Guild Wars 2

I really enjoy this topic xD Anet, please, give us hard content, no, hardhard content, with unattainable rewards, skins, titles, etc. I want to see the pain and suffering on the faces of the people :P

Ohoni.6057:

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Alternative rewards cannot work very well in closed instances like how fractals are now because there is limited choice in them. An alternative system could be implemented when they add the new fractal system allowing you to choose which fractal to run. Running lower level fractals is one such alternative to get fractal relics to earn the fractal rewards. Choosing which fractal to run, because some are harder than others is another option. But having fractal rewards outside of fractals doesn’t make any sense really no matter how you say it.

Rewards have themes, skins look appropriate from the content they come from, like the fractal weapons. Getting fractal weapons by killing Mordrem in SW or Flame Legion in Citadel of Flame is a bad reward design. Doesn’t even look appropriate.

With Challenging Group Content it could work in big zones where all bosses have different difficulty levels. Imagine a zone like the Fissure of Woe in the original Guild Wars, some quests were easy, others were hard, there was difficulty fluctuation. You could either make a group and blast through all quests and get all the rewards, or just farm a part of it for the obsidian shards.

Same with the Underworld, you could solo farm for ectos, do only the easy quests with henchmen and leave or with a proper group go all the way and finish everything. All choices resulted in you progressing in making the obsidian armor, some more than others.

Similar system in the Domain of Anguish, got little time to play, or a not so good group, or go solo with heroes? Build correctly and just finish the Lost City then leave (you get one token). Got a nice group and ample of time, then finish all 4 regions of DoA for 1+2+3+4 tokens, getting progressively more tokens, the more areas you finish in the same “round” without leaving the zone.

That’s how multiple approaches can work. Reward players by doing the actual content, allow said content to have multiple ways to reach the end reward, some will take more time than others, others will be faster but harder.

Of course a separate system for different game modes is also good to have. Like the PVP reward tracks for PVPers. However, from my experience, the reward tracks aren’t used by PVPers to get PVE rewards, but by PVErs to get the rewards then can’t bother to get through their game mode. So a different method needs to be applied, so it allows PVP PLAYERS (and WvW PLAYERS) to earn PVE rewards by playing their content of choice, and PVP tracks fail miserably as such.

fFamous.8720:

I really enjoy this topic xD Anet, please, give us hard content, no, hardhard content, with unattainable rewards, skins, titles, etc. I want to see the pain and suffering on the faces of the people :P

It would be nerfed as soon as people dont play it. As it has to be if you ask me.

Casual content for casual game and casual players. Thats what we really want. And if anet is confused about it, i guess only time will clarify it and put each mass of players in their context.

Some people ask for hard content, yeah, but not the real players, who only log in on week ends and play 4 hours per week.
An thats the real player base, even when we or our friends play more and demand more.

Silicato.4603:

fFamous.8720:

I really enjoy this topic xD Anet, please, give us hard content, no, hardhard content, with unattainable rewards, skins, titles, etc. I want to see the pain and suffering on the faces of the people :P

It would be nerfed as soon as people dont play it. As it has to be if you ask me.

Casual content for casual game and casual players. Thats what we really want. And if anet is confused about it, i guess only time will clarify it and put each mass of players in their context.

Some people ask for hard content, yeah, but not the real players, who only log in on week ends and play 4 hours per week.
An thats the real player base, even when we or our friends play more and demand more.

I don’t see how a casual player can’t like challenging content, I don’t equate a casual with a player who is bad at playing a game. Players who have a problem with hard content and exclusive rewards are NOT called casuals. They are completionists who want everything in the game, they want to finish 100% of the game even without touching 100% of the game. Don’t confuse those players with casual players.

Silicato.4603:

fFamous.8720:

I really enjoy this topic xD Anet, please, give us hard content, no, hardhard content, with unattainable rewards, skins, titles, etc. I want to see the pain and suffering on the faces of the people :P

It would be nerfed as soon as people dont play it. As it has to be if you ask me.

Yeah, mby. But we have TA aeth, we have fractals. For me, it’s preety easy/normal content, but alot of people do not go there If anet do hard, and nerfed soon, it’s okey, i belive alot of people do not go there too.

But i realy hate and cant understand people, who cry and want to have all ingame skins/rewards etc. – everywhere.

Supposing they relise hardcore content. I cant complete this content, i cant take skins or rewards. Okey, it’s not a problem, i dont go cry on forum about – why i cant take this or this, because it’s hard. I can only be happy for people who enjoy this hard content and can complate this sh%t xD But I will not stop trying.

But, It’s sad we have many crybaby in this game.
This is unlikely, but I believe that ANET do not go at them on occasion.

Sorry for my Eng

I’m more than okay with others having it too, they are all capable of doing the same content, i’ve mentioned the token system several times with easier bosses with less tokens. I’m not excluding anyone, but jsut like i have to do pvp to get the glorious armor they’d ahve to atleast beat the easy bosses to get the tokens for the reward they want.

Again, the system I’m fighting for would allow you to get Glorious armor by running Fractals, if that’s how you enjoy playing. It would be beneficial to everyone. You say “I’m fine with them having the same rewards, if they run the same content,” but when they don’t enjoy that content, you’re advocating that they have to choose between the lesser of two evils, play content they don’t enjoy, or never have the item they want. Who does that benefit in any way?

If all you need is a token of your achievement, something to say “I did this, and the game recognizes that,” then why can’t it just be a literal trophy to keep in your home instance, or a title, or just an achievement unlocked? Why does it need to be a practical weapon or armor skin that other players might want regardless of the “trophy” factor? Why do you even need a physical representation at all, when you know that you completed the task, and that’s the important part?

They can have that skin, there is a compromise right there, keep it tied to specific content but make it so the first few bosses are easier and give small amount of tokens compared to later/higher lvl bosses -, there they can now get their reward too.

But what if their dispute is not with the difficulty of the content, but rather with the methods of it? What if they know that they can tear the hard mode a new one if they wanted to, but for example they hate doing any single activity for more than twenty minutes at a time, and the dungeon takes a minimum of forty minutes? What if they are great at playing the game, but do not enjoy formally grouping with players, and instead only like to solo or join community events that do not enjoy grouping? What if difficulty is not the problem?

You’ve said that a player is allowed, in your mind, to not be all that great, and to run an easier version of the content and still receive a reward, so difficulty is not a hard line for you, why does the content theme have to be?

There’s clearly no compromising here, it’s either everyone have everything doing whatever you want to do, no matter the difficulty , no matter the type, heck why not give legendaries as jp rewards? right? coze people should get what they want through doing just what they want to do?

And see now we move into strawman arguments, which is rather disappointing. Now I don’t think Legendaries should be JP rewards, not directly at least, but I wouldn’t mind a system by which completing JPs could progress you to eventually getting a Legendary, in a process that would take about as much time and effort as getting one the current way. Like setting aside the Precursor part, whcih is a bit in flux after HoT, I would not mind if you could activate some sort of “Legendary track” within JPs, that would allow JP completion to award you credits towards a Gift of Exploration if you cleared all of them. You can already earn WvW badges via the WvW JPs, so that’s how many people earned their Gift of Battles. You can earn clovers and obsidian via monthly login rewards, so I see no reason you couldn’t also get those as rare JP drops. Maybe Forstgorge JPs could drop Icy Runes (although either way they drop gold, which you can use to buy them). They could even allow you to earn dungeon tokens in the region where the dungeon is. It took me about a week to earn the tokens I needed, so I don’t see why it would be a problem to allow people to earn their needed dungeon tokens via a few dozen daily runs of the more challenging JPs.

So no, JPs should not “drop” legendaries, but I see no reason why they couldn’t allow a player to progress towards one entirely via jumping puzzles if that’s what he enjoys (though they’d probably need to put in place safeguards first to make it impossible to camp at the top of one). Like say for example you wanted The Gift of Thorns? Instead of running Twilight Arbor daily for a week, maybe instead you could run Dark Reverie daily for a week (start to finish, no portals), or slightly longer perhaps.

Note to self: I am a elitist raidista type becuase I enjoy gaming with friends. Good to know for the future, I will make sure to share with them that we are all elitist raidistas because we all enjoy challenging content for different reasons.

Nothing wrong with you wanting to game with friends, and nobody said that there was, but you’re free to feel however you want to feel about it. What is toxic is people who enjoy raid-style content looking down on those who don’t, and insisting that they deserve special rewards that those other players should not get. If you do not hold those views, then you’re fine.

And on the topic of reputation, no GW2 is not sitting as one of the best reputations out there, if that was so there would not be a decline in players currently as an expansion is coming but rather an increase.

Most MMOs show a general decline between major releases, it’s nothing abnormal. WoW is obviously the 800lb. gorilla, but if you do a little searching, GW2 typically comes out as the 2nd or 3rd “best” or “most popular” MMO on most venues, and the community in particular is highlighted in a positive manner. It’s really doing much better than one would expect from a game without a well established outside IP.

There is this weird theory floating around the Internet that there is a nomad horde of hardcore raiders, in search of the next great raid game to play, and that if only this horde could be harnessed, MMO success awaits. Of course this nomad horde is about as real as the Flying Dutchman, as Wildstar clearly showed. Build it and they won’t be coming. In reality it’s just a few thousand really loud players, who clearly know what they want, but have a grossly outsized view of the amount of people sharing similar views.

See I can do it too, see how easy it is to change peoples words? Shoot I just re-did a whole long winded post and made it a super long run-on sentence! Man it must feel good to be able to totally ignore peoples argument and shove your opinion up their kitten and in their face!

That’s very disrespectful. I did not alter a single word that you typed in any of your posts, I merely responded to what you said.

Not to mention they have yet to say the skill level of the players they are aiming it, it could be the top 50% on this for all we know or the top 33% and I highly doubt they go past the top 33%

It really does not matter where they set the bar, even if it’s at the 50th percentile, that’s still hundreds of thousands of players that won’t make the cut. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to get rewards they might want?

So what I am saying is people shouldn’t be able to achieve everything by the current choice of grind grind grind but by actually exploring the world of GW2, because right now the world is empty and lack-luster, I ran in to more players in GW1 outposts in the last couple years before GW2 then I find in some GW2 maps while clearing them. And that right there is absolute bullcrock.

Really I don’t see that as a problem. It’s the result of two things, one, that GW2 has so much to do, enough that a map can have hundreds of people and seem empty if they spread out, and that GW2 has such FUN community involved events, so that people tend to gravitate towards other people, concentrating them and making the quieter parts of the maps seem even more quiet.

I don’t think rewards are a solution to any of that. Would putting unique rewards on certain underused maps draw people to where those rewards are? Sure. Does that actually make the game better? I don’t think so. What’s the advantage of having them there than having them where they otherwise would be? So long as they’re enjoying themselves, what does it matter where they are? Why is it better to have everyone spread as thinly across the world as possible, rather than having a couple dozen Silverwaste maps?

