Guild Wars 2

PorceleinEve.2973:

Yes challenging content can have good stories, as can non challenging content. The hardness of the content doesn’t really affect the quality of the story. As a person I don’t much like instances (totally personal preference) and I prefer well designed zones to them (which in this game are also instanced, bleh).

The difficulty of the content affects the quality of the story. Take the Battle for Claw Island, there is a huge risen invasion and yet it feels like a walk in the park. When NPCs die during the personal story the die because according to the story something happened to them and they had to sacrifice their life for the greater good. Yet, because the difficulty is so low you don’t get that feeling at all. You don’t mourn the dead because “hey, why did Tybalt die? I could take ALL THOSE RISEN by myself!”

A better difficulty would help the narrative convey the actual feelings of urgency, feeling of fear when a big boss arrives and feeling of actual loss when NPCs die. If you could’ve taken them by yourself, why in the world did those NPCs die?

Higher difficulty, or lower difficulty don’t add or subtract from the story. The story is there. Or it isn’t. There can never be an actual concept of war. Not even the illution of it. This isn’t a mature rated game, it can’t touch on the subtle plot lines of a war. So having harder mobs will only increase the frustration of the ppl who engage in the train option. I would like something different al together.

The old zones don’t have a story to tell either. The war with the Centaurs in Kryta was an excellent opportunity to have a real conflict. What is keeping it from being an engaging story is the difficulty. Frustration for the people who engage in trains is a very good thing. Trains are one of the destroyers of any idea of lore/story/depth and narrative in the game. Doesn’t feel very immersive to have 20 players moving around looting chests.

Instanced challenging group content will come, will not be all that challenging. What’s a real epic battle? One you can’t always win? No matter how hard you try? That cannot possibly happen. And how many would you have complete it? 75% of the population? 50% of the population? How many people you’d exclude for it to feel “epic”. Cause if everyone could complete it the rewards wouldn’t be exclusive, would they? What’s the cut off point for you… let’s be specific.

Yet there are many games out there that have that sense of a real epic battle. Because those games aren’t afraid they might alienate a part of their population. The % of the population that can’t complete the most challenging part is based on the actual ability of the population to adapt and learn. It has very little (if anything) to do with the content difficulty. If players want to learn the tactics and adapt their builds/tactics they will succeed. That’s the whole point, if the entire game is within the comfort zone of the lowest skill level players then it gets boring and stale for everyone else.

I was just looking at a video of WoodenPatatoes and the subject about cool rewards for specific content did get mentioned.

In the video the talk was more directed towards armor and weapon-skins but really this holds true for all types of rewards, also toys, and mini’s and finishers and so on.

WoodenPatatoes then adds that he expects these type of rewards will re revealed when they talk about the hard content, adding that those rewards being linked to that content (this concept) is one of the biggest things that excites him the most about the hard content.. it shows hot important rewards going with content (and the result of that, that he also talks about) is for many people.

Anyway, at 13:10 he even says the lack of this really is the biggest things that hampers GW2’s end-game.

And this is exactly how I feel as well, heck, it’s my main topic of many of my post of the last 2,5 years, where I personally blame the cash-shop focus for this. But it is exactly how I feel about it.

All these rewards just being things you buy / grind instead of being a reward for specific content, including challenging content does remove a huge part of the end-game / game.

In an MMO that generally is my preferred end-game.. but here that is grind, grind, grind instead of some interesting content to unlock the reward. So taking away a huge part of the content.

Maybe that is also something people should thing about.. that having rewards from content (instead of the grind option) is a big part of the game-play / end-game for many people and I indeed do feel as well the lack of this (other then grinding) is one of the biggest things holding GW2 back / biggest problems in GW2.

Of course WoodenPatatoes is also just one guy with an opinion, but I did wanted to throw this in here as it seemed relevant.

I’m not overly fond of WvWvW, does that mean Anet should stop creating content for it? No.

Again, nobody is saying that they shouldn’t create hard mode content, just that it should be truly optional, that players can earn all the same rewards through alternate methods if they are unable or uninterested in the hard mode content on its own merits. I of course do not believe that they should stop making content for WvW, even though I don’t participate in it, but they should not have unique WvW-only rewards either.

Why should someone get the same rewards as someone who put in the effort, just for doing an easier form of said content?

Again, nobody is talking about not having to put in effort. The discussion on the table is only that the effort one puts in should be in activities that they enjoy doing. If you enjoy hard mode content, then you can put in your effort in hard mode content. If you don’t, then you should be able to put that same amount of effort into some other activities, and still work towards the rewards that you want, just as PvP players can now put effort into clearing dungeon PvP tracks instead of having to run the dungeons themselves.

If you want the rewards for hard content, you better yourself until you’re able to complete the hard content, if you don’t want to do that, you acknowledge that you’ll never get those rewards.

And again, I don’t see how forcing that choice benefits anyone. Ever. All it does is mean that players who enjoy hard mode content receive a win/win situation, they get to do the thing they enjoy and get the prize that they want for it, while players that do not enjoy hard mode content are faced with a lose/lose scenario, where they are forced to either A. Do something they do not enjoy, often for weeks or months at a time, or B. forever abandon a reward that they want. I don’t see why forcing a choice between the lesser of two evils is of benefit to the consumer.

And WoW is still the number one MMORPG and won’t be surpassed any time soon. What’s your point? Wildstar didn’t fail because it copied WoW as far as rewards go, it failed because it didn’t.

Lol. Anyways, WoW did not really take off until it started to make rewards MORE accessible to players, the moves that the hardcore crowd derided, and that they championed Wildstar for restoring to “Vanilla WoW status.”

The point still stands, if they make it so you can get the reward by spamming 1 in SW in the same time frame it takes the “good” players to run the challenging content there is still no point in it (and doesn’t make any sense)

The “spamming 1” excuse gets brought up constantly in these sorts of discussions. I don’t think anyone is defending gameplay that simplistic as an ideal, but I do think there’s a reasonable middleground between “spamming 1” and Fractals. I think that they can make engaging content, that requires at least moderate attention, and content that is designed to flunk out the majority of players completely.

I’m not saying that everything should be awarded to people who just spam 1 or spam “f” or whatever, I’m saying that everything should be awarded to anyone that actually tries though, and I’m sorry, but hard mode content that is strong enough to please the hard mode crowd cannot fulfill that condition.

Actually wanting anyone to get the new rewards by playing farm content AND have them in the same time frame as those running the challenging content is the same as getting them with login rewards. So, “handed to them”.

Note that I didn’t say the exact same time, just that the distance between the two should not be that vast. For example, if there is an easy mode and a hard mode, and they each take roughly the same amount of time to complete, the hard mode should not reward a thing 100% of the time while the easy only rewards it 10% of the time. If the hard mode rewards it 10% of the time then the easy mode should not only reward it .01% of the time. The hard mode can be faster, but if players are doing it once daily, it should not take weeks or months for the “easy” version to catch up, it should take maybe a week or so.

Everyone (I think) should agree with this. If nothing else, someone who is following champion trains, following chest farms, kills world bosses and farms PVP arenas should have 0% chance of obtaining the new rewards. Any other token system is fine.

I don’t see why those shouldn’t be a viable method of obtaining tokens, If that is the gameplay that appeals to you. My point was just that the tokens should not be subject to the whims of supply and demand, the amount of tokens you have should not fluctuate in actual value based on the amount of tokens another player has, as is currently the case with gold.

And you are wrong, if someone is capable of completing that challenging content that 98% of the playerbase cannot then it’s not “handed to them”.

Everyone has different capabilities. Content that is moderately challenging to player A might be effortless to player B and impossible for player C. Player A might have “earned it” in completing content he found challenging, but player B would have just been handed it for doing something he could complete in his sleep, and player C would never be able to get it at all.

Every single black lion skin in the game is unfairly blocked behind grind because it is bought with gold. I’d rather I get them as rewards from content instead.

I think both should be options, although speaking realistically, they’re never going to offer BLTC goods as gameplay rewards, because that’s just not their business model. The only way I could remotely see them doing that is if they moved to a “semi sub” system, where you could pay gems to earn a buff, and only while under this buff you could potentially earn BLTC goods via ingame activities, but personally I don’t like this idea at all.

No. The kind of boring Open world like champ farming, sw cf, world bosses and pvp daily farm maps, should never ever provide a viable path to achieving any goal. They are ALREADY the most viable path to getting any Black Lion skin (most gold per hour) and I think that’s enough for them, let other types of content give rewards to players, those things already have exclusivity

Again, the goal is to make all paths viable to ALL rewards. Being able to get BLTC skins is great if those are the skins you want, but if the skin you want is not a tradable skin then that is of zero comfort to you. All skins are subjective, different people want some more than others. There are skins on the market going for hundreds of gold that I would not spend ten gold on, and others that go for 10g that I would spend 100 on if that was the only way to get it. You cannot say “you can have skins A-M and I’ll keep exclusive access to skins N-Z, and that’s fair because it’s balanced,” because all that actually matters is which skins the player wants.

Of course WoodenPatatoes is also just one guy with an opinion, but I did wanted to throw this in here as it seemed relevant.

I really like WP, I watch his videos daily, but I have never agreed with his stance on rewarding elitism.

Putting this out there.

A skin’s merit (not its look) is diminished the more alternatives to achieving it there are. Making a skin exclusive to a ‘challenging’ area of content, yet also attainable through a much easier method elsewhere, subsequently makes it less exclusive thus making players who attempt the ‘challenging’ method feel like their time was wasted when they could have done the easier method multiple times over for greater effect. And ultimately does nothing to solve the problems in GW2 Horizontial Progression, which there is currently none of.

That’s what this is really all about, there’s a lack of Horizontial Progression, or making efforts to gain every skin, every title, every cosmetic as right now a vast majority of it can be reached with enough gold or easier alternative means (Ambrite Weapons earned in PvE versus SPvP). Certain Living Story skins are exclusive in a sense of whether or not you were playing the game at the time and making achievement progress towards it, not too bad by design as it shows age and commitment for the player in question who has it. But there are no true skins that, through the social nature of this MMO, skilled players can show that designate the trials they went through, the EFFORT made.

