Showing Posts For Shifty.5187:
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the for gem shop reason just doesnt add up in my opinion.
…
how many people who find it hard to wait 15 days to get a single piece will get the credit card and change that 15 days into $24 ?
I fully agree.
Nothing, I completely agree 100% with all you said. My only issue is can you imagine any thing you could put in a game thakittens combined effort-time is at least 15 days and which is also fun to play? Personally I cannot. When I look at other games, its either farm the same raid (which I hate and wouldnt find fun) or farm a ton of mats which is also not fun. Do you have any suggestions?
I think Guild Wars 2 is perfectly suited to deal with this issue. They have a variety of activities that reward you; specifically with gold. You can do dungeon runs, run events, do WvW, sell your loot and rare finds, get friends to help you with gold, etc. After a while you can then buy the item you want, all the while having had fun getting that gold.
Usually there are some activities in the game that reward you with the most gold (CoF I guess) and then some people are drawn to that to get the item as quickly as possible but perhaps having less fun. This is just nearly impossible to solve and I don’t think it’s necessary to solve.
Although I think gold is great, I guess it is a bit less fun to just buy an item. Perhaps some kind of scavenger hunt type of activity is more fun.
and i think the most obvious reason is money
keep people logging in and you have higher chance to sell on gemstore
I’m naive enough to believe this is not their main motivation. I think they just want to give people stuff to strive for that will keep them busy for a long time, and also to level the playing ground between hardcore players and casuals.
They’re not talking days now either but each requirement defines that in various ways.
A piece of T3 cultural armor costing 20g doesnt directly state that said piece is meant to take 10 days to earn but for most people it will take 10 days to earn 20g either way
Of course, because effort is confounded with time: all actions take time to perform. But that is not to say that the time aspect of it is what drives the intention behind it.
The value of an item is in part determined by how hard it is to get, and usually this is a combination of effort and time. With the time-gated content it is just time, no effort, and therefore: wrong.
Get rid of time-gated content, make stuff effortful (and hopefully fun) to get, and don’t care that some people go all psycho on it and get it within a few days. What’s wrong with that approach?
They clearly want ascended gear to take 15 days at least to earn.
Before time-gated mechanisms in games not a single designer talked about getting items in terms of days. It’s always been simply effort. Do X to get item Y. Not do insubstantial thing X for every day to get item Y after Z days.
They’re wrong in artificially dragging out content. Let’s not forget that this assumption of theirs is worth questioning.
The Obsidian armor wasnt BiS… go for I dont know named exotics for example… hmm like say vision of the mists and you can get that same experiance more or less.
here’s a list of hard to craft thingies
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge/Equipment
Obsidian armor wasn’t BiS indeed, and I yet I had a lot of fun getting it.
Anyway, I’m not someone who needs stuff to do in GW2, I have plenty to do in it. That’s part of the reason I want to get rid of Dailies and other time-gated kittenry. No need for them.
I’m reminded by my last GW1 days where I decided to go for 50 HoM points. The last thing I needed was Obsidian armor and I set out to get it by selling everything I could sell and farming Fissure of Woe.
It was great hooking up with people to do that difficult content, performing your essential task in the speed run, being glad someone hands you a few ectos and obsidian shards because he doesn’t need them, finding a rare drop you can sell, all to acquire that piece of gear you want. I had fun every step of the way, although it closely resembles farming.
Almost all of that is gone with time-gated, non-tradeable items. I find that sad.
Not at all, I dont think casuals should be put on par with hardcore players, they cant. Dailies dont make them on par either. I think they should be made to suffer because of hardcore players.
There’s a typo here I think. =p
A hardcore player who plays 8hrs a day farming away every minute can make 16g a day easily I have no doubt of that. that means pricing a single ascended gear for such a hardcore play at 250g is reasonable. But a casual who only plays weekends will never be able to afford that. The hardcore will need 15 days, the casual will well never manage. Dailies equalize that to a point. Using laurels the hardcore player will get the ascended piece in 10 days. The casual will get it in a month. They’re not on par but the casual isnt being left out.
I understand your reasoning, but there are a few issues. I simply disagree with the idea that it should take people at least 20 days to get some gear. I have 0 problems with a super hardcore player getting gear within a day of its release. Usually that’s not possible since players need to go through some kind of content to get it, but after a while it will appear in the TP and people with gold can buy it. I see no problem there. (Although, playing the TP I find problematic but that’s a problem no matter where we end up gear-wise).
That wouldnt work. Ascended gear itself is a good example. You dont need, I myself am proof 950hrs played all kinds of content in the game and dont have a single ascended item on me. Yet casuals still want it right? Also unlike gw1, gw2 got players who just dont go for cosmetics. Obsidian armor wouldnt work for them because its just cosmetic. Its has to be better then anything else which is where this problem started from I guess.
