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Gw2 most grindy game ever..?

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

I quit playing around when ascended items were announced. Just came here to see if they gave up on the idea of a long grind for stat advantages rather than cosmetics.

Guess I still will not be rejoining this game.

If you’re going to put in stat advantage grinds, go all the way and make the grind feel rewarding as other successful games have. This kitten long grind for minor upgrades stuff is terrible.

How much power progression?

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Enough to make me quit playing completely.

Not enough to keep the WoW fanbase for long.

Not acceptable answer

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

I can see why people don’t like the stat increase between exotic and ascended, but try this as a thought experiment. Would your opinion on ascended gear be different if it was available at launch, but still required some grinding to get?

Assuming that ascended was the very last tier in that situation?

If ascended gear was available at launch I would still see it as far too much of a stat-based grind game for me. There is some (subjective) range of grinding that is acceptable to every individual, and some amount where it’s just too much. In the case of people like me, needing multiple sets of exotics was enough of a grind, but still within acceptable levels. It’s too much of a timesink for me to want to get ascended gear for a single character, let alone multiple sets for multiple characters, which is how I prefer to play games.

But at least in that situation the complete 180 in direction after a purchase wouldn’t be present. I would’ve avoided the game altogether rather than buying it and being disappointed.

Not acceptable answer

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

It makes no sense to engage with the pro-gear grind treadmill crowd. They got what they wanted so of course they are going to come on the forums and defend the despicable act. Ignore them. Our issue is with Anet. Personally, my dissent is not so much because they compromised their integrity by totally doing an about face in what they sold the game to be, but the fact that they refuse to honestly address the matter and be honest with the community, many of us who have been loyal supporters of Anet until this fiasco. All they had to do was be sincere with the reason for their sudden change of game philosophy. Instead what we are getting is infracted, censored, deleted, banned, and just basically ignored. This is no way to treat a customer. Their treatment of this community has been nothing short of abhorrent.

I’m sorry to use you as an example of what I see is a problem with these sorts of threads, but I see multiple instances of statements that the company is refusing to be honest with it’s customers. What leads you to believe this? There was a blog post where they stated their reasons, and all the people in an uproar decided that it was just a PR exercise.

While you may disagree with the reasoning (and I’ve seen some good examples of this), what has lead you to think the blog post wasn’t sincere?

Their response to date simply insults the intelligence of those of us who know better. Which is all the more disdainful.

Baselessly calling their response a lie is equally disdainful and insulting.

Their response is riddled with lies and betrayal. From Chris Whiteside’s post:

“Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. " – What can be said about this other than it’s a flat out lie? That it’s technically a truth because the gear treadmill is a means to an end (attracting a different demographic) rather than their primary goal? That’s about the best you’ll do. They have stated their intentions to continue along this same path of stat-based gear progression and gated content. It is a lie. No amount of word-twisting will change that reality.

“Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. " – An intentionally misleading statement, attempting to justify the stat-grind by subtly, purposely confusing the two separate ideas of a cosmetic reward and a stat based reward. There was no massive jump in stat based rewards that had to be ‘fixed’, but that’s what they’re trying to make you think. Intentionally misleading someone is as good as lying.

“We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.” – Another thing that may be technically true, if stretched to its limits, and yet is practically false. They are adding ascended gear bit-by-bit, so yes, there will periodically be new stat improvements that you will have to chase after. Today it is back pieces and jewelry. A few months from now maybe it will be weapons and chest pieces. After that, maybe helms and pants. There is no practical difference between that and there being an actual new tier beyond ascended. Heck, maybe once they reach 6 months from now they will add a whole new tier beyond ascended and start the cycle anew. Technically it wouldn’t lying. Practically, it is.

And the biggest lie of all was the manifesto. The promises that none of this nonsense would come to pass in the first place.

Not acceptable answer

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

I agree. It’s amazing how effective the words ’I’m sorry’ can be to mend a disagreement or issue when given genuinely. From my own observations, I’m glad that Anet are trying some different approaches and being creative with their events, gear etc – but it can be risky. The major problem is that in some cases the concerns of the most important stakeholder – the player/customer are not fully considered. Mind you, it doesn’t help when there are such polar opposites in player opinion on almost all the current issues – Anet are somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place….

