Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

Some people insist that nothing cosmetic can be a problem, that people do not have the right to be upset when a cosmic reward is denied them as they would a “stat reward,” but remember that this is all subjective, and while you might value having the best stats in the game the most, others might value having the coolest look in the game more than that. If you don’t think it’s fair that they would lock a “5% better Power stat than anything else” armor behind a given content wall, then just understand that there are other people who would feel the same away about a “5% flamier armor skin.”

I would love to see people also looking at cosmetics this way when the discussion is about putting it behind an endless grind (because according to some, grinding for cosmetics is fine because it are just cosmetics) or putting it in the cash-shop (because according to some only putting stats in a cash-shop counts as P2W or is bad).

Anyway, the problem is that many items are already behind a wall that makes it unreachable for many people. You see, most items are behind an endless grind of some currency (mostly gold).

So they are out of reach for people who can’t stand the never ending brainless grind.

What some people now ask is to simply have rewards that not behind an endless grind, or where the endless grind is the most optimal way of getting them, but items that are locked behind a challenge, or in my case I would be happy having rewards simply behind specific content.

Like I gave as example before, give JP’s all their own reward (that you can’t get when using a portal, or logging in at the chest).. You can even put a timer on it (adding the challenge) and link 3 rewards to a JP where the first you get for completing the JP and other 2 only if you complete it within x time.

Some of those items could be tradable, other not. At least then everybody has his little reward for his preferred content, instead of the grinders being able to get everything while there is not much (or it’s way harder) for those that dislike the grind.

What I would like to see:
- They move back to a B2P model with more focus on regular expansions and less on the cash-shop. Also improving the reward system, even moving many of the shop-items to the game-world behind specific content.

- More interesting content / raids also, but not only build around guilds, setting goals for guilds and players. Adding more challenges to the game.

- They make it a seamless world.

- We will get a nice mix of dynamic events and more traditional quest.

- Collision detection will only, and always be applied to the visible objects, so no more invisible walls or visible objects without collision detection.

- Mounts will be implemented and getting the mounts will be with many different types of interesting in-game game-play. (same for ranger-pets).

Well that would be the perfect world.

Torolan.5816:

Devata.6589:

It also adds to the value of the content itself. See for example the Molten Core dungeon. Everybody asked for it to be put back into the game, and after they did nobody seem to care about it anymore.. It’s not one of the favorite fractals or something like that.. Why? Well partly because it was put in as a fractal and not as a dungeon, but another major reason is imho the fact that the unique rewards (backpack and mini) where taken out. Much of the fun of the dungeon went with it. Many people did the dungeon for those rewards and every run there was the rush if it would drop.

I can only speak for myself and my groups of Fractal runners of course, but from what I know, most people prefer the Molten Core fractal over Maw or Mai Trin. Why? For hardcore reasons. It is short and comparatively quick if you know how to do it. Sadly for the real hardcore guys, you have to watch the entrance of the two bozzos all the time.^^

For hardcore reasons. It is short and comparatively quick if you know how to do it." So not because it’s fun, but because it’s easy to farm when grinding away in fractals.

People ask for it to come back because it was supposed to be fun, and indeed I myself had a lot of fun with it back when it was in the LS, but after the first 2 / 3 runs all other runs where completely reward driven.

maddoctor.2738:

SkiTz.4590:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

for christs sake… its this simple… HAVE YOUR HARD CONTENT no one is saying you shouldnt have challenging content, hell we enjoy hard content too, just dont lock the rewards so far out of reach that it becomes impossible for more then a handful of players to obtain it!

it’s also this simple… NO ONE is going to bother doing this new content that anet spent valuable time and resources if there are not UNIQUE rewards. They might do it just because its new for the first week or so, and than it will be dead content if there is no unique reward or unique progression towards a reward.

I think this is the main issue with all this conversation. I tried earlier to provide some options.

Putting them on the TP is a no no for reason I’ve already explained in other posts (mostly due to the heavy RNG/Grind required to keep them expensive) but making it so everyone can “farm” specific parts of the new challenging zone for tokens, while finishing the entire content gives a load more is one valid way to do this.

First boss (easier) might give 1 token, second boss 2 tokens, third boss 3 tokens, or 1/4/10 or whatever, so players of all skill levels can get the rewards while spending time in this content, not by farming SW or DT or whatever other farm exist.

In a similar way players that can’t finish the whole content because of time constraints could do a few bosses/sectors each time much how DoA worked in GW1. The greatest groups could do all 4 sectors in one run, getting 1/2/3/4 = 10 tokens. Players that wanted to farm one specific sector because it was easier for them, or they didn’t have enough time to do the whole thing, were getting 1 token. And anyone else, anywhere in between.

This of course requires the zones to be open enough and not be a straight line like current dungeons.

As I did show before, putting them on the TP does not have to be a problem. We can see this (as I did show in that post) in other games where some items can be but on the trading post, have been for the last 10 years but still are rare items.. however in reach if you do the content that goes with it.

The token structure is no solution.. it’s just yet another grind. People will start grinding boss 1 because it’s easy, slowly seeing the tokens increase and eventually buy the items (likely there are multiple) they want. But then also get bored because of killing the same boss over and over just seeing this small number increase is not really interesting.. at last not for the people that are not the grinding types.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

for christs sake… its this simple… HAVE YOUR HARD CONTENT no one is saying you shouldnt have challenging content, hell we enjoy hard content too, just dont lock the rewards so far out of reach that it becomes impossible for more then a handful of players to obtain it!

For christ sake.. 90% of the rewards is only in reach for the hardcore casuals who can / do / like to (brainlessly) grind, grind, grind all the time. Being out reach for all those other players who don’t like or don’t have the time for all that grind.

Is that really too much to ask from a game that was put on the marked with a ‘no grind philosophy’? Sure 2,5 years after release Colin clarified that with the ‘no grind philosophy’ they did try to have no tier grind and where not so much looking at the other types of grind, but still, that no grind philosophy is what many people were looking for when going to GW2, also those other types of grind.

But no, now some of the hardcore casuals get upset because some people ask for rewards to be locked behind a challenge or simply specific content instead of behind a generic grind.

If you want to this time hold people who left GW2 and will come back with HoT, Giving an direct / alternative way to earn rewards instead for all the grind is a must, as many likely will have left because they got bored by the grind.

It also adds to the value of the content itself. See for example the Molten Core dungeon. Everybody asked for it to be put back into the game, and after they did nobody seem to care about it anymore.. It’s not one of the favorite fractals or something like that.. Why? Well partly because it was put in as a fractal and not as a dungeon, but another major reason is imho the fact that the unique rewards (backpack and mini) where taken out. Much of the fun of the dungeon went with it. Many people did the dungeon for those rewards and every run there was the rush if it would drop.

So there are many good reasons to have rewards, in fact most rewards, put in the game behind specific content instead of behind a currency (whatever that currency is).

Kashrlyyk.5364:

maddoctor.2738:

…

What did you expect them to ask in that popup? “Do you want more challenging content? YES/NO”?

….

That or pointing the players to where the survey is happening, where the feedback can be given. It’s not enough to have the launcher have a tiny little banner about it because thanks to “Autoplay” this banner might not be seen by lots of players.

Devata.6589:

….

By putting the CDI about it on the forum, they give everybody the possibility to give their opinion about it.. so yes they asked everybody.. Not everybody answered.

Conski Deshan.2057:

….

They asked a reasonable sampling of active players (all of whom span the spectrum from low playtime or low skill to high play time or high skill players). It allowed for better and more detailed feedback on the issue rather than just a yes/no poll of the entire playerbase.

It’s very well known that most players do NOT visit the forums of the games they play. And the ones who do visit are more likely to NOT be casual players. So from the start the feedback was suffering from a massive selection bias. So no they did not ask a “reasonable sampling”.

That is why they should have made an ingame popup to actually give every player a chance to give feedback.

If there are no or only a few ‘casuals’ on the forums.. Then why is this discussion here going on? Looks like there are enough people of all sorts to have these discussions.. this topic proofs that.

Not saying that there could not be better ways of communicating with the community as indeed not everybody will be on the forums. But I do think nearly everybody (the group you could put them in) is represented on the forum.

Another thing you forget is that it might not be most important what the biggest number of current players say. Because many old players have left for some reasons and might come back with HoT. To know what Anet should do, to this time keep those players, it’s not interesting to see what most current people want form the game, as that are not the type of players that left.

Good example would be people who dislike grinding (but are also not into PvP or WvW). Because the game is so grindy most of them have left, so the game worked as a filter to filter out the grinders. Asking them how to improve the games will not help in holding the people that dislike grinding when they come back for HoT.

Astralporing.1957:

Devata.6589:

By putting the CDI about it on the forum, they give everybody the possibility to give their opinion about it.. so yes they asked everybody.. Not everybody answered.

Again, because it was mentioned that it was a CDI for the people that do want Raids. There wasn’t any question asked about whether the community want it or not at all.

Nah, everybody could do his say, also if you did not like the idea of raids. Also there is not one answer to if ‘the community’ wants raids, some will some won’t.

They did likely see many people ask for raids and so put up the CDI.

Lucius.2140:

Dovienya.6597:

There is this pervasive belief that 99% of the player base is 100% casual and that all of these players enjoy 100% the same type of content. I would 100% love to see these metrics.

As a casual player who generally enjoys to see all the content a game has to offer, I play and enjoy difficult content with other non-elitist, non-hard core players. Hard-core and elitism is an attitude, and does not necessarily have any causal relation to the skill of the player nor the content they enjoy.

MMOs definition of hardcore isnt directly related to skill level, its about time. In other types of games hardcore its the difficulty level you like and at the same time can play, so its related to skill level.

In fact i have friends that play very well, specially considering the time they spend in game, but in this game will be casuals. In MMO standars generally we all will progress to casuals as we get more real life responsabilities, but that doesnt mean that you like or play a litle of dull content, some people prefer the short but intense aproach.

Even if a casual isnt skilled, that doesnt mean he cant be skilled, as long as theres not physical/mental and/or hardware/internet problems, he can basically do all the content internet have.

My friend “Take”, who its relativly casual (no more than 10 hours a week), played Liandri (First Queen Gauntlet) about 300 times until he won, he spent all his time on it and was super happy of winning it.

Edit: If it wasnt solo i would have carried him, his my friend!

No, this is not completely true.. in GW2 you could define hardcore to time, as getting the best rewards mainly required time of grinding, not so much skill as brainless grinding will work.

That is why, in a previous comment I talked about the hardcore casuals, when asking the question how you would define casuals, hardcore and elites.

However, in the end, the question is about hard content. Not content for hardcore people as you would then define what hardcore means.

Tigaseye.2047:

Devata.6589:

Without going into a complete new discussion, I once compared the income of GW1 to that of GW2, where I put the initial income (from initial sale) as 100% (you can’t do this with actual numbers because GW2 has a much bigger scope).

Then I calculated the income GW2 would have made with yearly expansions based on how much GW1 earned with it expansions compared to the initial sale, and set that of to GW2 and what it earned with it’s original sale.

Result was, that based on these numbers, GW2 would have earned more money by now had it released a expansion every year (a €50,-) it would have earned more then it earned with the cash-shop. And even if you stretched it up to 1,5 year GW2 would have start earning more from I think the 3th expansion on (can’t remember exactly).