Ascended gear is a bad example because it has better stats. It doesn’t matter it is almost negligible, it’s better. Better gear is not that easy to dismiss for most people. Purely cosmetic would work because hardcores do care about that while casuals are more likely to dismiss it (or turn it into a long-long-term goal).
I don’t think there is any difference between GW1 and GW2 players. GW1 simply never had vertical progression in gear so it was never an issue there. In GW2 we hardly have purely cosmetic gear so it hard to say how motivating they are. Cultural Tier 3 armor is meh. It’s not particularly noteworthy to get (it just costs money), and then it also isn’t even max stat, which just feels like a downer.
An example of people caring about cosmetics is Fractal skins. I’ve seen many people talk about wanting those and after each Maw there are people hoping for a skin.
In the end, I think we need areas like the Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Realm of Torment, etc. Difficult areas where pros can go to shine. That will keep hardcores busy (and also PvP, guild events and WvW).
I would pay you 100g good sir if you could revamp this daily system again to just not be a daily!!
Good Day to you!
Let’s all pitch in with gold and pay Anet to change the time-gated content!
You seem to be misinterpreting as well. I made no mention of forgoing “fun” activities in favor of doing dailies. I stated the only reason some people even log in is to complete dailies. You yourself might not do that, but don’t try to deny there is a vast segment of the player base that does.
I did acknowledge that in a previous post, might be a different threat not sure… but anyhow do you think changing laurels for gold would make a difference to these players?
If you need 20 laurels for your reward and you make yourself log everyday so you make sure you have your reward by the 10th day if you instead of charging 20 laurels you charged say 40g do you believe people will be happy of just playing during the weekend and take 1 month 1 week?
Doubt it very much, if you just cant wait you will not be able to wait no matter what currency is used.
Hey Galen, I’ll respond to your other post in time, but I just want to leave a quick message. You seem to be of the impression that the casuals must be put on par with the hardcore, and that’s simply not necessary.
If you want to please the hardcore people, create items that provide prestige by being insanely difficult to get, but not useful enough for casuals to want. People do cost/benefit analyses on pretty much everything and when people realize they can’t get something they also want it less (generally speaking). So, GW2 needs the equivalent of Obsidian Armor (from GW1) to keep the hardcore players busy, while the casuals can work on their map completion. The casuals have plenty to do already.
In gw1, you could have up to 3 dailies in your quest log at a time. So you really only had to log in every three days. You could also save dailies for a looong time until you felt like doing them. And while it did give some nice things, it wasn’t anything necessary or better equipment and whatnot, although they did have some larger bags and special skins. The rewards were tradable too, so again, not really time gated then.
Of course I started this with the phrase “in gw1” so I guess it’s automatically ignored :p
Yeah, I can’t believe they don’t just use the Zaishen quest concept. It’s so much better.
Just want to voice my agreement with the OP. Silly time-gated mechanics.
I’m an actual casual player. And I spent my first 100 laurels on a cat tonic… Why? Because all that ascended gear in there didn’t add anything for my game play. As I’m casual, I don’t care about raiding that dungeon afap. Or doing that fractal set in 5 minutes. I just want to have fun.
For me, a casual player is a player who will take his time to reach his goals. No need for that min-maxing stuff, as I have time. Rares are good enough till I get enough gold/karma/laurels to get better stuff.
Fair enough. I’m defining a casual player as someone who doesn’t play 24/7, but instead only plays a limited amount. I’m not defining it by what they want to do in the game.
You wouldnt be loosing 5 laurels a week you’d be earning 2 laurels a week. Just like with the gold example you wouldnt be loosing 360g just cause thats a theoretical maximum of what you could earn in 5 days playing 24/7.
The problem being that psychologically, it’s just not true. It’s relatively easy to do the Dailies and I theoretically could do the Dailies every day. I surely can’t play 8 hours every day and farm gold. If you read my previous post you’ll understand better what my play-style is and how Dailies do not fit at all in that.
This is not really making casuals play every day at all, its just ask people play for 20 days in return for the item. its just a lot easier and a much fair system to quantify those 20 days rather then using any other currency.
It’s causing me to do that, so that’s 1 person who feels pressure to play every day. Am I the only one? Nope. Am I part of a significant portion of players who feels pressured? I don’t know, I’d like to find out.
I also don’t think it’s fair at all. Fairness would be effort = reward. Right now it is time = reward.
Whats 20 days worth of gold? lets be extremely conservative rather then going to the upper band of hardcore players like i did in my previous post. lets say 2g per day is a realistic amount most players earn in a day. For you personally, a player who plays a little during weekends would 40g be an easier price to pay then 20 laurels?
