Guild Wars 2

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Ashen.2907:

How many MMOs can you not take a break from and come back to do the lower tier instanced content that was present at launch ?

I have not encountered even one such.

That said, you are correct, as of now at least, about the relatively low impact of gear progression in GW2.

I’m relatively confused here, what lower-tier instanced content which was present at launch currently can’t be completed by someone gone for a month? Six months? Since November last year . . .?

Not only that but yesterday a friend of mine joined the game and at level 3 he came with me to do some mayhem fun in the queens pavilion. A starter character playing Max level content. Image how problematic it would be for a player who’s already at max level but took a long break to keep up?

But anyhow… thats not what Ahsen meant I believe, I think he meant that in other MMOs players can pick up right where they left without a problem… but that again is not in reply to what Tobias really said. What Tobias meant in the first place is a player gone for 6 months can join again and play along side his friends who never left without first progressing those 6 months they missed. Few MMOs allow you to do that.

Dog.1472:

Behellagh.1468:

Lesson here, when you introduce new items that you want acquisition take time, have both a time-gated currency and a random drop from every critter currency (like kite fortune scraps). Then you make the items cost either X time gated currency or y drop based currency. Toss in the possibility to convert one into the other at some unfriendly but better than nothing rate and everybody’s catered to.

I agree.

I think the easiest solution would be to simply keep dailies as they are, but at the same time not restrict the rewards granted by dailies to them alone.

This way lazy people like Galen can still go on about sitting on their porch and getting their daily welfare checks, while goal oriented people can go about farming for their gear in addition to that.

Ascended rings for example aren’t the worst in the world simply because you have a variety of ways to earn them, rather than just logging on for 5 minutes and then leaving.

Of course, the infinitely wise and brilliant Galen will swoop in and share this pile of crap with everyone:

Galen Grey.4709:

- ascended gear has to last so they dont have to introduce a new tier and alienate a big part of their fan base

Which of course is completely wrong, as it has already been touched up on in the thread that the game was originally advertised as not having vertical progression in the first place. I, and I’m sure many other people were drawn to this and were happy about it and don’t want ascended gear to exist at all.

You really want to get banned it seems dont you? are you completely incapable of posting without getting personal and offending people?

But yes congratulations on assuming a lot. You know how lazy Galen is? he played nearly 1000hrs. You keep assuming that this is about I dont want to make an effort to get my reward. You keep assuming this is about I only can play 3hrs a week and I want to keep up with the person who plays 64 hrs a week. it is not about that this is about If I want to gear up one of my characters in Ascended gear I dont want to spend the next 940hrs farming karka (250karka shells x 15 items (weapons, armor, trinkets) / 4 karka shell drops per hour). I dont want to spend the next 300-500 hrs running dungeons to make 900g to pay for 225 days worth of gold (just used a conservative 4 gold per day). Running the same content over and over again is boring to me, I will drop any game that forces me to do that. I am not sure what you find exciting about grinding / farming but most people dont. This is about avoiding that.

Please can you point out where it was promised this game would have no vertical progression? Because facts are they talked about vertical progression as far back as 2011 for sure. Look at this interview:
http://amd-icbm.com/icbm/guild-wars-2-guru-gw2-qa-cd-projekt-conference/

“So, the maximum level in GW2 will be level 80 on the initial release of the game. And I’m sure as we add expansion content we’re going to add more progression and add more levels to the game.”

Devata.6589:

Isn’t it bad that you need this sort of tactics to get people to log in in the first place? And many people don’t like to be presumed to do something so eventually people will start logging in less because of this.

However you do hit the mean part of the problem. I have also always linked this sort of bad game-design to a cash-shop focus. Thats the mean reason I don’t play F2P games and did go for GW2 who has supposed to be a B2P game. However as we know they are not working on an expansion and so they are now focusing on the gem-store resulting is a lot of this sort of bad game-design. It’s to bad that Anet went from the perfect payment system to a pretty bad one. It’s destroying the game.

I dont think this is a tactic to get people to play every day. In fact I completely disagree with the statement and have been trying to explain it is no different then any other non time gated currency.

15 days worth of gold take 15 days to earn
15 days worth of karma take 15 days to earn
15 days worth of dailies take 15 days to earn

In each case you need to play for 15 days to meet the requirements
In each case if you log 1 day less, 2 day less, x day less it will add x days to your 15 days.

why is it that with gold and karma its okey to add x days to your 15 days but with dailies its like you’re being forced to play every day?