They are stuck between a rock and a hard place, in the same sense that a Chinese restaurant would be, if they decided to snatch up your chow mein mid-meal and replace it with a burger instead, because the burger business is more lucrative.

I have no sympathy for them at all. There is no reasonable argument for them being “stuck”.

Ridiculous. If anything, they’re putting a burger on the table next to your chow mein. They’re taking nothing away. If you think they are, that’s a problem with your own perception, not with the game itself.

You are fooling yourself if you believe the social comparison aspect of MMO’s is something you can just throw out the window as unimportant. It is not a problem with anyone’s perception; it is a trait inherent to this type of game. Not even going to bother mentioning all the objective problems this grind creates because it’s been covered by thousands of posts already.

You cannot separate human nature and people’s perceptions of things in the game from the game itself. The game LIVES purely because of peoples perception of whether it is enjoyable or not. Games have no objective value that people do not give them.

The fact is that the very existence of a stat based gear grind is mutually exclusive with a game that isn’t based on that grind. Telling someone to stop half-way and imagine it’s not a grind is meaningless. Nobody thinks that way in reality.

Not acceptable answer

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

I agree. It’s amazing how effective the words ’I’m sorry’ can be to mend a disagreement or issue when given genuinely. From my own observations, I’m glad that Anet are trying some different approaches and being creative with their events, gear etc – but it can be risky. The major problem is that in some cases the concerns of the most important stakeholder – the player/customer are not fully considered. Mind you, it doesn’t help when there are such polar opposites in player opinion on almost all the current issues – Anet are somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place….

They are stuck between a rock and a hard place, in the same sense that a Chinese restaurant would be, if they decided to snatch up your chow mein mid-meal and replace it with a burger instead, because the burger business is more lucrative.

I have no sympathy for them at all. There is no reasonable argument for them being “stuck”.

FOTM the worst misstep I've ever seen

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

the world didn’t really need another undifferentiated gear grind game. I honestly don’t see how this game is different from WoW now.

Well it has less PvP modes than WoW.

In PvE there is a stat gear grind, but you get upgrades even slower than in WoW, despite reaching the top end gear more easily. Meaning the journey to top end gear is far less rewarding, seen as a grind to everyone who hates it, and still will not be enough to satisfy those who like gear treadmills.

There is one dungeon that’s worth the time to run in this game now, if you care about stats at all, as opposed to WoW’s multiple dungeons.

In PvE groups there is less teamwork required than in WoW.

But hey, the game is much prettier, and has no monthly fee, I guess…

don't understand your class philosophy

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Armour and health are not the only factors in survivability. In fact, they take a back seat to skills. Thieves and Guardians both have MUCH higher survivability than glass cannon warriors, generally, while having less hp. Classes aren’t meant to be compared as unresponsive punching bags.

Furthermore if any warrior is building glass cannon to have the “some of the better burst” he will drop like a fly, by anyone’s standard. They are not both sturdy and bursty at once.

Patch Feedback [merged]

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Any MMO could literally say that they were implementing a dungeon with living poop-enemies where you had a 0.001% chance of obtaining the best loot in the game from the poop-boss, or any other imaginable detestable system with a reasonably sized content patch and would see a TEMPORARY increase in players checking it out. This is accompanied by an amplifying illusion created by CONCENTRATING the existing the players around the new content (i.e. everybody is hanging out in LA and going to the new dungeon instead of being spread out through the usual content).

Initial bursts of population for a game release, content update, or expansion are meaningless. Temporary increases tell you absolutely nothing about whether this is a good decision beyond the very short term.

People are not trying to read the future. They are voicing their opinions so that ANET can read them.

DoTs Effects on Non-Living Entities

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Condition damage is bad enough as it is for many classes. Just slapping on a condition immunity to some things would not promote any kind of diversity.

If you buffed condition damage so that it was superior to flat damage in other cases, then you’d have a more normal system. Not sure how I feel about this.

I like it when a character is better or worse against certain monster types based on their skill choices, but only if it varies within a single dungeon. If a dungeon is nearly all undead for example, a condition damage build would be screwed for the whole dungeon. That’s stupid.