And before you say 40g wouldnt be a reasonable price to charge for a single ascended armor piece please consider that there are players who claim to make up to 8g per hour speed running dungeons which make 2g per day very very forgiving. For said players charging them 40g means they can afford said piece in 5 hours which means that reward that was intended to take 20 days to earn can be earned by these players in just 1 play session.
The whole reason a currency was invented in the first place is to be able to convert a variety of products or services into 1 single, universal, value that could be easily transferred and used by other people for services or products they would like to have.
I’d have absolutely no problem with buying Ascended gear for gold, because I could get the gold in a variety of ways and also get more gold on days I could play more, instead of having a fixed amount every single day. It really does make more sense to me that you should be rewarded for the amount of effort you put in. Not the times you login every week.
Playing just during the weekend it would take you exactly 1 month and 1 week to get a single ascended piece (5 weekends of dailies + a monthly you can finish during those 4 weekends) Do you think you’d be able to make 40g faster then 1 month and 1 week playing just during weekends? cause you’d need to be doing 4g every day you play for that to be true and that’s twice what we recon a day should be worth and it would still take you the same exact time.
I’d probably be able to get more than 4g on weekend-days. I’d also be able to sell some stuff I get randomly. I’d be able to have friends help me out by giving me gold to get the items. I’d be able to find a rare drop, sell it, and get an Ascended piece instead. Aren’t those things that make MMORPGs fun?
I think its a mistake to just look at the time it takes to get a piece you also need to look at the effort thats being asked for that piece. Ascended armor is a medium term goal. Its mean to take 20 days of effort more or less to get. Luarels are just a way to represent 20 days of play time which is equal to both hardcore and casuals alike.
Logging in and doing some boring things (killing 50 mobs in Ascalon) really should not be awarded with the best gear. It’s not effort. The only effort is me trying to get myself to login even though I’d rather be doing something else that evening.
For a casual player personally I think this system is a very a positive thing.
I do understand your point here and it is a good one, but I really don’t like that kind of play-style and it does not seem to fit the spirit of MMORPGs.
Also, I don’t think your math works out very well. If I can only play during the weekend, and let’s say I play the two full days, I can get a lot of ‘work’ done. With time-gated content, I’d like to be working on getting my gear, but after doing the Dailies, I’m done. There’s nothing else I can do to get that gear. That is no fun at all. With the time I have, I’d like to spend it on actually getting that gear! Now it is limiting even me, a casual!
I completely see the reasoning behind your argument, and agree that yes, it would be very nice for there to be an option somewhere to run a week’s worth of dailies over a weekend, but then everyone already able to run dailies daily would also run the week’s worth over the weekend, and you’d end up just as far behind them as you were before.
Not if you can save your Dailies for the weekend so that those who did the Dailies every day don’t need to catch up in the weekend, while those who did not play during the week do a week’s worth of Dailies in the weekend. This would solve 1 issue, but I feel like it’s a hack, trying to fit this game mechanic in a casual playing style for which it clearly isn’t designed.
I’m not entirely sure if you feel left behind in terms of how quickly other players progress, or if you are just impatient to receive something that you want? I mean that question genuinely. The moment I start thinking in terms of “keeping up” with other people, then no matter what I do I feel behind and start feeling “pushed into” doing things I don’t want. But if I regard it as a matter of me simply wanting something, then I can put my natural impatience aside because I know that though it takes me longer than someone else, nothing is stopping me from reaching that same goal. So your perspective on this issue would be interesting to see.
I don’t really compare myself to other people; I am not competitive with my gear. I do, however, like to be efficient and optimize my time. I establish a goal for me, such as get Ascended gear, and then I think about what the fastest, easiest, most cost-effective way of getting it is. I actually enjoy thinking about the most efficient method to get things. In a complex game such as MMORPGs that’s often a way of playing in and of itself. With time-gated content it’s however pretty simple. 1 laurel a day. That’s it. If I want to get my gear as fast as possible, I’d have to play every day.
Also, if I want to get Exotic gear, I can do dungeons, but the most optimal way is to play each dungeon path once a day to get the optimal number of tokens. More and more things are becoming time-gated and it seems to become an intrinsic part of their design philosophy. I cannot but dislike it since it conflicts with how I’d ideally like to play the game.
I don’t think ANet NEED us to log in every day – I mean, they designed a B2P game and tried to minimize vertical progression simply so it IS a pick up, play, put down kind of game. The dailies, I feel, fit in fairly well there since you aren’t rewarded especially significantly for completing them. Map completion, achievement points, monthlies etc all also offer laurels, so over a 6 hour Saturday run you are probably capable of making up a fair bit of ground (of course, the others who log in daily are doing this as well).