If they want to attract people to other areas of the world, I would rather they do it with fun and unique gameplay mechanics than with attractive prizes for completing them. Let people choose whether they enjoy those gameplay mechanics.

As I said and you ignored earlier, you were able to get most everything in PvP that is available now. The only things that have been added are the Balthazar back and Glorious track and the two new zones and the temporary ones during the holidays.

Yes, but even so, they are saying “You can earn Citadel of Fire armor via an activity that is NOT running the Citadel of Fire dungeon.” If they are saying that this is ok, that there are valid methods of earning the armor that is not just the original event it was tied to, then why can that not extend to other aspects of the game? Why is PvP this special exception to the rule?

Honestly just as much got removed like persay Tribal Armor, but lets not get in to that tid-bit. So while yes they made the tracks, they also made you have to permanently unlock them by doing the dungeon otherwise waiting for them to be the weekly.

And I would tentatively be fine with that being a factor. Let’s say they make a new dungeon, and it’s got a hard mode, and it’s got an easy mode. The hard mode is really hard, like harder than anything in the game, hard enough to please the real bondage crowd. The easy mode is about comparable to a storymode dungeon. Let’s say they also release PvE reward tracks, and they function exactly like PvP ones, progressed by doing activities equivalent to what raises the PvP bar. And let’s say that this hard mode dungeon is part of it.

That means that it’s on a weekly rotation, whether you’ve done the dungeon at all, and that you can unlock it permanently by beating the story mode version of it once. Would that satisfy you? I would be pretty much ok with that. Having to do the dungeon once is not a big problem, I’ve done every dungeon currently in the game at least once, and even if I didn’t have the skill for it, there are ways to carry a player through at least once. I think that would please at least most people.

Now each is rewarding in a different way, what you guys want is the challenging stuff not to be rewarding. . .

Now I’m going to cut you off there, but don’t take that to mean that I didn’t read what followed, or am not incorporating that into my response, because I did and am, but you are just fundamentally wrong here. I do not want to make challenging content not rewarding. I have stressed several times now that challenging content should have a quantity of reward at least as good, and even slightly better than other, easier content. However much gold you can make from champ trains, you should be able to make as much or more from this content. Whatever your odds are of a rare drop, the hard mode should be as good or better, with as many or more “rolls” for that item over a standard unit of time.

Challenging content should be rewarding. Now where I differ with many in this thread, is that I do not believe those rewards should be unique to the challenging content, nor do I believe any rewards should be unique to any content.

So I’m not saying that you should do the hardest content and ALL you get for it is a paperweight. What I’m saying is, you complete the hardest content, and you get a solid amount of currency, a roll for some awesome fancy loot that is thematic to the content, all the same type of stuff that is currently attached to fancy dungeons, AND you get some sort of tchotchke that only people who have completed the dungeon can get, but the difference would be that anything with intrinsic worth, like minis, weapon and armor skins, while you CAN get them via that content, if that’s how you prefer to do it, and that would likely be the easiest method if you’re decent at that sort of thing, there would be alternatives available for those unable or just unwilling to play that content type for long periods of time.

Rewards have themes, skins look appropriate from the content they come from, like the fractal weapons. Getting fractal weapons by killing Mordrem in SW or Flame Legion in Citadel of Flame is a bad reward design. Doesn’t even look appropriate.

I’m not arguing that they should drop anywhere, but there should be methods to earn them. You can get dungeon armors/weapons/tokens out of PvP reward tracks, why not out of PvE reward tracks as well? You’re setting an arbitrary restriction, that this is permissible in this one specific case, but not elsewhere in what would be a very similar case.

With Challenging Group Content it could work in big zones where all bosses have different difficulty levels. Imagine a zone like the Fissure of Woe in the original Guild Wars, some quests were easy, others were hard, there was difficulty fluctuation. You could either make a group and blast through all quests and get all the rewards, or just farm a part of it for the obsidian shards.

I never played GW1, I started with Guild Wars with the first GW2 BWE. That sounds interesting though, and if the new content can genuinely provide a variety of different experiences for all types of players, then it might be sufficient, but similar examples in the existing game currently fall short, so I remain skeptical. The Fractals example is a clear one, the new methods they’ve announced seem to be an improvement, but even still Fractals is not a content type I have much interest in, even just repeatedly doing the very easiest one, not because it’s “too hard” for me, but just because I don’t enjoy that type of content. Any time I spent in a fractal would be time I would prefer to be elsewhere, and I just don’t believe that’s in the game’s best interests.

Of course a separate system for different game modes is also good to have. Like the PVP reward tracks for PVPers. However, from my experience, the reward tracks aren’t used by PVPers to get PVE rewards, but by PVErs to get the rewards then can’t bother to get through their game mode.

I don’t know, it seems much easier to just got the PvE route really. I keep mine on the Glorious track myself.

So a different method needs to be applied, so it allows PVP PLAYERS (and WvW PLAYERS) to earn PVE rewards by playing their content of choice, and PVP tracks fail miserably as such.

Why do they fail? Are PvPers not using them to get the content they want? What do they do with the PvP tracks?

I don’t see how a casual player can’t like challenging content, I don’t equate a casual with a player who is bad at playing a game.

You raise a true point, gaming groups are highly diverse, and you can have someone who plays casually, but is hardcore while playing, or plays constantly, but only does light activities. Typically though, in MMO discussions “casual” refers not to someone who only plays occasionally, but rather to someone who, however much they play, only engages in “casual” activities that do not require a great deal of skill or attention. There is a great deal of stigma against such players from certain corners.

Hm…without hitting people with a wall of text, it could be easily translated that way imho:

“I want everything that is our there without being as capable as others and without investing the same amount of time”

It’s like going to a Porsche dealer telling him how unfair it is that your neighbours is driving a Porsche which you can not, because you are not interested in the aspects of life that make it possible for him.

That’s the problem in nowadays games, everyone wants everything he sees, without investing too much work.

Ohoni.6057:

I never played GW1, I started with Guild Wars with the first GW2 BWE. That sounds interesting though, and if the new content can genuinely provide a variety of different experiences for all types of players, then it might be sufficient, but similar examples in the existing game currently fall short, so I remain skeptical. The Fractals example is a clear one, the new methods they’ve announced seem to be an improvement, but even still Fractals is not a content type I have much interest in, even just repeatedly doing the very easiest one, not because it’s “too hard” for me, but just because I don’t enjoy that type of content. Any time I spent in a fractal would be time I would prefer to be elsewhere, and I just don’t believe that’s in the game’s best interests.

To be honest if their Challenging Group Content is Fractals only with more hit points and damage (read: higher fotm levels) I will be so disappointed that even I like the general content/mechanics I won’t do it. I hope their new system is not “a dungeon for 10 players” but a big open zone with loads of events and different encounters to do there, so a multiple approach to rewards can happen. So yeah if they add exclusive rewards behind fotm 2.0 (and only at its higher levels) then I’ll be annoyed to.

I don’t know, it seems much easier to just got the PvE route really. I keep mine on the Glorious track myself.

Weapons are much faster to get from the PVP tracks than running the dungeons but Armors are slower.

Why do they fail? Are PvPers not using them to get the content they want? What do they do with the PvP tracks?

PVP players use the PVP tracks to get a reward for playing PVP, and PVP tracks themselves were an excellent addition to the game. However, PVE players that go to PVP-land to fill the tracks are not actually participating in the act of Player versus Player. “Farm” maps are abusing the rules of custom arenas, they have player made rules to allow all those who play there to get the rewards, they DO NOT follow the rules of PVP. Farm maps ARE NOT A FORM OF PVP. I can understand and agree that PVP needs the PVP tracks to be rewarding and PVPers like them, I like them too, but they were made to allow PVP players to get those rewards, but in reality they are used as a cheat mode by PVErs to get other PVE rewards.

Reading some of the posters in this thread feels like browsing the darkest corners of tubmlr where the fight for social justice takes place. In other words, you sound too radical for anet to take you seriously and I can only hope they won’t do it (which, judging by their actions, is the current state).

Ohoni.6057:

If all you need is a token of your achievement, something to say “I did this, and the game recognizes that,” then why can’t it just be a literal trophy to keep in your home instance, or a title, or just an achievement unlocked? Why does it need to be a practical weapon or armor skin that other players might want regardless of the “trophy” factor? Why do you even need a physical representation at all, when you know that you completed the task, and that’s the important part?

An armour set is cooler than a title or something you have to go away from everyone else to be reminded of. It allows you to customise your character to reflect what you’ve done, thus increasing the bond you feel for it. You show other people who’ve also done the same thing that you went through the same troubles as they did. You get to tell people who’ve never heard about that challenge what it is and give them tips if they’re interested. If you’re using a less popular weapon and went through the trouble of getting a skin for it that is challenging to acquire, you show other people how much you like that skin or that weapon and they’ll be appropriately impressed/disturbed.

Having many different challenges for many different items allows for players to structure their long-term playtime instead of simply repeating the most efficient currency grind. All of this is why dungeons give out their own unique currency instead of having a single Dungeon Coin that you can buy any gear with. It makes the game environment more flavourful and varied.

Gene Archer.8560:

• 1)Sorry, you don’t get to make a stupid comment like “nobody does easy content for fun” and then turn around and say I’m disingenuous. Stuff it up your nose.

• 2)But why do you throw that party? Because it’s fun? Or because you expect to get presents that none of your party-goers have?

• 3)Again, my problem with the challenging argument is that people are saying they want challenging content but then turning around and saying they wouldn’t do it unless it gives them rewards that only they are allowed to have.

• 4)If that’s the kind of game you want, then I’m sorry, but you are literally playing the wrong game. ANet sold this game on being able to do the content you like to get the rewards you want, with things like Legendaries for the more hardcore grind side.

• 5)This point makes no sense. What you’re saying seems to be that exclusive rewards tied to difficult content are in fact not sustainable. So then how is it a good idea to tie exclusive rewards to difficult content? It makes no sense! I get the feeling that’s not what you’re trying to say, so please clarify.

• 6)How many times do I have to say that challenging content is not automatically fun?

• 7)So then ANet should make sure that all content allows progress so that all content is fun. But that doesn’t neccesitate the existence of exclusive gear.

• 8) This isn’t a sport. Unless you’re in PvP or WvW, you aren’t competing with anyone. The PVE of this game is cooperative. You can’t even fight over nodes for kitten sake.

• 9)Okay, so how does any of this neccesitate the existence of exclusive rewards? If content A is challenging a drops a shiny, and content B is easier, but contains a grind or time factor, and drops the same shiny, and you like content A, THEN YOU SHOULD DO CONTENT A.

If you take the “path of least resistance” while claiming that you like challenging content, then you have nobody to blame but yourself.

ok im guessing your misunderstanding me.

