The main motivator for people playing this game, the main motivator Arena Net encourage for people playing this game is vanity and the acquisition of material goods. They’ve termed it horizontal progression.
Guild Wars 2 is a theme park MMO. But unlike, say world of warcraft, the combat is far more engaging and interesting. Yes, Anet did add several forms of “progression” like ascended gear. But is it anet forcing the ideal of progression on the players or is it a portion of the player base asking for this progression? If its the later, can you claim everyone is playing for a sense of progression?
Think about why you play video games. Think about why you play any game for that matter. Did you play street hockey for a sense of progression and vanity among your peers? Or did you play it because it was fun? If you say the former over the later, your issues aren’t with Guild Wars 2 or any other game; they are deeply personal.
I can tell you with complete sincerity that I don’t play GW2 to impress other gamers with my “achievements”. I play it because its fun. I WvW because its really fun. AI can never replicate a human, nor his skill nor his mistakes. There is no greater joy than luring and punting someone off a cliff, or ninja-ing stonemist while its defenders figh off another realm. If you play for self validation or to further your sense of self worth.. that’s just sad.
I maintain that one of the problems with Guild Wars 2 is its single minded focus on monetizing almost every aspect of itself. Threads full of bile and hatred like this one are a result of a community fed the idea that in order to advance in the game, they must tread upon one another or throw money at the company. As such, many players feel that they earned the WvW rewards through hard work, and that this hard work was going to pay off and elevate them above their peers.
I agree to a certain extent. But even those playing to impress others through their achievements won’t feel compelled to buy gemstore armor skins. They’ll mostly grind for fractal weapon skins that truly are rare, or a legendary.
Where the gemstore is more detrimental imho is the gems to cash conversion. I have no issue with cash to gems however. It causes excess inflation which is detrimental to newer players (unless you believe their exchange rate jazz). Also, most of the interesting toys made for the game are in the form of gemstore purchases unfortunately.
Where I disagree the most with you is the final sentence you wrote. This thread is about impatience more than anything. Its childish. Much like grinding a video game to elevate yourself among your peers. That’s just plain sad. And even those looking for “elevation” are getting a skin everyone else who played WvW for more than a couple of weeks will be getting.
I see the weapon skin more like a memento. Its a key chain I bought on my vacation in the mists as a reminder for those fun fights we had. I can wait for the fix, I don’t need it now. But I would prefer it does get fixed.
If some items in the gem store, for example boosters or the reskinned infinite mining pick were bugged and disabled for some reason, I wonder what the response from the player base would be?
Howling bloody murder; as something they’ve paid for directly in cash isn’t working. A similar uproar would happen if the gemstore sold in game rewards, like say cultural T3 human armor unbound by race or legendaries.
Yet these aspects of the game run without a hitch or are fixed incredibly quickly. Your assertion that development time for a feature is correlated with how much money that feature can make for the game makes sense. The problem is that players know this, and it merely feeds their sense of injustice.
This is where the engineer in me wakes up. This issue with the ticket rewards (and chest that didn’t spawn) and the time it takes to fix it smells like an engineering and management issue… I wonder if the problem in the WvW team’s source code or if its elsewhere.. and if its elsewhere, do they have to schedule other personnel internally to help them find it? And is this other personnel free at the moment to work on it, or do they have a more pressing deadline? And then of course, if its scheduling, which work matters more for the game and company? So many questions.
But the answer I do have is they are working on it. And the observation I can make is the players posting in this thread are terribly impatient and childish. One even compared the game developers and the bug as a doctor and dying patient lol.
This thread is like those long family drives to Florida.
“Are we there yet?”
=^_^=