I do think they reward you pretty well. Especially now with account bonuses for getting achievement points.
It would be a true pick up and play game if there was no time-gated content at all.
I’m not sure about your last paragraph there … I’m not sure if it’s pertaining to anything I’ve said, or if you’re being sarcastic (in which case not sure what I’ve done to merit that)? Sorry!
My apologies, I meant ‘you’ as in the general term, not you personally. I think part of the reason Anet is using this time-gated crap is because they want to put hardcore players and casual player on the same level, which I think is silly.
You have monthlies. They give 10 laurels.
Voila, now you only need to play 10 days a month (do 10 dailies and finish the monthly in those 10 days).
There are 4 weeks in a month.
There are 4 weekends in a month.
There are 2.5 days in a weekend.
There are 10 days you can play during the weekends of every month.
You only need to play 10 days to get 20 Laurels.
WOAH LOGICKALIMAGICXKZ
Thank you for the lack of sympathies.
10 days to get 20 laurels is technically correct, except that it takes you a month each time. I guess that’s what they call time logic?
I hear you, Shifty, from on ACTUAL casual player to another.
However, I don’t have much of an issue with the time-gate (aside from general impatience, but that’s just because I lack patience in general – from a gameplay perspective I prefer this to any other kind of gating). This is because the time-gates on anything aren’t difficult in themselves. Yes, I may miss out on 5 days of laurels a week, but it doesn’t put me that much behind everyone else because I don’t really REQUIRE any of the stuff that laurels buy me. Anyone requiring this stuff has other ways to get it – like if you need it for fractals, well, you’re running fractals anyway and so have an alternative avenue to ascended gear.
The days I’m not playing, well, I don’t need the stuff because, well, I’m not playing so it doesn’t matter. And when I am playing, I don’t think I should get stuff for free that other people DID log on daily for. Just like work, if I don’t go in for the day, I can’t say it’s not fair I don’t get paid for the day because other people DID go in. The laurels are like currency – I need to earn them in order to buy stuff with them, and if you didn’t do the daily, then you didn’t earn that one laurel.
So, yes, you end up behind, but not in any “race” where that matters. You can still get exotic tier stuff, and that’s all that you really need (or rare, even).
Thank you for the sympathies, fellow casual.
My response is that, sure, you don’t need the best gear, but you surely want it. I don’t think that people who log in to play for an hour each day deserve those things any more than someone who would spend a whole afternoon on a Saturday getting the same thing.
Why do they need us to play every day? Thousands of people are playing it and if you make friends and get into a good guild, you can almost always find someone to play with (so no need to force everyone to be online to get a decent player density).
You’re afraid that people who play a lot get all the Legendaries while the casuals are still working on their exotic/Ascended gear? So what? There’s absolutely no need to equalize casuals with the hardcores. Those who play a lot get the good items. Those who do not play as much have to play for a longer time-period to get those things. There is no problem here that needs a solution.
I honestly dont get this missing a day means a whole new day of waiting.
lets say you can buy ascended gear using gold, lets say it costs 500g per piece and lets say you can typically make 3g per hour. lets say you can play 8 hrs a day.
There’s the rub. I don’t play 8 hours a day. That’s kittening insane even.
I’m a casual player who has weekends during which I can play more than on a weekday. Since I’m busy I’d rather not play every day of the week, or perhaps play some other games during my limited time. Ideally, I’d probably play only during the weekend. If I started doing that, I’d lose out on 5 laurels a week. That would significantly increase the amount of time before I can fully equip my character, my alts, and get alternative sets.
I’m an ACTUAL casual player, and asking casuals to play every day is crazy. Instead of Dailies, give me Weeklies that I can work on during the weekend where I actually have time. Or better yet, get rid of the time-gated content.
You also get laurels with Achievement Point chests and from the Monthly. Monthly gives an extra 10 Laurels, once you reach 2500 APs you will have 12 extra Laurels, at 5000 APs you will have a total of 28 Laurels. Also, doing just the 5 Dailies required to get a laurel takes less than an hour. Based on choice it can be done in a few minutes.
That’s not really a good alternative, nor does it really answer the OPs point. Time-gated items are simply nonsense because if you do get it in your head to fully equip your character, alts, or want multiple sets, you have to play every single day otherwise it’s going to take you a veryyyy long time, which it will already take. Missing a day is another whole day of waiting. It’s simply not great design.
You can explore the map (get your 100%), you can roll some alts to see the different stories, you can progress in WvW, play sPvP, and get loads of achievements, exploration/puzzles etc. Also, last I checked, even fully geared characters have something new to do every 2 weeks… You don’t need gold to get armor, you don’t need gold to get lots of runes/sigils, they can be crafted, not all of them though.