• 1)When i say the idea that people do easy content for fun is bull, what i should have said, is the idea that everyone is doing certain specific easy content like say champ trains, or event spam in Orr, or silverwastes, because its just so fun is bull.
  This doesnt mean no one enjoys it, or there isnt fun to be had doing it. The point is they are not doing it for fun ALONE. If it was actually just for the pure joy, then people wouldnt abandon them when they nerf the rewards.
• 2)throw a party for fun when you feel like it, but few people throw a party all the time, most people throw a few parties a year, even most hardcore party throwers only do it once a week. MMOs want to avoid creating content average people want to do a few times a year.

• 3)its not about flaunting your stuff around, (for everyone) its about creating a fulfilling reward system. By creating many means of getting any item, you make its value determined by the easiest most effecient means of getting that item, or its utility. and they dont believe people should have to work too hard (grind or challenge) for utility.
• 4) anet made a game with many different facets, they always intended to have some rewards for specific types of play, dunegeon armor and dungeons was supposed to be challenging content with unique rewards. Legendaries and titles also require specific milestones. Heck karma unique karma armor fits that bill.
• 5)Im saying they tried having non exclusive rewards, and they ended up having to create insane grind to get anything they want players to value.
  This is because of economics.
  • halloween 2 for example. Because of the insane amount of people playing halloween content, they had so much currency they had to create ridiculous prices in halloween items to create anything. They basically have to consider not how hard anything should be to obtain, but how much of it flows into and out of the economy. lets say halloween content had exclusive rewards, then they could design it so that someone who plays 10 hours of halloween content can get one of these items.
    or someone who does all this halloween stuff can get one of these items.
    instead they had to base it on how much candy corn and nuggets are there in the economy divided by the number of people we expect to want to get these items.

• 6) i wasnt saying challenging content is automatcially fun for everyone, i was explaining to you why a person might find challenging content fun, but not find it fun enough to do it a lot if it doesnt give them value for the effort.

• 7) yes anet should make sure all content provides progression, exclusive items helps you to do this by seperating concerns. You dont have to worry about how the latest farm will effect the value of rewards you get from say doing personal story, or a jump puzzle.

• 8)it doesnt have to be a competitive sport, every game has an objective/objectives. perhaps its human psychology but most people will not be happy playing a game if they are working cross purpose to the objectives. When having fun in a game relies on ignoring the objectives, usually the game starts to break down, becoming either a meta game thats different, or people lose interest.

• 9)exclusive rewards is the easiest method available to them to make rewards have value without introducing insane level of grind, or devaluing the item.

fFamous.8720:

I really enjoy this topic xD Anet, please, give us hard content, no, hardhard content, with unattainable rewards, skins, titles, etc. I want to see the pain and suffering on the faces of the people :P

Between you and me, I too, want to see extremely hard content in the game. Once that fails flatly we might get a proper expansion, with lore and stuff and they might start designing zones again instead of boxes with events.

Or, it will be a massive success and we’ll all laugh at how we thought we didn’t like raiding (well technically I love raiding, I just don’t like the person I become when I participate in it). Could go both ways. But, honestly, I do wish they add it so the debate is resolved via real world consequences.

TomCullen.5439:

Hm…without hitting people with a wall of text, it could be easily translated that way imho:

“I want everything that is our there without being as capable as others and without investing the same amount of time”

That’s the problem in nowadays games, everyone wants everything he sees, without investing too much work.

That is indeed what’s being said. They want everything that is out there without being as capable as others and without investing the same amount of time. They want to use time, to cover up the gap in their capability. Because capability might be a currency they don’t have, but time, everyone has. So, the “capable” get their rewards first, the less capable, get their rewards later, after applying the time necessary. So what’s the problem exactly?

Oh yes, let me say it one more time, the problem is, that the “capable” want everyone else to know how “capable” they are, especially the “non capable” guys. They just want to rub it in. They just want to be a visual representation of how much “better” they are than the rest of the plebs.

PorceleinEve.2973:

TomCullen.5439:

Hm…without hitting people with a wall of text, it could be easily translated that way imho:

“I want everything that is our there without being as capable as others and without investing the same amount of time”

That’s the problem in nowadays games, everyone wants everything he sees, without investing too much work.

That is indeed what’s being said. They want everything that is out there without being as capable as others and without investing the same amount of time. They want to use time, to cover up the gap in their capability. Because capability might be a currency they don’t have, but time, everyone has. So, the “capable” get their rewards first, the less capable, get their rewards later, after applying the time necessary. So what’s the problem exactly?

Oh yes, let me say it one more time, the problem is, that the “capable” want everyone else to know how “capable” they are, especially the “non capable” guys. They just want to rub it in. They just want to be a visual representation of how much “better” they are than the rest of the plebs.

Who the hell wants to “rub it in”?? is that your excuse? really?
There might be some idiotic 12 year olds running their mouth in LA. how they beat everything so easily and everyone else sucks. but newsflash, there are ppl that act like annoying kids in every game.

You think the majority of the “capable” ppl are doing it so they can finally stand on top of you or something??? Really?

It’s BS because like I said, I’m pretty kitten sure the cgc folks would be happy with a lot of gold too and that isn’t something that anyone will see. Sure, there are people out there who probably do behave in that elitist manner, of that I have no doubt. But there are plenty who don’t act that way. It’s not black and white. People want harder, more interesting content for fun. People also like being rewarded for their effort.

You don’t have to do the “hard mode” stuff. Stick to your Silver Wastes.

I just hope they make this new “hard content” more rewarding than spamming F with my eyes closed.

xarallei.4279:

It’s BS because like I said, I’m pretty kitten sure the cgc folks would be happy with a lot of gold too and that isn’t something that anyone will see. Sure, there are people out there who probably do behave in that elitist manner, of that I have no doubt. But there are plenty who don’t act that way. It’s not black and white. People want harder, more interesting content for fun. People also like being rewarded for their effort.

If they would they should get it, I don’t mind that at all, it’s the speshull snowflake exclusive rewards that annoy me to no end. Gold, let them be richer than midas.

No, they don’t stop lieing. This thread has demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that it’s not about the challenge but about the loot. Don’t project your personal desires onto reality. They have spoken already, they want challenging content for the exclusive rewards and nothing else will work for them (your proposition included).

phys.7689:

By creating many means of getting any item, you make its value determined by the easiest most effecient means of getting that item, or its utility. and they dont believe people should have to work too hard (grind or challenge) for utility.

Then the obvious solution is to make the challenging version to be more efficient (just not too efficient) for those that can run it.

phys.7689:

• 4) anet made a game with many different facets, they always intended to have some rewards for specific types of play, dunegeon armor and dungeons was supposed to be challenging content with unique rewards.

Maybe. On the other hand they fully seemed to expect most people to run those dungeons, and they eventually did introduce pvp dungeon reward tracks.

phys.7689:

Legendaries and titles also require specific milestones. Heck karma unique karma armor fits that bill.

Considering the many ways you can earn karma…

phys.7689:

• 5)Im saying they tried having non exclusive rewards, and they ended up having to create insane grind to get anything they want players to value.

Nah, that’s more tied to the tradable value of most loot.
They messed up the karma vendors too, but that was due to a ton of miscalculations (not enough rewards initially, then too much karma income, then nerfing karma income again without introducing new faucets, etc), not due to the idea being bad.

phys.7689:

• halloween 2 for example. Because of the insane amount of people playing halloween content, they had so much currency they had to create ridiculous prices in halloween items to create anything.

They did admit much later to miscalculating on those prices and making them too high.

phys.7689:

• 6) i wasnt saying challenging content is automatcially fun for everyone, i was explaining to you why a person might find challenging content fun, but not find it fun enough to do it a lot if it doesnt give them value for the effort.

That value doesn’t have to come in the way of exclusive rewards, though

phys.7689:

• 7) yes anet should make sure all content provides progression, exclusive items helps you to do this by seperating concerns. You dont have to worry about how the latest farm will effect the value of rewards you get from say doing personal story, or a jump puzzle.

Yes, you have to worry however whether the content you do now (which you like) gives you any progress towards the things you want.

phys.7689:

• 8)it doesnt have to be a competitive sport, every game has an objective/objectives. perhaps its human psychology but most people will not be happy playing a game if they are working cross purpose to the objectives. When having fun in a game relies on ignoring the objectives, usually the game starts to break down, becoming either a meta game thats different, or people lose interest.

Indeed. Making people do the content they consider unfun in order to get the rewards that would contribute to their fun is working at cross purposes.

phys.7689:

• 9)exclusive rewards is the easiest method available to them to make rewards have value without introducing insane level of grind, or devaluing the item.

That depends entirely of the person. Yes, there are players that value items depending mostly on how rare they are. There are however at least two other, separate ways of valuing those items (by advantage they confer, or by aesthetics) that do not benefit from exclusivity (quite the opposite, actually).

SkiTz.4590:

Who the hell wants to “rub it in”?? is that your excuse? really?
There might be some idiotic 12 year olds running their mouth in LA. how they beat everything so easily and everyone else sucks. but newsflash, there are ppl that act like annoying kids in every game.

You think the majority of the “capable” ppl are doing it so they can finally stand on top of you or something??? Really?

Judging from your behaviour in here, and the comments about the salty tears, you, my friend, would be one of them. You sound exactly like the person who would rub in it.

If I thought I was talking to a person who likes to self reflect, i’d urge you to consider what i’ve said, but I don’t think you are. So, instead, i’ll just tease you with your inability
to comprehend why the average on a normal distribution sits roughly in the middle. :P

PorceleinEve.2973:

SkiTz.4590:

Who the hell wants to “rub it in”?? is that your excuse? really?
There might be some idiotic 12 year olds running their mouth in LA. how they beat everything so easily and everyone else sucks. but newsflash, there are ppl that act like annoying kids in every game.

You think the majority of the “capable” ppl are doing it so they can finally stand on top of you or something??? Really?

Judging from your behaviour in here, and the comments about the salty tears, you, my friend, would be one of them. You sound exactly like the person who would rub in it.

If I thought I was talking to a person who likes to self reflect, i’d urge you to consider what i’ve said, but I don’t think you are. So, instead, i’ll just tease you with your inability
to comprehend why the average on a normal distribution sits roughly in the middle. :P

If you look back, I’ve already stated about your terrible logic with normal distribution and how irrelevant it is to this topic… So continue teasing me like the child you are anyways. (btw, your sample size is made up/too small. your standard deviation is skewed/too high, thus your conclusion, is in fact, an opinion. But you wouldn’t know that since you are ignorant. Go back and learn about statistics before you spew random stuff to make your opinion look better).

It’s going to be great when you finally quit the game because you can’t get a couple rewards, because that, in essence is what you and a few ppl having been whining and moaning about. Since anet CLEARLY is continuing to add exclusive rewards, your arguments have fallen on deaf ears to anet. So instead, i’ll just tease you on your inability to understand anet is not following your logic =)

“I want everything that is our there without being as capable as others and without investing the same amount of time”

Except that nobody is actually saying anything of the sort. The proposals addressed in this thread do not involve investing less time or effort, just in being able to apply that time and effort in a positive way, rather than in unfun grind.