Of course this also means the game should be able to attain the number of players as GW1 did (again, compared to the initial game) but the fact that items like this in the the game will help with that as it creates an overall more fun experience instead of the grind the current way of doing things (that is related to the cash-shop approach) does.

Now I don’t think that at this point GW2 will still be as successful as GW1 was with it’s expansion (compared to the initial sale) because I think at some points GW2 already did some irreversible damage, nonetheless, it would be interesting to do this math again when we have the numbers from the HoT sales, what will be a little harder as sales have already started.

Anyway, so based on these numbers it is very much is a viable option when you go for a true B2P approach, and that is exactly how GW2 initial was put on the marked, but then it slowly moved to a cash-shop model that indeed results in what we see now. Maybe that with HoT we move back to a B2P model? Viable it is so do the numbers assume.

Now I will not go into this any more because I have in many other topics, and that would derail this thread to much. Some people will simply not understand the math but you can do the math yourself, all the required numbers are available here http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx

Yes, but that’s the overall income?

So, it’s not, necessarily, taking into account the extra work that would be involved in producing an xpac every year?

So, quite possibly, in a $ per hour of work sense it would be less if they did that?

I would also prefer it if they did what you suggest, but surely there has to be a financial reason why they aren’t?

As far as we are aware, the team did not increase hugely for the development of HoT, so that does not seem to be the case.

Yes, there is. A true B2P model is more risky, a cash-shop model is pretty safe. When making an expansion you are investing money and then you need to hope the expansion will sell well while with a cash-shop you don’t have that risk so much.

Fox.3469:

But i don’t see people crying about that. And they shouldn’t. But is shows that Arenanet is more then willing to put unique rewards into maps and doing events. Now in the beta, there was a currency called airship parts, we don’t have an idea what that will provide us but let’s say it unlocks a few unique skins for the verdant brink map. Like drytop and silverwastes.

But then to hear those people come say that hardcore content needs non-exclusive rewards,

People talked about rewards for (hard) content, and then you come with an example where they use just another currency to show Anet will do that? Those airship parts are just again another currency to grind.

And while indeed the talk is here specific about hard content, really what we need is rewards exclusive to specific content. That includes but is not limited to hard content.

Tigaseye.2047:

Devata.6589:

I agree that there should be way more good looking and fun items (toys, mini’s, ranger-pets) in the game, the cash-shop should get way less focus, they can earn the money with the expansions. So we can get more and the best items in the game where they belong.

But I disagree that it has to be limited. If there are enough items in the game that are interesting, fun but hard to get (because of low RNG, or better because it’s hard to get or a mix) items, it can still be a rare item in the game, it does not have to be limited for it.

Let’s take an easy example from another game.
I will take WoW as example (Yes I know, for some reason, people seem to hate that game so don’t like it as example, however most people know it and it’s over 10 years old, so a great to use as example.). There is a range of whelpings (Azure Whelpling, Crimson Whelpling, Dark Whelpling, Emerald Whelpling) that have been available from the initial game (over 10 years ago). They are simple drops that are even tradable, but with very LOW RNG.. nonetheless you can directly work towards them (so no need to grind gold) because those Whelpling are all in one area with groups, so you can just kill them. This is btw not the best type of content, but again, it works good as example.

So there is an item you could buy from the TP and you could directly work for, it’s not out of reach for anybody. However, because of the way they put it in the game, even after 10 years it’s still a rare item that not many people have. You could, and should also implement items like that in challenging content.. Let’s say all JP’s get a special fun item (toy, mini, skin) for completing the JP in a very fast way (without the use of portals). Then it will stay rare items, but not limited so you can always go for it.

I don’t think, without a sub, they’re going to think of that as a viable option.

There’s only so much money a (moderately priced) xpac, every now and then, is going to raise.

The cash shop and lack of fun things to farm, in-game (encouraging you to use that cash shop more),. is essentially the price you pay for having no sub.

Do I like that situation? No.

But, it is what it is.

Tigaseye.2047:

Devata.6589:

I agree that there should be way more good looking and fun items (toys, mini’s, ranger-pets) in the game, the cash-shop should get way less focus, they can earn the money with the expansions. So we can get more and the best items in the game where they belong.

But I disagree that it has to be limited. If there are enough items in the game that are interesting, fun but hard to get (because of low RNG, or better because it’s hard to get or a mix) items, it can still be a rare item in the game, it does not have to be limited for it.

Let’s take an easy example from another game.
I will take WoW as example (Yes I know, for some reason, people seem to hate that game so don’t like it as example, however most people know it and it’s over 10 years old, so a great to use as example.). There is a range of whelpings (Azure Whelpling, Crimson Whelpling, Dark Whelpling, Emerald Whelpling) that have been available from the initial game (over 10 years ago). They are simple drops that are even tradable, but with very LOW RNG.. nonetheless you can directly work towards them (so no need to grind gold) because those Whelpling are all in one area with groups, so you can just kill them. This is btw not the best type of content, but again, it works good as example.

So there is an item you could buy from the TP and you could directly work for, it’s not out of reach for anybody. However, because of the way they put it in the game, even after 10 years it’s still a rare item that not many people have. You could, and should also implement items like that in challenging content.. Let’s say all JP’s get a special fun item (toy, mini, skin) for completing the JP in a very fast way (without the use of portals). Then it will stay rare items, but not limited so you can always go for it.

I don’t think, without a sub, they’re going to think of that as a viable option.

There’s only so much money a (moderately priced) xpac, every now and then, is going to raise.

The cash shop and lack of fun things to farm, in-game (encouraging you to use that cash shop more),. is essentially the price you pay for having no sub.

Do I like that situation? No.

But, it is what it is.

Without going into a complete new discussion, I once compared the income of GW1 to that of GW2, where I put the initial income (from initial sale) as 100% (you can’t do this with actual numbers because GW2 has a much bigger scope).

Then I calculated the income GW2 would have made with yearly expansions based on how much GW1 earned with it expansions compared to the initial sale, and set that of to GW2 and what it earned with it’s original sale.

Result was, that based on these numbers, GW2 would have earned more money by now had it released a expansion every year (a €50,-) it would have earned more then it earned with the cash-shop. And even if you stretched it up to 1,5 year GW2 would have start earning more from I think the 3th expansion on (can’t remember exactly).

Of course this also means the game should be able to attain the number of players as GW1 did (again, compared to the initial game) but the fact that items like this in the the game will help with that as it creates an overall more fun experience instead of the grind the current way of doing things (that is related to the cash-shop approach) does.

Now I don’t think that at this point GW2 will still be as successful as GW1 was with it’s expansion (compared to the initial sale) because I think at some points GW2 already did some irreversible damage, nonetheless, it would be interesting to do this math again when we have the numbers from the HoT sales, what will be a little harder as sales have already started.

Anyway, so based on these numbers it is very much is a viable option when you go for a true B2P approach, and that is exactly how GW2 initial was put on the marked, but then it slowly moved to a cash-shop model that indeed results in what we see now. Maybe that with HoT we move back to a B2P model? Viable it is so do the numbers assume.

Now I will not go into this any more because I have in many other topics, and that would derail this thread to much. Some people will simply not understand the math but you can do the math yourself, all the required numbers are available here http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx

Fox.3469:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

People are fond of comparing this game to Guild Wars 1. There was very little in Guild Wars 1 that couldn’t be purchased with gold. Arguably, the hardest weapons to attain were the weapons from DOA, or maybe rare stuff like the celestial compass, the bonecage scythe, the frog scepter or the voltaic spear.

All these high end items were available to sell. You didn’t have to be great to get them. You could farm feathers in a low end zone over and over till you could afford to purchase them.

No one in Guild Wars 1 seemed that riled that their rewards weren’t exclusive. It allowed players who wanted challenge to do challenging content and profit. It allowed less intense players to have the rewards.

I think this is the best solution all the way around.

To those who support those hard core rewards, I guarantee you if there are enough rewards casual players can’t get, you won’t have enough players left to continue running the game. Casuals, in my opinion, make a vast percentage of the playerbase. The more you put out of their reach, the more of them you lose.

I agree with this sentiment completely.

The guy who gets the super rare drop can hold onto it or get rich by selling it. Either way he is greatly rewarded for participating in the content that produced the drop. Meanwhile the player who doesn’t care for content X can farm content Y to finance his purchase of the item. Its a win/win.

Except it’s not. The top 1% will find a way to farm the hardcore content, they always do. As more people learn it more people will farm it. And this will eventually make the best way to aquire the item, to farm gold instead of doing the content.

Just think about it. If you could sell dungeon armor on the trading post, not only would it totally discourage anyone but the farmers from doing any dungeons but the speedpaths, it would completely destroy the value of any crafted exotic armor pieces on the market.

“Win/win” Yeah right

That really depends on how you design the game. Currently you are completely right, but if most, if not all good rewards are behind specific content this will be way less.

People can’t all start farming this one item that cost so much to earn money, because as soon as they do that the price of the item will drop.. Will people find ways to simply get high numbers of gold directly, then you will get inflation meaning the gold will be worth less.

So in that case, going directly for the reward is almost always the most efficient way.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am still in favor of also having account-bound items. Just wanted to show that just the fact that items are not account-bound does not mean they will automatically be fairly easy to get with grinding while hard to get directly from the game.

Kashrlyyk.5364:

maddoctor.2738:

….

They asked for feedback over their “harder” content numerous times now. Feedback on SAB TM, feedback on the new Tequatl, Triple Trouble. They’ve asked for feedback over the new more challenging mobs in Verdnat Brink. They’ve asked numerous times, there has been a CDI on raiding with 1700 replies.

They asked players what they want more than once. They got feedback and now the respond.

1700 replies? How many are from the same person? And compared to the population of GW2 what percentage of the ENTIRE player base answered? So NO they did not ask the players, the asked probably the smallest subset of the playerbase and now claim they know what ALL of them want.

Again they have NEVER asked ALL the players!!! Because for that they would have to add a popup ingame to inform the players that they want their opinion and they NEVER did that.

By putting the CDI about it on the forum, they give everybody the possibility to give their opinion about it.. so yes they asked everybody.. Not everybody answered.

All this talk about casual vs hardcore / elite, and that challenging content would scare away casuals.. Who says casuals would not be interested in challenging content? Most people like a challenge once in a while.

Also the question becomes how you define casual vs hardcore. Getting most of the current rewards required endless and endless hours of grinding. So from a “time spend” perspective, those casuals many seem to point to, are very hardcore. Meaning the current structure really mainly rewards hardcore players.

Builds don’t interest me so from that perspective I might be casual, and I for sure don’t like to grind, grind, grind some currency what results in me not being able to get many nice rewards (because of me being casual about this).

However, many people consider me the JP specialist because apparently I am good at JP’s so maybe I am elite at JP’s. So is it then really so strange to be rewarded for that, instead of mainly rewarding the hardcore casuals?

