to earn everything than a player who did each activity as intended.

More importantly, so long as you want any reward in the game, you could work towards it in any activity you like. So say you really enjoy this first raid, but you earn all the Legendary Armor it has to offer (well faster than any alternate method would provide it, mind you). What would you do then? You could go do something else, but what if you really enjoy that raid, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to continue doing it, while still advancing towards some meaningful reward? This system would allow you to do that. It wouldn’t be as efficient as doing the content that reward is natively attached to, but it would allow you to progress.

Basically, any time it would take X amount of time to earn an item via an existing method, the alternate method would take X+15% or more, it would ALWAYS take you MORE time to do it that way.

ALWAYS.

Like EVERY time.

ALL of the times.

So please stop with the “less time and effort” nonsense.

To the other points – Offering the best items or gear to everyone is an insult to those who actually worked hard to get them.

They would only be offered to other players who_also_ worked hard to get them, typically over longer periods of time. Those other players deserve the items no less than you do.

PopeUrban.2578:

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?

Kitten, now I have to go tag all forum threads to get my legendary forum badge.

Ohoni.6057:

stuff about exclusivity and such

You keep posting about raid but forget that legendary now require all types of activities in game. Raid provides pieces of precursors. PvP and WWW provide gifts. All are needed for legendary.
Somehow I don’t see any posts from you about pvp exclusive gifts. That’s strange.

Only specific to the raids, and it wouldn’t be happening constantly like the gem exchange or anything.

It’s still not the same thing. Let’s take an example to make it clear, when Silverwastes were added as new content they had a limited amount of balancing to do, for items that are available through multiple content types. Carapce skins and the ascended accesories didn’t require any specific balancing. With your system they’d need to balance Carapce skins and ascended accessories with every dungeon path in the game, geodes from Dry Top, pvp reward tracks and so on. It’s a lot of extra effort. Exclusive rewards don’t need as much balancing, you either do it, or you don’t.

You think it’s not worth it. I think it is. Ultimately neither of us matter, I’m hoping that ANet agrees that it’s worth it, and I’ll assume you’re hoping that they don’t. We shall see.

How is it worth it, if it goes against the rest of their reward system? They’ve gone to great lengths to create a new reward system with the precursors and now you want them to trash it to create a whole new system? Not worth it, and not likely to happen.

“How can I make this content better?” By making it less necessary for earning specific rewards, so that those players that enjoy it can play it and those that do not enjoy it can enjoy playing something else.

Too vague. That’s like saying “I don’t like underwater combat, please fix it”, which is a clear example of not giving constructive feedback. Try being constructive for a change, and to a degree, specific. Or make a new thread.

“How do you think this particular element or aspect of the game could be improved?” I believe I’ve been quite exhaustive on that one.

No you haven’t. You only gave a vague explanation that would give more players access to the rewards then you left it up to others to figure out the how. Also, it won’t “improve” the game, if it has so many flaws already presented to you. You haven’t been exhaustive at all.

“Tell us why: If we ask a specific question, don’t just answer it—tell us why you answered that way.” Nobody from ANet asked me anything, but I’ve done way more than could reasonably be expected in answering you guys.

I wonder why nobody from Anet asked you anything…

And if they ask for more, I’ll give them more, but you asking for more is not the same as them asking for more.

It’s the same thing. Maybe they are watching the thread for your answers. That’s how discussions work and besides you do understand that you are completely off topic now and you had been since you first presented your idea. You’d have more luck if you made a new thread labeled “[Feedback/suggestion] Add a variable reward system”

Using Feedback for Good
Understand the topic.

Your idea is clearly OFF topic, this topic is about exclusion of players from raids, not about the reward system in general. As I said above, make a new thread named “[Feedback/suggestion] Add a variable reward system” and you might even get a dev responce. You will also avoid trolling and derailing, talking about other things that I personally don’t even care about anymore.

Provide details.
ake sure your feedback is exact and detailed (without being overly long). You don’t need to provide every detail about what you experienced and your idea for how to improve it, but you must provide more than, “Make this better,” or, “This was not fun.”

Check you idea and you will see it’s missing a couple of details. It’s “Make this better” only. You need more details, or your details are hidden in 3 different threads and are hard to find and identify.

Provide well thought-out suggestions.

Your suggestion is all over 3 different threads, fructured and in pieces… I wouldn’t call that well thought-out.