We need exclusivity as it brings about it new Horizontial Progression we haven’t seen since people started making progress towards the first legendaries, towards doing explorable dungeons for the first time. And there can’t be other easier methods of gaining these exclusive skins.

Ohoni, its good you are not in charge of making decisions for this game.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, nobody is saying that they shouldn’t create hard mode content, just that it should be truly optional, that players can earn all the same rewards through alternate methods if they are unable or uninterested in the hard mode content on its own merits. I of course do not believe that they should stop making content for WvW, even though I don’t participate in it, but they should not have unique WvW-only rewards either.

really? no unique wvw rewards? than whats the point of even playing any particular game mode? Everyone would just pick whatever the easiest path is to said reward. Thus, more dead content. Your reward system would be next generation level of casual….

You want to achieve “yak slapper” title but don’t want to go to WvW, so you want anet to add an option so you can achieve it by killing donkeys in PvE maps instead? You want a champion magus title or PvP skin, but you want there to be a way to get it by doing PvE content only? That’s what your joke of a reward system looks like…

it KILLS the meaning of “unique”

Astralporing.1957:

Coulter.2315:

IndigoSundown.5419:

The OP does not want to prevent people from obtaining rewards, but he wants to prevent them from being able to obtain the feeling of satisfaction that they get from having something exclusive. The other side, meanwhile, wants to prevent others from getting those rewards at all.

People wanting content to be harder and rewarding do not want people prevented from attaining the rewards or doing the content, we just want it to require some effort.

Of course you do want it. A content that anyone would be able to do, one that a majority would be able to do, or even one that a large number of people would be able to do will not be considered hard. For obvious reasons.
Half the players are of below average skills. By asking for a hard content (one that requires above average skills) you are asking for content that will be beyond the reach of at least half the game population. Some people – those whose primary concern is indeed to have something that will personally challenge them – may not be thinking about it, but i am certain that majority of people asking for hardcore content are not only perfectly aware of it, but that this exclusion itself is their main goal.

Sorry so just so we’re all clear YOU believe that humans cannot adapt or improve and are frozen in time.. You must have been an impressive 2 yr old, disappointing now though…

A skin’s merit (not its look) is diminished the more alternatives to achieving it there are.

True, but a skin should have no merit attached to it. That is not the point of a skin. A skin should look cool on its own merits, it should have equal value whether only one exists or whether everyone gets one. People who want to accumulate tokens or merit should do so via means other than skins.

Sorry so just so we’re all clear YOU believe that humans cannot adapt or improve and are frozen in time.. You must have been an impressive 2 yr old, disappointing now though…

Individuals can grow and progress, but at different rates and at different ceilings. Just because you can do something does not mean that anyone else can do it if they just apply themselves, or that those who have not achieved it have not put in as much effort as you.

Ohoni.6057:

A skin’s merit (not its look) is diminished the more alternatives to achieving it there are.

True, but a skin should have no merit attached to it. That is not the point of a skin. A skin should look cool on its own merits, it should have equal value whether only one exists or whether everyone gets one. People who want to accumulate tokens or merit should do so via means other than skins.

Sorry so just so we’re all clear YOU believe that humans cannot adapt or improve and are frozen in time.. You must have been an impressive 2 yr old, disappointing now though…

Individuals can grow and progress, but at different rates and at different ceilings. Just because you can do something does not mean that anyone else can do it if they just apply themselves, or that those who have not achieved it have not put in as much effort as you.

Clearly anet is not listening to you.
Other wise some skins wouldn’t be outrageously more pricey than other.
They have merit, and they are supposed to have merit. Otherwise its meaningless.

you think the basic level 1 skins should have equal merit with legendary skins that takes ages to make? get real.

They are designed to have merit.

Ohoni.6057:

A skin’s merit (not its look) is diminished the more alternatives to achieving it there are.

True, but a skin should have no merit attached to it. That is not the point of a skin. A skin should look cool on its own merits, it should have equal value whether only one exists or whether everyone gets one. People who want to accumulate tokens or merit should do so via means other than skins.

Sorry so just so we’re all clear YOU believe that humans cannot adapt or improve and are frozen in time.. You must have been an impressive 2 yr old, disappointing now though…

Individuals can grow and progress, but at different rates and at different ceilings. Just because you can do something does not mean that anyone else can do it if they just apply themselves, or that those who have not achieved it have not put in as much effort as you.

The people arguing against difficult content in this thread were also saying the Beta area was too hard after having access to it for 2hrs, I know these guys are just being ridiculous and not trying.

I know that people progress at different rates but if you never even challenge them how will they ever improve? People don’t change until they have to but the wonder of them is that they can.

Also there will be PLENTY of rewards for the majority of the population, I see no issue with there being a few more difficult to get rewards.

The reward most likely is just some skins. In which most of it’s prestige comes from being hard to get, not because it even look that great.

Take for example, while I like the fractal skins, I think chaos skins look much better. But I still like fractal skins more because it is harder to get.

Clearly anet is not listening to you.
Other wise some skins wouldn’t be outrageously more pricey than other.

I never said they were listening to me, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t the right thing to do.

They have merit, and they are supposed to have merit. Otherwise its meaningless.

That’s preposterous. The skins have value based on how they look, that value is completely separate from the tasks one needs to do to acquire it.

The people arguing against difficult content in this thread were also saying the Beta area was too hard after having access to it for 2hrs, I know these guys are just being ridiculous and not trying.

I do think the beta was “too hard.” Keep in mind, I don’t mean that to say that it’s too hard to exist anywhere, but I do think it was too hard for where it was placed right in the world. The story mode was too hard for the first step in the HoT story, the open world content is too hard for “center line” open world content. Difficult content should be off to the sides, fully optional to those that want to engage in it. I’m not saying that I can’t gain the skills to overcome the content that was in the beta, I’m saying that I shouldn’t have to just to get by.

I know that people progress at different rates but if you never even challenge them how will they ever improve? People don’t change until they have to but the wonder of them is that they can.

That’s their business. Some people choose to spend hours in the gym every day, and wind up with massive muscles. Some don’t. They each pursued their own choice. The game should not be trying to get players to improve, players should want to improve for their own reasons, and if they don’t want to improve, then that should be fine too. The game as a whole benefits from the highest number of players that are having fun, not from having the highest number of highly trained and skilled players.

Also there will be PLENTY of rewards for the majority of the population, I see no issue with there being a few more difficult to get rewards.

Again, the total quantity of rewards distributed is ENTIRELY irrelevant. What matters is whether the rewards one actually wants are distributed to the people who want them. If you can earn 99% of the content in the game through casual means, but 1% of it is locked behind difficult content, that is zero comfort to the people who don’t care about that 99% of content and only want the 1% stuff. If you tell me “you can have anything on the McDonalds menu that you want, but the fish sandwich is only for people that can show a certificate of marathon completion,” then that would still suck for me, because I like those fish sandwiches, and the availability of the rest of the menu really doesn’t help.

Ohoni.6057:

Clearly anet is not listening to you.
Other wise some skins wouldn’t be outrageously more pricey than other.

I never said they were listening to me, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t the right thing to do.

They have merit, and they are supposed to have merit. Otherwise its meaningless.

That’s preposterous. The skins have value based on how they look, that value is completely separate from the tasks one needs to do to acquire it.

The people arguing against difficult content in this thread were also saying the Beta area was too hard after having access to it for 2hrs, I know these guys are just being ridiculous and not trying.

I do think the beta was “too hard.” Keep in mind, I don’t mean that to say that it’s too hard to exist anywhere, but I do think it was too hard for where it was placed right in the world. The story mode was too hard for the first step in the HoT story, the open world content is too hard for “center line” open world content. Difficult content should be off to the sides, fully optional to those that want to engage in it. I’m not saying that I can’t gain the skills to overcome the content that was in the beta, I’m saying that I shouldn’t have to just to get by.

I know that people progress at different rates but if you never even challenge them how will they ever improve? People don’t change until they have to but the wonder of them is that they can.

That’s their business. Some people choose to spend hours in the gym every day, and wind up with massive muscles. Some don’t. They each pursued their own choice. The game should not be trying to get players to improve, players should want to improve for their own reasons, and if they don’t want to improve, then that should be fine too. The game as a whole benefits from the highest number of players that are having fun, not from having the highest number of highly trained and skilled players.

Also there will be PLENTY of rewards for the majority of the population, I see no issue with there being a few more difficult to get rewards.

Again, the total quantity of rewards distributed is ENTIRELY irrelevant. What matters is whether the rewards one actually wants are distributed to the people who want them. If you can earn 99% of the content in the game through casual means, but 1% of it is locked behind difficult content, that is zero comfort to the people who don’t care about that 99% of content and only want the 1% stuff. If you tell me “you can have anything on the McDonalds menu that you want, but the fish sandwich is only for people that can show a certificate of marathon completion,” then that would still suck for me, because I like those fish sandwiches, and the availability of the rest of the menu really doesn’t help.

Ok we will never agree, I cannot understand your point of view. It isn’t an engaging game if you can get everything you want with your eyes closed. Have you genuinely never enjoyed that feeling you get for winning something you tried for? Prizes for competitions, school marks, university degree or exam results? Really none of that feeling is appealing to you? (Obviously GW2 will not reward you as heavily mentally as a good exam result but you can understand what I’m pointing at, I hope)

1% rewards exist already, 27k AP armour and Glorious Hero’s armour.

I think raising the challenge of the game’s base is only going to help keep the game engaging with a player base who thinks and appreciates the mechanics the devs have put effort into designing.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Conski Deshan.2057:

selfish
?s?lf??/
adjective
adjective: selfish
(of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for other people; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.

Selfish is literally about wanting things for yourself, keeping things from others is not a selfish act by itself, in a structured environment it makes sense, see the trophies and rewards from sports analogy a few people have made.

I know you don’t agree with it but surely you can recognize that progression and advancement are at the core of the game, and both of those involve less people being present the further along you get.

Both sides are being selfish.

The OP does not want to prevent people from obtaining rewards, but he wants to prevent them from being able to obtain the feeling of satisfaction that they get from having something exclusive. The other side, meanwhile, wants to prevent others from getting those rewards at all. Both sides are also trying to preserve what they value — access or exclusivity.