Weapons are much faster to get from the PVP tracks than running the dungeons but Armors are slower.

Perhaps, but you have to do PvP to advance the track, so even if the track is objectively faster, I still doubt many “Like dungeons, don’t like PvP” players are actively advancing the PvP track instead of running the dungeons. If they are PvEers who are using the dungeon PvP tracks, then it is more likely that they either A. don’t like dungeons in the first place, even if they generally prefer PvE to PvP, B. enjoy PvP well enough, or C. are just knocking out their PvP dailies because the PvE ones are kittening Fractals, and don’t care about the Glorious track.

In any case, I think if you want to run dungeons, you should be able to run dungeons and get appropriately rewarded for it, while if you don’t want to run dungeons, but like the dungeon rewards, there should be more alternatives than just the PvP tracks.

PVP players use the PVP tracks to get a reward for playing PVP, and PVP tracks themselves were an excellent addition to the game. However, PVE players that go to PVP-land to fill the tracks are not actually participating in the act of Player versus Player. “Farm” maps are abusing the rules of custom arenas, they have player made rules to allow all those who play there to get the rewards, they DO NOT follow the rules of PVP.

I don’t have much experience with “farm maps,” but it sounds like they would be the problem in that scenario, not the reward tracks themselves, and the solution would be for ANet to do a better job of making those harder to pull off. It’s the same with any aspect of the game, there are ways to exploit loopholes and streamline processes to do things in the easiest possible way, no matter how you design it, and it’s ANet’s job to figure out those loopholes and close as many of them as they can, or just make them less effective. They’ve done this by making various champ trains less rewarding, various farm events less farmable, making dungeon map breakouts less possible, etc., and will almost certainly have to do some live tuning on whatever “challenging content” they produce to patch up similar flaws.

An armour set is cooler than a title or something you have to go away from everyone else to be reminded of. It allows you to customise your character to reflect what you’ve done, thus increasing the bond you feel for it. You show other people who’ve also done the same thing that you went through the same troubles as they did. You get to tell people who’ve never heard about that challenge what it is and give them tips if they’re interested. If you’re using a less popular weapon and went through the trouble of getting a skin for it that is challenging to acquire, you show other people how much you like that skin or that weapon and they’ll be appropriately impressed/disturbed.

But what about players who really want that armor or weapon skin, but have zero interest in the task related to it? Why should they have to choose the lesser of two evils in how to react to that fact?

Having many different challenges for many different items allows for players to structure their long-term playtime instead of simply repeating the most efficient currency grind. All of this is why dungeons give out their own unique currency instead of having a single Dungeon Coin that you can buy any gear with. It makes the game environment more flavourful and varied.

I think players should be able to structure their play how they prefer. I think that running dungeon A can be the most efficient method of acquiring dungeon A currency and rewards, but that other methods should be available for people who really don’t want to run dungeon A. What does it benefit anyone to have players running dungeon A who have no interest in being there?

When i say the idea that people do easy content for fun is bull, what i should have said, is the idea that everyone is doing certain specific easy content like say champ trains, or event spam in Orr, or silverwastes, because its just so fun is bull.
This doesnt mean no one enjoys it, or there isnt fun to be had doing it. The point is they are not doing it for fun ALONE. If it was actually just for the pure joy, then people wouldnt abandon them when they nerf the rewards.

True, but, it is also fair to say that many players find the champ farms to be a more enjoyable use of their time than they do Fractals, or PvP, or dungeons, etc., so while it’s fair to argue that they are choosing the most rewarding version of that type of content, it’s not fair to argue that if you make them less rewarding, that they would move on to dungeons and that sort of thing and be just as happy there.

5)Im saying they tried having non exclusive rewards, and they ended up having to create insane grind to get anything they want players to value.
This is because of economics.

Yes, and this is why alternate acquisition methods should be immune to the player economy. It should involve accountbound progressions and currencies, that reward accountbound skins, so that the only negotiation is between you and the game, and whether ten thousand people have/want the item or only ten, the price to you would be a constant.

Ohoni.6057:

Except that nobody is actually saying anything of the sort. The proposals addressed in this thread do not involve investing less time or effort, just in being able to apply that time and effort in a positive way, rather than in unfun grind.

You should reread this thread then. Because that’s exactly what people are crying about here.

PorceleinEve.2973:

TomCullen.5439:

Hm…without hitting people with a wall of text, it could be easily translated that way imho:

“I want everything that is our there without being as capable as others and without investing the same amount of time”

That’s the problem in nowadays games, everyone wants everything he sees, without investing too much work.

That is indeed what’s being said. They want everything that is out there without being as capable as others and without investing the same amount of time. They want to use time, to cover up the gap in their capability. Because capability might be a currency they don’t have, but time, everyone has. So, the “capable” get their rewards first, the less capable, get their rewards later, after applying the time necessary. So what’s the problem exactly?

Oh yes, let me say it one more time, the problem is, that the “capable” want everyone else to know how “capable” they are, especially the “non capable” guys. They just want to rub it in. They just want to be a visual representation of how much “better” they are than the rest of the plebs.

The problem is the entitlement to every reward in the game the way you want it rather than abiding by the rules of the game.

It’s a product of a generation of gamers that is only in it for the rewards. As opposed to people who want a good game and a good reward.

That’s not to say that the reward needs to be completely exclusive, but also so that it’s not like providing the player with a choice menu says Hard way this way and easy lazy way that way. Which is not really a choice for most of the people. Which pretty much makes that piece of content obsolete. Like designing a maze with a bridge to the middle.

Furthermore, it makes players accept the non-challenge. Any further challenge is met with, “Meh I can just grind it if I really want it” And quickly turning into “Guild Wars 2 is all about grind!” And thus the majority never really bothers to do any challenges, because the lazy laid back way is there anyway, which makes even more content obsolete because the ultimate rewarding content will be the place where everyone is at. Designing the game so that the incentives to move to the next zone is only because of interesting story and lore, is the same as making the only incentives about hard content. The easiest farmable map will be the most populated map every time. Because that will be how the game functions.

It’s the same reason ArenaNet removed the Tokens drops from early dungeon bosses, because people just started to farm the early dungeon bosses without actually bothering to do the whole dungeon.

Instead of playing the game, people are gaming the reward system.
People always game the reward system where possible. The huge incentive is where the reward is the biggest, sure they might go out of their way to enjoy a bit of the new lore and the new areas for a bit or even try harder challenges while in the long run returning to the one place where the rewards are the biggest. Making content obsolete, making maps more boxes that give out huge rewards, because otherwise people will not even play it.

To me it’s like you only see half the truth this thread already has provided before your very eyes. People do care very little about intrinsic rewards as challenges, and lore, and beautiful areas in the long run (or in any game that is reward driven). Any exclusive rewards incentives to people to go to those areas in the game. Whether that is Lore-rich or challenge rich.

(Although I personally think that all reward could simply be removed from the game and only player curiosity is the driving factor, but that would not be well accepted either by all the players either, so I remain to be realistic.)

You should reread this thread then. Because that’s exactly what people are crying about here.

Nope. The only people who are crying in this thread is people crying that their strawmen want that. The actual human beings in this thread have suggested no such thing.

The problem is the entitlement to every reward in the game the way you want it rather than abiding by the rules of the game.

No, it’s not. The “rules of the game” are entirely arbitrary and mutable. If ANet says that you have to run Citadel of Flame to get CoF armor, then you have to run Citadel of Flame. If they say that you can also do the CoF PvP reward track, then you can also do the PvP reward track. If they then go on to say that you can run a PvE reward track, or trade tokens from TA for tokens for CoF, or if they say you can collect CoF tokens by completing events in Fireheart Rise, etc., then all of those are now viable routes.

The rules are what ANet says they are, and players are free to petition them to change those rules to make the game more enjoyable.

It’s a product of a generation of gamers that is only in it for the rewards. As opposed to people who want a good game and a good reward.

I agree, which is why hard mode content should not be about getting some fancy exclusive reward, it should be about doing the content because you enjoy it, and then receiving a quantity of loot appropriate to the time and effort invested, but nothing that cannot be gained elsewhere for equivalent time and effort.

Ohoni.6057:

PVP players use the PVP tracks to get a reward for playing PVP, and PVP tracks themselves were an excellent addition to the game. However, PVE players that go to PVP-land to fill the tracks are not actually participating in the act of Player versus Player. “Farm” maps are abusing the rules of custom arenas, they have player made rules to allow all those who play there to get the rewards, they DO NOT follow the rules of PVP.

I don’t have much experience with “farm maps,” but it sounds like they would be the problem in that scenario, not the reward tracks themselves, and the solution would be for ANet to do a better job of making those harder to pull off.

Well yes the PVP tracks themselves are absolutely fine. In farm maps, one team (chosen by map rules) takes the points and they all wait until it’s over, exchanging a capture point to earn extra points. In the other “variety” players meet at a point and tag as many people then commit suicide so the points progress faster and matches and quicker. Both types of farm map have absolutely nothing to do with Players versus Player, not even like the more casual, come in and go PVP found in Hotjoins. If they “fixed” this issue and rewarded players in PVP when they played PVP then yeah let them put as many rewards in the tracks as possible so PVPers can get all the PVE rewards, after all it’s a separate game mode.

I’m sure one of the reasons WvW rewards are horrible is because those can be exploited too, trade kills with someone you know on the other, circle taking objectives like in EotM etc etc, all that “exploiting” makes Badges of Honor less useful, if they find a way to “fix” the exploitative portions of WvW maybe they could add amazing rewards in WvW too, as WvW players have been complaining about their game mode of choice being the least rewarding since release.

It’s the same with any aspect of the game, there are ways to exploit loopholes and streamline processes to do things in the easiest possible way, no matter how you design it, and it’s ANet’s job to figure out those loopholes and close as many of them as they can, or just make them less effective. They’ve done this by making various champ trains less rewarding, various farm events less farmable, making dungeon map breakouts less possible, etc., and will almost certainly have to do some live tuning on whatever “challenging content” they produce to patch up similar flaws.

True, fixing loopholes and exploits should be one their highest priorities. My favorite example of completely broken “challenging” content was the end raid boss in the game Warhammer Online, at release you could find a way to go “under” the map, then just kill the boss -solo- with auto attacks because he wasn’t retaliating. Imagine the supposed hardest boss in a game beaten by a solo player (it took him HOURS and HOURS to kill him) using a dumb exploit. I hope similar things do not exist in GW2 challenging content.

I also want to note here that the way they made champ trains less rewarding was terrible. Instead of nerfing in some way the amount of bags you can get each day, they nerfed the bags themselves, effectively nerfing the ability of non-train farmers to get any rewards they want more than the actual farmers (who was their target I think).