Give examples.

Where are the tricky examples? Like Geodes for CoF gear, or how are you going to add rewards to jumping puzzles? Saying “I will let the devs decide” is avoiding giving the important examples.

My big suggestion (and request) to you is to make a “[Feedback/suggestion] Add a variable reward system” thread and make sure you follow all the guidelines for constructive feedback. Even if I missed something above and you actually did provide it, don’t blame me if your suggestion is all over 3 different threads on different topics and multiple posts. Make a new one with all the details in one concise post that has ALL the information in one place, easy to read, easy to find.

You will also avoid the need to respond to off-topic comments by other posters. It will do good to the sanity of everyone posting on this thread, and you above all probably.

I’m still in the situation of deciding whether I will buy HoT or not as I’m still not sold on it. That aside I don’t think it’s such a horrible problem with providing content that is more challenging as the core game is pretty mindless. That being said I don’t agree with shunning people if they do not have ascended gear. IMO ascended gear is too grindy for me, working is grindy enough for me as it is. Unless they made acquiring the materials much faster and easier, but as it is I’ve only gone with a weapon.

If raids were tiered so T1 was capable of running exotic+ 1 ascended, T2 requires exotic+ 4 ascended, T3 requires full ascended. T1 & 2 would have high chances to obtaining ascended materials it would assist people to move forward. As it stands now it is boring to grind/farm for it (IMO of course). The only other thing I would say is the rewards better be worth it; I find GW very lackluster in its rewards for doing XYZ.

You keep posting about raid but forget that legendary now require all types of activities in game.

Two things on that. First, I have always been generally opposed to the current state of Legendaries, and have long pressed for more opening up of the ingredients for them, so “X is like. . . so Y must also. . .” doesn’t really interest me here.

Second, while current Legendaries do require various activities, the amount that you need to engage in most of these abilities is minimal, requiring little to no actual skill at them, and almost no time invested. The dungeon-based conditions can be cleared in a few nights, I believe it’s something like 6-8 total dungeon paths? That’s nothing for most dungeons, and even for Arah anyone can likely find a way. For WvW, I’ve gotten more badges through Acheivement rewards than I’ll ever be able to spend on Gift of Battle’s, and the newly added rank requirement also requires very little actual effort. These really fall into the category of the “try me” rewards that Doc was refusing to admit exist, they require almost no investment.

If Raid Precursors are no harder, take no more time, take no more skill to earn than the various dungeon Gifts for making Legendaries, then I don’t really think they’ll post a problem. I think most people could manage to “close their eyes and think of England” through that. My concern is based on the assumption, which I believe everyone on both sides of this issue shares, that the Precursors are more likely to involve considerably more time spent raiding, and considerably more player skill than the typical easiest dungeon path. The more imposing the barrier, the more whether it’s justified or not matters.

The recently added PvP gifts do concern me, but I’ve been progressing reward tracks with minimal engagement, I’m more willing to see the exact details on that one before becoming seriously concerned.

It’s still not the same thing. Let’s take an example to make it clear, when Silverwastes were added as new content they had a limited amount of balancing to do, for items that are available through multiple content types. Carapce skins and the ascended accesories didn’t require any specific balancing. With your system they’d need to balance Carapce skins and ascended accessories with every dungeon path in the game, geodes from Dry Top, pvp reward tracks and so on. It’s a lot of extra effort.

It’s really not. So long as rewards are balanced within their own merchant, that each item has a fair value of effort:reward within its own economy, it is automatically in balance with all other activities. All you need to do is determine the “coefficient” of the content area in question, the player skill necessary to earn the native tokens, the minimal and average times it would take to accumulate the tokens, etc. The easier they are to get, the faster you can accumulate them, the lower their value coefficient would be. The more difficult they are to get, and the slower they are to earn, the higher the coefficient.

You wouldn’t need to balance each reward within the merchant to every other reward, you just balance the rewards within a merchant against each other, and then balance that merchant against other merchants, which they should be doing anyways.

Exclusive rewards don’t need as much balancing, you either do it, or you don’t.

This is true, but we have Penguin over here constantly preaching about the virtue of hard work, why are you praising sloth on the part of the devs? It does add more work on their end, no question, but it’s not a lot of work really, and it’s more than worth the effort.