Neither side is being noble, expansive or inclusive. There is no way to give both sides what they want, because their desires are diametrically opposed. The only way to move forward in situations like that is to compromise by having some rewards that can be gained in multiple ways, and some that require completion of certain content.

ANet already knows this. That’s why we have a mix of reward availability in the game and are likely to see the same going forward. However, they also need to keep a couple of other things in mind.

• Vayne’s point about there being a “straw that broke the camel’s back” with regard to reward exclusivity has merit. Locking too many of the most wanted gewgaws behind harder content would have an effect on participation, which affects revenue in the long run. Fortunately, ANet also seems to realize this, and there are not that many such rewards — nor do I expect to see the preponderance of rewards be exclusive going forward, for the same reason. A like point can be made on the part of those who want some exclusivity. If they don’t get their itch scratched, they might also move on, so that has to also be factored in.

• More players wanting to play different aspects of GW2 is good for the longevity of the game. ANet uses rewards to push participation. I see no signs they will stop doing this, so I expect there will continue to be rewards used for that purpose.

“Locking too many of the most wanted gewgaws behind harder content would have an effect on participation, which affects revenue in the long run. " Well you could put nearly all rewards behind specific content and make 50% not account-bound (so available with grinding gold) and 50% account-bound. Seems fair. But at this very moment maybe 5%? is placed behind specific content. While the fast majority is not and can really only be grinded for. And only a small percentage of the items that are behind specific content are account-bound, so while they are behind specific content, they can be farmed for as well.

So currently the balance is completely gone. Cheers if your a grinder, bad luck if your not. And personally I am convinced this is THE main issue why Anet does have a problem holding people (something they said.. just before we get in an argument if they are, or are not holding people). People come in the game and then set themselves goals (even before reaching lvl 80), they see an item they like and go about “how do I get that”, the answer.. ah get money doing x, y or z. So they do that, then they see another item and wonder how to get that… it’s the same answer, grinding x, y or z, next item again the same, next item again the same. And within no time they get bored or burned out by the grind.

That is why this is according to me such a big issue, and something Anet needs to get right with HoT as many of those will return with HoT, but if they get bored / burned out again they will not come back for the expansion after HoT.

“A like point can be made on the part of those who want some exclusivity. If they don’t get their itch scratched, they might also move on, so that has to also be factored in.”

It’s not only about feeling rewarded. Setting goals / working towards such rewards is a big part of an MMO and the end-game for many people, but in GW2 that for the biggest part is now only available in the form of grinding currency, what is not everybody’s cup a thee.

“ANet uses rewards to push participation. I see no signs they will stop doing this, so I expect there will continue to be rewards used for that purpose.”
Well so far most rewards are best collected by grinding, that does not incentive many different types of content. In incentives grinding the few types of content that best rewards the currency you need for those items.

Uhm…. “hard mode” is levling up to 80 and deleting your character if you /deaths >0 ……

If the Lawless Helmet given its ‘unique’ look were instead of a Gem Store Skin a skin out of a truly grueling ‘end-game instance’, you would absolutely be seeing a lot more of it being used, I would use it and find armor that made it look kitten beautiful. In reality, yes fashion is a factor in GW2 as part of Horizontial progression, but not when the progression is a step-stool as opposed to a tall ladder.

…Not to offend anyone who has the skin right now. I mean to each their own…

Ohoni.6057:

But like I said before, it is important to link the reward to the content. For the Molten Backpack you need to kill the boss with the molten backpack, for a portal to a WvW map, you need to hold a keep in that WvW map, for a mini that jumps all the time you need to have completed that JP in x time and so on.

Thematic linking is all well and good, but should not come at the expense of fun. There are numerous items in this game that are thematically linked to a given boss or dungeon or other task, but there are also numerous items that could be thematically linked, but aren’t. The Pact Fleet weapons could be earned in Silverwastes, the human God skins could be linked to Orr, but they aren’t they are bought for gold on the TP.

I think it’s perfectly fine to thematically link an item to a given dungeon or JP or whatever difficult task, and that can certainly be one way of earning it, but that doesn’t mean that there can’t be others, like PvE reward tracks, token collection/redemption, drops in the local area, etc. A decent example of this is the game Marvel Heroes. Most bosses in the game have special unique gear associated with them, like say “Doctor Octopus’s Tentacles.” You can, as one would assume, get these off the boss in question, as a rare drop. But also, you can clear an achievement to kill that boss 100 times, and even if you never got it as a rare drop, that guarantees you one. OR, in some cases, these items also have a chance of dropping off any mob in their stage, lower, but still possible. OR, there are special “rare drop” boxes that you can buy using special event currencies, and these boxes have a chance of dropping these special rare items as well. There are currently several ways to get almost any item, while still keeping the item thematically tied, and I think this is a fair balance to aim for.

It’s like a trophy. You can earn a trophy for winning with some sport.. or you can simply go to a shop and buy that exact same trophy. While it’s the same trophy, the first one will be of more value (for you at least) because it was a reward for winning, not just something you did buy with the money you earned working. However it would feel really bad if other people would indeed buy the same trophy because it undermines the meaning of the trophy.

As I said before, I have no problem with trophies, so long a they ARE trophies, as in an otherwise useless hunk of metal that only serves to highlight an accomplishment. Skins are NOT trophies.

Maybe you aren’t getting that yet, think of it this way, interior design. People like to design their homes, right? Buy furniture that they think looks good? Well what if most furniture could not be bought, it had to be won through various means. Want a leather sofa? You have to complete a 10K. Want a standing reading lamp? You have to complete a bachelors in literature. Want a blue carpet? You have to master bee keeping. The design of your home would be subject to the tasks you were willing and able to complete for them, and the arbitrary rules that society placed in assigning item A to content B.

The skins available to you should not be held hostage to the content you are willing and able to complete.

“Thematic linking is all well and good, but should not come at the expense of fun.” Is does not, it increases it and also makes it more fair / logic to lock the reward behind the content. You want the jumping mini, then it makes perfect sense to have to complete the JP.

Because it very much is a trophy for the reward..

You say I don’t get that it should not be a trophy, but in fact you do not seem to get that for many people it is, or they want it to be the trophy for the reward.

In real life we indeed work and they buy the stuff, but this is a game, and in an MMO many people do like the `life of the land` mentality you describe there.

Yes while in real life I would prefer to buy a lamp, in a game I would prefer to have to kill a dragon, and then use his head as lamp in the guild-hall. (Your examples don’t really link content to reward).

PS, if you again post comments, then please quote using the names, because people might not spot you commenting on them in this way.

Ok we will never agree, I cannot understand your point of view. It isn’t an engaging game if you can get everything you want with your eyes closed.

I’m not saying that we ever will agree, but it might help if you actually read the words that I typed. At no point did I say anything even approaching : “you should be able to get everything you want with your eyes closed.”

Have you genuinely never enjoyed that feeling you get for winning something you tried for?

Yes, but there is a delicate balance between “achieving that thing you worked for” and “pushing a boulder indefinitely up a hill until you get frustrated and quit.” Games are meant to be fun, the amount of time that a game forces you to spend “not having fun” before achieving a desired reward should be relatively minimal. Since what is “fun” is highly subjective, they need to ensure that there are a wide variety of method by which one might have fun, and not overly pressure players into any specific activities that might not be fun for them.

1% rewards exist already, 27k AP armour and Glorious Hero’s armour.

Arguing that these items do exist in the game does not mean that they should, or that ANet should double down on the idea. I would very much welcome them “democratizing” more of the existing items as well.

I think raising the challenge of the game’s base is only going to help keep the game engaging with a player base who thinks and appreciates the mechanics the devs have put effort into designing.

It would do that, and it would also drive away players that have no interest in that sort of content. They can design harder content for those that want it, but need to respect the views of those who don’t want it as well, by allowing them to opt out of that harder content as often and as painlessly as possible.

And personally I am convinced this is THE main issue why Anet does have a problem holding people (something they said.. just before we get in an argument if they are, or are not holding people).

The only time they ever expressed any difficulty retaining players was in relation to mid-level trait and skill acquisition. They have never expressed any difficulty retaining players that would be engaged in the sort of high level “loot chase” you refer to.

It’s not only about feeling rewarded. Setting goals / working towards such rewards is a big part of an MMO and the end-game for many people, but in GW2 that for the biggest part is now only available in the form of grinding currency, what is not everybody’s cup a thee.

But again, nobody’s talking about removing the ability to set goals and work towards them. If anything, the ideas here would improve that factor, because the goals you could set would be realistic ones. “If I do this long enough, I will get the thing I want,” as opposed to “If I can ever manage to complete this dungeon, then maybe RNG will provide me with what I want.”

Nobody’s talking about reducing the long term goals in the game, just in providing as flexible a path towards those goals as possible, so that players are most likely to enjoy the journey as much as they look forward to the destination.

You say I don’t get that it should not be a trophy, but in fact you do not seem to get that for many people it is, or they want it to be the trophy for the reward.

Well too bad for them, because I want it as not a trophy. I want it for what it is, not for what it represents. If they want something to represent that they accomplished something, then great, I have no problem with that, give them a trophy that serves no function other than being a trophy, but it should not be a skin or a mini or anything else that has a value beyond as a representational token of achievement. the two elements should not be conflated.

I told myself I wouldn’t bother posting here as the arguments are just going in circles at this point, but…

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not saying that we ever will agree, but it might help if you actually read the words that I typed. At no point did I say anything even approaching : “you should be able to get everything you want with your eyes closed.”

But you are essentially saying this. By saying that you should be able to achieve the same exact rewards that a legendary pvper or a hard mode content player gets by facerolling sw, that is basically what you are saying. Facerolling sw should never give you the same rewards as that. Period. That is not a proportional reward for effort.

I’m glad there has been a lot of positive feedback for VB and I hope they stick to their guns and do not nerf it. It’s great the way it is (well, minus the bugs of course). And I am glad that Anet has chosen to reward PvPers and fractal runners and will hopefully reward challenging group content appropriately as well. More casual folks will still have lots of things to work towards.

xarallei.4279:

I told myself I wouldn’t bother posting here as the arguments are just going in circles at this point, but…

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not saying that we ever will agree, but it might help if you actually read the words that I typed. At no point did I say anything even approaching : “you should be able to get everything you want with your eyes closed.”

