Guild Wars 2

Some people care about their name being out there as Tha Best. Some people are competitive. Some people invest hundreds of hours in getting the best possible time in 20 year old platformers. Will most people care? Probably not. But it adds something for those who do. And it’s not like its complicated to implement. High scores in arcade games were invented longer ago than most gamers have been alive.

Shoe.5821:

Some people care about their name being out there as Tha Best. Some people are competitive. Some people invest hundreds of hours in getting the best possible time in 20 year old platformers. Will most people care? Probably not. But it adds something for those who do. And it’s not like its complicated to implement. High scores in arcade games were invented longer ago than most gamers have been alive.

Harper.4173:

Very few people care about numbers or names on a list – most care about gold, items and cosmetic benefits. You can’t motivate people with a list – very few of them will care about it.

Notice how Harper mentioned very few people. Not none, but few. No one is arguing that there would be no interest in highscores.

The argument he was making was that this alone would not keep a majority of the playerbase interested. I have to agree with him on this.

It’s already hard enough to keep many gamers interested without a WoW type gear treadmill that keeps devaluing your items, let alone leave people to figure out their own endgame. GW2 endgame is fashion wars, plain and simple.

i guess that did not compute since we already know raids -> legendaries

if legendaries arn’t enough of a reward what is

it would be surprising if regular loot, guild stuff, and perhaps mastery points wernt also a part of this

We have dungeons speed run leaderboards. Look how many people care about it.

Shoe.5821:

Very few people care about numbers or names on a list – most care about gold, items and cosmetic benefits. You can’t motivate people with a list – very few of them will care about it.

Clearly you’ve never worked in Hollywood

Do you think anyone in Hollywood would lift a finger to do what they do if they weren’t also immensely rich and well paid?

Shoe.5821:

Some people care about their name being out there as Tha Best. Some people are competitive. Some people invest hundreds of hours in getting the best possible time in 20 year old platformers. Will most people care? Probably not. But it adds something for those who do. And it’s not like its complicated to implement. High scores in arcade games were invented longer ago than most gamers have been alive.

Also vanity and ego only work if you have recognition – most of the player base doesn’t care about current dungeon speed clearing records – and I would speculate most players won’t care about Raid speed clearing records.

So then how do you stroke your ego? You’re the best at something not many care about. Does that float a person’s boat? Maybe for some but not for many.

The appeal of being recognized, famous, acknowledged is there – but you must have a significant number of people giving you their attention in order for it to be gratifying.

This is real for Hollywood stars (your earlier example) because nearly anyone can recognize them. And it might be true that people would do Raids for the “prestige” only if the prestige was similar to that of a Hollywood superstar – however that won’t happen.

Our community’s obsession with “fast runs” and “speed clears” manifested through the “zerker meta” doesn’t derive from the desire to be competitive or to show off speed – it derives from the desire of getting loot really really fast and with little effort.

I’ll counter with a question – if high scores and leaderboards were enough back then why is it that today’s games reward you with items – cosmetic or gameplay-related at almost every turn?
Is it perhaps because lederboards, high scores and being first is no longer enough?

It’s like you’ve never even heard of starving artists~

Snide commentary aside, there is a fame economy in cinema. Getting your name officially credited opens up doors that were closed to you when you were just some schlub. That’s not just for big name actors, it’s for all those people in the credits list.

You can also look at academia, and the often cuthroat battles to get on projects or to get credited as an author or coauthor.

A third place to look is executives of large companies. A lot of them are rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and obtaining wealth makes functionally no difference in their day to day lives. Rather, prestige and power are what matters (Although having a bigger salary, or doing ostentatiously expensive things with money often = prestige)\

EDIT:

I’ll counter with a question – if high scores and leaderboards were enough back then why is it that today’s games reward you with items – cosmetic or gameplay-related at almost every turn?
Is it perhaps because lederboards, high scores and being first is no longer enough?

it doesn’t have to be enough! nor did I say it was enuff. there’s already rewards for raids other than prestige. If legendary items arn’t enough I don’t know what is~

though if you want to be philosophical about it, pretty much every endgame reward is one of prestige and keeping up with the Joneses.

the core reward people receive from playing a game is the satisfaction and enjoyment derived from doing a thing well and/or solving problems. There’s also the competitive impulse, striving to be better than someone else either directly or indirectly. If you rely just on Pavlovian shinies your game fails.