I think this is just a perception issue.

Devata.6589:

Meglobob.8620:

Anet wants you to log in at least once per day…its what mmo’s are all about really…so expect more once per day stuff not less…

But in the long run.. and it will only scare people away.

Temporary content / time-gated content is bad game-design. Anet has got many negatives reactions about this every since they started with it. Colin promised to have less but it has only gotten worse so far.

And that ‘long run’ is not so long anymore because they are doing it already for a pretty long time. Starting with the laurels and the temporary content from the living story. I expect that the player-base soon starts dropping because of this but we will see.

I have been active in multiple threads about this and many people complained so they where warned.

Just as an FYI Colin came out and said that he saw feed back suggesting he wasnt keeping up to his promise, but he pointed out that they needed time after making that statement to finish off what content they had in the pipeline and be able to take that direction. He said the first content in line with his promises will be coming out not the next update but the one after that.

milo.6942:

..snip

Honestly I am not trying to be a pain but I really do no see it. If someone logs in the game to finish off the daily quickly so as to not add an extra day to their wait time for a particular reward, they’re not going to stick around once they finish the daily to browse the gem shop and buy some stuff for their character. They’ll likely be in a mad hurry, it takes time to browse the gem shop and choose stuff so why would they do it? If they feel the urge to buy stuff and again I dont see that happening if like you said they feel forced to log in and thus in an angry state for sure. If they feel like buying stuff it makes more sense to me that they would leave it for one of their regular gaming sessions when they have all the time they need to quitely look around and select stuff they like and not doing it at a time when they’re in a hurry and already spent 30 minutes they dont have playing to finish of the daily!

Shifty.5187:

Galen Grey.4709:

Nothing, I completely agree 100% with all you said. My only issue is can you imagine any thing you could put in a game thakittens combined effort-time is at least 15 days and which is also fun to play? Personally I cannot. When I look at other games, its either farm the same raid (which I hate and wouldnt find fun) or farm a ton of mats which is also not fun. Do you have any suggestions?

I think Guild Wars 2 is perfectly suited to deal with this issue. They have a variety of activities that reward you; specifically with gold. You can do dungeon runs, run events, do WvW, sell your loot and rare finds, get friends to help you with gold, etc. After a while you can then buy the item you want, all the while having had fun getting that gold.

Usually there are some activities in the game that reward you with the most gold (CoF I guess) and then some people are drawn to that to get the item as quickly as possible but perhaps having less fun. This is just nearly impossible to solve and I don’t think it’s necessary to solve.

Although I think gold is great, I guess it is a bit less fun to just buy an item. Perhaps some kind of scavenger hunt type of activity is more fun.

Again conceptually I agree with you 100% even 200% here there is no doubt that one thing that makes this a great game is you’re free to do anything you love content wise and then use that to get your chosen reward. You’re right it would fit the gw2 phylosofy 100%. Unfortunately it has some problems when you map that to those 15 days.

The biggest problem is you can use your credit card to get as much as you want of it.
If you’re rich enough to pay $300 you can also get a whole ascended gear set in a few minutes rather then in 6 months. This would make matters a lot worst in the end because imagine the outcry of players demanding for a new gear tier and waving the I am entitled to a new set because I paid $300 in a day.

Of course you could go with karma which doesnt have that issue but then we come to issue 2 that is common to both karma and gold. How much gold or karma is 15 days worth? For some players who like to enjoy the game through exploration, engaging in mini games or just roleplaying 15 days is worth a lot less then players who like to farm, play TP, grind dungeons etc… So if you balance it towards hardcore players (and you have to based on those 15 days are most crucial to them) that means that for players who enjoy the game you’ll be charging them 30, 40 perhaps 50 days worth of karma / gold.

Its a complicated problem to solve. I dont envy Arenanet. I do think they came up with the best compromise. Of course an option if you want to a sense of accomplishment is to require more then just laurels, perhaps some item that drops off champion mobs or world bosses. Or some essence of the mist. But I am not sure the problem for many people is really a sense of accomplishment, I think its probably more then wish they could work harder to cut some time off those 15 days.

Shifty.5187:

milo.6942:

and i think the most obvious reason is money
keep people logging in and you have higher chance to sell on gemstore

I’m naive enough to believe this is not their main motivation. I think they just want to give people stuff to strive for that will keep them busy for a long time, and also to level the playing ground between hardcore players and casuals.