Stars.2179:

Vayne.8563:

dsslive.8473:

Stars.2179:

Actually, there are such thing is non-viable builds a well as game play. Just because Goku or Abe or Wethospu can solo the crap out of everything naked doesn’t mean other people can do it. There are such thing as non-viable way of playing for others and for them, sometimes it IS IMPOSSIBLE!

not sure if this was in reply to my response to the arah guy, but here we go

He already managed to complete arah once, so it’s not out of his reach, the thing is that it simply took too long (all dungeons are gonna take long if you’re doing the for the first time) Instead of sking for help or just joining a party and learning as he goes he decides it’s “out of reach” when it really isn’t. No one is saying he should be able to solo arah naked (i surely can’t), you don’t do dungeons alone, you’re there with a group and most of the times (from my experience) people are totally willing to explain the bossfights and to help (ofcourse there are exceptions).

So no, it’s not “impossible”, he jsut made the decision that it wasn’t worht the effort. And thats a totally valid decision, there are skins i like but i just don’t see it being worth the effort, they aren’t “impossible” to obtain for me though (and i’m far from good). It’s just me weighing their value agaisnt whether i’d enjoy getting them. I rather have fun , than force myself to grind or do something unfun for a skin. And that’s okay, i won’t get that skin , i move on.

Wrong or right, that’s the attitude of a lot of people. This isn’t a job, it’s a game. You play games to have fun. If you don’t find dungeons fun, you don’t do dungeons. If they make it so you can ONLY get rewards from dungeons and you want those rewards, you’re forced to do something you’re not enjoying, at which point, it’s not a game anymore.

Sure anyone CAN do it. I can go to the gym and work out too, but I don’t, because I don’t find it fun. The thing is, I have huge amounts of time to play so it doesn’t matter if some stuff I do isn’t fun for a bit, but people who have less time to play…it becomes a bigger deal. How many of these people are there? What is the threshold before they throw in the towel? It varies from person to person.

But it doesn’t make those people wrong.

Yeah but how do you balance it out if I only ever wanted to roleplay and run 50 laps around divinity reach every day and I don’t find dungeons nor fractal fun AT ALL. I HATE THEM but I WANT those skins ANYWAY. So should I be just get them without doing the appropriate contents?

As joke I would say, they could make a reward for logging in.. but reality has it, that that already exists.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

People are fond of comparing this game to Guild Wars 1. There was very little in Guild Wars 1 that couldn’t be purchased with gold. Arguably, the hardest weapons to attain were the weapons from DOA, or maybe rare stuff like the celestial compass, the bonecage scythe, the frog scepter or the voltaic spear.

All these high end items were available to sell. You didn’t have to be great to get them. You could farm feathers in a low end zone over and over till you could afford to purchase them.

No one in Guild Wars 1 seemed that riled that their rewards weren’t exclusive. It allowed players who wanted challenge to do challenging content and profit. It allowed less intense players to have the rewards.

I think this is the best solution all the way around.

To those who support those hard core rewards, I guarantee you if there are enough rewards casual players can’t get, you won’t have enough players left to continue running the game. Casuals, in my opinion, make a vast percentage of the playerbase. The more you put out of their reach, the more of them you lose.

I agree with this sentiment completely.

The guy who gets the super rare drop can hold onto it or get rich by selling it. Either way he is greatly rewarded for participating in the content that produced the drop. Meanwhile the player who doesn’t care for content X can farm content Y to finance his purchase of the item. Its a win/win.

But that only works because the structure is different from GW2. In GW2 you don’t really have these type of items other than items that are very rare and purely based on ‘luck’, extremely low RNG or the ones you can only buy (cash-shop). But not really ‘do this hard content’ and that gives you a reasonable possibility for item x to drop. Only a few, while it should be with many of the items, do x get y, do b get c. Not do whatever, sell whatever, buy y from the guy that wanted c but got y by doing whatever. (Where whatever is usually some type of grind they do to get the currency they need)

CorrynnStarr.7942:

people that compare this to real life are just not getting it… This isn’t real life!! Its a game meant for enjoyment. You cant compare scenarios to real life here, cuz it doesn’t make any sense. If you want to play like real life, then go to REAL LIFE… comparing this to a gym to get 6 pack abs… pfff… Lipo and implants can give you that with no effort… or I could just select 6 pack abs on my toon from a menu… should I wait 4 years to add longer hair to my toon cuz ittakes that long in real life??? should I make my toon as ugly as possible to imitate my own look in real life? and the opposite, should I choose to have the prettiest toon possible to fit my real life self image? Jesus people… Games are designed to have fun, not to be real life work. Go ahead and have your hard content, just don’t gate the rewards behind things a lot of people cant obtain, regardless of how hard they work at it.

There is not a kitten thing wrong with making something hard to get and have multiple ways to do it. THE ONLY REASON to keep it gated is to make it so your selfish kitten can walk around PVE and gloat… PERIOD. Don’t try to hide behind that cowl of “oh you just have to work for it” nonsense, cuz that SCREAMS of “im better than you and I want to show it off”.

“There is not a kitten thing wrong with making something hard to get and have multiple ways to do it.”
Sure, but it does depends on how you do it.. In the current way it’s very currency driven (like in real life), resulting in people grinding for the currency, not even liking the grind (like often in real life) to then buy the items they want (like in real life). So it basically becomes a job to them (like in real life). But indeed, this should not be about real life, this should be fun, that is exactly why you would have a more interesting system (life by the land type of idea) that is a fun or challenging way to earn the rewards, instead of turning it into a job.

Blaeys.3102:

I agree with the OP 100 percent on this.

Like many, I want more challenging content in all areas of the game (a lot) – but I want it so that I feel challenged and have fun doing the content, not so I can obtain something that others cannot.

Differentiated gear tiers (of any kind) is a relic from other MMOs. GW2 takes that drama out of the game and puts the focus solely on what it should be on – the content and personal satisfaction that comes from beating that content.

Good rewards does not equal gear tiers, it can also be about cosmetic or other fun items.

Anyway, if those items are not important, only the content is, then why care about how you have to get them?

Also many people are now grinding their way towards the rewards, not even liking the grind, so whether you like it or not, GW2 very much is reward-driven. Also in those cases there is not much personal satisfaction that comes out of the content exactly because of the way the reward system works in GW2 at this moment.

Fox.3469:

Devata.6589:

Fox.3469:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Fox.3469:

Conski Deshan.2057:

If a full set of say 8 warriors can just blow through it , it indicates that the games mechanics are not being fully utilized.

I have to say i strongly disagree with this. If a full set of berserker warriors, all with the same weapons can blast trough it, then yes. However if you have allot of different specs and playstyles of the warrior in your group. Then 8 warriors should be just fine.

You have to have different roles, classes are flavour, but the role they fill should be important.

I would consider classes to be more than flavor.
I said mechanically, and what I mean by that is, there may be a portion of the fight that requires reflects (like arah but say damageable by normal means), Water fields may be required for another section, invisibility for a section where you have to stealth through and agro results in insta-kill, A crowd control fight where you have to prevent several enemies from reaching a location through soft CC.

Even 8 different spec’d warriors would feel too low diversity wise.

I don’t mean to say it has to be optimal, just possible. If not you just impose certain classes upon the group.

If different roles are not required you never get the feeling you really make a change. It’s more the the ‘just everybody DPS the hell out of it’.

That is what i said… Dear lord people read, i said before 8 warriors should be able to complete it, but not 8 berserkers. Warrior can fill allot of different roles. I explained that your class shouldn’t matter that much, but your role should. and in role i mean wether you are more tanky, dps heavy, or support based.

Well this little discussion started with a post of me where I talked about “Raid Group Setup” and then it’s about roles, not about classes.

Now personally I would still think doing it with 8 warriors should not be doable because that means Warriors can have too many possible roles, not leaving enough flavor between different classes. Also if you can switch role half way, there really is no role.. But that’s a complete other discussion about how you should design classes and roles. So when you say you must be able to do it with 8 warriors then it becomes a completely different discussion.

When you talk about “group setup” I do mean different roles in a group. Take the trinity as an example (no, I am not saying we should have the trinity) then there are 3 required roles, DPS, Tank and Healer. We are not, and have never been talking about classes but about the group setup aka what roles a group must exist of.

Vayne.8563:

dsslive.8473:

Stars.2179:

Actually, there are such thing is non-viable builds a well as game play. Just because Goku or Abe or Wethospu can solo the crap out of everything naked doesn’t mean other people can do it. There are such thing as non-viable way of playing for others and for them, sometimes it IS IMPOSSIBLE!

not sure if this was in reply to my response to the arah guy, but here we go

He already managed to complete arah once, so it’s not out of his reach, the thing is that it simply took too long (all dungeons are gonna take long if you’re doing the for the first time) Instead of sking for help or just joining a party and learning as he goes he decides it’s “out of reach” when it really isn’t. No one is saying he should be able to solo arah naked (i surely can’t), you don’t do dungeons alone, you’re there with a group and most of the times (from my experience) people are totally willing to explain the bossfights and to help (ofcourse there are exceptions).

So no, it’s not “impossible”, he jsut made the decision that it wasn’t worht the effort. And thats a totally valid decision, there are skins i like but i just don’t see it being worth the effort, they aren’t “impossible” to obtain for me though (and i’m far from good). It’s just me weighing their value agaisnt whether i’d enjoy getting them. I rather have fun , than force myself to grind or do something unfun for a skin. And that’s okay, i won’t get that skin , i move on.

Wrong or right, that’s the attitude of a lot of people. This isn’t a job, it’s a game. You play games to have fun. If you don’t find dungeons fun, you don’t do dungeons. If they make it so you can ONLY get rewards from dungeons and you want those rewards, you’re forced to do something you’re not enjoying, at which point, it’s not a game anymore.

Sure anyone CAN do it. I can go to the gym and work out too, but I don’t, because I don’t find it fun. The thing is, I have huge amounts of time to play so it doesn’t matter if some stuff I do isn’t fun for a bit, but people who have less time to play…it becomes a bigger deal. How many of these people are there? What is the threshold before they throw in the towel? It varies from person to person.

But it doesn’t make those people wrong.

“Wrong or right, that’s the attitude of a lot of people. This isn’t a job, it’s a game. "
Indeed, and grind, grind, grind to buy the reward feels like a job, an interesting challenge feels like a game.

I agree that there should be way more good looking and fun items (toys, mini’s, ranger-pets) in the game, the cash-shop should get way less focus, they can earn the money with the expansions. So we can get more and the best items in the game where they belong.

But I disagree that it has to be limited. If there are enough items in the game that are interesting, fun but hard to get (because of low RNG, or better because it’s hard to get or a mix) items, it can still be a rare item in the game, it does not have to be limited for it.

Let’s take an easy example from another game.
I will take WoW as example (Yes I know, for some reason, people seem to hate that game so don’t like it as example, however most people know it and it’s over 10 years old, so a great to use as example.). There is a range of whelpings (Azure Whelpling, Crimson Whelpling, Dark Whelpling, Emerald Whelpling) that have been available from the initial game (over 10 years ago). They are simple drops that are even tradable, but with very LOW RNG.. nonetheless you can directly work towards them (so no need to grind gold) because those Whelpling are all in one area with groups, so you can just kill them. This is btw not the best type of content, but again, it works good as example.

So there is an item you could buy from the TP and you could directly work for, it’s not out of reach for anybody. However, because of the way they put it in the game, even after 10 years it’s still a rare item that not many people have. You could, and should also implement items like that in challenging content.. Let’s say all JP’s get a special fun item (toy, mini, skin) for completing the JP in a very fast way (without the use of portals). Then it will stay rare items, but not limited so you can always go for it.