Shoe.5821:

It’s like you’ve never even heard of starving artists~

I am not contesting their existence – merely saying they are too few to matter compared to the general population.
Anet can’t invest development time into something only a handful of players will want to keep playing.

I know what you’re saying – but ultimately there aren’t enough benefits to be gained by being “in-game famous” for it to matter as much or more than actual items and cosmetic loot.

Also – prestige and all – like I said – matter when you’re already rich – eg – already have all the things you want and will ever want.
Until you have them people usually care more about tangible, material things.

the core reward people receive from playing a game is the satisfaction and enjoyment derived from doing a thing well and/or solving problems.

This is not true for MMOs – where you grind the same thing over and over and over hundreds to thousands of times.
The satisfaction here derives from acquiring things that are considered rare and that not a lot of people have thus creating the “i’m better than you because I have this” situation.
That or the social “multiplayer” aspect of it.

All I’m trying to point out here is that Raids -unless they come with rewards that matter ( and they do) will most likely never be relevant for the majority players.

Harper.4173:

Very few people care about numbers or names on a list – most care about gold, items and cosmetic benefits. You can’t motivate people with a list – very few of them will care about it.

Also – you can’t make content both easy and hard – easy to get done but difficult to speed clear. Because if the content is easy enough to begin with simply doing those things faster will clear it faster.

The fact that more players will be sad is true – but it should motivate them to improve – since all games should have you constantly striving for something – and ideally through that strife and struggle should come self-improvement as a player.

For content to have a significant lifespan and staying power in an MMO you have to make it repeatable – and people won’t repeat content and raids for the sake of “prestige” – they will do it once and be content with being able to get a really fast run and then won’t care about it – 1,2,3,4 seconds do not matter that much to people.

What matters are practical rewards something you can get for yourself – so for that
reason these real, tangible rewards are the factor that will motivate people to do the content over and over and over again.

Ask yourself this – if the 1 – 3 gold reward at the end of each dungeon got removed – how many people would still run dungeons?
What if you also remove tokens and skins? How many people would still run dungeons?

It’s the practical rewards that keep people playing.

And here I thought you people wanted challenging content for its own sake!

Funny how that argument immediately went by the wayside once Anet started kowtowing to you.

Seeing how the meta discussion got derailed into incentive. I don’t know if anyone is familiar with this paper . I found it pretty useful to understand playing styles and incentives in general. That being said unless someone can accurately pole in the Gw2 community for what reasons they play stating ‘reason X is the main reason players will do thing X’ is pretty arbitrary.

I also notice arguments over semantics on what meta means. (IF)Meta being the most widely accepted and proven way to accomplish thing X by doing actions A instead of doing actions b,c,d, etc. Then it simply comes down to optimization. And optimization is something that won’t go away in gaming. Shown by the amazing amount of speed clears of numerous games not limited to MMOs <optimizing time and resources>. Solution? All feasible actions that can be done to do thing X should have equal weight in completing thing X successfully with individual skill, knowledge, communication factors ignored.

So, in theory a group of all clerics should be able to clear dungeon X as fast as a group of Zerkers, dire, etc. \o/

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Harper.4173:

Very few people care about numbers or names on a list – most care about gold, items and cosmetic benefits. You can’t motivate people with a list – very few of them will care about it.

Also – you can’t make content both easy and hard – easy to get done but difficult to speed clear. Because if the content is easy enough to begin with simply doing those things faster will clear it faster.

The fact that more players will be sad is true – but it should motivate them to improve – since all games should have you constantly striving for something – and ideally through that strife and struggle should come self-improvement as a player.

For content to have a significant lifespan and staying power in an MMO you have to make it repeatable – and people won’t repeat content and raids for the sake of “prestige” – they will do it once and be content with being able to get a really fast run and then won’t care about it – 1,2,3,4 seconds do not matter that much to people.

What matters are practical rewards something you can get for yourself – so for that
reason these real, tangible rewards are the factor that will motivate people to do the content over and over and over again.

Ask yourself this – if the 1 – 3 gold reward at the end of each dungeon got removed – how many people would still run dungeons?
What if you also remove tokens and skins? How many people would still run dungeons?

It’s the practical rewards that keep people playing.

And here I thought you people wanted challenging content for its own sake!