And here I fully agree with. There’s plenty to do in the game, and things are being added near continuously. If after a full gear set you don’t know what to do, then either you’re not looking at what’s available in the game or you simply shouldn’t be playing the game.
At what point do you reach ‘entitlement’ and not a simple sense of designing a game to provide people with what they want?
In other words, are people wrong to want these achievements, and is it up to the people to change, or up to Anet to take into consideration how people react to time-limited, reward-offering achievements?
I’m an achievement kitten and I have been since the beginning of the game. I’ve made it my goal to get all the achievements. Unfortunately, I’m also rather busy and some of the content I have to go through to get those achievements I don’t like. Now, am I wrong to want the achievements? It is true that I’m currently playing that Survival game with the pure intent to get the achievements, instead of just enjoying the game-mode. I don’t like it that I do that, but I do like the sense of completion I get after I get all the achievements.
I could give up on that, but it is a somewhat difficult decision, I have to pick between 2 things I both like, and right now I’m choosing the achievements. Are there solutions that can solve this conundrum?
What about people who need that direction? You can’t claim they don’t exist.
You mean people who log in, and have no idea what to do in the game? Yeah they don’t exist.
People who appreciate the direction provided by Dailies, those I do believe exist, but I don’t think they need much of a reward for doing those things. They just need a reason.
A better solution would be like they did in Guild Wars 1 (starting to sense a theme), with the Zaishen quests. They point you to a certain area of the world and give you tokens to select from a decent set of items that were fun or useful to use. They did not involve achievement points you couldn’t get back if you missed them (as is the case with Dailies) and even if you miss some of them, it didn’t matter. You could always buy the items from another player.
Anyway, there will always be someone to complain about whatever Anet does.
I’m also glad there’s always someone complaining about the complaining.
Again, nice for you. But how many people login, would like to do X, but also have the nagging thought “Well, I should finish the Daily first, perhaps get some more achievement points since those rewards ARE nice.”?
Must you really provide extrinsic incentives to play certain parts of your game?
I’m not grinding. I do what I want, when I want.
Good for you. In the meanwhile, intrinsic motivation is still better than extrinsic.
Yes, because apparently we need another incentive to grind. Can’t just have things for the sake of having them.
Intrinsic motivation > extrinsic motivation.
@shifty
thats is precisely why time gating is a good idea here. You want people to take 30 days to acquire 1 item but you certainly dont want every single one of your players to spend as much time as the ones who play a lot spend, like say 60hrs per week. with charged crystal mechanic you’re still making sure it takes 30 days to acquire 1 item (well provided this is what the mechanic is intended for lets not forget all this is just speculation) but instead of forcing everyone to play 60hrs per week you’re just asking them to invest 2-5 minutes each day leaving the rest of the game session free for them to play what they enjoy rather then farming a ton of materials .
That flies in the face of what I’ve been talking about. Yes it prevents the hardcore people from playing 60 hours a week, but those players want to play that much. You as a game designer might give them something to do in those 60 hours if you’re not against it, but time-gating is not one of them. The casual players do not want to log in every day, but now they feel obliged to since it does only take a few minutes to charge a Quartz so why not log in to do it and log out? Is that really the kind of thing you want to happen in your game? It’s work, not fun. NO ONE is having fun charging Quartz. People have fun running dungeons and doing events, and it would be nice to get charged Quartz in those contexts. Now it’s just another kitten example of kitten grind.
The solution is incredibly simple and they already implemented it in Guild Wars 1: prestigious items that are easy not to care about, yet still provide the prestige hardcore players can strive for. That, and WvW, PvP, guild events, helping out other players, creating alts, the Living Story, etc. There is no reason for you to not know what to do in the game, and if DESPITE all those things you still get bored, go play another game; Anet shouldn’t care if that happens.
So you want your gear to take a month per piece to acquire.
That’s the crucial bit, just don’t want that.
If your game has hardcore players then that is great of course, but do you really want them to play your game for 60 hours a week? Don’t you want them to spend time on other things besides your game? After all, it’s just a game. This is not to diminish the value of games, but they are just games. Games are meant to be played for entertainment purposes and that’s it. Once players are playing it like it is a job, you’re losing sight of what is really your goal as a game developer.
Collecting gear is not even fun. It’s the actual game-content that is fun. Running through the areas, doing the events with other people (preferably), doing dungeons with PUGs or with your guild, those are the fun things. After a while most of these things become stale and then you might run into a problem. As a developer you probably want to keep giving things to your players so they can entertain themselves, but just adding time-gated crap does not solve any of that. It’s not fun for ANYONE.