How to make money if I have no talent at all?

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

How to make money if I have no talent at all?

Work in PR for ANET.

Thoughts on Ascended Gear? [Merged threads]

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Put in more of a stat based gear grind and GW2 just becomes a pretty version of every other MMO, but with a poor targeting system, subpar WvW, and most importantly, organized PvP which is vastly inferior to that in every MMO I have ever tried.

I bought this game believing that max stats would be easy to obtain, as promised, and as seen in history through GW1. If I wanted a stat based gear grind, there are plenty of other MMO’s with MUCH better systems surrounding that grind than GW2 has. I would never have purchased GW2.

There are two things that brought me to this game. Ease of max stats, and a belief that PvP would be as satisfying and have as much variety as GW1. PvP has already been a HUGE disappointment. Now the last thread of quality has been snipped from this game. What motivation do I have to continue playing this, if these changes go through?

None.

Exotic and legendary weapons perform the same

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Indeed. If any gap had to be filled, it was a rarity gap and NOT a stat gap. People need to see that this particular justification for increased stats is BS.

Mystic Forge is a lazy, boring, overused concept

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

The title really covers it all, but I guess I’ll expand it a little here.

I dislike the mystic forge as a concept. It does not have any significant story surrounding it, and was clearly just created on a whim as a bandage fix some perceived problem. It also brings the worst parts of RNG to this game (reliance on a very low drop rate for an item while still relying on specific materials, hunted for this specific gamble), without any of the benefits of such a system (reward variety is so low it may as well be non-existant, and the reward rate is terrible so you feel like you wasted stuff most of the time).

That would’ve been fine if it kept playing a minor role, like throwing dyes in or tossing in old soulbound items for a chance at something random/new.

But instead we now have much of our high end content involving this stupid thing, and with the upcoming patch we’ll be using it even more for our “infusions”.

For example, why the heck do we get legendary weapons from the mystic forge? What’s legendary about that? Where’s the story behind each weapon? Where’s the battle, the quest line, the creation and previous use of this weapon?

I don’t think I should have to explain what a legendary weapon should be like to game developers, but for the audience I will point this out. Even ancient games, like the original Everquest, had epic weapons with plenty of storyline and relevant quest lines and challenges. RNG was part of it too, which could be harsh, but at least there was fun along the way; unlike with GW2, which demands you just grind a certain amount of gold or specific materials to throw into a nonsensical RNG forge.

Bottom line: Stop being so lazy with game design. ANET is using the mystic forge as a crutch to get out of designing proper routes to rewards, and it’s starting to hurt the game for people who care at all about that kind of thing.

(edited by Shindar the Reaver.2518)

GW2 loot system , Do you players like it ? yes/no give reasons for both

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

For those of us that never played GW1, could someone explain a bit more about what that was, and how it’s different than how GW2 does it? I haven’t done a lot of dungeons, but I don’t mind the current GW2 system, actually. I’m pretty flexible in my preferences, as long as it’s not one of those miserable systems where everybody fights and works and wins, and then at the end there’s a chance for one random item to drop that one random person out of the whole group gets…

GW1 had a system that was kind of a cross between what GW2 is now (with the focus on loot ‘upgrades’ being aesthetic rather than stat-oriented, mostly) and a Diablo game if you’re familiar with that.

There was gold, and materials that you could farm to sell or use in crafting armour or weapons if you wanted as in any MMO. So there were some guaranteed rewards if you put the time in, as there are in GW2. There were also a couple of token rewards for completion of certain things.

The loot in different regions was often different and appropriate for the area (i.e. certain weapon types only dropped in certain areas). Random drops from any monster or chest was a bigger part of that game than GW2. You could get lucky and hit the jackpot with a perfect rare weapon, even if you weren’t in the area just to farm it.

Random drops were frequent and varied enough to keep you excited about the possibility of getting something valuable.