Funny how that argument immediately went by the wayside once Anet started kowtowing to you.

Challenging content requires good loot or we end up with something like Aetherpath. Why do something that’s hard when you can just do the easy things that reward more?

Also the current discussion went totally off road.

Raids need to be challenging, otherwise everybody will run it once per week and everybody will have the legendary armor at the same time.

Also not many will “speed-run” it anyway simply because of the weekly loot and that’s a good thing. As I said earlier the meta(s) will be about just COMPLETING the raid and NOT about finishing it FAST.

You won’t lose much time since it’s only once per week and since all-full zerker might not be possible the optimal completion time won’t be that much higher anyway.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Harper.4173:

Very few people care about numbers or names on a list – most care about gold, items and cosmetic benefits. You can’t motivate people with a list – very few of them will care about it.

Also – you can’t make content both easy and hard – easy to get done but difficult to speed clear. Because if the content is easy enough to begin with simply doing those things faster will clear it faster.

The fact that more players will be sad is true – but it should motivate them to improve – since all games should have you constantly striving for something – and ideally through that strife and struggle should come self-improvement as a player.

For content to have a significant lifespan and staying power in an MMO you have to make it repeatable – and people won’t repeat content and raids for the sake of “prestige” – they will do it once and be content with being able to get a really fast run and then won’t care about it – 1,2,3,4 seconds do not matter that much to people.

What matters are practical rewards something you can get for yourself – so for that
reason these real, tangible rewards are the factor that will motivate people to do the content over and over and over again.

Ask yourself this – if the 1 – 3 gold reward at the end of each dungeon got removed – how many people would still run dungeons?
What if you also remove tokens and skins? How many people would still run dungeons?

It’s the practical rewards that keep people playing.

And here I thought you people wanted challenging content for its own sake!

Funny how that argument immediately went by the wayside once Anet started kowtowing to you.

And here I am wondering when exactly during my entire posting history on these forums have I asked for “challenging content” just for the sake of challenge.
When have I not asked for better or unique rewards attached to said content?
Never – in case you were wondering – so please don’t lump me into “you people” – when obviously you don’t even know what I want.

what do you want? playing the game in order to get rewards that only matter in the game is purposeless.

Neox.3497:

Challenging content requires good loot or we end up with something like Aetherpath. Why do something that’s hard when you can just do the easy things that reward more?

Also the current discussion went totally off road.

Raids need to be challenging, otherwise everybody will run it once per week and everybody will have the legendary armor at the same time.

Also not many will “speed-run” it anyway simply because of the weekly loot and that’s a good thing. As I said earlier the meta(s) will be about just COMPLETING the raid and NOT about finishing it FAST.

You won’t lose much time since it’s only once per week and since all-full zerker might not be possible the optimal completion time won’t be that much higher anyway.

Challenging content and arguably any part of a game needs to tend to all/most of the types of player ‘suits’ in reference to the paper I linked in a previous post. Good loot isn’t enough to get a majority to play the content continuously or more than they are now at least. Aetherblade is a great example of this. I played for exploring <exploring new content>, achievements <achiever get new kitten>, and the importance of comms with my guild <social>. So this basically covers 3/4 of the major groups players may fall in.

Problem that happened is that after you farmed achievments, beat it a couple of times, and lose the social appeal <not pugs>. I personally lost interest in the path. NOT just because of lack of rewards. So, really it’s catering towards more than one type of incentive. Not just some reward you get daily which is enough to get people to play ‘non challenging’ content, relative to Aetherblade that is.

jadaniel.4910:

Seeing how the meta discussion got derailed into incentive. I don’t know if anyone is familiar with this paper . I found it pretty useful to understand playing styles and incentives in general. That being said unless someone can accurately pole in the Gw2 community for what reasons they play stating ‘reason X is the main reason players will do thing X’ is pretty arbitrary.

I also notice arguments over semantics on what meta means. (IF)Meta being the most widely accepted and proven way to accomplish thing X by doing actions A instead of doing actions b,c,d, etc. Then it simply comes down to optimization. And optimization is something that won’t go away in gaming. Shown by the amazing amount of speed clears of numerous games not limited to MMOs <optimizing time and resources>. Solution? All feasible actions that can be done to do thing X should have equal weight in completing thing X successfully with individual skill, knowledge, communication factors ignored.