But you are essentially saying this. By saying that you should be able to achieve the same exact rewards that a legendary pvper or a hard mode content player gets by facerolling sw, that is basically what you are saying. Facerolling sw should never give you the same rewards as that. Period. That is not a proportional reward for effort.

I’m glad there has been a lot of positive feedback for VB and I hope they stick to their guns and do not nerf it. It’s great the way it is (well, minus the bugs of course). And I am glad that Anet has chosen to reward PvPers and fractal runners and will hopefully reward challenging group content appropriately as well. More casual folks will still have lots of things to work towards.

He doesn’t want to admit it but its true.
He KNOWS he won’t do the new challenging content and wants to convince anet to make easier paths to the reward…. thats exactly what OP wants.

Each game mode gets their own set of unique rewards. PvP will get their end game progression, WvW will as well, and the new challenging content as well.
There is NO LOGICAL REASON to EVER split up the rewards and just make them all interchangeable through different game modes as OP wants…

This BS “everyone should get a trophy, even thou we chose the path with least resistance” has to go.

You can believe it’s right way to think all you want to Ohoni, at least anet thinks you are completely wrong, and in the end, thats all that matters…

SkiTz.4590:

You can believe it’s right way to think all you want to Ohoni, at least anet thinks you are completely wrong, and in the end, thats all that matters…

It’s so refreshing to have mind reader in here … you now know what they think … your powers sir, are amazing

PorceleinEve.2973:

SkiTz.4590:

You can believe it’s right way to think all you want to Ohoni, at least anet thinks you are completely wrong, and in the end, thats all that matters…

It’s so refreshing to have mind reader in here … you now know what they think … your powers sir, are amazing

Thank you, but you don’t need to be a mind reader to figure it out.
Anet doesn’t need to specifically say “OP is wrong”
Their actions alone speak for themselves.

SkiTz.4590:

Thank you, but you don’t need to be a mind reader to figure it out.
Anet doesn’t need to specifically say “OP is wrong”
Their actions alone speak for themselves.

That they do, and we’ll soon know.

There is no valid reason for the game to not have exclusive rewards. Other than personal preference.

Recognizing that in an MMO there’s millions of players, there’s millions of different opinions what they like or not like in the game. Which automatically means that parts of the game will not be for you, which means parts of the rewards will not be for you.

It’s up to ArenaNet to design the game or parts of the game for the players or parts of the players. The rewards are something earned through playing the game. They are however, not the game itself. As long as the game is open for everyone, then the rewards are open for everyone to get.

Getting a shortcut to a reward by opening it up to a flexible acquisition could mean the reward would get a totally different progression path, directing most players into that way. It’s basically teaching players to avoid the game and choose the easiest path. It would be a meaningless choice to make.

It’s very hard to have a reward that’s requires equal amounts of effort by an easy long route as well as a “shorter” more challenging route.

What could help, is to let people learn the challenging content better so that they feel more able to move through this content. Basically training them to become better at the type of content and showing them the ropes to a certain extend.

But you are essentially saying this. By saying that you should be able to achieve the same exact rewards that a legendary pvper or a hard mode content player gets by facerolling sw, that is basically what you are saying. Facerolling sw should never give you the same rewards as that. Period. That is not a proportional reward for effort.

I’m not saying that at all. I’m not saying that “facerolling” content should ever be supported, but there is a gulf between facerolling content and, say, Liadri, and I think good gameplay for the average player is somewhere in between. ANet are the ones that currently support the SW chest trains, and if they support it for some things then they should support it for all things, but ideally they would tighten that one up a bit, make the chests less of the value and actual event participation more of one, for example.

Each game mode gets their own set of unique rewards. PvP will get their end game progression, WvW will as well, and the new challenging content as well.
There is NO LOGICAL REASON to EVER split up the rewards and just make them all interchangeable through different game modes as OP wants…

Have you seen the PvP reward tracks?

Ohoni.6057:

But you are essentially saying this. By saying that you should be able to achieve the same exact rewards that a legendary pvper or a hard mode content player gets by facerolling sw, that is basically what you are saying. Facerolling sw should never give you the same rewards as that. Period. That is not a proportional reward for effort.

I’m not saying that at all. I’m not saying that “facerolling” content should ever be supported, but there is a gulf between facerolling content and, say, Liadri, and I think good gameplay for the average player is somewhere in between. ANet are the ones that currently support the SW chest trains, and if they support it for some things then they should support it for all things, but ideally they would tighten that one up a bit, make the chests less of the value and actual event participation more of one, for example.

Each game mode gets their own set of unique rewards. PvP will get their end game progression, WvW will as well, and the new challenging content as well.
There is NO LOGICAL REASON to EVER split up the rewards and just make them all interchangeable through different game modes as OP wants…

Have you seen the PvP reward tracks?

I PvP quite a bit, yes I have.
No one is pvping because anet added dung armor as a reward (a really slow way to even get dung armor anyways)
I would still be PvPing with or without dung reward tracks…that is not a UNIQUE reward for PvPing.. its just a bit of an extra
All they added were more scraps (minus niche things like tomes of knowledge)

The real progression is in going for champion x profession titles, ranking up for new finishers, etc, and just your personal skill cap in general…
Thankfully leagues are coming into play for progressing towards something actually worthwhile (legendary backpeice)

let me clarify by saying each game mode has their unique progression and this new challenging content will be no different… Dung reward tracks are NOT unique progression to PvP. It’s just something extra anet decided to give since.

Ohoni.6057:

But you are essentially saying this. By saying that you should be able to achieve the same exact rewards that a legendary pvper or a hard mode content player gets by facerolling sw, that is basically what you are saying. Facerolling sw should never give you the same rewards as that. Period. That is not a proportional reward for effort.

I’m not saying that at all. I’m not saying that “facerolling” content should ever be supported, but there is a gulf between facerolling content and, say, Liadri, and I think good gameplay for the average player is somewhere in between. ANet are the ones that currently support the SW chest trains, and if they support it for some things then they should support it for all things, but ideally they would tighten that one up a bit, make the chests less of the value and actual event participation more of one, for example.

Each game mode gets their own set of unique rewards. PvP will get their end game progression, WvW will as well, and the new challenging content as well.
There is NO LOGICAL REASON to EVER split up the rewards and just make them all interchangeable through different game modes as OP wants…

Have you seen the PvP reward tracks?

You say now that because most of the rewards have a multitude of ways to get them all of the content “should” have that. But earlier you denied the argument of someone saying that because there’s exclusive rewards for some of the content that there is also room for that type of rewards.

Obviously ArenaNet is also endorsing the exclusive rewards that there are currently.

Ohoni.6057:

ANet are the ones that currently support the SW chest trains, and if they support it for some things then they should support it for all things

This is utterly ridiculous and awful. Stop arguing back you’re sounding insane now, your children one day might see this.

Ohoni.6057:

But you are essentially saying this. By saying that you should be able to achieve the same exact rewards that a legendary pvper or a hard mode content player gets by facerolling sw, that is basically what you are saying. Facerolling sw should never give you the same rewards as that. Period. That is not a proportional reward for effort.

I’m not saying that at all. I’m not saying that “facerolling” content should ever be supported, but there is a gulf between facerolling content and, say, Liadri, and I think good gameplay for the average player is somewhere in between. ANet are the ones that currently support the SW chest trains, and if they support it for some things then they should support it for all things, but ideally they would tighten that one up a bit, make the chests less of the value and actual event participation more of one, for example.

Didn’t you say before “all paths” should be able to lead to these rewards? That people should be able to play whatever they want and get these rewards? Well, that includes facerolling SW and similar content. So either you want all paths or you don’t, which is it?

No one is pvping because anet added dung armor as a reward (a really slow way to even get dung armor anyways)
I would still be PvPing with or without dung reward tracks…that is not a UNIQUE reward for PvPing.. its just a bit of an extra

So the same philosophy applies, if a player wants to get a dungeon armor, but has no interest in playing that dungeon, OR in PvP, then why not give them the option to progress a “PvE reward track” that progresses based on PvE experience gains? Or why not allow them to convert tokens from one dungeon into tokens from another at a rate of maybe 2:1? Or why not allow open world content in the region around the dungeon to also reward those dungeon tokens? Why not all of the above, and let people play the way that they’d prefer to play?

The real progression is in going for champion x profession titles, ranking up for new finishers, etc, and just your personal skill cap in general…
Thankfully leagues are coming into play for progressing towards something actually worthwhile (legendary backpeice)

Look, if they want to add more “unique progression” elements to PvE, by which “elite” PvE players can earn unique titles, unique leaderboards, some sort of emote to show off that they are so much better than the other players (if for no other reason than to give those other players a good laugh), then that’s perfectly fine. Do that. But don’t tie it in to unique skins/minis/etc. that have their own intrinsic value.

You say now that because most of the rewards have a multitude of ways to get them all of the content “should” have that. But earlier you denied the argument of someone saying that because there’s exclusive rewards for some of the content that there is also room for that type of rewards.

I’m saying that the right thing to do is the right thing to do, regardless of precedent, but for those that care about precedent, there is precedent.

Didn’t you say before “all paths” should be able to lead to these rewards?

When I say this, people who fundamentally disagree with me tend to resort to strawman arguments, like “well then you should be able to get Legendaries by just chatting with friends in LA, right?” which is never my intent.

When I say “all paths,” I’m talking “all reasonable content,” all content that already provides a reasonable level of reward. I can agree with those that say that some of the current paths are a bit too easy, but ANet are the ones that say those methods should offer significant rewards. If they believe those are content worth rewarding, then I believe they should be content worth providing any sorts of rewards you’re aiming for. If they are not content worth providing any sorts of rewards, then they should not offer any significant rewards, or should be tightened up to be worthy of those rewards.