Fox.3469:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Fox.3469:

Conski Deshan.2057:

If a full set of say 8 warriors can just blow through it , it indicates that the games mechanics are not being fully utilized.

I have to say i strongly disagree with this. If a full set of berserker warriors, all with the same weapons can blast trough it, then yes. However if you have allot of different specs and playstyles of the warrior in your group. Then 8 warriors should be just fine.

You have to have different roles, classes are flavour, but the role they fill should be important.

I would consider classes to be more than flavor.
I said mechanically, and what I mean by that is, there may be a portion of the fight that requires reflects (like arah but say damageable by normal means), Water fields may be required for another section, invisibility for a section where you have to stealth through and agro results in insta-kill, A crowd control fight where you have to prevent several enemies from reaching a location through soft CC.

Even 8 different spec’d warriors would feel too low diversity wise.

I don’t mean to say it has to be optimal, just possible. If not you just impose certain classes upon the group.

If different roles are not required you never get the feeling you really make a change. It’s more the the ‘just everybody DPS the hell out of it’.

phys.7689:

Devata.6589:

Silicato.4603:

phys.7689:

Silicato.4603:

+1 to the creator of the thread.
He said exactly what i think and what i want. i dont want this game that i love transform into a frustrating game that only can be played with 150 trained people at the same time or staying on X ip for 2 hours, etc etc. I want a casual game, where i can enjoy and play at its full with just 1-2 hours per day, like GW2 has always been.

the author isnt talking about the overall way the game is played. The author only cares about the reward balance between different types of content.

also what you are refering to is not about challenge, its about barrier to entry.

A sport wouldnt be considered challenging just because you have to wait on line for 2 days with 40 of your friends.

I remind you Tripple wurm is considered challenging content in GW2. And the dificulty it has nowadays is just the barrier to entry: choosing an ip, and put in there all the “challenge lovers”…

Challenging content, in reality, in GW2, not in our heads, is just new mechanics (that will not be new for more than a few days), long content, or both.

This really depends on the design and it reminds me of a post from Chris Whiteside:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/31#post4541113

Where he says the following about how to design a content (or a raid in this case) according to him:
1: Knowledge>
2: Skill>
3: Raid Group Setup

What imho is a huge mistake.
It should be,
1: Skill>
2: Raid Group Setup >
3: Knowladge

What I did try to explain a little later:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/31#post4541188

When you apply the mechanic Chris suggest here, you are right.. The ‘hard’ content will become a ‘trick’. Once they learned how to beat it, it becomes easy.

But that does not have to be the case, you can design it in ways so that content does stay a challenge, much like with PvP games. In fact you could mix it in, let two groups compete (not fight) with each other in some race.. This keeps it interesting and challenging. Better AI helps, as well as good use of randomness.

raid group setup shouldnt even be a thing.

putting in order makes it work wrong.
knowlegde should be the first gate. You have to figure out whats going on and deal with it. but that doesnt mean its the most difficult aspect, merely that you have to understand the area before you master it.

skill should be ever present, but you shouldnt need the greatest skill to get the base level of completion.

team work should be always a part of it, working well with your teams strengths and weaknesses should be part of the core.

great skill should give you better chances at rewards, or greater progress towards rewards.

The > does not stands for “comes first” but “is more important then”.

When knowledge is most important then Silicato is right.. challenging content does not stay challenging for very long.. just as long until people figured it out.

Group setup helps to also make people really feel / be useful, they all have a role to complete, and if they fail at their goal, the group fails at their goal. Something a lot of people miss in GW2.

Then lastly knowledge, having a fun mechanic in a dungeon you have to figure out first is good, but that only lasts for so long.

Silicato.4603:

phys.7689:

Silicato.4603:

+1 to the creator of the thread.
He said exactly what i think and what i want. i dont want this game that i love transform into a frustrating game that only can be played with 150 trained people at the same time or staying on X ip for 2 hours, etc etc. I want a casual game, where i can enjoy and play at its full with just 1-2 hours per day, like GW2 has always been.

the author isnt talking about the overall way the game is played. The author only cares about the reward balance between different types of content.

also what you are refering to is not about challenge, its about barrier to entry.

A sport wouldnt be considered challenging just because you have to wait on line for 2 days with 40 of your friends.

I remind you Tripple wurm is considered challenging content in GW2. And the dificulty it has nowadays is just the barrier to entry: choosing an ip, and put in there all the “challenge lovers”…

Challenging content, in reality, in GW2, not in our heads, is just new mechanics (that will not be new for more than a few days), long content, or both.

This really depends on the design and it reminds me of a post from Chris Whiteside:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/31#post4541113

Where he says the following about how to design a content (or a raid in this case) according to him:
1: Knowledge>
2: Skill>
3: Raid Group Setup

What imho is a huge mistake.
It should be,
1: Skill>
2: Raid Group Setup >
3: Knowladge

What I did try to explain a little later:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/31#post4541188

When you apply the mechanic Chris suggest here, you are right.. The ‘hard’ content will become a ‘trick’. Once they learned how to beat it, it becomes easy.

But that does not have to be the case, you can design it in ways so that content does stay a challenge, much like with PvP games. In fact you could mix it in, let two groups compete (not fight) with each other in some race.. This keeps it interesting and challenging. Better AI helps, as well as good use of randomness.

Vayne.8563:

What this game really needed, from the beginning, was stuff for casual people to collect LABELLED as such, and then you could put in those ultra hard rewards. But the game didn’t label that stuff. In Rift there were sparkles that anyone could get and anyone could collect. This game needs something like that to keep more casual people playing, as well as harder rewards for people who want more challenge.

But it doesn’t have that. It’s just rewards. Not easier and harder. There’s very few sets “everyone” can get, and that’s missing. Because that’s missing no one is going to be satisfied.

So the trick becomes kittening off the smallest group of people you can.

Funny how far apart we are.. I would say the labels should in some cases not be there at all of just less visible.. You know like being able to see, or now even preview all mini’s. Fine that there is a ‘label’ for collecting 10 mini’s (there already was from the beginning) but if you ask me you should not have given the ability to see all the mini’s (not even the icons) because this takes away from the hunt and discovering a new mini (maybe when seeing somebody with them).

So imho you should not make all possible collections to visible (label them), but make them less visible.

“as well as harder rewards for people who want more challenge.”
Good to see you changed your mind about this.

Harper.4173:

Devata.6589:

Harper.4173:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

~

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~

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FOTM does not have general good loot – nobody plays FOTM for the loot or farms it. People do it for the skins and the skin drop rates are abysmal.

Tokens would work – one man’s grind is another man’s decent progression. And trust me – RNG can be a huge grind too – just that with a token system you can have a point where the grind will eventually end even if you’re unlucky but with a RNG system the grind keeps going on forever if you’re unlucky.

“RNG can be a huge grind too – just that with a token system you can have a point where the grind will eventually end even if you’re unlucky but with a RNG system the grind keeps going on forever if you’re unlucky. "

This is exactly what I mean.. when I say people see RNG as thig big angry thing.

Yes tokens give you a more direct number to go by, but in the end it should not matter much, just for the sake of argument, let’s say you need 6 tokens, every run requires one token. That is similar (close to) a 1 in 6 drop-rate.

Now because people have started seeing RNG as this big bad thing they almost don’t want to / can’t think clearly anymore. When you say.. just as with the tokens where you are working towards your 6 runs, so do you with the 1 in 6 drop-rate. It’s not a guarantee but it still is a guide, every time you do a run you get closer towards it. Then the arguments becomes.. no, the possibility stays 1 in 6 so you are not getting closer, it’s completely random and this is mathematically right, and wrong at the same time. Previous round do not increase your chance of getting anything but not getting it in 5 rounds is mathematically still smaller then not getting it in 6 rounds. And because of the way people have started to look at RNG, they don’t seem to be able to see this.

While you can put it very simple.. Let’s say you may throw a dice 12 times.. now you must guess if the number 1 drops at least one time.. Following the logic people use when seeing RNG as this big angry thing… you should say “no” because the possibility is only 1 / 6 and the next try is still 1/6 and again. But everybody knows the smart thing is to say yes.

This only start to break down when numbers are huge but you have a limited number of tries. So a machine pics a number between 1 and a million, and you may pick 100 numbers.. Then RNG really is that big angry thing.

With dungeon drops it works in a similar way. Requiring 6 tokens could be similar to making a drop-rate of about 1 in 6. In one dungeon it may drop sooner, in another it might drop later but on average it’s 1 in 6. Unlucky in the general sense does not exist here (unless Anet codes it that way).

So in effort of achieving it, it’s similar, but there is a big advantage here that RNG has over a currency-system.

With RNG every run there is the rush of ‘will it drop’ this time. I mean.. you could be ‘lucky’ and it drops the first run, or you could be ‘unlucky’ and it drops the 12th run. One dungeon you will be ‘lucky’ the other you will be ‘unlucky’.. But this always creates that rush of ‘Will it drop this time’. Back to the token system, it’s completely this number you see going up slowly until you reach run 6 where you get the last token, reward wise there is way less of a rush. It’s a more boring system.

Not saying that tokens are bad, but imho they should be a side thing to earn something that is not supposed to be the main goal people go for, but just a nice extra, so even if they feel ‘unlucky’ and did not get the thing they wanted, at least they got a token for this additional item.. also if they did get lucky, they also got half way with the token so might want to come back later to get those last few tokens because they are half-way anyway.

“FOTM does not have general good loot – nobody plays FOTM for the loot or farms it. People do it for the skins and the skin drop rates are abysmal. "
Well there is no need for it, clearly you can still code it wrong.. But they where going to fix that with HoT right?

Silicato.4603:

maddoctor.2738:

Silicato.4603:

+1 to the creator of the thread.
He said exactly what i think and what i want. i dont want this game that i love transform into a frustrating game that only can be played with 150 trained people at the same time or staying on X ip for 2 hours, etc etc. I want a casual game, where i can enjoy and play at its full with just 1-2 hours per day, like GW2 has always been.

A) Challenging Group Content doesn’t mean “insanely long content”. There can be challenge without taking many hours (unless we count wipes), in fact that’s the best kind of challenge

B) I miss the point where any kind of content like this is mandatory. More types of content for more types of players = win isn’kitten

You may consider challenging content a win. But you just have to look the big picture.
It is actually a failure even before start, not a win.
Challenging content is only fun as long it remains a challenge that you cant deal with or if the reward is apealing to you after completing it.

By definition, challenging content has a lapsed time where challenge lovers or any kind of player can have fun with.
After that time, it will be wasted content and wasted resources by anet.

Anet, focus on the kind of content all your players will enjoy, for as long as GW2 lives, and dont fall in the trap of challenging content.
We dont want it, not even the ones who now claim for it. They won’t want it in a few weeks and you will have to create new content for them, and waste even more resources in lapsed content.

And maddoctor, you said that if we have a lot of different content, the better for the game, right?
Well, no, cause in this case, we are talking about lapsed content. Content that nobody will do or will want in a few months. Resources wasted. Instead of making a better game, they choosed to give some resources into lapsed content instead of real content.
I understand why, dont get me wrong. If with this, they manage to make more players (the ones looking for challenging content) to buy, mission accomplished.

But it is not real and durable content. It is just a carrot.
Something that will bring people who doesnt look to the big picture into the expansion.