To be clear, it was NOT like a WoW RNG system. You didn’t have the to run through an area to reach some end boss for a chance at something and then compete with others for it. Some bosses did have desirable random loot exclusive to them, but the journey there could also be very profitable and exciting. The loot you got also was not soulbound, unlike in WoW. If something nice dropped in WoW, for example, that nobody in the group wanted to use, it was trash. In Guildwars, it kept its value completely because it was tradeable. That’s very important.

The game did not just revolve around collecting currency, but it also didn’t revolve around farming some end boss. It had a very nice mixture of random drops from every monster and chest, guaranteed rewards through currencies, and rewards exclusive to defeating bosses.

(edited by Shindar the Reaver.2518)

The Female Human epidemic

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

First, just realize that most people like their avatar to be at least one of two things: absolute bad kitten monstrosity, or attractive/relatable.

Generally males will view males of a race as more bad kitten (for example, largest most fierce looking male charr > female charr). So when they want to make a bad kitten character, it’s more likely to be male than female. That’s why in pretty much every MMO the less humanoid races have nearly nobody playing a female.

People who mostly play humanoid races (the majority of people) are more concerned with their avatars looking attractive/relatable (regardless of whether it is male or female) than those who play monster races. Male humanoids are relatable (to males), and female humanoids are attractive. They both have their pros, so they both get chosen quite frequently.

As for why you would be seeing more human females than norn females, I don’t have a clue… I guess they can’t stand the sight of a strong norn woman

(edited by Shindar the Reaver.2518)

Why were dungeons added to the monthly?

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Why does this have to be so complicated? The end and the means should both be enjoyable.

Encouraging people to do things they hate (whether PVE or PVP) is not good game design.

People can argue back and forth about how optional something is, but the fact that it’s technically optional really adds nothing to this argument, since many are clearly compelled to do it, while hating it. That’s not a situation that should exist.

Armour in GW2 is largely bland/underwhelming

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Although I really liked the GW1 prestige armour sets, I also love the armour of GW2 (except that there are WAY too many trenchcoats for medium armour). In fact I think that maybe they’ve made some of the more common armours look TOO good, which takes away from the sense of progression from bad armour to something prestigious. In GW1 the basic armour sets were really quite boring to look at, so the 15k armour stood out a lot.

I don’t know how they could really fix this problem. Considering we already have some quite extravagant armours and sets with flames coming out, I really wouldn’t want them to go over the top WoW style to make exotics stand out.

But if all you want is the old GW prestige armours in GW2, that would be sweet too.

(edited by Shindar the Reaver.2518)

GW2 needs less focus on currencies, more on randomness

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

I would try to stay away from RNG in general for this game. For one, I don’t like it; and two, it only seems to bring problems. Example the 3 biggest factors of RNG in GW2: Clovers, Precursors, and the event BLC skins. All of these have been complained about to death, why? RNG. There are a few people who love the carrot on the stick RNG stuff but it’s already in-game. Legendaries. What? You don’t like the skin or it’s too tough? Then sell the lenendaries and be set for life. As for the difficulty, that’s pretty much all RNG is adding is a useless time sink.

All the negative things you’ve listed are problems with the scarcity of random drops and a poor drop rate. Part of the problem with the BLC skins in particular was that they were tied to real money AND had a crazy low drop rate on top of it. A lot of people wasted their money on BLC keys thinking that if they spent some reasonable amount of cash, they’d have a reasonable shot at the skins, but that clearly wasn’t the case.

Very few people would be complaining about RNG with a reasonable drop rate.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that legendary precursors should just have their drop rates increased. I’m all for having some items being really rare and having a low drop rate. But it is a problem when the only items tied to a RNG system in this game worth anything are both very scarce in number, and have such low drop rates that most people don’t really have a decent shot at finding anything to get excited about.

If you’ve never had experience with games that had rewarding RNG systems, like Guildwars, and you’ve only experienced terribly unrewarding things like the current GW2 RNG system or Diablo 3 when it was released, or even WoW’s random drops, then it’s understandable that you would mistake RNG for some evil system that doesn’t reward anyone. But that is not the case. The fact that games use bad RNG systems doesn’t mean RNG as a system bad, any more than the fact that there are bad games means all games bad.

