Showing Posts For Vizeroth.1295:
Armor skins are the biggest reward in the game, though I’ve missed out on them because I don’t want to grind or gamble for them.
I think it would be motivating to have these rewards for challenges in the game such as difficult jumping puzzles or scalable content.
For such a casual friendly game, with new and interesting changing content at max level, it’s odd that armor skin rewards after 80 are reserved for people that like gambling or grinding.
Perhaps my armor will be stay the same forever, but at least the backpack skins of the recent living content have been accessible to casual players. I have to applaud this change to the game. It’s been keeping my interest.
I believe the success of Kickstarter games and Steam Greenlighting has shown how much players love getting involved with supporting new ideas and how they are willing to spend more money to be part of that involvement.
I would love to see the amazing ideas that I’m sure developers are coming up with all the time and be able to support those ideas. I would be very motivated to buy into future content that I could choose, especially if it included cool cosmetic rewards.
My suggestion: Allow developers to pitch content to players along with cosmetic rewards for levels of monetary investment, a la Kickstarter.
I doubt that I could make any better response to people’s lack of empathy for those with a weakness to gambling than Black Regent. Though I have to say many people’s callous responses to corporate capitalization on human imperfection make Ayn Rand look like a philanthropist.
It’s scary to think that this game is becoming a community where it’s more profitable to take advantage of people than to treat them fairly, yet many people think that’s fine.
This is a forum for public debate, not a dry academic discussion. My words may be laden with emotion, but I mean them literally and with no exaggeration.
Selling lock boxes without telling the purchasers the odds of “winning” is unethical.
Buying lock boxes without knowing the odds of “winning” is stupidity in action.One statement does not negate the other.
This is very well stated, and may get the point across in a way that I was unable.
Maybe this discussion breaks down into those who think fair trade should be regulated by people not being stupid and those who think it should be regulated by sellers not being unethical.
If I could turn this into a poll, I would.
It appears there is some misunderstanding about the purpose and point of my argument. I start with a commonly held belief that exploiting people through gambling is unethical. The discussion should start in if or how this applies to lock-boxes.
This is not about:
The emotional pain of being “burned”
Trying to get something out of the store that I want
Whether or not it’s the gambler’s fault for allowing himself to be exploited
How state law against gambling applies to this game
Slippery slopes leading to “everything is bad to someone”
I would hope that it’s possible to have an economics discussion on the ethical practices of marketing and trading, which include a duty of honesty and fairness to the customer.
As a side note, I happily support many elements of the store.
Gambling preys on the basic human nature to be highly motivated by random positive reinforcement. While this behavior might have served humanity well in surviving nature, it is now used to perpetuate poverty by criminal organizations that seek to leech profit from people instead of providing equitable value.
In the past, fixed-odds based gambling has been justified mainly by the promise of at least equal or greater return on investment or at least clarity in the odds of stated rewards. Yet this gem store has neither, only vague promises that lead to misperceptions on the odds of specific rewards and a majority of outcomes that are significantly less valuable than the investment.
The gem store is insidiously preying on people’s trust of the developers to give them equitable value for their money. Using Southsun Supply Crates, roughly one US dollar most often turns into materials of less than 20 silver in value instead of the 2-3 gold value it has on the general market. This often results in people feeling like they have to keep spending more money to feel as though their previous investments have not been wasted.
While I’m sure this is a monetarily successful short term marketing strategy, it is immoral and deceptive. Before realizing the results of lock boxes, I was happy to buy from the store based on my trust of GW2 and my eagerness to support such a great game. And now that I see what they are doing, I will never trust the charlatans of the Black Lion Trading Co to do anything other than con money out of honest people.
1UP
This has some of the most fun content I’ve seen in the game. It’s just the kind of creative design GW2 needs to keep reviving my enthusiasm.
Ground targeting is certainly more advantageous to a skilled player with no distractions. However, as soon as the area is obscured with special effects and my fps drop to very low rates, it’s easy to start missing. This is especially bad for casual players who have a hard time becoming skilled with ground targeting.
I don’t think this is a balance issue. I just think having GTAoE effects center on targets with a modifier key would make them a lot more fun to use in certain circumstances.
I love the dye system. It’s a great innovation that I would love to see carried over to armor.
One way to do it would be to have rare permanent transmutation stones that put armor styles into a transmutation menu like the dyes. Then transmutation stones could be used to apply those styles to equipped armor.
The motivation I can see to do dungeons is to collect interesting armor sets; however, I’m not sure how I would store or even put to use multiple sets given limited storage and destruction upon transmutation.
If it is true that credit is based off of relative DPS, then it would appear that having too many well geared or higher level players is essentially preventing the new players from getting any reward. That seems contradictory to the game’s philosophy.
It seems odd that developers would design events to give credit based off of relative DPS and yet actively prevents players from being able to measure it. These hidden metrics make success and failure seem frustratingly random.
Character: Mortarclaw
Server: Ehmry Bay
Story: Research and Destroy (lvl 30)
Skipped to: On Red Alert (lvl 48)
(I accepted progress as a particpant in another player’s story)