So TL;DR, so long as ANet chooses to support Silverwastes farming as a viable reward mechanism, it should allow access to all types of rewards, but I do not personally advocate that it should remain a viable reward mechanism.

anet has already shown they will make unique skins/mini’s or whatever you hold so close to your heart.

it’s not up to you to decide what should be the correct reward thankfully.

Just know that aesthetics ARE the endgame rewards (PvP – legend backpeice , fractals – skins as we’ll). I have every reason to believe this challenging content will also have some sort of unique skin/mini since that is what anet has been doing – skins, collection, etc is the endgame progression for PvE since new tiers of armor/weapon is not the type of progression gw2 is about. It’s not about getting better armor/weapons statistically, its about getting cooler and rare skins. I don’t see that changing in the new content release.

All of this will be answered next saturday when anet finally reveals the new challenging content/reward. No matter what, you will most likely be disappointed if you think rewards from that new content will be availble by zerging and auto attacking in open world maps (unless the rewards can be bought..)

FrizzFreston.5290:

There is no valid reason for the game to not have exclusive rewards. Other than personal preference.

Recognizing that in an MMO there’s millions of players, there’s millions of different opinions what they like or not like in the game. Which automatically means that parts of the game will not be for you, which means parts of the rewards will not be for you.

It’s up to ArenaNet to design the game or parts of the game for the players or parts of the players. The rewards are something earned through playing the game. They are however, not the game itself. As long as the game is open for everyone, then the rewards are open for everyone to get.

Getting a shortcut to a reward by opening it up to a flexible acquisition could mean the reward would get a totally different progression path, directing most players into that way. It’s basically teaching players to avoid the game and choose the easiest path. It would be a meaningless choice to make.

It’s very hard to have a reward that’s requires equal amounts of effort by an easy long route as well as a “shorter” more challenging route.

What could help, is to let people learn the challenging content better so that they feel more able to move through this content. Basically training them to become better at the type of content and showing them the ropes to a certain extend.

Some would say personal preference is a valid reason. lol

SkiTz.4590:

Where do you get your assumptions from?
harder means less ppl doing it? what The ppl wanting hardcore pve content either quit the game LONG time ago OR moved into spvp/wvw where its usually not a braindead auto attack spam game like you have now…
less ppl do it because they FIND IT BORING.. thats why anet is bringing in endgame progression/content…. because of evident it was that this game was lacking it…

I don´t really understand how this can be even in question? Even if that probably baffles you, most people don´t want to spend their game time in the same dungeon, the adrenaline rush gets very quickly replaced by the feeling of being tired of failing at the same spot, or a variety of different spots.
I am a fairly stubborn player, but simply gave up at some point to obtain Lumi Armor because of the grindy and unforgiven nature of LS2 .Yes, stuff can both be grindy and unforgiven at once. If I did not luckily have a “pro player” in my guild, I would probably only have a few of them instead of at least a majority of them because I could not be kitten d to enter them again.

Torolan.5816:

SkiTz.4590:

Where do you get your assumptions from?
harder means less ppl doing it? what The ppl wanting hardcore pve content either quit the game LONG time ago OR moved into spvp/wvw where its usually not a braindead auto attack spam game like you have now…
less ppl do it because they FIND IT BORING.. thats why anet is bringing in endgame progression/content…. because of evident it was that this game was lacking it…

I don´t really understand how this can be even in question? Even if that probably baffles you, most people don´t want to spend their game time in the same dungeon, the adrenaline rush gets very quickly replaced by the feeling of being tired of failing at the same spot, or a variety of different spots.
I am a fairly stubborn player, but simply gave up at some point to obtain Lumi Armor because of the grindy and unforgiven nature of LS2 .Yes, stuff can both be grindy and unforgiven at once. If I did not luckily have a “pro player” in my guild, I would probably only have a few of them instead of at least a majority of them because I could not be kitten d to enter them again.

Sounds like a personal problem… Its not anets problem or anyone else that you are too stubborn and give up easily and rely on others to carry you… You give up but you still want the reward….sounds reasonable…

Ohoni.6057:

Lol. Anyways, WoW did not really take off until it started to make rewards MORE accessible to players, the moves that the hardcore crowd derided, and that they championed Wildstar for restoring to “Vanilla WoW status.”

WoW was the number one game (with a vast difference) even when Blizzard said only 2% of their population was doing their raids. True after WotLK they made raids more accessible and now more than half of the population has done some raiding, but that wasn’t the only reason WoW took off, it was already at the top.

I’m not saying that everything should be awarded to people who just spam 1 or spam “f” or whatever, I’m saying that everything should be awarded to anyone that actually tries though, and I’m sorry, but hard mode content that is strong enough to please the hard mode crowd cannot fulfill that condition.

You know more than half the population of WoW has done some raiding right? The myth of hard content being inaccessible is just a myth.
There are three pillars of good challenging content design:

Player Skill, the personal skill of an individual, their reflex, reaction, and knowledge of the combat mechanics, like combos, boons, conditions etc, of the game.
Mechanic Knowledge, knowing exactly how something works to avoid deaths, knowing how to make bosses vulnerable if they have mechanics that make them immune to damage, knowing how to avoid insta kills when a boss does a unique wipe mechanic etc
Build/Team composition, having a proper set-up for your team, so that you have the appropriate skills for defeating the content at hand.

GOOD challenging content is not one that only wants one of these but all of them at once. Unfortunately, in GW2 most encounters, even dungeons, want only the third part (the build), put enough zerkers than maximize damage, stack might, damage modifiers and frost bows and content melts like it’s not even there. You say there is a middle ground between Fractals and “spam 1” content, I say even fractals is not “proper” challenging content. Even in Fractals building for damage is your top priority to get through many encounters (with some great exceptions)

When players are asking for CHALLENGING content, they are not asking for content which is harder than fractals / current dungeons for the individual skill of the player (how fast they can dodge and what reaction time they have) but the content to offer challenges through mechanics and build choice. It’s completely different to current “difficulty”. It’s way way harder than current content like fractals in a way, however a team that masters the mechanics and has a proper/working team composition with great synergy and variety of roles (not just pew pew DPS Fire Staff Eles) might even have an EASIER time than current encounter design.

The idea of Challenging content is to challenge all aspects of gameplay, not just your reflexes. So for that reason it can’t be in middle ground between fractals and open world, it’s on a completely different difficulty scale. I really hope GW2 challenging group content won’t be about mobs with 1 bazilion hit points and 1shot KO attacks, but they offer a variety of encounters that can be beaten through proper skill/build choice, knowledge of mechanics and of course some player skill. If it’s just like level 100 fractals (more hp/more damage) then yeah there is no reason to even have such content.

The “If challenging content is harder than fractals it will be bad and alienate players” is a dumb argument. Challenging content shouldn’t in any way or form be like a higher level fractal.

Note that I didn’t say the exact same time, just that the distance between the two should not be that vast. For example, if there is an easy mode and a hard mode, and they each take roughly the same amount of time to complete, the hard mode should not reward a thing 100% of the time while the easy only rewards it 10% of the time. If the hard mode rewards it 10% of the time then the easy mode should not only reward it .01% of the time. The hard mode can be faster, but if players are doing it once daily, it should not take weeks or months for the “easy” version to catch up, it should take maybe a week or so.

You are missing the whole point (again). Even if Hard content has a 100% chance of dropping an item, not everyone will beat the content quickly. Even when the playerbase starts beating it, it will take (if it’s properly challenging) weeks or months to put it on “farm status”. Yet the “Easy” version, by being easier, will go on farm status way faster.

In an ideal world, if it takes me 2 months to master the content and get the item, it should take 2 months to get it through the easy mode. However, which player’s time should you use? Of course if it’s 100% chance in the hard mode, the easy mode should be 10% or even 1% or 0.1%, based on how much easier it is, that’s a no brainer.

Imagine if Arah P4 had some unique exclusive reward at the end that dropped from the final boss with 50% chance. In that case there is no spot selling. However, they made it so bosses in Cursed Shore also have a chance to drop it.

Should they both be 50%? That’s completely unreasonable, if there is a 50% in Arah P4, it should be 0.5% on the World Bosses. Arah P4 can only be done once daily, and takes 40 minutes to 2 hours (depends on group) and also for many parties has a probability of failure, defeating events in Cursed Shore takes minutes, has no possibility of failure, and you can do it while leeching and spamming 1 while everyone else is doing the work. Why should they have the same chance, or even SIMILAR chance? Their chances should be VASTLY different.

Everyone (I think) should agree with this. If nothing else, someone who is following champion trains, following chest farms, kills world bosses and farms PVP arenas should have 0% chance of obtaining the new rewards. Any other token system is fine.

I don’t see why those shouldn’t be a viable method of obtaining tokens, If that is the gameplay that appeals to you. My point was just that the tokens should not be subject to the whims of supply and demand, the amount of tokens you have should not fluctuate in actual value based on the amount of tokens another player has, as is currently the case with gold.

No, those activities are a plague. Enough is enough with how many rewards they offer for the effort they require. Unless they get 1 token every 2 weeks and you need 50000 tokens to get an item, this will never work.

And you are wrong, if someone is capable of completing that challenging content that 98% of the playerbase cannot then it’s not “handed to them”.

Everyone has different capabilities. Content that is moderately challenging to player A might be effortless to player B and impossible for player C. Player A might have “earned it” in completing content he found challenging, but player B would have just been handed it for doing something he could complete in his sleep, and player C would never be able to get it at all.

And doing the easy content has only player Bs. The difference in the time needed for both is player A in challenging content vs player B in the easy content. If you base your comparison on both player Bs (those who do it effortlessly) then you give no chance for player As to do the content. You are saying is fine if player A who finds the content moderately challenging can take 2 months to get the reward, while if he did the easy mode version he would’ve gotten in 2 weeks (like the player B in hard content). That’s plain wrong and unreasonable.

Again, the goal is to make all paths viable to ALL rewards. Being able to get BLTC skins is great if those are the skins you want, but if the skin you want is not a tradable skin then that is of zero comfort to you. All skins are subjective, different people want some more than others. There are skins on the market going for hundreds of gold that I would not spend ten gold on, and others that go for 10g that I would spend 100 on if that was the only way to get it. You cannot say “you can have skins A-M and I’ll keep exclusive access to skins N-Z, and that’s fair because it’s balanced,” because all that actually matters is which skins the player wants.