RNG only brings problems with a poorly tuned drop rate. RNG IS as rewarding as any other system if it is done correctly, as it was in the original Guildwars. It can be tuned so that on average, it is exactly as rewarding as any token system in fact; this is indisputable. It is not any more of a timesink than a token system. And in terms of fun that will usually be more rewarding for plenty of us because of the constant excitement rather than the guaranteed useless number of runs.

I think I understand what you are trying to say. You want more RNG drops with a decent drop rate so you can make cash right? Well 2 problems that I can see, both very probable. 1, If the drop rate is high, everyone is going to farm it themselves and not pay you. Counterproductive. 2, Again if you want the drop chance to be decent then they are going to be worth crap. The rare stuff is expensive, doesn’t matter what it is. Then lower the drop rate? You might counter. Well then we get back to the fact that a lot of people hate RNG drops with a really crappy rate. There isn’t a big middle ground. Either it can be gotten solo, usually. Or is worth a stupid amount of gold because it is so kitten frustratingly rare.

Well, there are other ways to make cash, but they’re not at all exciting. I’m more focused on staving off the boredom than I am making gold, but I digress…

The two parts of the single problem you’ve listed are not inherent to a RNG system, but they do indeed come into play when you have a lack of variety in your RNG loot. For example, if all people really want are legendary precursors, and nothing else, then there is no way to keep them really rare without making them frustrating to obtain. You could make them drop more, but then they would no longer be rare and valuable. That is the current situation we have.

On the other hand, if a system has a large variety of desirable loot, and your chance to get one from that pool is reasonable, but at the same time the chance to get any particular piece is low, that is a good system that does not have the problem from above. You could keep the rare items rare, while still rewarding people in an RNG system. Keep in mind that this isn’t just a theory I’m coming up with; it’s been done multiple times in practice in other games. Supplement the RNG system with the currency rewards and you get a winning system, really.

GW2 needs less focus on currencies, more on randomness

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar, you seem to contradict yourself in these posts… aparently all of the issues people bring up are not due to RNG but drop rates, yet you insist that the drop rates should not be changed. So if everything were put into this logic… ie. dungeon skins then everyone would qq about them because they are too low, which is a drop rate problem but the drop rate shoudln’t be increased according to you. Also as soon as you make an item like a skin drop too often it becomes over farmed and worthless… if its too rare its qq’d about. no one will ever be happy.

I can see how you get that impression, but if you look more deeply at what I’m saying there is no contradiction at all. I do think that some items should be very rare, and others not so rare, but I am not by any means insisting that all drop rates (or the overall drop rate for rare items) should be equal to the rarity of the legendary precursors. There should be a continuum of rarity for tradeable items that drop randomly, with enough variety that you can be rewarded in regular intervals without making all items less than legendary completely worthless and undesirable.

When I speak of the drop rate causing trouble, I am talking about the general drop rate of valuable items rather than the drop rate of a particular item, like a legendary precursor. There are also specific cases where the particular drop rate is the problem though (such as the BLC chest halloween skins).

It should be set up so that your chance of getting any particular item remains quite low, but that your chance of being rewarded with some valuable item is essentially guaranteed over a certain amount of time. This means that even if you do not get exactly what you want, you get something that you can trade for what you want. As discussed above, since things would be on a continuum of rarity/desirability, you also have the chance to strike gold and get an extremely rare item even if you’re not searching for it in particular, which you could trade for possibly multiple items that you do want.

This is in line with games like Guildwars 1 and (sometimes) Diablo games.

(edited by Shindar the Reaver.2518)

GW2 needs less focus on currencies, more on randomness

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

I abhor random drops. Nothing more idiotic than waiting on chance to reward you when there is a distinct possibility that you will never get the reward.

Again, this is a drop rate (and soulbound) problem, not a random drop problem… A properly tuned RNG system rewards you for your time over some period, either with a few valuable items that you can trade for the item you want, or for the actual item you seek. The chance that you will not be rewarded over a long period of time is practically nonexistant for a properly tuned system. Over short periods of time you may be unlucky and not be rewarded, which is not different from the guaranteed lack of reward in a currency system.

I am also not suggesting the removal of currency rewards, I am suggesting the implementation of more RNG rewards. Your guaranteed reward can stay.