Too vague. That’s like saying “I don’t like underwater combat, please fix it”, which is a clear example of not giving constructive feedback. Try being constructive for a change, and to a degree, specific. Or make a new thread.

I think you have a fundamental miscommunication on what “constructive feedback” is. Constructive feedback doesn’t require that you give them a pre-built solution to the problem. Developers understand that players are not expected to be developers. All constructive feedback requires is that you can clearly articulate precisely what you view to be the problem, and why you believe this is a problem, so that they know what to fix and where.

As you note, “I don’t like underwater combat, please fix it”, is poor feedback, because it doesn’t give them any good idea of why you don’t like it. On the other hand, “I don’t like underwater combat, I tend to get confused moving in three dimensions," IS constructive feedback, because while it provides no solution, it does make clear why exactly the player does not enjoy underwater combat. It then leaves the developer to figure out some better UI perhaps to make underwater combat easier to parse.

I believe that whether you agree with my positions or not, I have done a perfectly adequate job of laying out my specific points of disagreement, why I believe these are issues, and the general direction I would like to see them move on it.

1. I believe that rewards exclusive to specific content force unnecessary pressure on players to either do that activity, even if they know they don’t enjoy it, or to do without an item that they clearly want, and that neither of these outcomes is desirable.

2. I believe that raids are likely to be designed so that many, if not most players will be unable to complete them (in practical terms, not literal terms), and therefore rewards earned from raids should have alternative methods that have more reasonable conditions.

It’s the same thing. Maybe they are watching the thread for your answers.

Your questions are not likely their questions. You presume far to much if you try to portray yourself as a Prophet of the Devs. I do answer your questions if they seem to raise a valid point of discussion, but a lot of them just seem to be pointless needling, designed to tear apart, rather than to support. To use your own words, try to be more constructive in your feedback. Your kind of constructive, ideally, the kind where you do all my work for me. That’d be nice.

That’s how discussions work and besides you do understand that you are completely off topic now and you had been since you first presented your idea. You’d have more luck if you made a new thread labeled “[Feedback/suggestion] Add a variable reward system”

I didn’t present it out of the blue. In fact, I avoided discussing it several times, because I thought it had been talked to death in previous threads, but then some posters just constantly kept coming back with “well then what would you do?” “Explain your alternative?” “Give more details, be less vague.” And here we are. Nothing I posted about my proposed alternative was not an answer to a specifically posed request.

Check you idea and you will see it’s missing a couple of details. It’s “Make this better” only. You need more details, or your details are hidden in 3 different threads and are hard to find and identify.

You understand that when they say “provide details,” they mean “details about the thing in the game that you think is a problem,” not “details about how you would fix it?” The latter they don’t expect of players. It’s not our job to fix things, it’s our job to point out things we think are broken. While we can both agree that I haven’t nailed down every detail of my alternative, I believe we can also agree that I have been more than detailed about the areas in which I have concerns.

Ohoni.6057:

You wouldn’t need to balance each reward within the merchant to every other reward, you just balance the rewards within a merchant against each other, and then balance that merchant against other merchants, which they should be doing anyways.

And what about things without merchants? The lost chests in Dry Top, the Bandit chests in SW, jumping puzzle chests, PVP tracks, WvW rewards etc Isn’t your idea about making every reward accessible through all types of content?

I believe that whether you agree with my positions or not, I have done a perfectly adequate job of laying out my specific points of disagreement, why I believe these are issues, and the general direction I would like to see them move on it.
1. I believe that rewards exclusive to specific content force unnecessary pressure on players to either do that activity, even if they know they enjoy it, or to do without an item that they clearly want, and that neither of these outcomes is desirable.
2. I believe that raids are likely to be designed so that many, if not most players will be unable to complete them (in practical terms, not literal terms), and therefore rewards earned from raids should have alternative methods that have more reasonable conditions.

I have no problems with that. I’m not saying they aren’t issues for some players, that’s a discussion for others though, I’m done with that. I said what I believe on that particular subject and won’t deal with it anymore. My one and only target was the “variable reward system” and only that. Nothing about exclusivity and/or raids.