In a few months after HoT release, when challenge lovers demand new challenging content, or new rewards, or bla bla bla, ill be glad to tell you all: “I told you so”

“Anet, focus on the kind of content all your players will enjoy, for as long as GW2 lives, and dont fall in the trap of challenging content.”

Sadly a lot of people are grinding.. not having fun at all, just doing it for the reward. Untill they get bored / burned out by it.

Basically, the challeging content does not have to last forever in terms of replayability, as long as it’s holds people long enough for the next expansion to be released and also offers fun to new players.

Then there will always be people doing the content, and people don’t get bored because they did run out of content.

If it comes to unique skins, what I would do is trying to have multiple difficulty levels for specific content. Let say JP’s are part of the leaderboard-content and when implementing that it would also get a unique reward. Now you can make it so that when you complete it you get a specific silver skin. Completing it within 5 min however also unlocks the same skin but with gold details on it, and completing it within 2,5 min it also gets a nice effect on it that you can then toggle on and off for both previous unlocked skins.

Now everybody can go for the skin, but there still is good reward for a bigger challenge.

What is important however is that the reward you get is also linked to the content (as much as possible). Best example I use for this, would be unlocking the blue-print for a portal to a WvW map for the guild-hall. Unlocking that, might very well be linked to holding a keep in that map. Sure this mean to unlock it, you need to do WvW, but the content matches the reward.

Much like the SAB mini’s should have been a reward from SAB (just as the skins). Now the mini’s where cash-shop items, meaning the way to get them was by grinding gold, or just buying them and not even looking at SAB. But would people really be able to complain about having to do SAB, to get the SAB mini’s?. Sure they can, but it would be completely unreasonable imho.

Harper.4173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Harper.4173:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m leery of Legendary skins available only in hard content. Legendary items are the game’s only real carrot outside of the ~5% stat increase offered by Ascended items. This game has too few carrots, and restricting the most noticeable of them to whatever percentage of the player-base wants hard content might not be the best for the game’s health. Existing Legendaries fit the bill, I’m not sure about the new ones yet.

No – the part i bolded out I cannot agree with – existing legendary weapons are a joke – the fact that you can straight up buy one with cash is ridiculous.
Why even call it Legendary? What’s legendary about swiping your card and getting the item? Nothing.

They could have cash-only or gem-store only exclusive skins that you can buy with gems – sure – but the moment your game’s most prestigious and supposedly hard to get item can be straight-up bought with real money I see a very very big problem.

Anet has accepted this and changed it since wave 2 legendary items will be account bound – as they should have been from the beginning.

Won’t argue with that — I was speaking about universality of access to make one’s own, not buying the item — which is consistent with buying skins in GW, but not ideal from a prestige point of view.

Yes – sure they’re easily accessible and I can see how that’s a good thing but a lot of bad comes from it too.

The reason they’re so accessible is that they’re basically a huge buy list with very little things that you actually have to do in order to get them. They were hard or harder at launch . Badges of honor for example were relevant and difficult to get back in the day when EOTM didn’t exist – you really did have to WvW a bit to get your 500.

Today most of what makes up a Gen 1 legendary is stuff you can straight up buy – that’s why they’re easy to get.

Easy as in, it just requires a brainless grind.. but not fun / challenging. Also it makes the item less unique so gives it less value from a game-perspective.

Vayne.8563:

On that nature of “rewards”. Okay let’s say you’re a mini collector. All along you’ve been getting every mini you can. Up until the Liadri mini, most minis in the game were relatively easily attainable. Now you add in the Liadri mini.

If minis are what you cared about, and you’re incapable of beating Liadri, all the time you’ve spent collecting until that moment will seem wasted to you. It doesn’t matter if you agree. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s right. There are completionists and collectors for whom the entire game will be ruined if you put on item out of the game for them. If they know there’s no chance of them ever getting that one item, the collection as a whole becomes worthless and they simply stop. I know that sounds nuts, but it’s how a lot of people roll.

I’m not one of those people, but I know too many of them. However, even me, if I start feeling enough rewards are out of my reach, I’ll starting thinking it’s the wrong game for me, and I’ll walk away. Not because I don’t like the game, but because I don’t want to feel completely limited.

I’m not the best gamer in the world, but I’m probably a bit above average. What I make up for in experience, however, I lose by living in Tasmania. No one likes to feel left out of reward pools. And yes, my geographical location makes it harder, I have to be better than others to get the same rewards.

Guild Wars 1 allowed people to purchase rewards. This not only gave people the ability to have something they want, but it also gives people running the content to get something out of it, after they’ve collected their unique rewards. It really is a win/win situation.

There is a group of people who feel that it’s not a win/win, but I’d wager it’s a lot smaller than the group of people who doesn’t really want to work hard to play a game, but they still want cool stuff.

Is it unfair? Maybe. But this is a game people play for entertainment and relaxation. Some people find challenging content fun, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the majority of the playerbase, even if it is a very loud portion of the playerbase. Why risk kittening off a big portion for a small portion?

I was a collector in other MMO’s, especially mini’s, but also special ranger pets, toys, mounts and special skins or just special cool items. Many mmo’s have such items that are gray or white but just fun, like a pet-rock (only the item, not the mini in GW2) or an unhatched egg and so on. Collecting such items is indeed for many people the preferred game-play in an MMO.

Anyway, it’s exactly the nature of GW2 that resulted in me not doing this in GW2, that important part of the game-play (usually for me in an MMO) is none-existing in GW2 because of the grind. Sure you might technically be able to get most, if not all of those mini’s in GW2 but it’s all grind, grind grind.

For the mini’s there are 3 sets in the cash-shop and many other separate mini’s in the cash-shop.. Those can only be collected with cash or gold. For many of the ones ingame the same holds true. And then there are a few you can get in fun ways ingame. Compare that with many other mmo’s where the most special ones required farming a hard dungeon or raid, but most are rewarded for quest, or from specific mobs in the world and so on, and so on but maybe a few one are indeed out of reach. Collecting mini’s in those game was an adventure that send you all over the world, letting you do all kinds of game-play. But in GW2, it’s grind, grind, grind.

So while it might factually (well still not completely) be possible to get them all ingame, the process of getting them was boring, and you also can’t say you could simply earn them by playing normally.. Getting that amount of money required grinding. A good question would be, how many people did set out to collect all mini (or something else), grinded a lot to get it, spend money on it (the hole reason it’s build this way) and then eventually got burned out of it exactly because of this approach?

“There are completionists and collectors for whom the entire game will be ruined if you put on item out of the game for them.” Well not ‘the game’ but indeed that game-play.. however, so does the grind. For every collector / completionism, who is not also enjoys brainless grinding, that game-play is already lost because of the current approach. It would be nice to give them something again.. letting them collect mini’s you can in fact work directly towards, other than grind, grind grind.

“if I start feeling enough rewards are out of my reach, I’ll starting thinking it’s the wrong game for me, and I’ll walk away.” But then you conveniently forget about all the people who do see a lot of rewards out of reach for them because the grind in between them and the item is just too much for them. People who might indeed have left but might come back with HoT.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

RNG isn’t the problem, RNG can in fact be positive.

I think when players are talking about RNG in this game, they mean the 0.0001% (or lower) chances of getting anything of value so the RNG = evil stuck with us.

However, there is an alternative for RNG so you can remove it completely from the game, at least from instanced content, without adding tokens. There was a raiding system in Lotro (pre-expansion) that was my favorite reward system. It worked like this:

Each raid boss dropped ONE token for a specific piece of raid gear. So, the first boss dropped the boot token, second the glove token etc. Bosses only dropped one token each time, even in a raid group of 24 players but it was a 100% chance.

The players then had the ability to decide who gets that said token, either rolling randomly, or by choice. Random groups would do random rolls, but organized groups had much better ways of distributing their loot. For example, it was common to give the tokens to the main tank first (for obvious reasons) then the main healer and then everyone else. Or use an attendance/point system where the most valuable/consistent player got them first, it was really a player choice.

What made the system work so well was the fact that there was no punishing RNG involved. Getting your raid gear wasn’t a matter of luck or a random roll. At maximum with a constant raid team, you would get your boots in exactly 24 runs because by then everyone else in your raid group would already have them. The difference with the GW2 system is that when one of your party members got one of the tokens you felt HAPPY for them, because you were one step closer to getting it yourself. In GW2 when your friend gets an ultra rare drop it’s not the same. Your friend getting that fractal dagger won’t bring you a step closer in getting it yourself.

It’s the feeling that changes. In GW2 I might kill Tequatl a bazillion times and never get a Tequatl weapon, my friend might get 2 in 2 runs. Tokens are a way to remove the unfair part of RNG from a game, but they make it feel like a grind instead.

“I think when players are talking about RNG in this game, they mean the 0.0001% (or lower) chances of getting anything of value so the RNG = evil stuck with us.”
Well, the problem of this is that people seem to forget that RNG does not have to be bad.. They have come to see RNG as this angry mean thing, while it can also be good. That is why I wanted to point this out.

Of course, one of the problems is that with the current structure in GW2 it’s hard to get it right. I mean, if you want to make something a general drop as they seem to prefer, you can’t get RNG good, and when you put an item as RNG from content that gets grinded for gold like-world bosses, you also can’t do it right because then the TP will be flooded. You really need to do that with new content, and release it all together, not one by one. Only then you can implement good RNG.

Your solution might work ver well, but only for raid instances I think.

Harper.4173:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

CandyHearts.6025:

So what I’m getting from OP is this example

1 man practices, keeps in shape, does all he can to prepare for a competitive sport.
2nd man can’t be bothered, because he doesn’t enjoy being active.

Both participate. 1st man ran the whole 10 miles. The other man took a nap and watched television and takes a taxi to the finish line and expects the same prize.

How is that fair to the person who earned it?

It’s not. And that’s what should matter more over.

It’s the same reason why drops and rewards are different for story mode dungeons vs explorable.

Elitists seem to forget, this isn’t a game about fairness, this is a game to be enjoyed… if a casual doesn’t enjoy it, game over, period. It doesn’t have to be fair or ethical or virtuous, or honorable, or respectable, or <insert descriptor here>.

What you are not understanding is that if you run 75% of your base off, you end up with an unfunded and dying game. Yes you will be a god, but it will only be of 6 people and your game will not be around long and then you will be off to ruin another game. Cuz if only the elite can have the end reward, no one will play but elites, and there is only so much room at the top my friend… those who cant attain it, will never play it making your reward obsolete in the end…

First of all you’re assuming how many casuals there are.
Second of all you’re assuming all of them would be upset by things being fair – which I doubt would be the case – not all people are as entitled as some in this thread.
You don’t need the end reward to play now do you? And if you do why not get better?
Ultimately both the elite and casuals have a right to enjoy themselves in game – I really don’t understand why some choose to consider not having access to things they can’t earn for themselves to be a problem and are so upset about it.

The problem probably is that the current grindy game-play has worked as a filter, meaning you now have many people left who prefer the grind. They have gotten used to being able to get everything simply by brainlessly grinding and feel threatened this way of doing this might go away.

However with HoT many player who left (so those who can’t stand the grind) will come back, and that is important to hold them instead of applying the grind-filter again.

Harper.4173:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Once or twice maybe. Then what? How do you keep players interested in doing that “hard content” in the long run?