(edited by Shindar the Reaver.2518)

GW2 needs less focus on currencies, more on randomness

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

I would try to stay away from RNG in general for this game. For one, I don’t like it; and two, it only seems to bring problems. Example the 3 biggest factors of RNG in GW2: Clovers, Precursors, and the event BLC skins. All of these have been complained about to death, why? RNG. There are a few people who love the carrot on the stick RNG stuff but it’s already in-game. Legendaries. What? You don’t like the skin or it’s too tough? Then sell the lenendaries and be set for life. As for the difficulty, that’s pretty much all RNG is adding is a useless time sink.

All the negative things you’ve listed are problems with the scarcity of random drops and a poor drop rate. Part of the problem with the BLC skins in particular was that they were tied to real money AND had a crazy low drop rate on top of it. A lot of people wasted their money on BLC keys thinking that if they spent some reasonable amount of cash, they’d have a reasonable shot at the skins, but that clearly wasn’t the case.

Very few people would be complaining about RNG with a reasonable drop rate.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that legendary precursors should just have their drop rates increased. I’m all for having some items being really rare and having a low drop rate. But it is a problem when the only items tied to a RNG system in this game worth anything are both very scarce in number, and have such low drop rates that most people don’t really have a decent shot at finding anything to get excited about.

If you’ve never had experience with games that had rewarding RNG systems, like Guildwars, and you’ve only experienced terribly unrewarding things like the current GW2 RNG system or Diablo 3 when it was released, or even WoW’s random drops, then it’s understandable that you would mistake RNG for some evil system that doesn’t reward anyone. But that is not the case. The fact that games use bad RNG systems doesn’t mean RNG as a system bad, any more than the fact that there are bad games means all games bad.

RNG only brings problems with a poorly tuned drop rate. RNG IS as rewarding as any other system if it is done correctly, as it was in the original Guildwars. It can be tuned so that on average, it is exactly as rewarding as any token system in fact; this is indisputable. It is not any more of a timesink than a token system. And in terms of fun that will usually be more rewarding for plenty of us because of the constant excitement rather than the guaranteed useless number of runs.

GW2 needs less focus on currencies, more on randomness

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

i can see where you’re coming from.. to a certain degree. just to get things straight, you’re not saying to do away with currency in game right?

Not at all. Having some form of guaranteed reward is a nice thing to fall back on when your luck is going poorly, or for those who plain prefer it. They could easily keep the token rewards as they are while implementing some extra (equal) rewards through random drops. I just wish that random tradeable drops had a larger focus in this game.

Kessex Hills Floating Castle

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Well that’s cool. I never saw it because I was too busy having my camera angled downward…

GW2 needs less focus on currencies, more on randomness

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

It’s fine in most cases but when taken to the extreme like in Diablo 3 you have a problem. You can spend over 100 hours playing the game and not get anything good.

But wait, what if after you run the dungeon x number of times and you got nothing? Yeah, perfectly okay with that… Well, I don’t buy it for a second that someone would prefer random chance and not getting anything over getting something but having to grind for it.

Well, yes, if someone happens to be unlucky and can also predict the future, knowing ahead of time that they will get nothing from their run, they would prefer a guaranteed drop. That goes without saying…

But when a system fails to reward a person meaningfully over 100 hours, that is a problem with drop-rates and not a problem with RNG as a concept. If your chance to find a valuable drop is the same as winning the lottery, then I would agree that I’d prefer a guaranteed reward instead.

On the other hand, ideally (IMO), there should be a random system which has a drop rate(and variety) such that a person who puts in time is extremely likely to be rewarded in some meaningful way. This means that unless you win the lottery of bad-luck, you WILL be rewarded in a RNG system. If not, it is a drop rate problem, not a RNG problem.

GW2 needs less focus on currencies, more on randomness

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Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

Lol, and amidst tons of threads hating on RNG, one like this appears. :P

I can see how that is a funny thing, but if you think about it those complaints are really a symptom of the sparsity of random valuable drops. There are so few, and those that exist have such ridiculously low drop chances, that most people who want anything from the RNG system are pretty screwed. Those drops are also tied to the most desirable items in the game, so naturally many people will want them, and subsequently get screwed.