If by “feedback” you mean the above then yes, it followed the “rules” of good feedback, but that was never my intended target. My target was your solution to the problem, the variable reward system and that one didn’t exactly follow the good feedback rules at all. It’s a mess on multiple levels, spread on loads of posts alone. Maybe if it was in concice form it would be. To re-iterate, it’s not about exclusive rewards and excluding players but about the variable reward system alone. I gave feedback for your feedback and how it has holes, how it can be abused and exploited. I can’t fix them, if I could I would’ve posted my solutions already and do your job for you. You say “it’s not your job to fix it”. Fine, there is no point going further with this if you don’t want to fix the problems with your idea.

I’ll leave it at that. Good day.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’d like to take this moment to discuss how Raids (and other Elite content) excludes some players, and why that’s actually good for the game. As it stands, GW2 is a very Casual friendly MMO. Anet designed this game without any required grind, staying true to their core principles since Day 1 of this game. You play how you want to play, level how you want to level, and ultimately decide what “fun” is. If that “fun” includes grinding content over and over (i.e. FotM, SW chests, Dungeons, etc), that’s your choice. Anet doesn’t stop you from voluntarily putting your time and effort to repeating content.

There’s something for everyone in this game. But the content for Elite/Hardcore players, while there, was sorely lacking. Thus the reason why Raids are now being introduced. These players yearn for challenging content with exclusive rewards. The best thing about how Raids are being introduced is that absolutely no one is being left out (technically). All players are allowed to try and play Raids as much as they want, as often as they want.

Here’s the part that might upset people. Raids are hard. There is no easy button for this content. While all players are welcome to play in Raids, not all will have the skills or equipment to succeed. This inherent design is working as intended. Challenging content isn’t made for you just to beat. It’s made for you to push your limits. It requires players to have a full understanding of their build, their party member’s build, and be able to coordinate all together to achieve the goal of beating the Raid. It also requires you to invest time and money into your equipment, thus helping you be more prepared for enemy encounters. Players who cannot adapt will be left out.

The million dollar question: Why is it ok for players to be “left out”?
There’s always a skill level difference between people. There’s also a difference between the time one can invest in playing this MMO. So with Raids, the assumed hardest content available, having it clear by anyone at any skill level takes away from the prestige. Why make hard content if it’s not actually hard? Why offer exclusive rewards if everyone can get them? Having some players excluded from succeeding in clearing the Raids serve as a reason to become a better player. It brings balance to game rewards for those at a higher skill level. Remember, GW2 was never designed to be a “hack & slash” game. Combat was meant to be dynamic. Standing still and swinging your sword may work on weak enemies, but will punish you on the more moderate to strong ones. Each time you learn from a mistake, the more you grow as a player.

People who invest time in learning and adapting in this game should have content that rewards them for their efforts. Raids cater to the Elite/Hardcore players, and gives them rewards based on skill and coordination. It excludes those who aren’t up to that level of commitment. But fear not, Raids will always be there for you if you choose to invest in yourself. Exclusive rewards are never impossible to get if you believe in yourself! Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars.

tl;dr – Raids are good for this game because it allows high skilled players to earn rewards worthy of their efforts, gives incentives to grow and become a better player, and gives Hardcore players content that they can enjoy.

I agree with this entirely. I’m a fairly casual player and I have avoided certain areas of the game due to time commitment and difficulty; i.e. dungeons and fractals. I get most of the my enjoyment out of the game through map completion and the story. Some people get enjoyment out of different aspects of the game and that’s totally ok.

My opinion is that if you want to do things like Raids or high level Fractals, you should prepare for it by playing low level fractals and researching what builds/team comp. works best for the setting you want to join. There’s nothing wrong with content being hard. Hard content makes better players. There are going to be people who whine about how new release material is too hard for them to earn any rewards from. Let them whine, the amount of time they spend whining and posting poorly worded replies to forum posts is just time they could have used to better learn boss mechanics, strategies, and builds that could help them get through the content.

xedoslol.3069:

Let them whine, the amount of time they spend whining and posting poorly worded replies to forum posts is just time they could have used to better learn boss mechanics, strategies, and builds that could help them get through the content.

Yes, i could. So what? That still wouldn’t be fun.

I don’t think it will be fine and dandy.
Now Dungeons lfgs are like this: 2 eles, 1 thief, 1 guard, 1 PS war.

Do you really think the ‘meta’ choices will be gone? after we’ve seen sinister engi and other things?

Freedom of choice for profession is pretty much gone, if you want a spot in a raid group.
Will you compete with that 1 druid? with that 1 tank?
same old crap, more ascended gear required.

