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Forgive me if this is posted elsewhere – I’ve been looking for something on this and haven’t come across any threads yet.
Prior to HoT, I did a lot of SW farming for gold – both event maps and chest farms. Since HoT dropped, I noticed some changes in the map. Namely, there seems to be half as many bandit chests in the map, sw shovel drops have been nerfed significantly (I only got 2 in a recent one hour run), and it seems you need to see the majority of events through to conclusion in order to receive credit rather than tagging and running.
So, my first question – are these experiences limited to me or has anyone else come across them? I thought I read something on the shovels before, but I wanted to confirm.
Second question – is SW still worth it for gold grinding? I like the map and the flow of events, but I’ve been hurting for gold since HoT dropped because of the mentioned nerfs. I know dungeons got their rewards moved to fractals and fractals are now gated behind masteries, so I’m looking back at SW or world bosses for gold grinding.
Thoughts?
They can still create very challenging content that can be enjoyed by people who play the game 1 hour a time, but they chose to create raids that are challenging in the sense that it is difficult for many to come up with sufficient amount of time for it. This has nothing to do with player skills.
You say that they can still create challenging content that can be enjoyed 1 hour at a time – I think I need some examples. What elements of the PvE world are challenging yet take less than an hour to complete?
For the sake of argument, let’s ignore any content that utilizes zergs, like worldbosses. Zerg gameplay isn’t challenging.
Fractals, WvW, and PvP have one thing in common: they are not time sinks. You can enjoy them even if you play the game for under 1 hour a day (Fractals may require more time, but they are going to change that in HOT so that you can choose to do 1 instance instead of 4 random ones). However raids = time sinks for almost all MMORPG games without a proper implementation of LFR. If they indeed want to give players a viable way to clear a raid by raiding one hour every few days even if players have to spread the effort over multiple years, they should have advertised it since this will be very different from raids in other MMO.
I think they chose to market raids this way deliberately to appeal to that specific community of gamers. They’ve also chosen to advertise their lack of gating and went so far as to suggest ascended items, not require them (although I may not have up to date information). In this way, they’re splitting the difference by appealing to players who have the ability to spend a lot of time on difficult content while also keeping that content open to players who may want to experiment with them.
There are plenty of alternative MMOs out there, so if ANet wants GW2 to succeed, they need to keep diversifying their content and drawing in new players. They’ve chosen not to compromise their current player base to do so by making all their content accessible, if challenging. I think it’s too easy to forget that when we get up in arms about them trying to keep the game successful.
I’m a casual player that plays fairly often, and I find the prospect of raids and the difficulty they entail to be exciting. I left the game for a while because I hit 80, got my map completion, and got bored. You can only run the same events so often before they get boring, particularly when the rewards are minimal. The game has never been a stat treadmill, so unless you value the experience itself, you’ve got nothing to aspire to. There’s nothing wrong with valuing the experience, but some people do get bored of it.
Fractals, WvW, and PvP cater to different groups inside of the community but they’re available to everyone. If you enjoy PvE, why complain about WvW? If you enjoy dungeons, why complain about Fractals? What’s wrong with ANet offering content that other people would find engaging? All told, the game offers a little of everything to everyone, allowing the players to focus on what they want to spend their time on – and that’s good.
Raids are the same thing. Don’t like raiding? Don’t do them. Enjoy the story and Verdent Brink maps to your hearts content. Want to experience raiding? Give it a go – nothing’s stopping you. The only requirement is a little bit of gold and greater attention to game mechanics. It’s not gated nearly as drastically as raids in other mmos – ANet has done a great job of making it accessible to those who want to participate in it.
Bottom line though, we don’t know what the raids will be like or how long they’ll take to complete. ANet’s concept of ‘hard’ isn’t much to go by. They redesigned Tequatl to be ‘hard’ yet there are maps full of people who take him down at server reset every night. We’ll see once more details are released just how difficult these raids will be and what effect they’ll have on the community.
The Druid also has some synergy with self-sustaining condi builds. Has anyone tried such a build? I ran one in PvP and it was okay, but I’m not the best pvper or theorycrafter to tell if its actually viable. The sigils provide some good aoe effects and the divine form allos for some solid heals, which could keep you up as you keep close to an enemy with a sword/axe/torch build. Thoughts?