That’s a wrong question. If you need to offer special rewards just to keep players interested in a certain game mode, then perhaps they don’t find it interesting at all. And if they don’t find it interesting, then why should Anet even try to introduce that mode in the first place?

Tequatl got unique rewards when it was updated, Triple Trouble Wurm got unique rewards, Fractals got unique rewards, PVP got unique rewards, Achievement Points got unique rewards. Living Story S2 had unique rewards for completing the achievements. DT got new exclusive rewards, SW got unique exclusive rewards, HoT will probably add new rewards available only in HoT.

Every addition to the game had some extra/unique rewards with it, I didn’t see any complaints about any of those.

You haven’t? Because i saw complains about every single one of them. And if you haven’t noticed, fractal skins for example will be made easier to obtain in HoT.

This is a mixed bag here – yes there have been complaints about every single one of the but the complaints are not generated because these items exist but because these items are only obtainable through ridiculous RNG.
The problem with the unique skins we get from Teq, Wurm or FOTM is that you can’t work towards them. You can’t make any progress – it’s an all-or-nothing RNG system. One moment you don’t have it and then you do. And then you might not even get what you want ( FOTM skins).

The complaints would be nearly gone if they implemented a token system (which they are finally doing for FOTM) which allowed you to have something to work towards and give you a chance to get what you want on your terms – not the game’s.

RNG is not hard or easy – it’s just stupid.
Fractals skins could be made hard to get without having to rely on RNG – you want to make them hard? Charge 250 pristine relics for a weapon – then we’ll see who gets them. That’s hard but it’s fair.

RNG isn’t the problem, RNG can in fact be positive. You could attach a currency on it but that would only add yet another grind to the problem.. the drop-rate is the problem.. It’s not viable to work towards it, not because it’s RNG, but because it’s a real bad RNG .. very, very low drop-rate. While it make sense with Teq and Wurm because (especially Teq) they get grinded for all the loot they have, so you can’t make it a doable RNG as then marked would then be flooded with the items.

Better you put such items behind content that does not have general good loot (so is not getting grinded to earn gold) so you can have doable drop-rates / RNG. Of course you then need to do that in many places.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

Dhorghar.5249:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

CandyHearts.6025:

So what I’m getting from OP is this example

1 man practices, keeps in shape, does all he can to prepare for a competitive sport.
2nd man can’t be bothered, because he doesn’t enjoy being active.

Both participate. 1st man ran the whole 10 miles. The other man took a nap and watched television and takes a taxi to the finish line and expects the same prize.

How is that fair to the person who earned it?

It’s not. And that’s what should matter more over.

It’s the same reason why drops and rewards are different for story mode dungeons vs explorable.

Elitists seem to forget, this isn’t a game about fairness, this is a game to be enjoyed… if a casual doesn’t enjoy it, game over, period. It doesn’t have to be fair or ethical or virtuous, or honorable, or respectable, or <insert descriptor here>.

What you are not understanding is that if you run 75% of your base off, you end up with an unfunded and dying game. Yes you will be a god, but it will only be of 6 people and your game will not be around long and then you will be off to ruin another game. Cuz if only the elite can have the end reward, no one will play but elites, and there is only so much room at the top my friend… those who cant attain it, will never play it making your reward obsolete in the end…

These pessimistic posts that prophesize the end of a 10 year old franchise because anet is gonna add just a bit of challenging content after 3 years in a game that is 99% casual always make me laugh.

Really? That’s your best argument? Usually it’s when people run out of good arguments that they start throwing all these nonsense about the end of world and how bad things are gonna be in the future.

That is borderline stupid. Anet is not gonna ruin their game, they know what they should and shouldn’t do to try to improve it, otherwise they wouldn’t have such a successful mmo. If they have decided to introduce a bit of challenging content is because they think it could benefit the game and it won’t ruin the fun for most players. Besides, we don’t even know what that content is yet, the details have not been disclosed yet but many of you in this thread are acting like if it’s going to be a disaster.

Don’t worry, gw2 will remain a casual friendly game as it is now. You’ll have to come up with better arguments than the old “it’s gonna be the end of the world” nonsense if you want to have some credibility.

Your first mistake was thinking I have to prove ANYTHING to you at all… I Dont, anet ALREADY agrees with me. My argument was about separating classes of player with rewards. Its not a good idea and as you so eloquently stated… anet is not gonna ruin their game, ergo they will cater to the casuals instead of the elite 2%, thanks for driving my point home for me. Second, we have stated before that the challenging content introduced is not the issue here. Its the seperation of players thru elite rewards (i.e. class warfare for those who think politically).

Just make the rewards obtainable for those casual players as well thru some other mechanic or what have you. a person that plays 1-2 hours a day will not have a snowballs chance in hades of competing against a player who pvp’s 4-6 hours a day, cmon lets be realistic. That pvp player still has the ability to go into fractals and PVE and get anything they want their quite easily because their pvp skill already works in thier favor in the other 3 systems. Its not the same with the PVP reward of the backpiece. YOU HAVE TO BE TOP TIER in order to get the parts for it. which will segregate 90% of the server from obtaining it no matter how much they play in it! And its not the not wanting to play pvp thing here, its that it is seperated to the top 1% of all players. There is no need to seperate the player base just to appease the top 10 players in the world here.

plain and simple, this is a business. A business is gonna go the direction that makes them the most money. taking 2% of the pie or 98% of the pie is a no brainer. you want to make it difficult to obtain the items, then fine, make it difficult. but make it available to all, not just the top 10 players in the world. Is that so difficult for you to understand?

“a person that plays 1-2 hours a day will not have a snowballs chance in hades of competing against a player who pvp’s 4-6 hours a day,” In the system you seem to like, and we currently have.. this in fact makes the main difference. If everything is currency / grind driven, the question does not become hoe good somebody is, but how long he grinds.

So the thing you say you try to prevent, you are in fact causing with this system.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

CandyHearts.6025:

So what I’m getting from OP is this example

1 man practices, keeps in shape, does all he can to prepare for a competitive sport.
2nd man can’t be bothered, because he doesn’t enjoy being active.

Both participate. 1st man ran the whole 10 miles. The other man took a nap and watched television and takes a taxi to the finish line and expects the same prize.

How is that fair to the person who earned it?

It’s not. And that’s what should matter more over.

It’s the same reason why drops and rewards are different for story mode dungeons vs explorable.

Elitists seem to forget, this isn’t a game about fairness, this is a game to be enjoyed… if a casual doesn’t enjoy it, game over, period. It doesn’t have to be fair or ethical or virtuous, or honorable, or respectable, or <insert descriptor here>.

What you are not understanding is that if you run 75% of your base off, you end up with an unfunded and dying game. Yes you will be a god, but it will only be of 6 people and your game will not be around long and then you will be off to ruin another game. Cuz if only the elite can have the end reward, no one will play but elites, and there is only so much room at the top my friend… those who cant attain it, will never play it making your reward obsolete in the end…

Getting rewarded for a challenge is fun (for elitists and for casuals).. grind grind grind gold to buy the ‘reward’ is boring. So you are right, the game is about enjoyment and that is exactly why the reward-system should move away from the currency driven grind structure it has been, in order to hold more people with HoT. Those that left with the original game because they got bored or burned out.

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

Fox.3469:

Vayne.8563:

Fox.3469:

binidj.5734:

SkiTz.4590:

If you think the casual that play 2 hours a day deserve the legendary backpiece as much as the guy playing 6 hours a day in PvP leagues, than something is wrong with your logic. You have to earn it.

People who bust their rear deserve better rewards than some guy logging in a couple hours a week.

How about the casual that plays 6 hours a day? Does s/he deserve the legendary backpiece as much as the person playing 6 hours a day in PvP leagues? Let’s compare like with like here. Is your time more worthy of reward than mine? If so, why?

The fact you use casual and six hours a day in the same line… You clearly have no idea what casually playing a game while having a job means. Skins may be gated but A-Net will never gate power, wich is why i love this game.

There are in fact, many “hard-core” casuals. I’m one of them. I play more than 6 hours a day, every day since launch, and I still consider myself casual, in that my style of play is casual. I’m not particularly looking for challenging content (though I’ve done everything but Liadri).

The problem with challenging content for me is that I live in Tasmania and many people live in places where their ping/lag is quite high. Which means that Liadri is harder for me than it is for someone in the US with good point, but we get the same reward for it.

A lot of people are playing this game on potatos. I’m not but I still live far enough away that I have an unfair disadvantage. So yeah, competitive stuff for me is annoying at best, because even if I’m equal in skill to someone with lower ping, I’m likely to lose a fight.

So if a reward, like the Liadri mini, is offered for something I can’t do, and at this time I can’t do Sanctum Sprint at all, because one of the skills you need to lightning jump to a tower always throws me over the tower…it’s just not all that fair in the first place.

So if there are things I want, it’s not always possible to get them no matter how hard I work…unless you’re suggesting I sell the house and move my family to the US. Which would be a bit overkill for a mini. lol

In this logic A-Net should just shut down the game cause people who don’t have internet connection can’t get any rewards. While i do understand your problem, and i’m sorry for you, you cannot possibly expect the reward system to be based on your personal connection.

Here’s the thing, there are some things you can’t do, to bad for you, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be rewards for people that can, as for unique skins, bohoo you’ll miss a few, i miss a few to, from the 1 year i was moving constantly and didn’t have time to play GW2 due to personal stuff. But i don’t think for one second that my personal situation should affect others enjoyment of the game. And the simple fact is, if you don’t tie some unique rewards to hard and challenging content, you’ll loose many people’s attention for it. In any other mmo these people would have better stats then you, and that would be horrible, but in this one, the only thing achievable is visual updates, and if you can’t accept that some people will have acces to skins you don’t, then quite frankly you should stop playing.

Mmo’s have always worked like this, in fact GW2 has even worked like this. So why all the drama all of a sudden? Prestige has always been a part of whatever online game, cause people like to show off what they have done. There isn’t anything wrong with that. I’m sure there will be tons of skins that you can get outside of these hardcore options, as is quite obvious seeing the number of skins already available. If you really want a skin, you can always try for it, i personally really want the pvp backpiece but i won’t ever reach that level, it’s a bit sad to me, but i understand it. If it’s really your internet connection keeping you down, then i’m sorry for you, but that is an issue at your end, even tough it possibly can’t be helped. Tough luck.

You can’t always get everything you want, buying the game does not entitle you to have loot trown at you.

It’s NOT my personal connection. Every single person in Australia, which is probably more than 2 of us, has this problem. Half the people in the world in rural areas will have similar problems. What percentage of the playerbase do you think plays on machines fast enough to get the job done AND have good Internet connections.

If they make that game for that percentage, even if it’s 50%, and I don’t think it is, that means 50% of the playerbase is pretty much screwed. If you think that’s good business, I don’t really know what to tell you.

You seem to think living in a foreign country is a personal problem. I think thinking that way is a personal problem.

Which means because some part of the playerbase has ping problems they shouldn’t implement more challenging encounters in the game. They should create only encounters that are doable with 500 ping and at 10 fps with potato computers? What kind of logic is this?