Less than a week left until the 29th and we will know at least the basics. Maybe BWE2 will give us access to Challenging Group Content or that’s too much to ask?

I’ve asked for the thread to be locked, Since it’s really not going to be constructive.

There will never be consensus (or compromise apparently…)
We’re effectively playing two different games here you have the players like me who are playing a competitive* structured environment MMO with an aim to advance our accounts and another group that are playing for a general sort of fun.

*(That word does not mean exclusively direct pvp, that includes competition for rewards and against the other players in aspects such as skins unlocked, AP , feats of skill etc.)

Ohoni.6057:

No, it’s not. The “rules of the game” are entirely arbitrary and mutable.
The rules are what ANet says they are, and players are free to petition them to change those rules to make the game more enjoyable.

They are, within reason, however.
A complete structural change in how rewards a distributed 3 years into the game would effectively pull the rug out from under existing players and have severely negative PR and in-game consequences. (I’ll do an aside on why an everything for gold is bad at the bottom).

Ohoni.6057:

It’s a product of a generation of gamers that is only in it for the rewards. As opposed to people who want a good game and a good reward.

I agree, which is why hard mode content should not be about getting some fancy exclusive reward, it should be about doing the content because you enjoy it, and then receiving a quantity of loot appropriate to the time and effort invested, but nothing that cannot be gained elsewhere for equivalent time and effort.

Both sides are working for rewards/ arguing over rewards, if either side was purely about gameplay this wouldn’t be a discussion at all because one side wouldn’t mind. There is no “Good Guy” in this discussion.

Why being able to buy everything for gold would be a poor choice.
TL/DR: Inflation, the ability to buy gems for gold and inconsistency in the economy, Gold per hour.

Inflation: Lets look at the clear existing example on this: The emperor achievement. It is a fixed price set of skin unlocks, it may have taken 100 hours to unlock a year ago, it now would only take 40 hours, the first person has lost 60 hours of time played due to this.

Gems to Gold: I’m just going to make this a quote: “Ah yes I’ve unlocked 1500 skins in my 1000 hours of gameplay I feel like I’m starting to get somewhere rising through the ranks. Oh…that guys just dropped 5000$ on gems and bought every skin I worked for instantly………. welp this was a huge waste of my time**.” <—- this is the one that would absolutely kill the game for me if your change was implemented, I can’t compete against that, all my work invalidated /surpassed in an instant by an outside force (cheating).

• Yes some people do in fact drop that much it was not an exaggeration : https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/387314/so_i_spent_5000_on_gw2_gems_last_week/)

Economic fluctuations Items vary in price day to day on the TP by several hundred gold on some items , this would add up in huge losses in time for players unlucky enough to buy at the high peaks.

Gold per hour: This is not an exaggeration: The entire game would become even more so about optomising your gold per hour to ensure maximum rewards. Any time spent in a sub-par activity (which currently gives unique rewards giving it it’s own gold independent value) would be objectively poor choice as you’re “losing” time compared to another player.

Lastly there’s also a difference in out belief in how the average player behaves:
I believe the average player prioritizes rewards above fun, and that forced content verity is felt as a boon.
You believe the average player prioritizes fun above rewards and that forced content verity is punishing.
I’m sure you believe your view to be just as right as I believe mine to be , but when I see the Silverwastes, PvP rank farms, Farms in general, I stand by my point.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s a product of a generation of gamers that is only in it for the rewards. As opposed to people who want a good game and a good reward.

I agree, which is why hard mode content should not be about getting some fancy exclusive reward, it should be about doing the content because you enjoy it, and then receiving a quantity of loot appropriate to the time and effort invested, but nothing that cannot be gained elsewhere for equivalent time and effort.

Same thing could be said to you. You should play the game for fun. Not for some skin or mini you dont’ even care about. And only care because other people have it.

In farm maps, one team (chosen by map rules) takes the points and they all wait until it’s over, exchanging a capture point to earn extra points.

Ok, yeah that does seem like pretty cheesey ways to PvP, but kind of hard to police in a way that wouldn’t also just crack down on unfortunately mismatched teams. One thing that might help is a minimum time limit, so that even if you maxed out the score within a certain amount of time, the match would keep going for at least a total of 5-10 minutes? Theoretically a team would still be able to even come back if they feel behind in the early game, rising above the current cap. It would basically be “first to 500, Or highest score at 10 minutes, whichever comes last?” That would at least reduce the incentive to get it over as fast as possible. And of course they could just make participating in those types of openly advertised maps a bannable offense if caught.

Imagine the supposed hardest boss in a game beaten by a solo player (it took him HOURS and HOURS to kill him) using a dumb exploit. I hope similar things do not exist in GW2 challenging content.

While I do agree that it’s stupid and they should try to fix that sort of thing as best they can, at the end of the day, it’s not like he really soloed the thing, he cheated, everyone knows it, it’s no different than the guy driving up to the finish line of a marathon. I don’t think it takes away from the sense of accomplishment of those who achieve the win using fair tactics, they know that they did it the right way.

I also want to note here that the way they made champ trains less rewarding was terrible. Instead of nerfing in some way the amount of bags you can get each day, they nerfed the bags themselves, effectively nerfing the ability of non-train farmers to get any rewards they want more than the actual farmers (who was their target I think).

Maybe, although a daily limit has its own issues, as people inclined to do so would just run their “daily limit” of train farming, and then stop, but they’d still be train farming on a daily basis. I think the best balance to achieve is that you can do whatever you like, as much as you want, but no method should be significantly more efficient than another. Obviously there will be some difference in efficiency, but it should be minimal enough that people can say “well, I can earn 4 gold an hour doing this, or 3.85 gold per hour doing that, and I prefer that a lot more, so I’ll do that instead.”

Ohoni.6057:

But what about players who really want that armor or weapon skin, but have zero interest in the task related to it?

shrug Too bad for them. I’m not interested in grinding a lot for legendary weapons so I’m unlikely to get any. That can be asked about any activity, anyway, even a system where you do whatever you want and pick whatever item you want. It’s much better to just implement a system where everyone simply has every skin unlocked instead of advocating for half-hearted grinding. City of Heroes did mostly that and the costume creator was one of its strong points. There was still a lot of heroing to be done, though, and the rewards were mostly XP and currency since there was so little actual gear.

IMHO either gear should tell you something about their wearer and have a meaningful existence in the game environment or should be available as baseline. I’m a fan of the game world simply telling you that some things will be done on its terms and not on yours. If it’s going to be a world then let it be a world and let players build community around that.

I’ve asked for the thread to be locked, Since it’s really not going to be constructive.

Good for you. It’s important to shut down discussions that one disagrees with, rather than participating in them or ignoring them as a mature adult might. “I’m taking your ball and going home” is a perfectly reasonable response to conflict.

There will never be consensus (or compromise apparently…)
We’re effectively playing two different games here you have the players like me who are playing a competitive* structured environment MMO with an aim to advance our accounts and another group that are playing for a general sort of fun.

The point is not necessarily to reach any compromise or consensus, but to establish what should happen. It really comes down to the relative size of the two camps, and it’s not about making both camps equally happy, it’s about making the large camp as happy as possible, and the smaller camp as happy as possible in a way that won’t reduce the happiness of the larger camp. In GW2’s community, which camp do you believe is larger?

A complete structural change in how rewards a distributed 3 years into the game would effectively pull the rug out from under existing players and have severely negative PR and in-game consequences. (I’ll do an aside on why an everything for gold is bad at the bottom).

Nonsense. They’ve made fairly significant changes to numerous reward systems over the course of the game. They added champ bags, they nerfed champ bags, they took PvP from a system entirely divorced from PvE gearing into one fully integrated with it, including making dozens of armor pieces that players earned via PvP into fully functional PvE wardrobe, they’re adding Precursor crafting to the game. They’ve overhauled core mechanics like traits not once but twice already. They can and will change systems massively, the suggestions I’ve indicated in this thread are a drop in the bucket.

Both sides are working for rewards/ arguing over rewards, if either side was purely about gameplay this wouldn’t be a discussion at all because one side wouldn’t mind. There is no “Good Guy” in this discussion.

No, that’s a logical fallacy. One side is arguing that rewards should be available to more people, one side is arguing that they should be available only to themselves, do not try to argue that both sides are equally moral here.

Why being able to buy everything for gold would be a poor choice.
TL/DR: Inflation, the ability to buy gems for gold and inconsistency in the economy, Gold per hour.

Agreed, being able to buy everything with gold is a poor choice, and to my knowledge is advocated by no one, except as a straw man argument put forth by those that want to maintain exclusivity. The rest of your comments seem to be about this “buying them with gold” straw man, and are thus irrelevant to the actual discussion at hand.

Same thing could be said to you. You should play the game for fun. Not for some skin or mini you dont’ even care about. And only care because other people have it.

A lot of people seem to be buying into this “two sides of a coin” fallacy, which reminds me of that John Oliver sketch where he brought out three climate change deniers and ninety seven scientists to more fairly represent the “debate.” No, it is not “two sides of a coin.” I do play the game for fun, but even when I do, if there is an item that I want, but cannot earn in any fun way, that makes me sad. That does not make the game as a whole a better place. There is no benefit to anyone that I am sad about not having an item I want, aside from schadenfreude, and I have no respect for that. So here are the “two sides”:

A. Wants to have fun doing content they enjoy, and get rewards exclusive to that content, so that people who don’t enjoy that content either have to do stuff they don’t enjoy, or never get that reward.

B. Wants to have fun doing content they enjoy, and get the rewards they want, without negatively impacting anyone else’s play time, because they can do the content that they enjoy instead, and also get the rewards they want. Everybody wins.

They are not equivalent positions.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

You should reread this thread then. Because that’s exactly what people are crying about here.

Or maybe you should … this time without projecting though…

Ohoni.6057:

Good for you. It’s important to shut down discussions that one disagrees with, rather than participating in them or ignoring them as a mature adult might. “I’m taking your ball and going home” is a perfectly reasonable response to conflict.

He’s probably reported a couple of people too, cause words also annoy him.

And if he hasn’t already, i’m sure he will after this post :P

Ohoni.6057:

A. Wants to have fun doing content they enjoy, and get rewards exclusive to that content, so that people who don’t enjoy that content either have to do stuff they don’t enjoy, or never get that reward.

B. Wants to have fun doing content they enjoy, and get the rewards they want, without negatively impacting anyone else’s play time, because they can do the content that they enjoy instead, and also get the rewards they want. Everybody wins.

They are not equivalent positions.

The rewards they get is progression. Not everyone play for skins. I dont’ do 400 fractals for the skins, I do it for the journey to get the skins. Aka collecting them.

After Anet make the change of fractal skins being sellable for pristine relics, I stop going back to fractal. I already have everything. Which is just a bunch of skins I don’t really care about.