It’s unreasonable for them to put black lion skins in regular gameplay yes. So boring grinding content that allows faster access to those skins (better gold/hour ratio) will always be the go to method for them. So let’s add some rewards that can’t be acquired by those activities, they have enough rewards already.

SkiTz.4590:

Sounds like a personal problem… Its not anets problem or anyone else that you are too stubborn and give up easily and rely on others to carry you… You give up but you still want the reward….sounds reasonable…

Uhm, yes? Of course it is a personal problem, but how does that invalidate the idea that people like me are the majority? I don´t see many people run around in Lumi armor, and not just because it is ugly…

PorceleinEve.2973:

Fox.3469:

you know … stuff

You sir are a true romantic.

if i had a hat, i’d take it off, i love romantics.

Get ready for the pvp track for those exclusive rewards (because I my god sir, am a cynic, hm.. maybe that’s why i like romantics so much … hm..)

I don’t care about the pvp tracks, as long as pve people don’t get a cheap out option

SkiTz.4590:

anet has already shown they will make unique skins/mini’s or whatever you hold so close to your heart.

it’s not up to you to decide what should be the correct reward thankfully.

I can’t say Anet really did that a lot, and for sure not as it imho should be.

Best (looking) items are generally directly sold from the cash-shop or indirectly sold as they are put in black lion chest.

Personally I don’t really like reward system of the Ambrite weapon skins because it is still grindy and not really rewards for content, more rewards for a map. (In a way, it’s how most rewards works, but now shrunk down to one map). Still it’s something you can work towards and is in the game so while still grindy and not optimal, it’s better than the black lion, and cash-shop items.

However when comparing the looks of the skins, I must conclude that most of those black lion skins are way better looking. Now clearly people have different tastes so some might prefer the Ambrite weapons over (for example) the Chaos weapon skins. But I think I am not lying if I say, by far most people will prefer the chaos skins, and that is true for most of the black lion skins when comparing them to the Ambrite weapon skins.

While from a game perspective, the most ‘awesome’ skins, should be in the game as reward for a challenge. (Again something the MC dungeon got right.. in fact that dungeon got everything right, with the only exception that it was temporary. No wonder it was so popular.)

The problem here however is that Anet was simply not able to do this right. There where / are making their money mainly with the cash-shop and so they need to convince people to throw money at it. When most of the best looking items are in the game, and the lesser ones (or none) are in the cash-shop (lets for example assume you got the chaos weapons in the game and the Ambrite weapons where black lion skins) people would have way less incentive to spend money on buying them and so Anet would earn less money.

That is why I have always been so much against the cash-shop focus. Some people like to think it would be some personal vendetta against it, but it’s not, it’s exactly these sorts of effects that come with it and really hurt the game imho.

So then the question becomes what will happen in HoT. Will they put some unique rewards behind specific (challenging) content? Hopefully they do and that would be great, but if they still keep the focus on the cash-shop I really expect that within no time we will see much better skins / items pop up again in the cash-shop / black lion chests.

Maybe that the €50,- price tag is there because they want to turn back to a more B2P model where the focus comes again on expansion and not on the cash-shop, but we don’t know. If it is we can and likely will start seeing the better rewards getting locked behind the harder content. But if not, then I really think the better rewards will keep coming from the store and black lion chests what does undermine the skins earned with the content. Still much better than no rewards, but in an ideal world you would see rewards that are themed around the content that rewards them, and how harder they are to get, the better they look.

So imho what will we see mainly depends on the main model they will be using from HoT on.

Sounds like a personal problem… Its not anets problem or anyone else that you are too stubborn and give up easily and rely on others to carry you… You give up but you still want the reward….sounds reasonable…

It is Anet’s problem if it leads to player burnout. It’s their job to keep as many people as engaged as possible. Activities that cause unnecessary frustration should be avoided.

WoW was the number one game (with a vast difference) even when Blizzard said only 2% of their population was doing their raids.

Yes, but it did not hit those stratospheric levels until well after that. It peaked in 2010, when Cataclysm launched. Really though, WoW makes a poor example in any MMO debate, because it’s an outlier result in almost every category.

You know more than half the population of WoW has done some raiding right? The myth of hard content being inaccessible is just a myth.

Once they made raiding accessible, yes, but that doesn’t mean that the majority of players enjoy raiding, and especially not that they enjoy “hardcore” raiding, and even more importantly, it doesn’t mean that people who like GW2 like raiding. If you enjoy raiding, that’s fine, but don’t project that onto others.

When players are asking for CHALLENGING content, they are not asking for content which is harder than fractals / current dungeons for the individual skill of the player (how fast they can dodge and what reaction time they have) but the content to offer challenges through mechanics and build choice.

I don’t know, I think that ultimately those other mechanics and build choice are very weak elements in an MMO. I mean, for the front line teams, finding out what the best builds to use, and the best ways around the mechanics is an interesting puzzle to sort, but once that job is done, there is no play to it, you just look up the correct answers and check the right boxes. After the “puzzle” has been solved once, there is no “play” left to it. The only way to keep that remotely interesting is to keep making new puzzles faster than the players can complete them, which is unrealistic for the GW2 dev team. Ultimately, once the puzzle has been solved, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between requiring a dozen different builds and just requiring one, the important part is that you have the “right” combination, so what does it matter if that combination is “536748542” or if it’s “111111111?”

I do support more engaging encounters, where players have to do more roles than just DPS as fast as possible and avoid the red circles, so long as these encounters are well communicated to the players, but I don’t support systems designed to require a lot of trial and error to guess what the developer’s intent was, or ones that require a specific combination of players to complete. I firmly believe in GW2’s “any team can work” philosophy, because it promotes a friendlier and less exclusionary community, and I also believe that the keys to solving any combat scenario should be clearly spelled out, so that you can figure out what to do even if its your first try, and the only trick is actually doing it.

The “If challenging content is harder than fractals it will be bad and alienate players” is a dumb argument. Challenging content shouldn’t in any way or form be like a higher level fractal.

Ok, fine, I was just trying to use an example relevant to the game, but my point is, content that most players are incapable of doing tends to drive most players away.

You are missing the whole point (again). Even if Hard content has a 100% chance of dropping an item, not everyone will beat the content quickly. Even when the playerbase starts beating it, it will take (if it’s properly challenging) weeks or months to put it on “farm status”. Yet the “Easy” version, by being easier, will go on farm status way faster.

But once it goes on farm status, the the rewards will start piling up on the hard mode side. There is an elegant solution to this, I think. It would be connected to the leaderboards system. Attach a leaderboard to the content which tracks all completion times. Make it so that the reward rates of the “easy mode” methods of acquiring the loot, whatever they might be, are directly tied to some average or median completion time of the hard mode, whatever balance point would give a good idea as to the expected pace of the content. That way, if nobody is beating it at all, then the easy mode option would not work at all. If only a tiny portion of players can beat it, and only some of the time, then the easy mode would only offer it as a rare drop, or require a large expense. If most of the front line folks can beat it nightly, then it would be relatively likely you could get the item via the easy path in under a month of reasonable effort. If the content ends up “on farm” then it would be easy enough to get the reward within a week or less, etc. It would be directly tied to actual player metrics.

Should they both be 50%? That’s completely unreasonable, if there is a 50% in Arah P4, it should be 0.5% on the World Bosses. Arah P4 can only be done once daily, and takes 40 minutes to 2 hours (depends on group) and also for many parties has a probability of failure, defeating events in Cursed Shore takes minutes, has no possibility of failure, and you can do it while leeching and spamming 1 while everyone else is doing the work. Why should they have the same chance, or even SIMILAR chance? Their chances should be VASTLY different.

I fully agree on that. But ok, it takes you ~80 minutes to run the dungeon route, once a day, and you have a 50% chance. Ok. Then the reasonable alternative would be to have a daily reward achievement, kill X number of Cursed Shore world bosses (a number determined to take roughly the same amount of time, and only including the interesting ones), and once you did you would get a chest similar to the dungeon chest, with perhaps a 25% chance of the cool item, or maybe a bit less, but something reasonable.

Now ideally it would not be a daily achievement, because that would be a huge block of time to be spent doing one task, so I would prefer to be able to break that up over several days, but maybe an achievement that would not reset until you completed it, but could only be completed a maximum of once per day and would black out until the next reset.

Or maybe it wouldn’t be a drop at all, maybe all events drop “Cursed Tokens” that you can buy the item from at a vendor, and as you would have a decent chance of getting the item you want out of 2-3 dungeon runs, or ~4 hours, the item would be priced around the point that maybe 5-6 hours of dedicated map events.

Now I agree that if it’s just a random drop, the RNG can be relatively lower, but the basic idea is not that it should be comparable to “kill one dungeon boss = kill one world boss,” it should be “spend one hour in a dungeon = spend one hour actively running serious open world events,” give or take.

No, those activities are a plague. Enough is enough with how many rewards they offer for the effort they require. Unless they get 1 token every 2 weeks and you need 50000 tokens to get an item, this will never work.

The core of this game is open world dynamic events. If they actively start to shun players that enjoy that gameplay, the population will implode. It’d be Wildstar within the year.

And doing the easy content has only player Bs. The difference in the time needed for both is player A in challenging content vs player B in the easy content. If you base your comparison on both player Bs (those who do it effortlessly) then you give no chance for player As to do the content. You are saying is fine if player A who finds the content moderately challenging can take 2 months to get the reward, while if he did the easy mode version he would’ve gotten in 2 weeks (like the player B in hard content). That’s plain wrong and unreasonable.

I’m saying that players should play what they enjoy. If player A just wants the reward, and has a hard time with the content, then maybe he should do it the easy mode route, get the item he wants, and move on. Or maybe he could then start doing the content anyways, for the “reward” of having completed it, which is more valuable than any trinket.

It’s unreasonable for them to put black lion skins in regular gameplay yes. So boring grinding content that allows faster access to those skins (better gold/hour ratio) will always be the go to method for them. So let’s add some rewards that can’t be acquired by those activities, they have enough rewards already.