The problem isn’t hard content. The problem is how players blame each other when they fail hard content. They’re awesome, but that other guy is to blame…

And what about things without merchants? The lost chests in Dry Top, the Bandit chests in SW, jumping puzzle chests, PVP tracks, WvW rewards etc Isn’t your idea about making every reward accessible through all types of content?

Again, all of those reward systems should already be in balance with all other systems in the game, otherwise they would become “the only worthwhile thing to be doing” or “never worth doing.” Wherever those systems are not already in balance, they should be changed, whether anything else I’ve proposed goes into effect or not. But again, the goal is not to have every reward system be shared, just enough of them that players have a wide variety of options. I would not expect DT chests to drop tokens, for example, but the DT meta would, so you could be playing in DT and advancing towards your goal.

My one and only target was the “variable reward system” and only that. Nothing about exclusivity and/or raids.

But the “variable reward system” wasn’t even addressed in this thread until you demanded it. And that was a good 9-10 pages in.

To re-iterate, it’s not about exclusive rewards and excluding players but about the variable reward system alone. I

And to re-iterate my position, it has never been about the variable reward system, it has been about exclusive rewards and exclusionary content. The variable rewards system is just my best guess at a potential solution, but my concern is with the problem, and if ANet implements nothing of the variable reward system I described, but manages to figure out a different way to allow players multiple, reasonable paths towards all potential rewards, then I would be just as happy, possibly happier, depending on what they come up with. I am in no way tied to any specific solution, I just want the problems I raised to be solved.

ekarat.1085:

The problem isn’t hard content. The problem is how players blame each other when they fail hard content. They’re awesome, but that other guy is to blame…

I try to own up to my blame ASAP — it dramatically improves the odds of the group sticking together to make another attempt. If you get out in front of it there’s a lot of personality types that don’t enjoy rubbing it in.

Nike.2631:

I try to own up to my blame ASAP — it dramatically improves the odds of the group sticking together to make another attempt. If you get out in front of it there’s a lot of personality types that don’t enjoy rubbing it in.

This.

On top of everything else it shows that you know what you did wrong and so, hopefully, wont make the same mistake again.

Ohoni.6057:

A game world, one in which nobody is “worthy” of anything, or “unworthy” of anything, it’s all just activities and rewards, and the developers arbitrarily decide to attach reward A to activity #4, and people that do activity #4 get reward A, but they are no more “worthy” of it than anyone else.

They are indeed worthy if the content for the reward is hard enough to exclude those who don’t beat it.

Ohoni.6057:

And if 14% of the people doing the open world content don’t do their job, then all 100% of them aren’t worthy of reward either?

You seem to have a selective memory. Open World content is not the same as Raids. If your 14% don’t do their jobs, all 100% still benefit if the event is successful. That is what makes Open World unfit for exclusive rewards. Until Anet can figure out how to only reward those who put in god-like efforts, you need to have a instanced map that forces all players to succeed together, or fail together.

Ohoni.6057:

No, they don’t. Every solution I’ve offered or supported would involve doing MORE work than the original method, just work of a different variety.

Nope. Farming tokens for 5 years to get Legendary gear will never be the same as putting in 1 hour of intense group-based battles with a Raid boss. That 1 hour spent planning, executing, and winning will always trump your extra time doing something mindlessly easy.

Ohoni.6057:

Ok, that out of our systems, Sure, someone who puts in minimal effort could eventually, say, earn one piece of Raid armor.

See above

Ohoni.6057:

“Play raids” is not reasonable to all players,

And that’s ok.

Ohoni.6057:

But again, if you don’t play it, you don’t get the reward, and are sad that you don’t have the reward.

And to get over your sadness, you play the content and learn something new. As my own example of being bad at PvP. I didn’t like PvP in GW2. I preferred GW1 HoH. But after 2 years of ho-humming, I became more active. Just in the past couple months, I’ve pushed myself to become better. Now the ranks are coming quickly, and went from Wolf to almost Phoenix. All your arguments instantly fail against mine, because I’m living proof that anyone can play any content. Perhaps you can get to my level and try something you don’t like, and maybe participate in Raids. You never know, you could actually like it.

Ohoni.6057:

The system I’m advocating for is one in which people can retain interest longer.