I’m not saying you are wrong to voice what you want. I’m saying you are wrong as it does negatively impact some group of players who won’t be having as much fun, because the challenging content stops being rewarding.

To me every reward in this game is pretty pointless. The most rewarding thing is the journey and progression.

and I dont’ have a problem if the hard content rewards isn’t exclusive. But it should take even more efforts in terms of time gates or time invested if it is obtainable in easier contents. Else it is kind of pointless for people to do harder content.

Ohoni.6057:

The problem is the entitlement to every reward in the game the way you want it rather than abiding by the rules of the game.

No, it’s not. The “rules of the game” are entirely arbitrary and mutable. If ANet says that you have to run Citadel of Flame to get CoF armor, then you have to run Citadel of Flame. If they say that you can also do the CoF PvP reward track, then you can also do the PvP reward track. If they then go on to say that you can run a PvE reward track, or trade tokens from TA for tokens for CoF, or if they say you can collect CoF tokens by completing events in Fireheart Rise, etc., then all of those are now viable routes.

The rules are what ANet says they are, and players are free to petition them to change those rules to make the game more enjoyable.

Personally some concepts of your ideas aren’t too bad, but the notion that this needs to happen to all the rewards is not a good idea.

Merely because there’s multiple routes to dungeon armor, doesn’t mean it needs an additional route for example. It is very hard to sort of balance the rewards of the two methods already. PvP had dungeon rewards since the beginning and it has been rebalanced a couple of times, as well as dungeons where bosses at the start gave nearly as much as at the end. It was very accessible to a PvE farming crowd, just no one did the dungeon anymore. As PvP and PvE are very different kinds of content, there’s still some sort of healthy interest in the both of them. But once you start to make them available in the maps then you have two very similar kinds of content, PvE Dungeon and PvE Open world, who will need to compete interest. Since there is a bit more effort involved in making a 5 man group, and then doing the challenges in a dungeon, rather than merely grinding the events outside the dungeon. It also will make people shy away from any 5-man group content, no one feels pressured to group up, plus inserting a time in place of challenge is a bad idea. That’s literally asking for grind. The game would be alot less fun, OR ArenaNet needs to pull out so much more content so that players don’t get bored by doing the same thing over and over again.

It’s a product of a generation of gamers that is only in it for the rewards. As opposed to people who want a good game and a good reward.

I agree, which is why hard mode content should not be about getting some fancy exclusive reward, it should be about doing the content because you enjoy it, and then receiving a quantity of loot appropriate to the time and effort invested, but nothing that cannot be gained elsewhere for equivalent time and effort.

The problem is that both “easy content” and “hard content” are about getting some fancy exclusive reward. In easy mode it would be people who completed the easy route 1000 hours and want to show that off, and in hard mode it would be the ones that completed that 10 times and want to show that off. (or whatever is balanced)

I’m just saying, it’s like saying easy rewards shouldn’t be about how much time you invested in the game, mostly because not everyone has that time and it would make certain parts of the reward be unattainable to people who do not have that time.

Astralporing.1957:

• 1)Then the obvious solution is to make the challenging version to be more efficient (just not too efficient) for those that can run it.

• 2)Maybe. On the other hand they fully seemed to expect most people to run those dungeons, and they eventually did introduce pvp dungeon reward tracks.

• 3)Considering the many ways you can earn karma…

• 4)Nah, that’s more tied to the tradable value of most loot.
  They messed up the karma vendors too, but that was due to a ton of miscalculations (not enough rewards initially, then too much karma income, then nerfing karma income again without introducing new faucets, etc), not due to the idea being bad.

• 5)They did admit much later to miscalculating on those prices and making them too high.

• 6)That value doesn’t have to come in the way of exclusive rewards, though

• 7)Yes, you have to worry however whether the content you do now (which you like) gives you any progress towards the things you want.

• 8)Indeed. Making people do the content they consider unfun in order to get the rewards that would contribute to their fun is working at cross purposes.

• 9)That depends entirely of the person. Yes, there are players that value items depending mostly on how rare they are. There are however at least two other, separate ways of valuing those items (by advantage they confer, or by aesthetics) that do not benefit from exclusivity (quite the opposite, actually).

• 1) i wouldnt mind more effeccency versus less, if well planned mathematically, but even then they couldnt just make it obtainable by any means, it would still have to be something they can easily observe and control well, with the proper amount of inflow and ouflow of some type of currency.
  Which they really arent good at. Heck it might be something that is just not feasible, to have system which creates items/currency at large rates, while at the same time still being rewarding over time.

• 2) on release they said they expected dungeons to be the challenging content for people who really want to master the game. For a time it was (some paths)

• 3) i didnt mean karma earning, i meant the fact that most karma items required you to do some specifc content to unlock said merchant. IE specific content for specific rewards (this is not just about hard content, its also about unique rewards)

• 4) tradeable loot is the purest form of the do anything you like to get something else you like concept. And i honestly feel it probably would not be as bad IF more items had unique sources. The fact that they dont means people who have no desire for items get them, and people who want items have drop rates lowered to balance influx.
  but i digress

• 5) it wasnt so much a miscalculation, as much as a fundamental design flaw, to base earning items too heavily around the economy instead of the user experience. However since golds stability, and the economy, is tied to cash, its a line they have to walk.
• 6) there are other solutions beyond exclusive rewards, but exclusive rewards is simpler, and less likely to break down, or fail to achieve its goal.
• 7) this true, the bad part about exclusives is that you may have to do something you dont like to get what you want. But this is still true with all the casual exclusives, like karma vendors, luminescent armor, achievement armor, titles, etc. I think its ok to accept in a virtual world, you may have to make choices in how you play, or goals you are willing to try to achieve. This already happens, like i know i cant invest the energy in a bunch more legendaries, or i wont earn the pvp armors, or guild weapons, or get tequatl skins.
• 8) this is the nail on the head here. Some peoples primary enjoyment comes from getting specific items they want. They may not enjoy that many other facets of the game. So for them, they want to be able to get anything by the means they do enjoy.
  I understand this beef, but i have yet to see them balance the get anything you want via whatever play you enjoy, in a manner that doesnt make most rewards unfullfilling and increase grind greatly. Id rather have to choose or not choose to do something i dont like, than have everything require an intense grind, and every reward be watered down based on how much people earn unintentionally, or when playing super optimally.
• 9)regardless of how much you value how something looks, how rewarded you feel getting it will still be effected by knowledge of how it can be obtained. Many people may think that a low level sword you can buy from a vendor in the first town is the most awesome sword. Most people would still be annoyed if they gave that same sword as a reward for 10k Achievement points. because if they wanted that item, they would already have got it the easier way. Is no that they dont value the aestitic, its that the difficulty did not match the reward.

phys.7689:

• 8) this is the nail on the head here. Some peoples primary enjoyment comes from getting specific items they want. They may not enjoy that many other facets of the game. So for them, they want to be able to get anything by the means they do enjoy.
  I understand this beef, but i have yet to see them balance the get anything you want via whatever play you enjoy, in a manner that doesnt make most rewards unfullfilling and increase grind greatly. Id rather have to choose or not choose to do something i dont like, than have everything require an intense grind, and every reward be watered down based on how much people earn unintentionally, or when playing super optimally.

You are making the hypothesis here that the options are, short, hard and rewarding, and long, easy and eventually rewarding if you can take the grind.

but the fact is, that the way this game is set up, there is nothing than grind for stuff. So I believe you’re wrong in assuming that there will be a grind free, or even, smaller grind road. At least in the beginning.

Something to keep in mind. Maybe the question is what kind of grind you prefer, in the end.

That was my latest attempt at reasoned discussion with you, but if we’re playing the fallacy game:
Choosing to completely ignore my argument due to what you believe is a strawman is the fallacy fallacy, combined with a dash of tu quoque fallacy. To be fair we’re both committing the black and white fallacy with different assumptions and if the wikipedia list I’ve opened to grab a few more is to be believed the psychologists fallacy and probobly about a dozen or so more..

And to avoid this being a tu quoque fallacy post, If you take my last point on my previous post it stands even if replaced with tokens (although I’d swear you’d mentioned a gold alternative at some point).

Introducing a universal token system for rewards (Is this one a strawman too? or is it more in line with what you mean.) would be an equally bad idea, the game would become purely about tokens per hour earned. The fun we both seek would take a back-seat to optimization as usual.
Areas that award lower amounts will no longer be played (where as before they may have had unique rewards to sustain them.) E.G drytop, if the amberite weapons and recipies were removed it would be dead instantly , it can’t compare to other pieces of content in terms of reward.
And again the value of your account is reduced from several factors(skill of play, content played, time played, events attended, achievements completed) to time played to earn equivalent tokens.

PorceleinEve.2973:

Ohoni.6057:

Good for you. It’s important to shut down discussions that one disagrees with, rather than participating in them or ignoring them as a mature adult might. “I’m taking your ball and going home” is a perfectly reasonable response to conflict.

He’s probably reported a couple of people too, cause words also annoy him.

And if he hasn’t already, i’m sure he will after this post :P

I have not actually I don’t agree with what you’re saying and I find the attempts at goading me loathsome but, In my entire time on the forums I’ve reported two people, the first some random person for homophobic comments the second Ohoni because I genuinely believe his view is so extreme that it is intentional trolling. (I do not believe that someone can be present in the MMO environment for several years and genuinely believe people will allow that view to occur.)

Ohoni.6057:

The point is not necessarily to reach any compromise or consensus, but to establish what should happen. It really comes down to the relative size of the two camps, and it’s not about making both camps equally happy, it’s about making the large camp as happy as possible, and the smaller camp as happy as possible in a way that won’t reduce the happiness of the larger camp. In GW2’s community, which camp do you believe is larger?

And that is what will kill the game. It is what has been killing the game for years, this lack of a drive towards actually playing the game. GW2 has, I believe many will attest and agree with me, the greatest combat system in a MMO seen yet with such fluid dynamic content. Yet we and arenanet months ago were left at an impasse where specifically in PvE the challenge simply was not there. You can argue the current “hardcore” content is plenty challenge enough for a great number of players, but the fact is with all the ‘trains’ in this game being the most efficient way to work on Horizontial progression, I can easily assure you that your own ‘crowd’ will eventually get bored of it and leave GW2 as well.

Put bluntly, the sheer request to universalize any and all unique loot that can come out of HoT will Kill this game. Because it’s unsustainable, and with how rewards (or horizontial progression actually is) being focused around what is most efficient rather than what is most achievable… The game will turn into a smoldering husk in no time since veterans (Everyone turns into one at some point) will get tired of the same old efficient trends.

SPvP has been in a half-living state since launch, with leaderboards finally being implemented and a notable, unique reward for players who do a LOT of SPvP and coming out victorious it might make a comeback. Why was it unpopular before though? Outside of the constant unbalance and stale metas that come with it, the rewards for anyone wanting to get into SPvP were not there. They still aren’t quite there, a player at the highest MMR possible with such long queue times will get the same reward for winning their match than someone going into Ranked the first time.