I do try to avoid repeating myself, I really do, but I think I already covered this one:

Again, the total quantity of rewards distributed is ENTIRELY irrelevant. What matters is whether the rewards one actually wants are distributed to the people who want them. If you can earn 99% of the content in the game through casual means, but 1% of it is locked behind difficult content, that is zero comfort to the people who don’t care about that 99% of content and only want the 1% stuff. If you tell me “you can have anything on the McDonalds menu that you want, but the fish sandwich is only for people that can show a certificate of marathon completion,” then that would still suck for me, because I like those fish sandwiches, and the availability of the rest of the menu really doesn’t help.

So if farming gold can get you 100% of black lion merch, but not a set of Luminescent armor, then the fact that gold can get you any BLTC skin you want is entirely irrelevant to someone who wants the Luminescent skins. It’s not a “you get one but not the other so it’s fair,” when the individual has no interest in what he is able to get. So while I don’t favor making all items available through gold, I do favor allowing all items to be earned through at least three completely different methods, at least three types of content, perhaps more, that allow the players to choose which content type best suits their playstyle.

And pretty much any method in the game can make you gold too, so it’s not like you can never get BLTC merch from dungeon running, it just might take you a bit longer than chest farming, so it’s already the “Arah vs. Cursed Shore farming” scenario we were discussing above.

Uhm, yes? Of course it is a personal problem, but how does that invalidate the idea that people like me are the majority? I don´t see many people run around in Lumi armor, and not just because it is ugly…

I have a full set, btw, but only run it on my Char Mesmer. My Silvari Warrior wears half Lumi, and my Guardian wears the boots and gloves, but none of the others do. I would so wear more of it if they glowed white and took on dye colors better.

But I think I am not lying if I say, by far most people will prefer the chaos skins, and that is true for most of the black lion skins when comparing them to the Ambrite weapon skins.

Depends on the characters, really. The Ambrite weapons look quite nice with my Ranger’s look (GS/LB), but I don’t use the others, even though I did get them all for the achievement.

So then the question becomes what will happen in HoT. Will they put some unique rewards behind specific (challenging) content? Hopefully they do and that would be great, but if they still keep the focus on the cash-shop I really expect that within no time we will see much better skins / items pop up again in the cash-shop / black lion chests.

When the game launched, it came with a couple dozen full armor sets and weapon sets for each weapon, free of charge, earned through content. Most of my characters are decked out in at least one of these pieces, if not mostly these pieces. When HoT launches, I don’t expect them to double that amount, but I would expect that for the cost of the box we’ll be getting at least a few full sets of weapons and armors that can be earned via content. All I’m hoping is that they are not unique to single activities, and instead earnable through various means, allowing players flexibility in how they earn them.

I do expect them to continue releasing BLTC gear though, the box model alone cannot sustain them long term, and I wouldn’t want them to release boxed expansions on a pace that would theoretically work for that model. The nice thing about the store is that it’s optional, you can buy the new skins or not. If they were releasing boxed expansions every 3-6 months, as they would have to to make a living off of it, then that’s pretty much a subscription, and subscription fees are why I play GW2.

And btw, I personally suck at everything that involves jumping (had a trip back to wibbly wobbly high pedestral land with the Harpy Fractal at first, thank you very much Anet!), so I found LS2 to be both grindy, boring, repetive and not my taste in general, not even storywise. I have both every success of triple worm and Tequatl, so I don´t consider myself a lazy person, just someone that does not want to make the same stuff multiple times for sometimes no reward at all, like in ls2.

And for being carried by the guy that has “carried” me, it´s my Fractal level that opens our fractal runs, not his. He helps me again when I need to make JP for some terrible reason, I help other people with crafting or WVW. In my guild, we don´t see stuff like this as leeching on someones success and being carried by others, we see it as helping our fellow members and online friends to help them achieve success in fields they personally are not good in.

Boring, repetive and grindy stuff stays boring, repetive and grindy, despite it being hardcore or not. It´s the quality of the things you do, not how hard it is, at least for me.

Ohoni.6057:

I do expect them to continue releasing BLTC gear though, the box model alone cannot sustain them long term, and I wouldn’t want them to release boxed expansions on a pace that would theoretically work for that model. The nice thing about the store is that it’s optional, you can buy the new skins or not. If they were releasing boxed expansions every 3-6 months, as they would have to to make a living off of it, then that’s pretty much a subscription, and subscription fees are why I play GW2.

Releasing an expansion every year, to max 1,5 year would also generate the income they need (so do the numbers we have, suggest).

And yes than I would much rather see them making money that way (B2P) then putting all fun things behind cash or a grind, sucking a big part of the fun out of the game.

From an income perspective in a way that would be like a subscription indeed, but from a player perspective not really because you can always play once you own at least one version, you just might not have access to everything. That is a huge difference.

Ohoni.6057:

Once they made raiding accessible, yes, but that doesn’t mean that the majority of players enjoy raiding, and especially not that they enjoy “hardcore” raiding, and even more importantly, it doesn’t mean that people who like GW2 like raiding. If you enjoy raiding, that’s fine, but don’t project that onto others.

I think nobody expects GW2 challenging content to be anything like hardcore WoW raids. If 70% of the WoW playerbase is doing raiding (even to some small degree) then Anet can’t dismiss raiding from GW2.

I don’t know, I think that ultimately those other mechanics and build choice are very weak elements in an MMO. I mean, for the front line teams, finding out what the best builds to use, and the best ways around the mechanics is an interesting puzzle to sort, but once that job is done, there is no play to it, you just look up the correct answers and check the right boxes. After the “puzzle” has been solved once, there is no “play” left to it. The only way to keep that remotely interesting is to keep making new puzzles faster than the players can complete them, which is unrealistic for the GW2 dev team. Ultimately, once the puzzle has been solved, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between requiring a dozen different builds and just requiring one, the important part is that you have the “right” combination, so what does it matter if that combination is “536748542” or if it’s “111111111?”

Yet all MMORPG raids are like that. They all (the best of them at least) have a good amount of all three pillars of difficulty, skill, knowledge and build. That’s how you build good encounters. There is no “best” combination for all encounters, in one encounter you will need to do different things than others, that’s why any specific rotation that beats all (like the 11111, or 521112111211152111) is dumb

I do support more engaging encounters, where players have to do more roles than just DPS as fast as possible and avoid the red circles, so long as these encounters are well communicated to the players, but I don’t support systems designed to require a lot of trial and error to guess what the developer’s intent was, or ones that require a specific combination of players to complete. I firmly believe in GW2’s “any team can work” philosophy, because it promotes a friendlier and less exclusionary community, and I also believe that the keys to solving any combat scenario should be clearly spelled out, so that you can figure out what to do even if its your first try, and the only trick is actually doing it.

The “any team can work” philosophy is going to change, it’s the number one reason for not having good encounters. It can stay in the open world of course, nothing can be done about that, but expecting good designs with that philosophy won’t work. And while “any team can work” applies to current content, it reality it doesn’t, the dungeon meta exists for a reason.

But once it goes on farm status, the the rewards will start piling up on the hard mode side.

And the non hard mode side will always be “farm status”. it doesn’t matter how you try to solve it with a leaderboard, it still won’t make any sense. Imagine if a good deal of the playerbase is already doing the hard mode “quickly” but a brand new player starts playing the game with his friends. It would take him 2 months to do it with his team of players (with no 100% chance of success) but 2 weeks if he farms the easy mode. Is there any reason to pick the 2 month but harder version?

Also it’s unfair for those who go the “farm way” too. I wouldn’t be so happy if something took me 2 months to get, but after some players managed to beat it, it became easier and easier and easier. That wouldn’t make any kind of sense either.

Now I agree that if it’s just a random drop, the RNG can be relatively lower, but the basic idea is not that it should be comparable to “kill one dungeon boss = kill one world boss,” it should be “spend one hour in a dungeon = spend one hour actively running serious open world events,” give or take.

A) Anyone with any skill level or ability will do the same open world events in the same time frame. No amount of skill or ability can help with it.
B) The skill of the players plays an important role in how fast you can beat a dungeon.

There is absolutely no way to compare one hour of dungeons with one hour of world events. The one hour of world events is roughly the same regardless of player skill but the one hour of dungeons can be vastly different between players. One team might do the entire Arah (all 4 paths in 1 hour) while another one might only finish Arah p4. With which one will you compare then?

The core of this game is open world dynamic events. If they actively start to shun players that enjoy that gameplay, the population will implode. It’d be Wildstar within the year.

I only said to not include any other rewards to that type of content, it’s already rewarding enough.

Again, the total quantity of rewards distributed is ENTIRELY irrelevant. What matters is whether the rewards one actually wants are distributed to the people who want them. If you can earn 99% of the content in the game through casual means, but 1% of it is locked behind difficult content, that is zero comfort to the people who don’t care about that 99% of content and only want the 1% stuff.

That doesn’t mean someone should get all the rewards by staying only in their comfort zone. I’d love to be able to get all rewards with the login rewards, but I can understand why something like that is unreasonable for a game.

So if farming gold can get you 100% of black lion merch, but not a set of Luminescent armor, then the fact that gold can get you any BLTC skin you want is entirely irrelevant to someone who wants the Luminescent skins. It’s not a “you get one but not the other so it’s fair,” when the individual has no interest in what he is able to get. So while I don’t favor making all items available through gold, I do favor allowing all items to be earned through at least three completely different methods, at least three types of content, perhaps more, that allow the players to choose which content type best suits their playstyle.

Adding them through different types of content is one thing. Adding them to content that is already superior in rewards is another. Adding them to content which is just a farm/grind is another.

Releasing an expansion every year, to max 1,5 year would also generate the income they need (so do the numbers we have, suggest).

I highly doubt that. It’s possible, but I doubt it. Remember that we’ve never been privy to split numbers between box and gem store profits, so we have no idea how much of ANet’s profitability is based on which, but given the way they’ve positioned themselves, it seems like the gem store is a significant part of it. This also squares with how completely “free to play” games tend to be more profitable than other models. I like B2P because it requires some level of “buy in” from the start, but microtransactions definitely seem to be the best business model, and I think for all the complaining, GW2’s struck a quite livable balance.