Your not naive, the for gem shop reason just doesnt add up in my opinion.

You’re not going to spend real money in the gem shop just because you logged on for 30 minutes to finish off your daily (if you were not going to log on at all on a particular day and logged just to finish of your daily its safe to assume you’re not going to stick around beyond finishing off that daily)

If their intention was to have you spent money in the gem shop the daily system actually hurts them in that regard. What would work beautifully is have a vendor sell them for gold or craft-able for non-time gated mats

If they price each piece at say 60g … 4g per day x 15 days
or if they make it craft-able and require materials that collectively cost 60g

how many people who find it hard to wait 15 days to get a single piece will get the credit card and change that 15 days into $24 ?

Yep no doubt in my mind that if their motivation was make money from the cash shop, removing the timegate would make them wayyyyy more money then what people logging in just to finish off a daily can ever hope of make them.

Unless I am missing some angle of course. If so please let me know.

Shifty.5187:

Galen Grey.4709:

They’re not talking days now either but each requirement defines that in various ways.

A piece of T3 cultural armor costing 20g doesnt directly state that said piece is meant to take 10 days to earn but for most people it will take 10 days to earn 20g either way

Of course, because effort is confounded with time: all actions take time to perform. But that is not to say that the time aspect of it is what drives the intention behind it.

The value of an item is in part determined by how hard it is to get, and usually this is a combination of effort and time. With the time-gated content it is just time, no effort, and therefore: wrong.

Get rid of time-gated content, make stuff effortful (and hopefully fun) to get, and don’t care that some people go all psycho on it and get it within a few days. What’s wrong with that approach?

Nothing, I completely agree 100% with all you said. My only issue is can you imagine any thing you could put in a game thakittens combined effort-time is at least 15 days and which is also fun to play? Personally I cannot. When I look at other games, its either farm the same raid (which I hate and wouldnt find fun) or farm a ton of mats which is also not fun. Do you have any suggestions?

milo.6942:

Shifty.5187:

Galen Grey.4709:

They clearly want ascended gear to take 15 days at least to earn.

Before time-gated mechanisms in games not a single designer talked about getting items in terms of days. It’s always been simply effort. Do X to get item Y. Not do insubstantial thing X for every day to get item Y after Z days.

They’re wrong in artificially dragging out content. Let’s not forget that this assumption of theirs is worth questioning.

and i think the most obvious reason is money
keep people logging in and you have higher chance to sell on gemstore

People keep saying this but no one explained to me how 20 days worth of gold make you log in less then 20 days worth of dailies.

If anything, if you want to argue the more you log in the more chances you have to spend money in the gemstore wouldnt requiring 20 days worth of gold make it much more likely to use the cash shop?

for one you can just buy yourself out of those 20 days using gems → gold conversion but even forgetting that
you can finish 20 days worth of dailies in a about 15 hrs
20 days worth of gold on the other hand could take as long as 160 hrs if they calculate a day worth of gold as 8 hrs of game play.

Isnt someone who’s playing for 8hrs a day for 20 days be much more likely to spend money on the cash shop that another who barely logs in for 30 minutes a day for 20 days?

Shifty.5187:

Galen Grey.4709:

They clearly want ascended gear to take 15 days at least to earn.

Before time-gated mechanisms in games not a single designer talked about getting items in terms of days. It’s always been simply effort. Do X to get item Y. Not do insubstantial thing X for every day to get item Y after Z days.

They’re wrong in artificially dragging out content. Let’s not forget that this assumption of theirs is worth questioning.

They’re not talking days now either but each requirement defines that in various ways.

A piece of T3 cultural armor costing 20g doesnt directly state that said piece is meant to take 10 days to earn but for most people it will take 10 days to earn 20g either way.

Every requirement for a reward be it mats required to craft, gold, karma etc… is meant to require a certain play time before you get given said reward. Nothing is stopping Arenanet from pricing that 20g piece to 5c if they wanted to. Its not like a manufacturer has to be paid for the materials used or labor involved in creating said item. In games rewards are all valued based on item required to acquire them its just that time is hidden in creative ways be it requirements, drop rate, skill required, time locks etc…

@oloap

Its not that simple. I think you’re making a small mistake in assuming that without the time gate the time required to earn a reward wouldnt change. It would and drastically.