If rewards don’t match the risk, if skins, titles, unique trophies aren’t symbols of achievement through actually taking up the PvE trials and succeeding, than this game is done. Heart of Thorns needs to shave off this effective ‘This gets me everything’ mentality and get players to go into certain content they might disagree with, or have struggles as performing the task.

Another thing, and this is important. Just because the content might be unbearable to the absolutely soft-minded few doesn’t mean they have to do it alone. ‘Challenging Group Content’ means you don’t do it alone, you work with allies or strangers, potentially new friends since MMOs are like that. Even living story instances can be grouped up for! Some of the achievements are really grueling solo, and I beat Liandri if that’s any worth to anyone but with friends, things get a lot easier.

Finally, your two group analogy indeed does make sense…in a vacuum. Tell me, can you measure how many people in the ‘Average or less skill’ group have a drive to improve or get better at this game? And then take how many players from the ‘Higher Skill’ camp and ask them how they feel about lending a helping hand to those who want to learn how to face the challenge in question and work together towards a common goal of good loot.

I bet the numbers are much higher than what you think in both those catagories.

The rewards they get is progression. Not everyone play for skins. I dont’ do 400 fractals for the skins, I do it for the journey to get the skins. Aka collecting them.

And you’ll continue to be able to do so, because nobody’s suggesting removing the ability to earn those skins by completing Fractals. The only suggestion on the table is for there to be other alternate methods of earning them as well.

To me every reward in this game is pretty pointless. The most rewarding thing is the journey and progression.

And they can have journey and progression that have nothing to do with skins. They have achievements, they’ll have leaderboards, and you’ll still have to earn the skins through some methods, so there is still the collection aspect, the only thing that would change is that the collection aspect would not force you into a specific narrow activity to pursue it.

But once you start to make them available in the maps then you have two very similar kinds of content, PvE Dungeon and PvE Open world, who will need to compete interest.

I would argue that this is a very subjective statement that too many people seem to take as fact. Just because you view PvE open world as being more similar to PvE dungeons than dungeons are to PvP matches, does not mean that everyone feels that way. Just because a player enjoys open world content does not mean that he has any interest in dungeons. Just because he likes dungeons does not mean that Fractals are fun for him. Just because he likes sPvP does not mean WvW is a suitable substitute. You cannot assume that because player likes one type of activity, that he must view any other activity as being “close enough” that the two can be considered interchangeable.

If you accept that PvPing and dungeon running are two activities distinct enough that it’s not a problem that they can share reward pools, then just expand that understanding to include all types of content.

Since there is a bit more effort involved in making a 5 man group, and then doing the challenges in a dungeon, rather than merely grinding the events outside the dungeon.

If people have reasons to shy away from doing dungeons, then either A: ANet should streamline those difficulties so that they are no longer an issue, or B: those players should not be running dungeons. ANet should not be bribing them to do content they do not want to do.

And to avoid this being a tu quoque fallacy post, If you take my last point on my previous post it stands even if replaced with tokens (although I’d swear you’d mentioned a gold alternative at some point).

I do not like the gold economy in this game, so it’s certainly nothing I would advocate for. I wouldn’t be opposed to some gold method, but only as a last resort. For example, say an item is a rare drop in a dungeon, that you can currently TP. Leave that option intact. But then also allow you to buy it using dungeon tokens, but bound only. And also allow you to win it RNG via a reward track, but bound only. And also allow you to earn those tokens and buy it via the reward track, etc. Have multiple other methods, but have the results of those methods be account bound. But the original method result you could always sell, so some would be on the markets, and if you absolutely wanted to, you could buy it with gold, but for most people the account bound methods would be much more efficient for getting one.

It’s a similar situation to what will likely result from Precursor Crafting.

Introducing a universal token system for rewards (Is this one a strawman too? or is it more in line with what you mean.) would be an equally bad idea, the game would become purely about tokens per hour earned.

Well, there are various alternatives, I don’t think universal tokens would be the best, but sort of exchange currency, in which you can earn specific tokens through various activities for specific rewards, but then you can also exchange these currencies at rates relative to how hard they are to earn. So for example you might be able to exchange CoF tokens for TA tokens at a rate of 2:1, or even 10:7 or something, while converting CoF tokens to Fractal Relics would be more like 10:1 or more, and converting Silverwaste Badges to CoF tokens would be like 50:1.

I think that doing it this way, players that really want a specific token would gravitate towards specific events if they were at all interested in them, and would only take the alternatives if they really didn’t want to do that content.

Areas that award lower amounts will no longer be played (where as before they may have had unique rewards to sustain them.) E.G drytop, if the amberite weapons and recipies were removed it would be dead instantly , it can’t compare to other pieces of content in terms of reward.

I think that’s fine though. If people tire of the content in an area, and aren’t playing it because they enjoy it, but because they want the rewards, I think it’s healthy for that area to die off for a bit. Perhaps they could take advantage of this fact, and openly tweak the reward levels of various zones on rotation, so that DT might be the absolute best place to be for a few weeks, then Silverwastes, then Frostgorge, then, hell, Snowden Drifts or something. Whatever. If they make it very efficient, people will cone. Instead of trying to make all places efficient at once, or accepting that most places are inefficient but people will play them anyways because there’s no other place to get that sort of item, just constantly shift the winners and losers.

SPvP has been in a half-living state since launch, with leaderboards finally being implemented and a notable, unique reward for players who do a LOT of SPvP and coming out victorious it might make a comeback. Why was it unpopular before though? Outside of the constant unbalance and stale metas that come with it, the rewards for anyone wanting to get into SPvP were not there. They still aren’t quite there, a player at the highest MMR possible with such long queue times will get the same reward for winning their match than someone going into Ranked the first time.

sPvP was, is, and will remain unpopular because most players do not want to PvP, no matter how much ANet tries to bribe them into it. The only thing that I could see making sPvP into “a thing” would be if they made it completely F2P (as in no box), because at least it could then compete fairly with games like LoL. As it stands, the only people playing are a subset of the people willing to pay to buy GW2, and the people paying to buy GW2 are just not PvPers (in numbers larger than you currently see in PvP). There is nothing whatsoever they can do to make the sPvP numbers significantly large than they are from the existing pool of GW2 players, that would nto be straight up bribing players into not having fun.

Finally, your two group analogy indeed does make sense…in a vacuum. Tell me, can you measure how many people in the ‘Average or less skill’ group have a drive to improve or get better at this game? A

5%, maybe 10%?

I mean, if you mean “how many of them want to improve at their own pace, over time, with no pressure on them to do so?” Then maybe closer to 80%+, but if you mean “how many want to ‘git gud’ so they can run hardcore content and get the rewards they want,” then yeah, like 10% or so.

And then take how many players from the ‘Higher Skill’ camp and ask them how they feel about lending a helping hand to those who want to learn how to face the challenge in question and work together towards a common goal of good loot.

Oh, probably like 60%+, plenty of those, mainly because they want people to play with in those high tier areas and are desperate to convert people, but again, most people don’t want to be converted.

Ohoni.6057:

The point is not necessarily to reach any compromise or consensus, but to establish what should happen. It really comes down to the relative size of the two camps, and it’s not about making both camps equally happy, it’s about making the large camp as happy as possible, and the smaller camp as happy as possible in a way that won’t reduce the happiness of the larger camp. In GW2’s community, which camp do you believe is larger?

Or perhaps it comes down to ANet wanting to try to please both camps, regardless of their relative size. Since your desires are opposed to theirs, that would mean that some rewards will be exclusive, and some not. Both camps would then need to accept that there are rewards in the game aimed at the other guys. Size of the demographics might then determine the relative frequency with which their preferences were indulged.

Should such rewards accompany harder content, as I fully expect, it would not be the first time, nor will it likely be the last, that ANet uses carrots to entice people who are not otherwise inclined to try content. The coming rework of fractals is a blatant attempt to do so.

There’s no point in arguing with someone like ohoni. He 100% believes he is right even thou anet has proven he is wrong.

It doesn’t even matter if the game director himself comes in here and says “We are making just a couple exclusive rewards and this is going to be our philosophy going forward in regards to endgame progression”.

Ohoni would still respond by saying “colin is wrong and the game will die now since 90-95% of the population will quit according to my make believe statistics . They will quit because a couple new rewards became exclusives and since they couldn’t achieve those rewards, theres absolutely no point in playing such a vast MMORPG anymore since we couldn’t recieve a couple skins”

Flawless logic.

phys.7689:

• 3) i didnt mean karma earning, i meant the fact that most karma items required you to do some specifc content to unlock said merchant. IE specific content for specific rewards (this is not just about hard content, its also about unique rewards)

Untrue. Most karma items didn’t need any unlocking. Others did require for someone to unlock the vendor, but that someone didn’t have to be you. In fact, you didn’t even need to be present on the same map during unlocking (see “LFG for Opened Balthasar Temple” times)

phys.7689:

• 6) there are other solutions beyond exclusive rewards, but exclusive rewards is simpler, and less likely to break down, or fail to achieve its goal.

That is actually highly debatable. You are completely ignoring here the fact that exclusivity brings with it just too many negative factors that need to be also considered.

phys.7689:

• 7) this true, the bad part about exclusives is that you may have to do something you dont like to get what you want. But this is still true with all the casual exclusives, like karma vendors, luminescent armor, achievement armor, titles, etc.

That’s because all exclusives are equally bad.

phys.7689:

• 8) this is the nail on the head here. Some peoples primary enjoyment comes from getting specific items they want. They may not enjoy that many other facets of the game. So for them, they want to be able to get anything by the means they do enjoy.
  I understand this beef, but i have yet to see them balance the get anything you want via whatever play you enjoy, in a manner that doesnt make most rewards unfullfilling and increase grind greatly. Id rather have to choose or not choose to do something i dont like, than have everything require an intense grind, and every reward be watered down based on how much people earn unintentionally, or when playing super optimally.

This is where we definitely not agree. Especially since i don’t think the negatives you described are unavoidable.

phys.7689:

• 9)regardless of how much you value how something looks, how rewarded you feel getting it will still be effected by knowledge of how it can be obtained. Many people may think that a low level sword you can buy from a vendor in the first town is the most awesome sword. Most people would still be annoyed if they gave that same sword as a reward for 10k Achievement points. because if they wanted that item, they would already have got it the easier way. Is no that they dont value the aestitic, its that the difficulty did not match the reward.

Well, if they already have it, then obviously they won’t need another.
And the current 10k AP box gives out skins you could have chosen at 1k ap if you wanted them. I didn’t notice anyone complaining about it so far.

Ohoni.6057:

You should reread this thread then. Because that’s exactly what people are crying about here.