Masteries provide a viable way to provide everything a quest could, in this context. I didn’t know about the Lore Mastery tracks in HoT, but I think that might very well be the way to go. Maybe create Tracks for sub-plots in Tyria and carry out small-scale storytelling like that…. yeah, lol, that’s a really cool idea! It’s a good way to bypass quests altogether.
I think that’s what I would like to see scattered among the LS updates – Mastery Tracks that serve as scavenger hunts/plotlines for side stories in Tyria. Then again, do you think they would work in this regard since you unlock points in the track by ‘leveling up’ after 80? That is, do you think it’d be worthwhile to invest your points in as opposed to a track that influences gameplay, or do you think that these would be a good way to keep people investing points when they complete their gameplay tracks?
I got excited by the idea of being tasked with locating things in dungeons and JPs, lol. I think that’s a viable idea. You don’t necessarily need a formal quest so much as a sort of Collections tab where you can track your findings. Or perhaps in the logbook that tracks LS progress – you could turn it into a full logbook that tracks your efforts in completing lore from across the world.
That would definitely be something for the players interested in lore as well as collectors, and could easily be expanded on with tiered reward systems. What about more contemporary storylines, though? Do you think the same system could be used to, say, help dig up dirt on Ellen Kiel for Evon Gnashblade to use in the future, or some such thing?
That’s mostly what I’m interested – some additional content that wouldn’t need big cutscenes or productions to add into the game. They could be ways to tell smaller stories set across the world, or in the cities, which would encourage more people to poke around them. Quests/Expanded Hearts could be a potential way to do that.
I’m intrigued by what Randulf said, though. Scavenger hunts can be fun, and could be a way to bring attention to past events/old lore.
I think the way Mawdrey and the Karka hunt and also the Marriners Plaque achievement should be the way they continue to plug lore during “downtimes” rather than traditional quests. These fit the game much better and as Marriner showed, can really highlight the lore in exceptional ways.
And are 10x more fun imo.
Interesting! So put in more pieces of lore scattered about the world – maybe hidden in dialogue – and possibly set up an Achievement track to reward searching them out?
As they’re currently implemented, Hearts have you working in a limited area for a specific task – namely helping out the NPC perform some task. Is there room in the game – or could the game benefit from – a system that sends players trekking across a map, or multiple map, to uncover information for an NPC? The Living Story does a good job of it on a grand scale, furthering the primary plot of the game, but there are side characters, side plots, and background information that could benefit by some low-key attention. Would it be better for the game to leave them in the background until a major plot point require them or would it be interesting to explore those stories between updates?
Yeah but you’re doing the same thing in that limited area as you would be if you had gone outside of the map.
Perhaps. Given how people treat the hearts – like you said, players tend to power through them – do you think that a system that would push players out of the map and back, revealing more information about the history of the world/actions of the side-characters/etc would be similarly overlooked and potentially pointless?
As they’re currently implemented, Hearts have you working in a limited area for a specific task – namely helping out the NPC perform some task. Is there room in the game – or could the game benefit from – a system that sends players trekking across a map, or multiple map, to uncover information for an NPC? The Living Story does a good job of it on a grand scale, furthering the primary plot of the game, but there are side characters, side plots, and background information that could benefit by some low-key attention. Would it be better for the game to leave them in the background until a major plot point require them or would it be interesting to explore those stories between updates?
I know ANet’s stance regarding quests – I’m just curious as to whether its a good stance to stick to or if quests might still have a place within the framework they’ve built. They can’t address everything in the game through Living Story and expansions, and people have complained in the past about all the focus on the dragons when there’s so many other forces at work – so why would quests not work in this environment? Is ANet right in avoiding them or do people feel differently?
Hey all, was looking for a discussion on whether quests would be truly detrimental to GW2 or if they could offer potential benefits to the game. I apologize if a topic like this already exists – I wasn’t able to find it, and I’d be happy to post there if someone can share a link.
My friends and I were discussing the topic recently, and while we don’t have an issue with the Dynamic Event system, we felt that the system limits our experience to what’s currently going on in Tyria. With so much interesting lore only hinted at by the progression of the Living Story, we felt that traditional quests – particularly optional side quests – could help players get acquainted with other elements of Tyria that aren’t the focus of the Living Story, Personal Story, or Heart of Thorns. That ‘quest packs’ could be released between chapters of the story to encourage players to revisit old maps and learn more about the game world.
It was just an idle conversation, but I’m curious as to what the community thinks about quests and whether or not implementing them would be a good idea.