They clearly want ascended gear to take 15 days at least to earn. They currently require 30 minutes of you time per day simply because you can only earn 1 laurel per day. So if you play 30 minutes, 2hrs, 4hrs or 24hrs doesnt matter to arenanet it will still take you 15 days if you play 24hrs a day.

Use a non time gated currency and that changes. Now to keep to that 15 day schedule the requirements arenanet ask for has to match as closely as possible to 15 days worth of game time. So if enough people play say 8hrs a day they have to charge what those people earn in those 8hrs multiplied by 15 else if they dont those people will earn the reward in less then those 15 days.

So when you say “while i could dedicate a full day doing the weekly tasks and dedicate the rest o my playtime to actually play the game instead of working on it.”wouldnt work with a none time gated currency because what you’ll end up with is 15 days working for that 1 reward.

Simply speaking playing heavily for 2 days straight and stop for a couple of weeks isnt really any different to completing 2 dailies and stopping for a couple of weeks.

As for those who cannot understand why tickets are sellable but buttons are not think of it this way. The support token things where like raffle tickets. You could buy / earn as many raffle tickets as you wanted for 2 weeks. You could deposit your raffle tickets in a big urn from which a winner would be selected. The buttons are the tickets that have been cast. You got the value out of those tickets in the form of your chance to win. The tickets which were not placed inside the urn though were technically wasted… you paid (money or time) for them but never got anything in return for you investment. Arenanet here is being nice enough to buy those back. Nothing else.

You know what I am seeing here people letting their own personal greed have them shoot their own foot.

So you’re raging because you deleted the tickets thinking they were useless. Fine I can understand not being happy about that but instead of learning from the experience and making sure that next time you will wait for the patch notes before deleting left overs you attack Arenanet saying people will left overs shouldnt get anything. Or how this whole initiative was stupid.

What do you think is going to happen next time?

Arenanet will look at this and if enough people complain they’ll figure its not worthed!

They didnt do this as some sort of content, this was just a nice gesture so that if you went through the trouble of acquiring tickets but never got around to using them all you wouldnt have simply wasted your time you got something small in return. But if this is not going to have the expected results (make people happy) why repeat it?

So yeah with your attitude you’re not solving anything expect making sure next time any left overs will be nothing more then trash to delete.

TooBz.3065:

@Galen Grey (sorry too long to quote).

You can’t see the perverse incentives this introduces into future content?

Participate in the event or hang on to whatever item and hope it’s worth money in the future. It’s like those refugee things you turned in during flame and frost. Knowing there’s a chance that they would be worth silver, wouldn’t you hold on to them? Is that what ANet wants?

Someone clearly did not think this through.

Actually I have a feeling that what is going to happen is people will expect this to be repeated and when it isnt complain that they were led to believe this is going to happen and were kept out of participating for the event for nothing.

I dont think this was a trend that we’ll see in the future, I think this was to make up for Arenanet not advising us ingame a little bit before hand before voting closed.

Ashen.2907:

Galen Grey.4709:

Only 15 days for 20 laurels isnt an analogy. Its a fact. Its a perfect amount in that no matter what any other variable is, how much you play, how much you farm, how lucky you are… it will always take 15 days of playing the game to earn 20 laurels.

Ive completed my Monthly in three days on one occasion. This gave ten Laurels for the monthly plus three for the dailies completed on those three days.

Seven more days of play allowed me to complete seven more dailies for a total of ten Laurels (including the three mentioned above). This means that I earned twenty Laurels in ten days, not fifteen.

Yes the theoretical minimum for 20 laurels is 10 days. But then it will take you a minimum of 20 days to get the next 20 laurels. This cycle will keep on repeating month after month. That means the average is 20 laurels per 15 days. But yes you’re right its totally possible to get 20 laurels in 10 days but then you’ll have to “pay” 5 extra days for the next set

Navzar.2938:

Galen Grey.4709:

Navzar.2938:

Galen, the lollipop doesn’t cost a days wage because you earn things in addition to the lollipop.
@threadtopic The problem is that the only way to get a lollipop is through the extra that you can only get once a day, rather than being able to continue to work for more lollipops at a lower rate.

You’re right you do earn more stuff but it has no bearing on laurels because they’re different currencies.

Its like saying that if you earn 2g in a day, the value of it isnt really 2g because you also earned 8k karma. Thats incorrect, the karma has no bearing on gold.