Nope. The only people who are crying in this thread is people crying that their strawmen want that. The actual human beings in this thread have suggested no such thing.

Not true. I’ve seen people in this thread saying stuff like farming SW should be a viable way to earn such cgc rewards. That is not proportional effort. Now, maybe you don’t think that, but it’s definitely been said in this thread.

FrizzFreston.5290:

entitlement

All that needs to be said when summing up OP’s topic.

Ohoni.6057:

sPvP was, is, and will remain unpopular because most players do not want to PvP, no matter how much ANet tries to bribe them into it. The only thing that I could see making sPvP into “a thing” would be if they made it completely F2P (as in no box), because at least it could then compete fairly with games like LoL. As it stands, the only people playing are a subset of the people willing to pay to buy GW2, and the people paying to buy GW2 are just not PvPers (in numbers larger than you currently see in PvP). There is nothing whatsoever they can do to make the sPvP numbers significantly large than they are from the existing pool of GW2 players, that would nto be straight up bribing players into not having fun.

Utter insanity, there is literally 2/3rds of the game dedicated to some form of Player Versus Player. Certainly SPvP was the vast lesser of what composes the GW2 trinity, but as previously stated from the gutter that was SPvP to what it can potentially become in HoT with Leagues, is a step in the right direction not just for current players but new ones. The price tag means nothing provided SPvP brings the experience to full-time SPvP players, especially those in LoL or any other ‘ESports’ who pay for arbitrary skins. And your blanket statements about how any PvE players won’t have fun in this new system is utterly unwarranted.

On the WvW side, well, if you are familiar with the GvG / OS debacle, the reason WvW masteries were brought into play, the refurbishing of the Borderland Maps with Ruin objectives. Any of those instances are Arenanet telling us that there is enough incentive to put resources into those things. Again proving that PvE isn’t the only realm that matters, PvP does to the populace.

Ohoni.6057:

5%, maybe 10%?

I mean, if you mean “how many of them want to improve at their own pace, over time, with no pressure on them to do so?” Then maybe closer to 80%+, but if you mean “how many want to ‘git gud’ so they can run hardcore content and get the rewards they want,” then yeah, like 10% or so.

That entire paragraph goes back on itself. You agree on the premise that a vast majority of the players who can’t get the skin they want immediately but will do so over a time, yet slightly ‘change the wording’ on the previous phrase creates a whole new %.

What you should have said was ‘If you mean “how many of them want to improve at their own pace, over time, with no pressure on them to do so?” Then maybe closer to 80%+’ because that is exactly what I meant, not your spin on it. If a player has the capacity to not keep trying the same old failed approach, to actually improve on how they play, they will at some point get what they want. This is no different than someone who is god-awful at jumping puzzles but wants those achievement points continuing to try again and again until they start jumping at different angles or from another side. It’s called PROGRESS.

Ohoni.6057:

Oh, probably like 60%+, plenty of those, mainly because they want people to play with in those high tier areas and are desperate to convert people, but again, most people don’t want to be converted.

We can agree on everything but the last bit you added. A lot of us players would love to help out others, we do it implicitly in this game by its very design. There’s no competing for mining nodes, or ‘tagging’ mobs, in PvE we are all cooperating for the same things. Certainly, there are a substantial minority who seek efficiency (like dungeons 80s only full zerk) which are a result of another fundamental issue with PvE we are all intimately familiar with. But if challenging content arrives, everyone will more or less be your ally.

Conski Deshan.2057:

I’ve asked for the thread to be locked, Since it’s really not going to be constructive.

There will never be consensus (or compromise apparently…)

Agree.

We could try to recap all the none A vs B and falacies to then create a constructive thread, with the arguemnts in favor and against different positions, some things both sides have in common and some general terminological misunderstanding.

However as things goes, the ones to post later will probably put anything and continue in both a vs b and falacies, instead of trying to make the debate progress.

Astralporing.1957:

phys.7689:

• 3) i didnt mean karma earning, i meant the fact that most karma items required you to do some specifc content to unlock said merchant. IE specific content for specific rewards (this is not just about hard content, its also about unique rewards)

Untrue. Most karma items didn’t need any unlocking. Others did require for someone to unlock the vendor, but that someone didn’t have to be you. In fact, you didn’t even need to be present on the same map during unlocking (see “LFG for Opened Balthasar Temple” times)

phys.7689:

• 6) there are other solutions beyond exclusive rewards, but exclusive rewards is simpler, and less likely to break down, or fail to achieve its goal.

That is actually highly debatable. You are completely ignoring here the fact that exclusivity brings with it just too many negative factors that need to be also considered.

phys.7689:

• 7) this true, the bad part about exclusives is that you may have to do something you dont like to get what you want. But this is still true with all the casual exclusives, like karma vendors, luminescent armor, achievement armor, titles, etc.

That’s because all exclusives are equally bad.

phys.7689:

• 8) this is the nail on the head here. Some peoples primary enjoyment comes from getting specific items they want. They may not enjoy that many other facets of the game. So for them, they want to be able to get anything by the means they do enjoy.
  I understand this beef, but i have yet to see them balance the get anything you want via whatever play you enjoy, in a manner that doesnt make most rewards unfullfilling and increase grind greatly. Id rather have to choose or not choose to do something i dont like, than have everything require an intense grind, and every reward be watered down based on how much people earn unintentionally, or when playing super optimally.

This is where we definitely not agree. Especially since i don’t think the negatives you described are unavoidable.

phys.7689:

• 9)regardless of how much you value how something looks, how rewarded you feel getting it will still be effected by knowledge of how it can be obtained. Many people may think that a low level sword you can buy from a vendor in the first town is the most awesome sword. Most people would still be annoyed if they gave that same sword as a reward for 10k Achievement points. because if they wanted that item, they would already have got it the easier way. Is no that they dont value the aestitic, its that the difficulty did not match the reward.

Well, if they already have it, then obviously they won’t need another.
And the current 10k AP box gives out skins you could have chosen at 1k ap if you wanted them. I didn’t notice anyone complaining about it so far.

most karma armors require you to complete a heart. “but outside Orr, players must complete renown hearts before accessing a karma merchant’s inventory”

explain how you would make non exclusive items work? universal currency like ohoni says?
many flaws there, much of which you see already with gold, and other currencies

• encourages farming the path of least resistance
• must be balanced across total earned and total expended, not over individual user experience
• exploits bug and unintended play effect every item that can be bought
• earning overtime lead to build ups of currency, but for new content they want people to have to play again, so either prices go up, or they have to invent new currencies.
• add to that they have to properly guess the relative ease/time sinks of various contents after players learn the ropes.
• universal currency would be given all over the place, so things would be more expensive because they assume you already have X currency just from doing regular stuff

we have seen all these problems, these are the natural results of these type of systems.

the only negative aspect of unique sources for items is you may not be able to get every cosmetic you want without playing specific content. But this is already the reality of the game.

Or perhaps it comes down to ANet wanting to try to please both camps, regardless of their relative size.

Perhaps, but as Conshki pointed out, it really isn’t possible to please both sides at once, not entirely. You have to give some people less than what would satisfy them or the other side would not be happy.

Since your desires are opposed to theirs, that would mean that some rewards will be exclusive, and some not.

But see, that is not a compromise, because the quantity of rewards that are exclusive is completely irrelevant. There are hundreds of skins in this game. Speaking just for me personally, I like maybe a couple dozen. If I’m just basing my response on what matters to me, and not caring about anyone else, then if you tell me that all of those skins are non-exclusive, and the only exclusive ones are ones I couldn’t care less about, then on a personal level I would be fine with that. If you tell me that half of those skins are in the “exclusive” category then you’ve accomplished nothing by me. That’s the problem, you can’t please people with “only some of the skins are exclusive,” if that “some” group is inclusive of anything they might actually want.

That is not a compromise, that is the “pro exclusivity” side getting everything that they could reasonably expect to get. Sometimes there are problems where you can’t just “split the baby in half and each party gets their half.”

I’ve seen people in this thread saying stuff like farming SW should be a viable way to earn such cgc rewards. That is not proportional effort. Now, maybe you don’t think that, but it’s definitely been said in this thread.

That really depends on how much you have to farm. Is farming SW for one hour proportional effort to running a dungeon for one hour? No. Is farming SW for two hours proportional to running a dungeon for one hour? Yeah, probably. So long as the exchange rate is right, it balances out. Personally though, I think they need to tighten up how SW works, you shouldn’t be able to just chest farm, the rewards should come from actually engaging the content (but ANet are the ones that currently think it should be a profitable way to play, so argue with them about it).

Utter insanity, there is literally 2/3rds of the game dedicated to some form of Player Versus Player.

Lol, 2/3 of the gameplay systems, but not 2/3 of the actual players by ANY stretch. The game is broken up into three systems because each represents a very distinct gameplay style that mixes poorly with the other. Don’t let that confuse you into believing that they are each equally as important to the players, or the developers. sPvP is a sideshow at best.

On the WvW side, well, if you are familiar with the GvG / OS debacle, the reason WvW masteries were brought into play, the refurbishing of the Borderland Maps with Ruin objectives. Any of those instances are Arenanet telling us that there is enough incentive to put resources into those things. Again proving that PvE isn’t the only realm that matters, PvP does to the populace.

They would like to see sPvP and WvW succeed, which is why they waste so much time and good will updating it and trying to figure out new ways to bribe their PvE players into playing it, but the players never bite.

That entire paragraph goes back on itself. You agree on the premise that a vast majority of the players who can’t get the skin they want immediately but will do so over a time, yet slightly ‘change the wording’ on the previous phrase creates a whole new %.

If you believe that then you don’t understand my point at all. My point is, I’m pretty good at the game, and I’m certainly a lot better than when I started, and hope to get better still. But if you put an objective in front of me and tell me “you need to get better if you want to get this thing,” then that does not encourage me, it only frustrates me. I do not want to get better because you tell me to get better, I want to get better at whatever pace I get better, and do not want to wait to get that reward until I have.

So if you ask me how many players have any interest in ever improving, then sure, most of them probably. But if you ask me how many players would be satisfied with the answer “get better at the game” as a reason to why they cannot have something that they want, then that number is much much smaller.

We can agree on everything but the last bit you added. A lot of us players would love to help out others, we do it implicitly in this game by its very design. There’s no competing for mining nodes, or ‘tagging’ mobs, in PvE we are all cooperating for the same things. Certainly, there are a substantial minority who seek efficiency (like dungeons 80s only full zerk) which are a result of another fundamental issue with PvE we are all intimately familiar with. But if challenging content arrives, everyone will more or less be your ally.

Sure, and I don’t dispute that, I appreciate their help when offered, and offer my own help any time I can, we have a great community. I’m just saying, jn this case I don’t need them to be my ally, I just need them to understand that I don’t want to do that content, and don’t want to have to do it to get any rewards I might want. I don’t need their help, I just need them to not get in my way.