From an income perspective in a way that would be like a subscription indeed, but from a player perspective not really because you can always play once you own at least one version, you just might not have access to everything. That is a huge difference.

I prefer a DLC model to a pure subscription (DCUO’s current model, for example, involves frequent add-ons that you can buy or not, but essentially a subscription if you buy them all, or you can get an actual subscription to basically “rent” all these DLC for as long as you maintain it), but I still prefer the actual content to be released for free. It fragments the content less.

If they released one expansion every few years, that’s fine, they can reasonably expect that serious players will keep up, but if they release completely optional patches every few months, so that frugal players can pick and choose the ones that really appeal to them, then you end up with players in a guild going “A:hey, want to run Twilight arbor tonight?” “B:Oh, I never got that one. What about Sorrow’s Embrace?” “C: Well, I never bothered picking that one up. Molten Core?” "A: I decided to skip that one. Hmm. . . "

It’s just not good for the community.

maddoctor.2738:

It’s unreasonable for them to put black lion skins in regular gameplay yes. So boring grinding content that allows faster access to those skins (better gold/hour ratio) will always be the go to method for them. So let’s add some rewards that can’t be acquired by those activities, they have enough rewards already.

Why would it be unreasonable. The fact that getting such items has always been such a boring grinding content is the main issue with the game and so they should do something about it for HoT. Such items should have been put in the game (behind content) from the start.

Devata.6589:

maddoctor.2738:

It’s unreasonable for them to put black lion skins in regular gameplay yes. So boring grinding content that allows faster access to those skins (better gold/hour ratio) will always be the go to method for them. So let’s add some rewards that can’t be acquired by those activities, they have enough rewards already.

Why would it be unreasonable. The fact that getting such items has always been such a boring grinding content is the main issue with the game and so they should do something about it for HoT. Such items should have been put in the game (behind content) from the start.

Exactly :/

Gaaroth.2567:

Devata.6589:

maddoctor.2738:

It’s unreasonable for them to put black lion skins in regular gameplay yes. So boring grinding content that allows faster access to those skins (better gold/hour ratio) will always be the go to method for them. So let’s add some rewards that can’t be acquired by those activities, they have enough rewards already.

Why would it be unreasonable. The fact that getting such items has always been such a boring grinding content is the main issue with the game and so they should do something about it for HoT. Such items should have been put in the game (behind content) from the start.

Exactly :/

I never said I wouldn’t want them to put those black lion skins behind content, it would be awesome if they did. Image if the challenging group content rewards are actually black lion skins! No reason for anyone to complain about them being exclusive or anything anymore.

However so far they’ve shown that the gem store items are created and maintained by a different team than the in-game rewards team. And they want to keep them that way, for example they said that the gem store will only have outfits now, and HoT content will have loads of new armor skins.

I seriously doubt they will ever put gem store items in content because it’s their payment model. Of course if they do, I will be among the first to smile

Ohoni.6057:

Releasing an expansion every year, to max 1,5 year would also generate the income they need (so do the numbers we have, suggest).

I highly doubt that. It’s possible, but I doubt it. Remember that we’ve never been privy to split numbers between box and gem store profits, so we have no idea how much of ANet’s profitability is based on which, but given the way they’ve positioned themselves, it seems like the gem store is a significant part of it. This also squares with how completely “free to play” games tend to be more profitable than other models. I like B2P because it requires some level of “buy in” from the start, but microtransactions definitely seem to be the best business model, and I think for all the complaining, GW2’s struck a quite livable balance.

From an income perspective in a way that would be like a subscription indeed, but from a player perspective not really because you can always play once you own at least one version, you just might not have access to everything. That is a huge difference.

I prefer a DLC model to a pure subscription (DCUO’s current model, for example, involves frequent add-ons that you can buy or not, but essentially a subscription if you buy them all, or you can get an actual subscription to basically “rent” all these DLC for as long as you maintain it), but I still prefer the actual content to be released for free. It fragments the content less.

If they released one expansion every few years, that’s fine, they can reasonably expect that serious players will keep up, but if they release completely optional patches every few months, so that frugal players can pick and choose the ones that really appeal to them, then you end up with players in a guild going “A:hey, want to run Twilight arbor tonight?” “B:Oh, I never got that one. What about Sorrow’s Embrace?” “C: Well, I never bothered picking that one up. Molten Core?” "A: I decided to skip that one. Hmm. . . "

It’s just not good for the community.

You can look at the NCsoft numbers.. they indeed do not split those numbers, but there is a huge spike of income with the release, and then a lower (until the announcement of HoT, always declining) income after that. Using that spike as “box sales” and the income after that as cash-shop income should give you a good idea. Same can be done with GW1 where you take the spikes around expansion releases as box-sales.

You can do the math and while it’s never going to be exact, it gives you an idea, and it suggest they would in fact have earned more money by now with yearly expansions.

Also the idea that F2P games always earn more seems to be taken out of thin air. It is a fairly safe (low risk) and easy approach, that is why it’s used a lot.

“but if they release completely optional patches every few months, so that frugal players can pick and choose the ones that really appeal to them” That is the DLC model you got.. A problem you will have less with expansions that are released ever 1 / 1,5 year. When releasing an expansion every few years they will need to rely on the cash-shop to earn much of the money resulting in the bad reward system we have now.

Draknar.5748:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Entertainment (a game in this case) shouldn’t be about work how?

They clearly didn’t understand that when you said “work” you meant “effort”. In their mind playing a game shouldn’t be work. That’s fair. But to say that people shouldn’t ever have to put effort into a game is just stupid. Go play Candy Crush or something if that’s how they feel.

Most people yield entertainment in MMOs through achieving goals, and those goals almost always involve effort. Astralporing just doesn’t seem to understand this concept.

I do. What you seem to not understand is that there’s a marked difference between a game involving effort, and effort being the most important point behind a game. You seem to be arguing for the second, while for me this turns the game into work, instead of fun.

Draknar.5748:

To them, they should be able to frolic through the fields doing whatever they want and still be able to get all of the same rewards as everyone else.

Strawman much? As you are well aware, nobody is actually asking for this. What we are arguing for is that the same end rewards should be accessible through a multitude of ways (yes, all requiring some effort, just a different kind of it).

maddoctor.2738:

The point still stands, if they make it so you can get the reward by spamming 1 in SW in the same time frame it takes the “good” players to run the challenging content there is still no point in it (and doesn’t make any sense)

It doesn’t have to be the same timeframe, you know. It just shouldn’t be excessively different.

maddoctor.2738:

As a reminder: the topic is to allow as many people as possible to earn the “new” challenging rewards by having multiple ways to acquire them, this isn’t a question about Challenging Content being in the game or not.

Agreed. Personally, my problems with Challenging Content™ have nothing to do with the actual existence of challenging content (as long as certain proportions of it towards the casual one are retained). The problem lies solely with the reward structure.

maddoctor.2738:

Actually wanting anyone to get the new rewards by playing farm content AND have them in the same time frame as those running the challenging content is the same as getting them with login rewards.

…oh come on, that’s a massive exagerration and you should know better than to try to use it. And that’s even when ignoring that we’re not asking for exactly the same time frames. What Ohoni argued for (and what i agree with) is that the timeframes should not be massively different.

maddoctor.2738:

No. The kind of boring Open world like champ farming, sw cf, world bosses and pvp daily farm maps, should never ever provide a viable path to achieving any goal.

Why, because you don’t like it?

[quote:]The problem here however is that Anet was simply not able to do this right. There where / are making their money mainly with the cash-shop and so they need to convince people to throw money at it. [/quote]

PPl went in Riot when they heard the price of the x-pack …. and they where forced to use real money and not the gold>gem mechanic .
So the MAJORITY of the popualtion does not want to pay real money .

Now that the x-pack will be realeseed , a large amount of players will benefit from the new and free WvWvW map+PvP and they will buy the x-ack when it will have a lower price , 6 months later.
But because business is buness at the end of the year they must have gathered a ’’fixxed’’ amount based on the contract they have sign … either by selling the 50$ dollars x-pack or 25$ x-packs+gems stores .
And in every year passing the ‘’fixxed income’’ needed with increase by +10% .
Otherwise we will see a ‘’cut-getting fired’’ for their employers

Now you will have 2 otpions
a) In 2 months i will get my Signature back (that means i wont have Infarctions) and i will witchunt any ‘’VOCAL MINORITY’’ in order to avert any ‘’new Achendand gear scenario’’
. If the popualation will be happy with 50% dollars x-pack so be it …. but if we dont see a lot of sales it will be 25$ + gem stores next time

Random player: ‘’But …but if they didnt focus on gemstore we would have a lot players’’
6 manths ago …same answer..: 0.8-4% in a sample of 3 million acctounts of WoD did outdoors content for Cosmetic gear

b) If you want something , say something and dont reapeat yourself like a broken old record … otherwise when i get my Sig back , i will ask you why we dont have Crysis 4 …. and you tell me that ‘’IF a game is created for the FREAKS it will survive …. while if created for the casuals that may die …’’

Edit: I wish every1 a good summer , and we will see each other in 2 months :P

Last 2 month edit :P :

Chalenging content = Like every trinity games (+the Tentraquil fight > where ppl have to protect the cannons +use them to buff the whole Raid) , 30% of the players do the heavy lifting
In trinity games :
Dpser get out of the 70% loss hp aoes + do their roattion damage
Healers try to restore tht 70% hp lost with aoe heals = get out of those aoes too + heal the Tank .
Tanks must avoid the aoes + migrade (use defensive cds) Bosses singe target huge attacks +ensure tht the Bosses is facing and doing his Huges attacks away from the zergs
(These kind of players are ‘’forged under pressure’’ and mature more easily in real life and are worth of listening or following without question – suki senpai ! ) .

Hardcore contenet :
Same formula but with 1-shot aoes + more frenquient + a Timer
so if the 15% of the dpsers die you dont have enought damage , for the 10 min Timer

Tentraquil = Chalenging
3 Worm + CM part 2 (the bomb part) ,where the success of the party depents of 100% of the party members = Hardcore