You’re right, it has no bearing on laurels, but that doesn’t mean you can say 1 hours of play is equal to 8 hours of play. Even if they’re different currencies, you still earn more with one option than the other.
2g vs 2g + 8k karma, there is indeed a difference because the second one gives you something in addition to the same reward.
Side note: Karma actually does have a bearing on gold though in case you have a mil or two saved up thinking there’s nothing you can use it on

And I’m not arguing with the time gated aspect, I even stated that was the problem.

Okey lets take a different angle… how do you decide the value of something thats virtual? why does a corrupt lodestone sell for 1.4g ? why does a charged lodestone sell for 2.3g? why do these items sell for gold rather then copper?

It all has got to do with 2 side. One side is how long it takes to acquire one. If it takes me an hour to get a corrupted lodestone drop I am not going to sell that corrupt lodestone for any less then I would make in that hour playing other content. Farming them would be a waste of time. On the other side It has got to do with the buyer. How much am I willing to pay ? Of course if it takes an hour to get one of these and even then there is no guarantee its fine for me to play the amount I earn in doing 1 hour of my favorite content perhaps even a bit more. But all in all these two factors push the price towards the monatory value of the time it takes to get one of these object. The seller wants to maximize their income, if it were for them they’d sell a corrupt lodestone for 100g but of course the buyer will never be willing to pay that.

Now back on subject, imagine if ascended gear bought with laurels were suddenly made tradeable. Do you think they would be priced based on the time it takes to get 20 laurels? IE about 15hrs? which would be around 15g (going with generous 1g per hour) or do you think it would be closer to the gold one makes in 15 days ? 60g (going with 4g per day) Lets think from the point of view of the seller. It will take me 15 days as a seller to get one of these. Sure it takes me just 15hrs of my real time but it will still take me another 15 days to get one more. Am I willing to just get 1g for every day I have to log on and play? How about as a buyer, do you think people who want this so badly and are having an issue with the current 15 day wait will never be willing to pay 15g? or do you think they’ll go as far as 60g per piece?

There is plenty of exotic gear that sells already more then 15g… Cultural armor, Named exotics, Some skins etc… In my mind I have no doubt they would sell for far more then just 15g. So for sure that makes a laurel worth much more then physical amount of time it takes to earn it.Will it sell for 60g? yep I have no doubt plenty of people will buy them at 60g a pop. That would make laurels worth a whole day of gameplay. But lets not stop there, do you think they’ll sell for 100g? or 120g? a piece? probably not everyone will afford that but yes I do believe some would pay as much too. So potentially a single laurel could even be worth more then your typical day worth of game.

But I think its quite likely the worth of a laurel is closer to the day then the 30 mins it takes to earn it.

Smith.1826:

Galen Grey.4709:

I have already explained to you directly at least twice now the reason why I believe Gw2 requires to limit the speed of Ascended gear. It has got to do with The issue of People loving / hating Vertical progression. If you ask another 5 times I’ll give you the same answer cause what I believe and this will not change unless presented with a good enough reason to make realize I was wrong. So far that hasnt happened

From what I gather (sometimes it gets difficult reading your posts), you seem to think these timegates are important because the sooner a ‘statgrinder’ gets the best gear, the sooner he’ll start asking for more. This is true.

Exactly, that’s precisely what I am trying to say.

Smith.1826:

What I question is how this is good for everyone, since not everyone likes to grind and not everyone can keep a sturdy game schedule. Not everyone likes free rewards, either (“time spent” isn’t really indicative of much effort or skill).

The daily system is a balance of all you mention here. Because its time gated they dont have to make it grindy. You can get ~1.3 laurel per day so it will take you at least 15 days to get a single piece and thats not dependant on any effort put in because of this there is no reason for Arenanet to put in some crazy requirements like 250 ecto and stuff just so it will take you a long time to earn it. In my opinion daily makes it easier on those who do not have a sturdy game schedule. Whether its grinding materials or earning laurels you still need to play X amount of days to get to your goal. The less you play the longer it will take you… both in terms of game time and realtime. Daily makes it so game time its identical. Some one who plays every day will take the same number of days (playing the game) as someone who plays just once a week. realtime is likely to be less with dailies as opposed to grind simply because 15 days worth of grind for a hardcore player who can play everyday is much larger then 15 days worth of grind for a casual player who doesnt have a sturdy game schedule.