If you want your game to remain fun, focus on WvW and PvP, add Fractals levels and continue to develop the Living Story. These are all things that can get people back, and none of it requires time-gated nonsense.
If despite that you do want to offer something to 60 hours per week hardcore players, then just add items that are insanely hard to get but only differ in looks. Guild Wars 1 had plenty of awesome items that would get you some nice in-game prestige, but none of it was necessary. Casual players were not at a disadvantage in PvE and mostly did not care. Here and there would be some pangs of jealousy, but that’s actually what you want. Give the hardcore players awesome but ‘useless’ items, and let casual players leave the game when they want to, and let them come back when they want to.
Like this its a simple and elegant way to put casuals and hardcore players on the same page and have them both take 30 days to craft a piece of kitten gear rather then have a situations where a hardcore player can get it done in 20 – 30 days and a casual need 6 months to craft the same thing.
Why try to equalize those who play so differently?
The actual elegant solution is to let the willingness to expand effort correlate with the reward you get, but simply don’t let the reward count in a competitive way.
Let hardcore players get the Legendaries and other amazing skins that are insanely difficult to get. This is no way affects your competitive edge, but it gives you the rewarding prestige associated with the items.
For something that takes less 2 minutes to login in, wp, charge and logout, people sure do complain quite a lot.
These design decisions reflect a philosophy that underlies the game. As a result, there might be worse things to come.
Besides, there are also the daily achievements that give you laurels, another time-gated currency.
The complaining about complaining is getting a bit old. We’re simply voicing our opinion in the hope they address the issue or convince us that they are doing it for good reasons.
By putting everything on daily timers, a casual can choose what he needs, and make meaningful progress without being negatively affected by hardcore players. Making a single quartz takes 10 seconds. Farming a single elemental essence in WoW takes half an hour to two hours. Take your pick.
Make it weeklies, not dailies? By which I mean you can skip a daily and catch up another day.
I work for a living, and enjoy gaming as a hobby. I’m still seriously irritated by the timegating. Especially since (due to work), while i am able to devote lot of time to the game during weekends, Monday-Friday is completely different matter. Especially if i pull an afternoon shift.
This time gating is not casual friendly. Casuals do not play every day, every week, every month all year.
Hear hear, I’m in full agreement.
Also, consider other games. Mario, Zelda, Halo, Resident Evil, etc., these are all a successful franchise and do not require you to log in every day to be successful.
MMORPGs are of a different nature due to the constant server costs and the staff managing the game, but it still does not require you to log in every day for it to be a sustainable business model. Heck, the business model of Guild Wars (no subscription fees) already will get many people to just log back in whenever they feel like, since they don’t have to pay a fee and feel obliged to play for a whole month.
In short, if you need, or even WANT, people to play every day, you’ve failed.
I love it, but I do have a human guardian.
The difference is you can get those Laurels by doing a variety of activities, including the new achievement chests that have loads of them, while in other MMOs you have to do very very specific tasks to get the best gear, tasks that involve raids usually.
I don’t think it’s hard to see the huge difference here.
Compared to other MMOs, the grind is very often muuuuch better. Compared to Guild Wars 1, not so much.
It affected a few skills that were arguably the most powerful in the game, some of which were required for builds that people asked for to do the hardest content in Guild Wars 1. This is my point.
By comparison, the work we need to put into to get ascended gear is negligible. And the difference in power, at least so far, isn’t nearly as great.
The difference in power comes from the basic skill itself, not the power added through the title tiers. I never maxed those but I clearly noticed the incredible power of say, Pain Inverter.
Anyway, it’s BAD, and it’s worse when it applies to something like armor, which you need in almost every aspect of the game. I feel bad when my gear is not BiS, and in Guild Wars 1, my gear was nearly always BiS.
What are you talking about…a few quests?
I’m talking about the difference between Save Yourselves at Luxon/kurzick level one and Save Yourselves at luxon kurzick level 12. We’re talking months of grinding here.
Edit: If you don’t believe me look up Fast Faction Farming in the Guild Wars 1 wiki.
I thought you were talking about how your character become more powerful with the introduction of the new skills themselves, not the fact you can make those skills more powerful with the title grind.
I’m okay with introducing more powerful skills (although balance is nice) for which you only have to do a single or few quests to get them.
I’m not okay with the title grind to make skills more powerful. We have acknowledged that that was one of the examples of vertical progression in Guild Wars 1, but as Shockwave rightly pointed out, it wasn’t a big part of Guild Wars 1 and it only affected a few skills. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s still BAD and I would have preferred if Guild Wars 1 did not have it.
So those that fear vertical progression, even if it’s gear-based, should be used to it from Guild Wars 1 because, at least in PvE, the power plateau kept rising. Call it what you want but over the years, your character got a whole lot more powerful.