The logic is learn to read. That’s the logic. I said make it so that the rewards can be sold so if you really want one, and your ping isnt’ there, you can still get it. If you want challenging content. No problem. If you want rewards that no one else can get because you have some deep seated need to show off and you think people will be impressed by it, there’s not much else I can say.

My suggestion is a compromise. Give people hard content but don’t shut out people from the rewards who physically can’t get them. That’s not in any way unreasonable, no matter how hard you try to make it sound that way.

Worse idea ever. If there is a problem with the game, it’s exactly this.. Everybody can buy nearly every item, being it with cash, being it with an ingame currency. Resulting in grind, grind grind (for those currency’s), making the game boring for many people eventually having them leave.

We don’t need more items people can ‘buy’ we need less of them, way less, they need to be replaced with rewards being… well rewarded for specific content or challenge.

Those rewards give goals, add to the content and incentive people to do all those types on content.

Funny because Guild Wars 1 was like this. You could pretty much buy and sell everything and no one seemed to have a problem with it. Many people say this game should be more like Guild Wars 1. I say that’s a good place to start.

I think GW1 in fact had the mix I would like to see (while I haven’t played a lot of GW1). there are account-bound items but indeed also items that drop form specific content. You were indeed able to sell those items so people could get them in other ways. But that was far from the most viable or efficient way.

Getting that item might be doable with collecting feather, but it was by far an easy and fast task, and there was always that more viable (while harder) option, of doing the content for it. In fact, in forms of effort, getting the items by grinding in GW1, might be similar to getting the items directly in GW2. While getting the getting the item directly there, is similar in the effort you have to put in grinding it in GW2. (effort, in time, not in challenge)

Compare that to most items we have now? You want them, the only real option you have is grinding. It’s that mentality that has to go imho. By simply saying “you should be able to buy everything” you don’t get rid of that mentality or structure. Of course the fact that by far most new or best looking items you can only get (directly, or indirectly) with gems (including BTP skins) does also not help as again, the only way to get them is grinding.

maddoctor.2738:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, are you saying if given the choice between ‘buying’ the reward, and completing specific content, most will opt to ‘buy’?

If not, then why can’t there be both options?

If yes, then I guess most show they prefer to ‘grind’, as you put it, over disparate content.

It’s simple. To keep those items expensive enough and not drop them to a few coppers a piece they need to be behind some insane RNG. That’s what’s terrible with putting everything on the TP. I’m afraid if they put everything on the TP, to keep prices up, there will be some insane RNG like the current fractal weapons.

Challenging Group Content is an excellent way for Arenanet to start rewarding players correctly, reward players for doing specific (hard) content and not fighting for the RNG god favor. Everything else has insane RNG, can we have at least one part of the game in PVE that doesn’t involve so much RNG?

Although I’m not the best PVPer in the world I still like how they did the Legendary backpack in PVP. You know what? Because there is very little RNG or grind involved. Can’t we have something like this in PVE too?

I’m all for playing hard/challenging content just for the challenge of it. But if there is some reward I’m supposed to get and after 200 runs I still don’t have it, then it’s no longer fun. There is no “challenge” in RNG.

Insane RNG is only needed when you make an item a general drop, or simply drop something from content that also get grinded for its general good loot / gold.

In that case it does not even matter if you can trade it or not (while I still am in favor of also having items that are account-bound so it really is a reward for completing that content.).

It’s simple, if an item drops from 100 (just a reference number) mobs, drop-rate has to be 100 times smaller to get the same amount of them on the TP as when 1 mob drops it.

With the exception, if the one mob gets farmed by 500 people every day while your average mob would only get looted once a day. To get the same amount of them on the TP the drop-rate would then need to be 500 times lower. So that results in insane RNG numbers.

In the end, this is what results in the grind as because of the low drop-rate grinding becomes the only real way to get them.

If there are many different challenges / content / mobs that all drop their own specific items but not with other general good rewards (so they are not very interesting to grind for gold), the drop-rate can be way more doable without having to many of the items on the TP. Sure people still have the option to farm the item just to sell it, but if to many people do that with the same item, prices will drop making it again less interesting to grind them.

That is why the current approach creates a lot of grind, but this approach prevents it, while those who want still can. Mix that with some items that are indeed account-bound and imho you would have the perfect world, where those who prefer to brainlessly grind, still can for most items, however the game does not feel as grindy as it now does and those rewards that are account-bound do feel much more as a real reward.

Draknar.5748:

Vayne.8563:

People are fond of comparing this game to Guild Wars 1. There was very little in Guild Wars 1 that couldn’t be purchased with gold. Arguably, the hardest weapons to attain were the weapons from DOA, or maybe rare stuff like the celestial compass, the bonecage scythe, the frog scepter or the voltaic spear.

All these high end items were available to sell. You didn’t have to be great to get them. You could farm feathers in a low end zone over and over till you could afford to purchase them.

No one in Guild Wars 1 seemed that riled that their rewards weren’t exclusive. It allowed players who wanted challenge to do challenging content and profit. It allowed less intense players to have the rewards.

I think this is the best solution all the way around.

To those who support those hard core rewards, I guarantee you if there are enough rewards casual players can’t get, you won’t have enough players left to continue running the game. Casuals, in my opinion, make a vast percentage of the playerbase. The more you put out of their reach, the more of them you lose.

I agree casuals make a vast percentage of the playerbase. I disagree that enough players would literally quit the game to kill GW2 because a skin exists that they can’t get.

You can’t get the fractal capacitor backpiece without doing tons of fractals. You can’t get Glorious armor without doing PvP. No one seems up in arms about it.

I think adding an item or two to each game mode that is exclusive to that game mode is a good thing, not a bad thing. Not all good players are hardcore, and not all bad players are casual. I consider myself casual and a good player. I would like to be able to casually work towards that legendary fractal back-piece, no matter how long it takes me, and I would hate if someone who doesn’t even do fractals has access to it.

Nah, I think there should be a mix.

However, what I am more talking about is the general currency way of doing things, that results in the grinding behavior. Like now, many items you can’t really get from doing specific content. None of the items with a general drop and none of the cash-shop items. The same btw holds true for items that drop from content that also gets grinded for the gold, like the world bosses.

It’s that mentality the game needs to lose, and it should move more towards the mentality you did see with Liadri.

So content you do for the challenge and the specific reward but not to grind gold. You can mix that a little with getting the item with a drop-rate (RNG), and you can make those items sellable, while those with a guaranteed drop you make account-bound.

That way, grinding does not become the only viable, and not even the most efficient way to get many items. While those that like to grind, still can for by many, if not most items… It’s just not the only / most viable option anymore.

“If yes, then I guess most show they prefer to ‘grind’, as you put it, over disparate content.” At this moment, the active playerbase GW2 has, likely exist of players that have no problem with the grin or that simply buy the items… or those that simply don’t care for those things and to WvW or PvP. Those that have got bored by the grind most likely have left by now.. however they also come back with HoT and that is the time to try and not lose them again.

It’s also not as easy as saying “if they do it, they must like it.”, first of all, then you forget about all those that left because they did not like it, for many items there simply is no other option at this moment and lastly it’s human nature to go for the most efficient way and that of least resistance.

So if they set themselves to a goal.. get skin x and they know they can easily get it by just doing a few world-bosses instead of completing some hard and challenging content, that is what most people will do. And again for the next item and the next and the next, and soon they will get bored, or are burned out by the game.

Randulf.7614:

Cant say i agree. I find the combat exceptionally fluid, well animated and extremely fun to use. It is one of the big reasons i play. Having played clunkier systems in lotro, tsw, Anarchy, Conan and to some extent Ff14 (altho that works for diff reasons), gw2 is a breath of fresh air in comparison.

The dynamic events are an important infrastructure in countering traditional quests and a big reason ppl choose this game over others. Replacing or reducing them isn’t the answer. The game needs more of them, with more chains (like the excellent fireheart ones) and more variety. HoT may bring that, altho beta suggested repeating events on short timers. That i don’t think is good enough for the standard this game is capable of.

Well, they noticed it did not work like this, they have added more events in the beginning, but seeing as how they added little value to the game, they stopped doing that.

Also events simply can’t replace all elements traditional quest have. They are great to get some movement in the world (less static) and also a good replacement for the “kill 5 pigs” quests.

But they can’t offer what good quest chains can offer, and once you have done it a few times and see them repeating all the time they feel to be useless, like it does not matter, while with a quest it gives more the feeling you made a change to the world.. You helped that NPC, you did find his mini back (as an example) and that will stay that way. It’s not like 10 minutes later the mini is gone again and you can looking for it again.

So events are great for some things, but so are quest. They both have pro’s and cons. a problem is that at some point they did think events where able to completely take the place of quests while they weren’t able to. There is also no need to counter traditional quest, as there is no problem with them.

We have also see some quest being implemented, mainly in the LS, but also things like the karka invasion quest in LA.

Vayne.8563:

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

Fox.3469:

Vayne.8563:

Fox.3469:

binidj.5734:

SkiTz.4590:

If you think the casual that play 2 hours a day deserve the legendary backpiece as much as the guy playing 6 hours a day in PvP leagues, than something is wrong with your logic. You have to earn it.

People who bust their rear deserve better rewards than some guy logging in a couple hours a week.

How about the casual that plays 6 hours a day? Does s/he deserve the legendary backpiece as much as the person playing 6 hours a day in PvP leagues? Let’s compare like with like here. Is your time more worthy of reward than mine? If so, why?

The fact you use casual and six hours a day in the same line… You clearly have no idea what casually playing a game while having a job means. Skins may be gated but A-Net will never gate power, wich is why i love this game.

There are in fact, many “hard-core” casuals. I’m one of them. I play more than 6 hours a day, every day since launch, and I still consider myself casual, in that my style of play is casual. I’m not particularly looking for challenging content (though I’ve done everything but Liadri).

The problem with challenging content for me is that I live in Tasmania and many people live in places where their ping/lag is quite high. Which means that Liadri is harder for me than it is for someone in the US with good point, but we get the same reward for it.

A lot of people are playing this game on potatos. I’m not but I still live far enough away that I have an unfair disadvantage. So yeah, competitive stuff for me is annoying at best, because even if I’m equal in skill to someone with lower ping, I’m likely to lose a fight.

So if a reward, like the Liadri mini, is offered for something I can’t do, and at this time I can’t do Sanctum Sprint at all, because one of the skills you need to lightning jump to a tower always throws me over the tower…it’s just not all that fair in the first place.

So if there are things I want, it’s not always possible to get them no matter how hard I work…unless you’re suggesting I sell the house and move my family to the US. Which would be a bit overkill for a mini. lol

In this logic A-Net should just shut down the game cause people who don’t have internet connection can’t get any rewards. While i do understand your problem, and i’m sorry for you, you cannot possibly expect the reward system to be based on your personal connection.

Here’s the thing, there are some things you can’t do, to bad for you, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be rewards for people that can, as for unique skins, bohoo you’ll miss a few, i miss a few to, from the 1 year i was moving constantly and didn’t have time to play GW2 due to personal stuff. But i don’t think for one second that my personal situation should affect others enjoyment of the game. And the simple fact is, if you don’t tie some unique rewards to hard and challenging content, you’ll loose many people’s attention for it. In any other mmo these people would have better stats then you, and that would be horrible, but in this one, the only thing achievable is visual updates, and if you can’t accept that some people will have acces to skins you don’t, then quite frankly you should stop playing.