Smith.1826:

If we really want to expand on options – that’s what dailies attempt to promote – what if in addition to the timegated rewards we have now, we had challenging content with those same rewards? This way, inexperienced players and casual lootgrinders can still wait a month or two to get what they want, while skilled players get their knowledge of the game tested and rewarded.

In this instance, good players wanting vertical progression may get their gear ‘quickly’, true. But provided that the “challenging content” isn’t a casual flop-fest, it’ll require that they’ve put a lot of time into learning and playing the game. This would definitely impact WvW, but how ascended gear affects WvW is a thread all on it’s own.

I believe that 15 day “wait” is crucial for the health of the game. I love challenging content and hope to see more (am having a blast in the queen’s gauntlet) but it shouldnt be a shortcut to cut the time it takes ascended armor. It would be a bad idea because hardcore players are very likely to be the type of players to best challenges quickly while the casual player with limited time would likely have worst equipment and less experience. You’d be making it so the players you most want to take a long time to acquire ascended gear would be the once to get it quickly and then we come to the new gear tier problem.

Dog.1472:

Well let’s just make everything time gated then since it’s so convenient.

You no longer gain experience points for killing mobs/dungeons.
Your character gains exactly one level every day after you kill 10 bunnies. If you would like to level up again, come back tomorrow.

You no longer get gold from anything other than the daily chest.
Complete 5 events and you get 1 gold. No more gold is given out until tomorrow.

You no longer gain karma from anything other than your daily reward.
Talk to a laurel vendor to gain 1,000 karma. Come back tomorrow if you would like more karma.

What a wonderful game that is. Everything is so fair and equal and why is no one playing anymore?

And why should they do that? every design decision is meant to address a certain issue. Time gating on Laurels acquisition is meant to make ascended gear take a “long time” to acquire (15 days) without making the whole thing extremely grindy. To me that makes perfect sense.
Its a balance between game requirements
- ascended gear has to exist because some people dont care about cosmetics and only consider a reward something that makes their char more powerful
- ascended gear has to last so they dont have to introduce a new tier and alienate a big part of their fan base
- grind… without time gating to make it so it takes 15 to get a single piece acquiring that piece would have to be extremely grindy
- ascended gear should be acquirable by everyone not just the players who have all the time in the world.

They didnt do it to be mean to their players, they’re doing it to implement something thats fair on everyone.

It did for me, I never felt like I was grinding for anything, the game leaves me free to play the content I want to play and still make progress towards the reward I feel like. I like that aspect very much. I quit many MMOs once I got to max level simply because they meant repeating the same dungeons over and over again, I hate that find that grindy. Never had to do that in Gw2… plenty of stuff to explore and 2 week content practically guarantees I never have to grind anything which is great.

Change I totally agree with OP… Dynamic events are amazing. Their attention to detail is astounding… NPC needs to call a caravan to transport some artifacts? That NPC called in a pigeon, leaned to tie a message to that pigeon’s foot and then the pigeon flew off. The caravan then arrives a few minutes later. Its great to see things happening in front of you in a logical way. I came in this game with really high expectation with regards to dynamic events, I was sure they were going to let me down cause I couldnt believe how anything could live up to what I imagined. The first time I followed an NPC after an event to see what would happen I realized Arenanet not only lived up to my expectations… they exceeded them!

Gehenna.3625:

Galen Grey.4709:

If players continue this behavior I have a feeling the only lesson learned here will be by Arenanet… Dont do nice things for players, they’re just unable to appreciate the gesture.

The point is that it’s not a nice thing if you make it unfair. Of course people would’ve gone for the gold if they knew beforehand…that’ll tell you how much people cared about the voting.

Ellen Kiel won…whoopteedoo. I could’ve had an extra 5g if I’d known. This game is set up to make people care more about gold than content. That’s what we should learn from this.

And how exactly did they make it unfair?

Voting for Ellen or Evon meant quite a few things:

How the story would continue and developed based on who is on the council.

Which dungeon you’d get

what perk you’d get (discounted waypoint vs keys)

What is 5g? with the dungeon changes it means probably 3 hours of dungeon runs. But lets go with average 2 days of game play…

So if 2 day profit are more important to a player then which permanent dungeon they get to experience forever more

or which character the story will focus on

or even a discount on the next set of weapon skins (keys) vs a month of discounted way points both of which are likely to be worth much more then 5g (weapons skins through keys for sure… a single one was selling for up to 60g during this event) I think you can hardly blame it on game content, its more like bad player priorities really.

from where I stand each of these 3 items are worth more then 5g individually much more taken together.