For which you had to do very little. In most cases you only had to do a few quests and that was it. It felt rewarding even.
Can we move on, though? Yes there was SOME vertical progression in GW1, now there is MORE. The question is whether the increase in necessary grind is a good thing or a bad thing.
So you think the Guild Wars community would have been better served letting the game settle into oblivion? Because that’s what would have happened.
This game has much higher operating budget that Guild Wars 1 did, with five times the number of employees, bigger headquarters, etc. This game would have languished and died without players. There aren’t enough players like you and even me. Sad to say, but true.
What would be the reason they can’t just say that this is the case?
I simply didn’t do enough research before I bought the game. I felt let down, but you know, the company was doing what companies do. Promoting their product. As a consumer, my job is to separate sales talk from reality.
You seem to accept that companies can be evil. Why this defeatist attitude? Get mad!
Clear communication doesn’t exist between one person and a million people. One person says something and even if 500,000 people understand what he’s saying, someone WILL be able to misunderstand. It’s called the Army Axiom. Any order than can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.
I’ve watched a team of editors go through a professional writer’s manuscript and someone, somewhere will still find ambiguity that no one else saw.
Communication is flawed. Always has been, always will be.
No matter what anyone says, someone, eventually will misunderstand it.
Fair enough.
There’s no need for Anet to provide a clear picture of their intentions for every single customer they have, but they should address the issue we’ve been discussing since it pertains to, I believe, a relatively large number of people.
Clear communication doesn’t exist. However, that’s WHY Anet published after the manifesto a clarification of certain things. Some people probably remember it. It was probably lost in the shuffle to the new site, but it might be around somewhere.
No one can guarantee 100% clear communication. I’m a professional editor, who works with writers and no matter how clear you think something is, it’s never clear enough.
So Anet made the manifesto, there was confusion, Anet explained the manifesto. Then they proceeded to have two years of pretty crystal clear communication that everyone seems to have completely forgotten while trying to make a point about a two year old video that was clarified at the time.
And the customer isn’t always right. The customer is often wrong. We TELL customers they’re right, because customers like to hear it, but it doesn’t change the fact that customers often have no clue what they’re talking about.
And that’s from someone who spent 19 years in retail. You’re only right to your face. As soon as you turn around, you’re not. It’s pretty entertaining.
Clear communication does exist. Whenever I express my intention and you understand that same intention, there was clear communication. “Please hand me that soda”, I receive the soda, done: clear communication.
Regarding the Manifesto, there clearly is miscommunication, but probably because we also hear what we want to hear. Those coming from Guild Wars 1 understood their message as a continuation of what made Guild Wars 1 so awesome: (almost) no vertical progression.
Here on the forum it is clear by now that there are people who think the Manifesto is not being adhered to. The next step is to address this. Does Anet agree with this? Did they do what they set out to do from the start? Did they have to adjust their planning because of unexpected events (the Exodus hypothesis perhaps)?
What I want personally is for Anet to explicitly address these things. Specifically, do they themselves find it fun to press ‘F’ 50 times for an achievement, do they like to have to log in on a daily basis to get a steady supply of Laurels? Do they like to spend many resources on a +6 stat boost item? If they stand by these things and think they’re perfect examples of where they want to go with this game, then fine. Right now I’m just confused because I did not expect they would.
Interesting. From an outside perspective, as someone who didn’t play GW1 or any MMO for the past 10 years, I don’t really see why people make these types of complaints about the game. The game is very progressive in the world of MMOs, so much that it attracts players like myself who are primarily console gamers.
You should’ve seen Guild Wars 1.
I don’t know what the betrayal, false information, etc. was that people felt sold on, but did you ever think thakittens possible that people took information and created a set of false expectations in their head about what that information meant?
No. The fact there are so many of us who believe Anet has backtracked on their Manifesto is solid evidence they are at fault for the miscommunication; it is their responsibility to prevent misunderstandings, and they could have been perfectly clear.
So fault ANet for the miscommunication, and then let go of it. Move on. They aren’t going to change GW2 back to GW1, so why continue to beat this dead horse?
Why don’t you give this a rest? I want to continue voicing my dissatisfaction with some of the elements in the game, with the hope they address them.
No. The fact there are so many of us who believe Anet has backtracked on their Manifesto is solid evidence they are at fault for the miscommunication; it is their responsibility to prevent misunderstandings, and they could have been perfectly clear.
No, it’s solid evidence only of the fact that some people believe ANet backtracked on their Manifesto. What’s lacking is actual evidence that they did.
The burden of clear communication is on their side. If there are many people who end up believing they backtracked on their Manifesto, then that is their fault. It is similar to “The customer is always right.” Clearly that is not always so, but there’s an imbalance in accountability with these things.