Mmo’s have always worked like this, in fact GW2 has even worked like this. So why all the drama all of a sudden? Prestige has always been a part of whatever online game, cause people like to show off what they have done. There isn’t anything wrong with that. I’m sure there will be tons of skins that you can get outside of these hardcore options, as is quite obvious seeing the number of skins already available. If you really want a skin, you can always try for it, i personally really want the pvp backpiece but i won’t ever reach that level, it’s a bit sad to me, but i understand it. If it’s really your internet connection keeping you down, then i’m sorry for you, but that is an issue at your end, even tough it possibly can’t be helped. Tough luck.

You can’t always get everything you want, buying the game does not entitle you to have loot trown at you.

It’s NOT my personal connection. Every single person in Australia, which is probably more than 2 of us, has this problem. Half the people in the world in rural areas will have similar problems. What percentage of the playerbase do you think plays on machines fast enough to get the job done AND have good Internet connections.

If they make that game for that percentage, even if it’s 50%, and I don’t think it is, that means 50% of the playerbase is pretty much screwed. If you think that’s good business, I don’t really know what to tell you.

You seem to think living in a foreign country is a personal problem. I think thinking that way is a personal problem.

Which means because some part of the playerbase has ping problems they shouldn’t implement more challenging encounters in the game. They should create only encounters that are doable with 500 ping and at 10 fps with potato computers? What kind of logic is this?

The logic is learn to read. That’s the logic. I said make it so that the rewards can be sold so if you really want one, and your ping isnt’ there, you can still get it. If you want challenging content. No problem. If you want rewards that no one else can get because you have some deep seated need to show off and you think people will be impressed by it, there’s not much else I can say.

My suggestion is a compromise. Give people hard content but don’t shut out people from the rewards who physically can’t get them. That’s not in any way unreasonable, no matter how hard you try to make it sound that way.

Worse idea ever. If there is a problem with the game, it’s exactly this.. Everybody can buy nearly every item, being it with cash, being it with an ingame currency. Resulting in grind, grind grind (for those currency’s), making the game boring for many people eventually having them leave.

We don’t need more items people can ‘buy’ we need less of them, way less, they need to be replaced with rewards being… well rewarded for specific content or challenge.

Those rewards give goals, add to the content and incentive people to do all those types on content.

Exploring can indeed be fun, while it really depends on how you do it. Are you really exploring or running from vista, to vista, to PoI, to PoI, to hearth, to hearth, to Hero point ./ skill point, striping of the list on your map to complete it.

Imho, to get the best exploration experience PoI’s should completely be removed and those other things should be optional for map completion. Only seeing the full map (on your map) should count as map-completion (what should be fairly easy, simply keeping to the roads).

Why? Because then people explore to explore, creating a more fun experience, instead of pretty much blindly running from one point to the next simply striping of the to-do list. That is what might in fact make it boring. Is this ‘dumping’ it down.. Well depends on it.. It’s less work to get map-completion, but it’s not like it’s a hard task now, it just takes time.

There are two other main things I think can help prevent the boredom that some or many? people experience. Dynamic events are great but imho should not have been as full replacements for quest. Better mix in traditional quest with events. This gives people more of an adventure to go on, instead of wondering around and doing an event that happens to pop up.

Lastly reducing the grind. The game is very much currency based, want a nice item, buy it in the gem-store or grind some currency for it. The ability to direct be rewarded or else farm directly for items people might like results in people having more clear goals and doing many different types of content, keeping it fresh. The currency approach simply means people will do a lot of the same (because that gets them the currency the fastest) then buy the item they want, then grind again and buy it, then grind again.. and so on, and so on.

Getting rid of the boredom people clearly do experience (seeing as many did leave) is imho one of the main things Anet needs to get right with HoT as imho it’s the main reason for people to leave, and people that left before, come back with HoT but will leave again soon because of boredom are likely never coming back again.

Dawdler.8521:

Devata.6589:

I wonder how many people would be interested in good decent build-in VR support. As those also require DX11 or preferably DX12.

The VR Api of Oculus and that of Nvidia do not support DX9.
http://vrfocus.com/archives/10910/oculus-depreciating-support-dx9-next-sdk/

https://developer.nvidia.com/virtual-reality-development

That does not mean you can’t have any support VR in DX9, you can, but for really good native support you do need the upgrade.

Good VR support in GW2 could be amazing (when implemented well) and adding a complete new, more immersive experience to the game, and good support could be a good selling-point.

Immersive as in you are going to womit every time you dodge.

VR equipment is only good for 1st person games thats been designed for VR. GW2 is not one of those games.

“only good for 1st person games”
This is the biggest misconception about VR there exists, same for 3D glasses btw. I own 3D vision glasses and can tell you MMORPG’s are the best games to use them, I did try it on well supported 1st person shooters but it just does not work very great, probably because of the faster movement and the way you aim. (this is better in VR)

Back to VR, Oculus has multiple games it uses to demonstrate the VR-set, including multiple that are not 1st person. Chronos for example does not even let you move with the character (3th person) but places you in a fixed location in the room, and the effect you get with that is great.

For GW2 you could obviously play it in first person view but that might not always give you the best experience in VR, when just walking around I think it does, but indeed for dodging and combats with many people around you it might not be great, however for third person it can very well be a great experience. Where you now can look all around you (movement should not be bases on where you look, but similar to when you move the mouse while holding the left button) and seeing you character in front of you (making the same movements with his head, as you do). Or imagine looking up to one of the world-bosses.

That for sure creates a good immersive experience as you really feel like being in the game / world, you see and hear the world around you and see everything in 3D.

Back to DX12..
“games thats been designed for VR.” There is some truth in this.. It does not so much have to be design for it from the start, but you would want good build-in support for a good effect. Third party or generic solution to get a VR-set to work, will not get you very good results. That is for sure, and that is also exactly where DX11 / DX12 come into play.

I wonder how many people would be interested in good decent build-in VR support. As those also require DX11 or preferably DX12.

The VR Api of Oculus and that of Nvidia do not support DX9.
http://vrfocus.com/archives/10910/oculus-depreciating-support-dx9-next-sdk/

https://developer.nvidia.com/virtual-reality-development

That does not mean you can’t have any support VR in DX9, you can, but for really good native support you do need the upgrade.

Good VR support in GW2 could be amazing (when implemented well) and adding a complete new, more immersive experience to the game, and good support could be a good selling-point.

Healix.5819:

The date will be practically revealed by the end of this month. Either they will announce it at PAX in 2 weeks or TwitchCon next month. Either way, expect at least a month delay between then and launch.

Considering the third year birthday, I’d expect to see it secretly revealed, then officially at PAX. However, considering ArenaNet’s policy, they shouldn’t reveal it until the last group of elite specializations are complete, which would mean a reveal at TwitchCon and a Novemember-December release.

Devata.6589:

Sadly still no CE

There will not be a collector’s edition.

That seems to be very unlikely at this point, but the FAQ is not so clear about it.

Q: Will there be a collector’s edition for this expansion?
A: There are no plans for a physical collector’s edition for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. Heart of Thorns will be offered in Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate Editions (all of which are available for pre-purchase and include digital in-game bonuses only).

No plans, is not the same as no. Not sure why they can’t just be clear about it.

Nonetheless, I would also be happy with a pre-purchase deluxe edition or ultimate, but even that is not available. So if you want a hard copy and you want to get the pre-purchase bonus, the only option is the standard edition, and that literally is only an empty box ( with a code inside it).

That kinda sucks.

I just noticed that one of their official retail partners has put HoT on sale with 15-10-2015 as release date.

Sadly still no CE, so if you want a hard copy, you can now buy the standard pre-purchase edition, or if you really want a disc you can buy the normal edition as that will have a DvD but then you won’t get the pre-purchase advantages.

I figured you guys might be interested in this information.

Have been doing some testing and it looks like the problem is bigger in LA then in WvW. Just a few people in LA create the same decrease in FPS as two complete zergs in WvW.

Also I was thinking that if the CPU is the bottleneck, increasing the resolution should not have a real impact on the performance (as that is just additional work for the GPU)

Nonetheless I would still love to see them pushing out as much FPS as possible, mainly because that is important for VR, what btw would be an addition reason to implement DX 12 (or 11) as GameWorks VR (Nvidia’s api for VR) does work with DX11 and DX12.

So other then performance reasons, there are more reasons to implement DX11 or DX12,

Fred Fargone.3127:

Devata.6589:

Fred Fargone.3127:

Ehhh, GW2 is many things, but I wouldn’t even begin to consider it a P2W. Spending RL cash gives you… boosters? Skins? None of these really help you beat anyone in PvP or WvW. It doesn’t make you more desirable for PvE groups, except for the eyes of misguided elitists who think that having the best skin means you’re the best player (lol).

In PvE, winning = getting a reward (like that skin). So in that case, being able to buy a good skin can very well be considered buy to win. Just depends from what perspective you look at it.

You get tons of rewards in PvE all the time. You win at PvE all the time? Kinda diminishes the “win” of any skin you might buy. Besides, is it even a reward if you bought it? P2W is not about buying a certificate that says you won. P2W is about buying the tools that enables you to beat others more easily, and therefore win.

If some rich millionaire participated in the Olympics, paid $1Bn and just walked to the little pedestal with “#1” written on it… do you think people would consider him having won? Because I sure wouldn’t. I suppose someone might, but… no, just no.

Following you logic but applying it to defeating the competition.

If some guy participated in the Olympics, both a car (the tools that enables you to beat others) and drove to the finish… do you think people would consider him having won? Because I sure wouldn’t. I suppose someone might, but… no, just no.

No, imho in PvP winning is getting the kill or match, in PVE it might be killing the boss, but it very well might also be getting the reward.

GummiBear.2756:

considering you can buy gems for ingame gold, there is no way you could ever define GW2 as a P2W as there is not a single item you can’t get without spending any cash on the game (beside the obvious initial purchase of the game)

Getting something easy with spending money, while it takes a long and / or hard way (usually grindy) to get it in-game, is also considered P2W. So no, just the fact that you can get it with ingame-gold does not mean you can’t have P2W, it’s just a easy excuse to try and dismiss any type of P2W.

Thaddeus.4891:

Devata.6589:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Can players achieve the exact same thing with no RL cash?

That does not really matter, in many many games that are usually considered P2W, you can get all the stuff in game. It just usually required a lot of time and boring grind.

And what required a lot of time and boring grind that you can buy with RL cash? The most expansive gem store item is 1000 gem which can be bought with 113 gold or around 6-12 hours or gameplay depending on what you do. That’s not a lot of time.

I never make 113 gold in 6-12 hours. (dungeons, world-bosses and EotM would) but doing these things, just to get the gold to then buy those items you like.. and then again for the next item, and then again for the next item.. that is grinding, and will for a lot of people soon turn into being boring.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Ehhh, GW2 is many things, but I wouldn’t even begin to consider it a P2W. Spending RL cash gives you… boosters? Skins? None of these really help you beat anyone in PvP or WvW. It doesn’t make you more desirable for PvE groups, except for the eyes of misguided elitists who think that having the best skin means you’re the best player (lol).

In PvE, winning = getting a reward (like that skin). So in that case, being able to buy a good skin can very well be considered buy to win. Just depends from what perspective you look at it.