Wallach.7291:

hplee.2839:

Players: hey Anet what do i have to do with those leftover event token, they are useless and they are taking up my bag and bank slots.

Anet: delete them

Players: awww what a waste

NOW

Players: hey Anet what do i have to do with teh token i have so many left overs

Anet: you can now vendor them, earn yourself a little gold

Players: (nerd-rage on the forum)

You probably need to tell them that before they destroy them if you don’t want them to be upset. That is the actual issue.

They advised us less then 24hrs after the event ended. They couldnt tell us before the event ended… that would rig the event, essentially ruining it. Telling us in the patch notes was a sensible move.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Galen Grey.4709:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Well kitten, I knew I shouldn’t have converted that last bunch… We should be able to sell the badges as well. Period.

Part of me agrees with you and it would benefit me too but I can understand why they didnt do it like that.

One the influx of gold would be drastic. That could have a negative effect on the economy. Another argument against it is by putting your vote in you already got your value back. While if you just got the support ticket you didnt get anything for earning that ticket.

Yes and no…..

Im sure there were people that tosses the tokens in for no other reason than they had nothing better to do with them (like me). Like kitten I’m going to be able to use 100 Keil badges in 2 weeks. I don’t play that much.

It would only seem fair to allow us to sell the excess badges similarly to excess tokens. If you’re paying for one, why the heck not the other. Even if they knocked them down to 50c each, that’s fine.

One could only argue their vote only had value if their candidate won. The people that lost are going to be sore anyway. In addition to that, people that have bunches of both badges just sort of feel completely screwed, since they really didn’t care who won either way. They would have been better off just not doing it. How is that right?

Thats not exactly accurate though, The idea of casting a vote is not just so you can get a badge. That was just part of it. The main idea is to help your candidate win. For better or worst your choice made a difference.

As for the argument of the vote having value only if their candidate won. Thats not true either. Which candidate won is the outcome of the exercise. That was determined by which candidate had the most votes. Each vote counted for that ergo all votes had value. Even if you supported Evon and Evon lost when you cast your votes you had a say in that you wanted Evon to win and each vote cast made that outcome more likely.

But yes, a smaller price for badges might be a fair middle road I agree with you there.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Well kitten, I knew I shouldn’t have converted that last bunch… We should be able to sell the badges as well. Period.

Part of me agrees with you and it would benefit me too but I can understand why they didnt do it like that.

One the influx of gold would be drastic. That could have a negative effect on the economy. Another argument against it is by putting your vote in you already got your value back. While if you just got the support ticket you didnt get anything for earning that ticket.

Also a small thing to point, plenty of people here took part in the voting and deleted the remainder once they felt they had no more value. You just had a few hours to make that choice.

Consider that people who didnt want to take part in the voting at all considered this tokens worthless from day one.

Somehow I doubt people who didnt take part in the voting event really made that much cash if any at all.

Arenanet arent rewarding those who didnt take part, they’re rewarding the ones that took part and had some left overs.

Saelune.5316:

MrRuin.9740:

Fair? It is fair.
Those who voted and took part in the election system got what they wanted. They were able to take part in something and vote for a candidate they wanted.
Those who didnt care about a virtual election of some NPC got nothing for this except token for an event they didnt care about. This is what those people get out of it.

I didnt get what I wanted. I voted for Evon.

You got what you wanted. You wanted Evon to win, your vote gave him a better chance. The outcome didnt turn as you wished it to turn fair enough but you made your mark just like everyone else who voted.

Saelune.5316:

Galen Grey.4709:

If players continue this behavior I have a feeling the only lesson learned here will be by Arenanet… Dont do nice things for players, they’re just unable to appreciate the gesture.

Well, its kinda like scenes after credits at a movie. Yeah, its cool if you waited and saw it, but if you left when it ended, you missed out. Now many people often wait after credits wondering if anything will happen… but then it feels wasteful if it doesnt happen. Im one of those waiters, I dont delete old event stuff now, in fear I will miss out…it encourages hoarding of tokens, which leads to clutter. Maybe it wouldnt be so bad if they said what we can do with the tokens after, at the start of the event. If this next part said “Use this token to get this during event, can be sold/traded after” then atleast we would be made aware.