I want to spend money in the Gem Store and not just to support Anet. I’d like to buy several things from the store, but why in the world would I spend 6 euros or something on a novelty item?
I can buy several apps for my iPhone with that money.
Sorry, but you hold GW1 to a standard of, “to be effective,” and GW2 to a standard of, “the best possible.”
That is, by definition, a double standard.
You can be effective in GW2 without the best gear. The amount that the stat gain going from rare to exotic armor/weapons affects your build in GW2 is far less than the difference between an unranked character with nearly half of his entire skill bar comprised of PvE skills and that same build with max rank.
I see your point, but you should also see his. He gives a very reasonable clarification of his position. Would you mind focusing on the actual problems at hand?
It is my belief, and that’s all it is, that Anet did something to stop a mass exodus, while trying to find a way forward that would keep people engaged. Which means that now, with the Living Story starting to do that (and it has), we might NEVER see ascended weapons and armor with higher stats. It’s been theorized by a few people, but Anet has neither confirmed nor denied this.
Anet has not changed their vision. They changed their approach. I don’t believe for one second when they talked about cosmetic only upgrades they didn’t mean it. Now they’re doing it, through the LS.
I am unsure about the motivations but I do believe they meant everything they said. But now they’ve made mistakes and they need to be rectified, not kept.
Also, regarding the mass exodus hypothesis, why would they care? I am playing with the thought that your hardcore group does not spend as much money as more casual players as they have plenty of gold to convert. Casual players (like I want to be but can’t due to the kitten grind such as time gated crafting and Dailies) do not have the gold to convert to gems and sometimes do want to buy things available in the Gem Store. Heck, I’d even like to support Anet financially every other few weeks, although I hate it that they’re rewarding people now for doing this every month, giving them otherwise unattainable items.
What would be the reason they cannot just tell us what their reasoning is?
Nothing is ever perfectly clear. As a professional editor, I can personally guarantee that. There is no such thing as perfect clarity. Times when Anet says something that’s not clear, such as the manifesto, they posted clarifications of and explained (and explained and explained).
They have not yet explained how all the grinding elements that are currently in the game fit with their manifesto. They have not even explained why they are adding those things. Your possible interpretations are only conjecture.
Perhaps it is time for another AMA by Anet, focused on the manifesto.
Both games had vertical progression that affected character performance. GW1’s took longer to pursue.
Shockwave expresses that he did not like the vertical progression that is present in Guild Wars 1, so let’s not go too overboard with the double standard accusation.
Part of the issue is that balance between the stat boost and amount of time you have to invest. In Guild Wars 1 it would take too much time to fully rank up and get the best stat for the PvE-only skills (for some of them). I think this can be compared to the Agony upgrades in Guild Wars 2 which you can upgrade to give an extra 5 or 6 stats, but at an insane price; I’m never going to do that (although I’m still bothered by it). I will however go for Ascended gear since that is more feasible, although I hate it. I want to be done with my focus on stats rather quickly, and just focus on playing the game, perhaps go for things that look awesome. Right now all my plans for Guild Wars 2 are focused on getting the best gear for my main and my alts, and this will keep me busy for the foreseeable feature. This was not a problem in Guild Wars 1.
Interesting. From an outside perspective, as someone who didn’t play GW1 or any MMO for the past 10 years, I don’t really see why people make these types of complaints about the game. The game is very progressive in the world of MMOs, so much that it attracts players like myself who are primarily console gamers.
You should’ve seen Guild Wars 1.
I don’t know what the betrayal, false information, etc. was that people felt sold on, but did you ever think thakittens possible that people took information and created a set of false expectations in their head about what that information meant?
No. The fact there are so many of us who believe Anet has backtracked on their Manifesto is solid evidence they are at fault for the miscommunication; it is their responsibility to prevent misunderstandings, and they could have been perfectly clear.
The fact is that they didn’t expect MMO players. They expected GW1 players who were very casual and slow.
And you don’t need them. Other games do just fine without having OCD diagnosed players.
I also don’t even believe you can call all GW1 players casual. I’ve logged like 2000 hours in that game and I wasn’t even close to the ‘top’ players. If your business model requires people to play near-constantly, you’re doing it wrong.
My suggestion would be they try some alternative things and ride them out, such as more emphasis on affordable non-gear related equipment (e.g., the gathering tools, skins, bags, bank slots, etc.). Make them cheaper so people actually throw money at them. Of course a problem here is that people can also use in-game gold to buy gems, and your hardcore base (from whom you would want real money) are also the ones who have the most gold. I initially really liked the gold to gem conversion option, but maybe it’s not that smart.
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