Actually the opposite. Your system caters to players who feel they deserve everything. And once they have everything, they lose interest fast unless Anet can keep pounding out new content and new rewards to satisfy them. While we appreciate your willingness to offer suggestions, the one you feel so strongly about doesn’t work. Any game developer can tell you that when you give away everything, you hurt the game as a whole.

Ohoni.6057:

Basically, any time it would take X amount of time to earn an item via an existing method, the alternate method would take X+15% or more, it would ALWAYS take you MORE time to do it that way.

ALWAYS.

Again, that extra time spent does not equal the time Raiders spent beating Elite content. Never. A marathon runner who completes the 26 mile run in 3 hours is far superior to the person walked it in 10 hours, or someone who rode a 10 speed bike the same distance. It’s insulting to say “I finished a marathon just like you!” when your effort wasn’t on par with the runner’s.

Ohoni.6057:

Those other players deserve the items no less than you do.

They would deserve the item, only if they completed the requirements for it. Thus beating a Raid makes one worthy of such a reward.

lol. If anyone thinks raids takes a “god like effort” then they have a very small idea of what a God is. (Unless they think killing a raid boss is a miracle on the level of creating the universe in 6 days).

Just a flesh wound.3589:

lol. If anyone thinks raids takes a “god like effort” then they have a very small idea of what a God is. (Unless they think killing a raid boss is a miracle on the level of creating the universe in 6 days).

lol, I don’t think he meant Jehovah, he probably meant the gods of Grinding, which are lesser virtual deities whose planar portfolios revolve around killing the same virtual monster thousands of times in order to get a decent item set.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

lol. If anyone thinks raids takes a “god like effort” then they have a very small idea of what a God is. (Unless they think killing a raid boss is a miracle on the level of creating the universe in 6 days).

My GW1 ancestor helped create the god Kormir. I’m still waiting for her to grant me access to my stash of Tormented weapons inside my Hall of Monuments.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

lol. If anyone thinks raids takes a “god like effort” then they have a very small idea of what a God is. (Unless they think killing a raid boss is a miracle on the level of creating the universe in 6 days).

My GW1 ancestor helped create the god Kormir. I’m still waiting for her to grant me access to my stash of Tormented weapons inside my Hall of Monuments.

Don’t remind me of Kormir >.> or I’ll post that video again.

You seem to have a selective memory. Open World content is not the same as Raids. If your 14% don’t do their jobs, all 100% still benefit if the event is successful.

And if 10% of a raid group don’t do their jobs, all 100% still benefit if the event is successful. Same thing.

Until Anet can figure out how to only reward those who put in god-like efforts, you need to have a instanced map that forces all players to succeed together, or fail together.

And I’ve said that they should do a better job of tracking, requiring, and rewarding individual participation in open world events. As a simple example, you’re familiar with Karka Queen, right? What if during the “throw eggs” portion, instead of having a few eggs, and some of the players grab them and some don’t, have instanced eggs, everyone gets a few spread out that only they can see and interact with. Everyone is expected to grab an egg and throw it. Of course the event would not be tuned to require that, only a certain portion would need to participate to achieve the maximum possible result, but everyone could, in theory, and your individual loot table would, in part, be based on whether you achieved that.

I think most open world events suffer from the game breaking down when too many players are on screen, everything goes into slo-mo, so they need to do a better job of making it impossible for that many players to congregate until they can get their tech to the place where the game would still run butter smooth, but there are all sorts of ways to reward players for active participation even with 50+ players in an area.

I still find the concept of “god-like efforts” in a game to be laughable, like literally “ha ha” laughter, not the more figurative use of the term. “God-like.” Lol.

Nope. Farming tokens for 5 years to get Legendary gear will never be the same as putting in 1 hour of intense group-based battles with a Raid boss.

Of course not, it’s way more work and completely preposterous. An hour of intense raid work should equate to like a few weeks of farming tokens, maybe a month. You have a ridiculously bloated view of how valuable a raid is. It’s harder than most other content, but it’s not that big a deal.

Ohoni.6057:

“Play raids” is not reasonable to all players,

And that’s ok.

It is ok, totally ok, just so long as those players have no reason to go into a raid, that there are no rewards that would be cut off from them if they did not do that raid, and they instead had valid alternatives.

As my own example of being bad at PvP. I didn’t like PvP in GW2. I preferred GW1 HoH. But after 2 years of ho-humming, I became more active. Just in the past couple months, I’ve pushed myself to become better. Now the ranks are coming quickly, and went from Wolf to almost Phoenix.