So, in theory a group of all clerics should be able to clear dungeon X as fast as a group of Zerkers, dire, etc. \o/

That’s where my hope comes that you won’t be able to do the content with only 10xA or 10xD, but that you can or you MUST do the content with 5xA and 5xD or 3xA, 2xB, 2xC and 3xD or 5xB and 5xC or any other combination.

B and C would be a mix of A and D.

For example~:
A = Berserker’s
B = Soldier’s
C = Knight’s
D = Nomad’s

I know in practice it’s not that simple but going in that direction would be great. Add the “requirement” of 2 tanks, 2 healer, 4 pure damage dealer 2 condition damage dealer and on paper pretty much every set could be viable in the the right team composistion without taking 5x longer to complete the content.

And as I said on paper, in practice this might not be that easy to implement. Additionally there comes the profession balance, but that’s another topic.

Neox.3497:

That’s where my hope comes that you won’t be able to do the content with only 10xA or 10xD, but that you can or you MUST do the content with 5xA and 5xD or 3xA, 2xB, 2xC and 3xD or 5xB and 5xC or any other combination.

B and C would be a mix of A and D.

For example~:
A = Berserker’s
B = Soldier’s
C = Knight’s
D = Nomad’s

I know in practice it’s not that simple but going in that direction would be great. Add the “requirement” of 2 tanks, 2 healer, 4 pure damage dealer 2 condition damage dealer and on paper pretty much every set could be viable in the the right team composistion without taking 5x longer to complete the content.

And as I said on paper, in practice this might not be that easy to implement. Additionally there comes the profession balance, but that’s another topic.

I hope so as well. The last comment I made was a little sarcastic, but the point is still there. Like you said easier said than done, but with the steering the composition away from a certain top tier meta would be a great start. I think it impossible to break away from meta completely, but with the ability to not HAVE to gear a certain way every time and avoiding ‘zerk only’ posts would be nice.

I think the nature of the game it just makes sense that it’d be way more difficult, using your example, to just have 10Ds etc, not saying it can’t be done, but definitely you see the disadvantages of having just one class set. However, you don’t ‘HAVE’ to which is the key. =]

Also – you can’t make content both easy and hard – easy to get done but difficult to speed clear. Because if the content is easy enough to begin with simply doing those things faster will clear it faster.

But speed clearing is about doing things as efficiently as possible. You can certainly make content where a low-meta group can clear a boss, but takes 5 minutes to do so, and then have it balanced in such a way that a more-meta team could kill it in 3, and an absolute peak team with all the best strategies could do it in 2 or less. That isn’t just down to HP vs. DPS either, it can involve interrupting various phases, removing buffs, applying weaknesses, various elements that would tweak the fight above and beyond just “spam your rotation,” while still allowing less optimal teams to succeed, just taking longer to do so.

The fact that more players will be sad is true – but it should motivate them to improve – since all games should have you constantly striving for something – and ideally through that strife and struggle should come self-improvement as a player.

Nope, some players respond well to this idea, most don’t, and shouldn’t have to. For most players, self improvement does not come from failing repeatedly until they eventually succeed, it comes from succeeding repeatedly but doing it better and more efficiently each time. For most players, if they fail something repeatedly, they just go do something else, maybe in some other game.

For content to have a significant lifespan and staying power in an MMO you have to make it repeatable – and people won’t repeat content and raids for the sake of “prestige” – they will do it once and be content with being able to get a really fast run and then won’t care about it – 1,2,3,4 seconds do not matter that much to people.

What matters are practical rewards something you can get for yourself – so for that
reason these real, tangible rewards are the factor that will motivate people to do the content over and over and over again.

And the practical rewards should be good, but they should be good for everyone, not just the top 10%. Everyone who does the content should get those rewards, if people want to fight over who’s the “best” then they can do so, but that should be a separate thing, unrelated to rewards.

Ask yourself this – if the 1 – 3 gold reward at the end of each dungeon got removed – how many people would still run dungeons?
What if you also remove tokens and skins? How many people would still run dungeons?

Again, nobody is suggesting removing rewards. Dungeons and raids should offer rewards comparable to the time and effort it takes to complete them.

Notice how Harper mentioned very few people. Not none, but few. No one is arguing that there would be no interest in highscores.