If people had a larger chance to find valuable drops randomly, and those things weren’t soulbound so they could trade for the thing they really seek, there would be much less complaining about RNG in general.

GW2 needs less focus on currencies, more on randomness

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

I’ll preface this post by reminding people that this is a topic of opinion rather than fact, so do not become hostile with each other and argue about who is right or wrong (as that concept does not apply here). I am also not saying that random drops don’t exist, but in comparison to other games and in comparison to currency rewards, they are very sparse. Also, everyone please keep in mind that RNG does not mean an impossibly low drop rate… RNG as a system is not out to screw you. That is a drop-rate problem.

It seems there are very few ways to get lucky and strike gold in this game. That makes it unexciting for some of us.

The heavy focus of GW2 on things like karma, dungeon tokens, and various other high-stack currencies really kills my desire to play this game, which I so very much want to enjoy.

Seeing the precise number of dungeons I have to run or amount of karma or gold I must acquire to get my desired reward does not ‘put a tangible guaranteed goal in sight’ (as some may think is the benefit of currency), but instead reminds me of just how far away that goal is.

A currency system actually guarantees that you will not find what you want within a certain amount of time. It eliminates any chance of being lucky. It makes the game a gind in the truest sense of the word, regardless of how much you buff the currency drops, because your first however-many runs of that dungeon are done only as work, for the sake of a non-random reward at the end. The same applies to gold or karma, wherever you farm it.

Another effect of these currencies is that once you have what you want from a particular dungeon or area (that is assuming you want ANYTHING other than karma and gold), you cease farming it, because the currencies are account-bound, and the things you buy with them are soulbound. There is nearly no point in revisiting a dungeon that you have everything you want from, except to grind more of a different currency (this is boring).

Other games I’ve played did not have this problem. Guildwars did not have this problem, for example, and I loved that game because of it. It had a few tokens here and there from completion of certain things, and gold existed and was used for much, but its main focus was not on grinding out a single currency for a guaranteed reward.

In games like that (and other games, including non-MMO), I had a chance of finding something amazing, worth a small or large fortune, regardless of whether it was my first run through the zone or my hundredth. In the best games, these valuable rewards are also tied to that particular area (such as in GW1). There was nothing stopping me from enjoying the feeling that I could potentially strike gold at any moment, from a chest or from a random monster kill.

Honestly I was quite hyped up about GW2 ever since it was announced, and got my friends into it, but I’ve been left disappointed by most things about the core of this game (the manner in which you obtain PVE rewards, the lack of SPVP variety and forced colours, the problems with too many particle effects in combat[this is huge because it is always present outside of solo play], a skill bar that you cannot rearrange).

No, it’s not because I had unrealistic expectations, because really all I expected was a base of Guildwars 1 with a third axis to move along… any other improvements would only have granted me more joy, but it seems ANET has taken many steps backwards.

There are nice features, but they are mostly fluff that wont keep me playing, like the art-style for armour, WvW, equal gear in SPVP, etc. Core features must be enjoyable before I can really enjoy any of the nice stuff that interacts with core features.

I desperately want to say that this game is fun, truly. I want a reason to play, and I want my friends (who all quit playing for similar reasons) to come back and play a fun game with me.

So I hope you guys can significantly fix this boring loot system up with more random tradeable drops, and less soulbound high-end desirables from tokens, karma, and other currencies.

Thanks.

(edited by Shindar the Reaver.2518)

Do you dislike team colors?

in PvP

Posted by: Shindar the Reaver.2518

Shindar the Reaver.2518

I HATE team colours. Not only do they diminish the importance of your characters style, they are functionally a hinderance to some of us.

I have no trouble telling the difference between a red NAME and a blue NAME to distinguish between enemies and allies.

On the other hand, when I see multiple people clumped together with similar armour and the exact same colour scheme, keeping track of a target becomes difficult. How the hell am I supposed to know the difference, at a glance, between one blue charr warrior and another blue charr warrior? How about multiple mesmers of the same race?

Seriously, give us an option to turn this off, please.

(edited by Shindar the Reaver.2518)