And in my experience, I hated PvP, I didn’t play it in GW1, but probably would have hated it there, but since they added the PvP daily and the PvE dailies are often junk I end up running a PvP game once or twice a week, and I’ve never been all that bad at it, I’m typically fairly good actually and the MVP of my team as often as not, and yet I still hate it, still don’t want to do it, still would love to have better PvE daily alternatives so that I could avoid it entirely, and still dislike my time spent in the game more when I see that PvP is my least bad option in the daily rotation.

All your arguments instantly fail against mine, because I’m living proof that anyone can play any content. Perhaps you can get to my level and try something you don’t like, and maybe participate in Raids. You never know, you could actually like it.

You presented a personal anecdote, it proves or disproves nothing. It’s quite possible that I will enjoy raiding. I kind of doubt it, based on what content in this or other games I know that I like and dislike, but it’s certainly possible. I highly doubt, however, that everyone will enjoy raiding, or be able to make the time for it.

I intend to give raiding a try if I can, I think my guild is up for it, and depending on how much time is required it’s possible I could find it, but if I play it, and just really do dislike it as much as I dislike Fractals, would you accept that I do not like it, and not want me to suffer through something I do not enjoy, or are you content that I am sad and see no reason to take that sadness away?

Actually the opposite. Your system caters to players who feel they deserve everything. And once they have everything, they lose interest fast unless Anet can keep pounding out new content and new rewards to satisfy them.

True, but as I keep repeating, my system would involve it ALWAYS taking LONGER time for them to have anything, so “when they have everything, they will quit” is an entirely moot point. They would never have anything faster than they would get it under the existing system.

Again, that extra time spent does not equal the time Raiders spent beating Elite content. Never.

What part of “X+15%” did you not understand? It would take them [the time Raiders spent beating Elite content] + 15% (or more). That is the design of the system. Ok, now sure, it might be faster than a raid group that takes preposterously long to resolve the content, like if the average first time clear of a given raid is three weeks, and it takes some group four months of failed attempts before they clear it once, then yeah, maybe someone dedicated could earn the rewards through the alternate means faster than they can, but that is an edge case. Anyone who is as “hardcore” as you deify would have no problem earning rewards via raiding way faster than the alternate methods, including all training time.

A marathon runner who completes the 26 mile run in 3 hours is far superior to the person walked it in 10 hours, or someone who rode a 10 speed bike the same distance. It’s insulting to say “I finished a marathon just like you!” when your effort wasn’t on par with the runner’s.

Most runners would not mind. They would know that they completed it in far less time, on their own terms, and would congratulate the person who walked the entire thing, or who biked it, on having accomplished the task in their own way. Those other people would take nothing away from the accomplishment of the runner, and the runner would know that (presuming he was a mature adult).

Ohoni.6057:

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.

Then you link the other kittening thread, you do know how to link something right?
And no, reporting spam is not harrasment, it’s reporting spam, you don’t have to respond to every kitten person and you can just link your thread and be done with it, but you choose not to because you seem to love this and it’s trolling at this point.

Ohoni.6057:

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.

I wasn’t going to bother with you but you spread misinformation again. You never gave a concice “system” to solve the issue as an argument. You never gave constructive feedback on the subject. You never gave a constructive idea, as specific as possible, to be used a basis for further improvements.

You need to learn to accept feedback for your feedback, that’s the point of giving it in the first place. You didn’t do that. You didn’t bother to address the issues with your so called “system” and instead went the easy way out “I’m not a dev”. That’s not good feedback, sometime later in your life you might learn what constructive feedback is and how to properly discuss a subject. Until then have fun, just don’t spread misinformation, you never had a “system” to worth with as an argument. You never had an argument to begin with.

Then you link the other kittening thread, you do know how to link something right?

It was a fairly long thread, linking it probably wouldn’t have been much help to anyone who hadn’t already read it. The funny thing though, the ones complaining were the ones who had read the previous thread!

And no, reporting spam is not harrasment, it’s reporting spam, you don’t have to respond to every kitten person and you can just link your thread and be done with it, but you choose not to because you seem to love this and it’s trolling at this point.

I’m not spamming though, I’m just responding legitimately to legitimate points raised. If anyone would be trolling at this point, it would be you, trying to shut down legitimate discussion because you disagree with the core principles.