The argument he was making was that this alone would not keep a majority of the playerbase interested. I have to agree with him on this.

Right, but this is why the basic completion and basic rewards should be for the majority of players, something within their grasp. For the majority that strives to go above and beyond the basic level, that is what leaderboards would be for.

So, from what’s been shown from raids, there are a few things I’ve noticed.

DPS meta still exists. I think the groups clearing Vale Guardian were full zerk, except for the 4 Rabid engineers which I presume was only because sinister was unavailable.

There is room for dedicated support, however this was always filled by druid. No ventari revs or ele heals.
Also, druid seems to still run zerk gear. Apparently this will change as they are lowering Druids base healing, though, so at the very least each standard group will be forced to take 1x clerics druid and 4x sinister engis.
Build diversity or nah.

tl;dr the new meta doesn’t seem too different stat-wise, but seems even stricter profession-wise.
I hope you love what you created, dudes.

Dungeon/raid metas are never going to have stat diversity beyond the stats best for a role. Be happy there were more roles.

Of kittening course there always will be a meta. What ArenaNet needs to do is to change the meta so it’s not zerker only. The point with raids was to require different stat combinations and more supportive/defensive skills.

By looking at the raid this weekend, you really needed a lot of dps, and not so much healing and defensive abillities. There was a squad that were 8 dps, 1 healer and 1 hybrid defensive/dps. And they completed it the first day. Give them 1 week and they can complete it with 10 dps.

People need to decide if they are meta players or not. The majority of players that do group content are not meta players and do not care what build you are.

Then there are meta players who base all group content around the most optimal builds and class setup. Meta players can play with other meta players, non-meta players can play with non-meta players. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s how its been in every game with group content.

For example, in WoW (at least back in Vanilla-WoTLK days), meta was effectively 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 DPS. You wanted tank to be a tanky/taunty build, healer to be a healer build, and DPS to be highest DPS build. Was there a chance to get a group together with 3 tanks and 2 DPS, sure I guess you could, but it’s not optimal and it slows you down, and often times cause you to fail.

It’s the same concept here. The only difference in GW2 is that since there are no hard trinity roles, you have a more leeway in terms of not needing the most optimal setup. You don’t need a healer or tank, for example, as everyone can take care of themselves for the most part. But when it comes to optimal raid setup, it may very well be 2 zerk warriors, 4 rabid engies, 3 zerk eles, and a druid or whatever it ends up being.

Do you need to go optimal? Probably not, but people have a right to require an optimal setup if that’s what they want to play. As long as it is clear they only want meta and specific classes, then there’s really no reason to care. Just don’t join their groups, its that simple.

Personally I could care less about optimal, but I also don’t want to end up with a whole team of cleric rangers or something, so even I have standards.

Draknar.5748:

People need to decide if they are meta players or not. The majority of players that do group content are not meta players and do not care what build you are.

Then there are meta players who base all group content around the most optimal builds and class setup. Meta players can play with other meta players, non-meta players can play with non-meta players. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s how its been in every game with group content.

For example, in WoW (at least back in Vanilla-WoTLK days), meta was effectively 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 DPS. You wanted tank to be a tanky/taunty build, healer to be a healer build, and DPS to be highest DPS build. Was there a chance to get a group together with 3 tanks and 2 DPS, sure I guess you could, but it’s not optimal and it slows you down, and often times cause you to fail.

It’s the same concept here. The only difference in GW2 is that since there are no hard trinity roles, you have a more leeway in terms of not needing the most optimal setup. You don’t need a healer or tank, for example, as everyone can take care of themselves for the most part. But when it comes to optimal raid setup, it may very well be 2 zerk warriors, 4 rabid engies, 3 zerk eles, and a druid or whatever it ends up being.

Do you need to go optimal? Probably not, but people have a right to require an optimal setup if that’s what they want to play. As long as it is clear they only want meta and specific classes, then there’s really no reason to care. Just don’t join their groups, its that simple.

Personally I could care less about optimal, but I also don’t want to end up with a whole team of cleric rangers or something, so even I have standards.

It’s a pretty good example, but it breaks down when you say 1 tank and 4 dps in WoW because a healer is absolutely necessary for content that you’re not extremely outgeared for.

Also someone is going to say it’s not that simple because they want everyone to cater to them it’s best just to ignore them.