People keep proving my point after my posts -. -

They couldnt have said beforehand what they planed to do. That would have guaranteed the minimum number of votes just to get the achievements would be cast and the rest would be horded to be sold. This event wasnt about making money it was about getting to choose which content comes next. Where the story heads to next as well as what perks you get. Stating intentions would definitely have tainted that like multiple posts above make clear. Just count the people who say if they knew they wouldnt have voted.

As for hording vs deleting I understand what you mean, we all come face to face with that decision. I had a feeling they might be useful somehow. It was all too sudden how the voting ended without a least a little message beforehand. I have a feeling that wasnt intended at all and something didnt work as intended. Arenanet always try to make up for it when something like this happen so I said I’ll hold on to them for a little while.

If players continue this behavior I have a feeling the only lesson learned here will be by Arenanet… Dont do nice things for players, they’re just unable to appreciate the gesture.

You’re not getting something in return for forgetting to vote. I didnt forget to vote, I cast 100s of votes. You’re getting something in return for votes you earned but didnt get the chance to cast.

Why is it so hard to see things for what they are? they could have done nothing and everyone would be happy. Yet they went over and above that and giving a small reward to people who had some left overs.

This is a nice gesture nothing else, why is it so hard to appreciate it for what it is?

Oh come on people be reasonable its not nearly as dark as you’re making it sound.

For starter no one knew at the end left overs could be sold for money.
Secondly those who got support tickets got to take part in the event as well, if they didnt they wouldnt have support tickets.
Third those who voted got to decide on which content / benefits to get. Thats worth much more then a little gold.

This is for left over from the event. I took part I voted but like many others didnt know the exact time the event was closing (to be honest I even forgot it was going to close yesterday) And when it close I had a some support tickets left. Took time and effort to farm them its only fair you can get something in return. If I had used them as intended (which is what I did for most of the tickets) I would have gotten back a chance to choose the game direction. Like this I get some silver.

I am not sure how beneficial going ftp would be. I am sure some of the new players would buy stuff from the cash shop occasionally but if they’re not willing to pay $50 for the game I would imagine many of them wouldnt be willing to pay anything either. On the other hand you’d need to expand servers, deal with heavy loads so possibly also upgrade infrastructure and all that.

It would be a very bad idea to go F2P before releasing in all of the markets for sure.

Lets no forget that the game will keep on selling even at a slower pace and thats a guaranteed income. Gw1 sold what? an average of 1m a year when there were no more releases? thats $50m hard to say how many f2p players who arent willing to pay $50 up front you need to match that income and thats provided they can only sell 1m per year like gw1 did.

Smith.1826:

Galen Grey.4709:

Because there are two possibilities here. Ether a single quest chain for the whole set which is unfeasible (it would require 180 days to complete) or a quest chain per single piece that requires 15 days to complete. In either case you might want to respect in which case the quest has to be repeatable so you can get a set for your new spec.

The reason why its bound to time is because thats the real cost of loot. This is not something gw2 does, its in every game MMO or otherwise. Why are raids limited to once a week? why are drops control by RNG? Why is loot distributed between party members?…

Because these aren’t ‘cherished’ features that keep reappearing in MMOs due to their popularity, they’re cheap ways to keep you playing as long as possible, that’s why they’re ‘popular’. They keep you subscribed longer, and in a free-to-play game attempt to ‘encourage’ you to buy something from them. You’d be hard pressed to see these kind of ‘features’ outside of MMOs and games that want your money (only being able to earn five stars a day in Mario 64 is a terrifying concept).

So why are they in GW2, a game without a subscription fee that isn’t entirely ‘free-to-play’? To encourage active gameplay? This can be done by making gameplay and the game world more interesting. To prevent people from ‘burning out’? An odd excuse considering how they implemented Legendaries. “Just something other MMOs” isn’t a good reason.

I have already explained to you directly at least twice now the reason why I believe Gw2 requires to limit the speed of Ascended gear. It has got to do with The issue of People loving / hating Vertical progression. If you ask another 5 times I’ll give you the same answer cause what I believe and this will not change unless presented with a good enough reason to make realize I was wrong. So far that hasnt happened

aspirine.6852:

They need to have some kind of incentive for players to logon everyday. It makes the shareholders happy :/

Nice theory but I am afraid its wrong…. NC Soft is a public company, their share holder meetings are public. If the shareholders would be told how many people log on every day we’d know, the media would know etc. Yet we dont do we? So they’re not being told, So no this is not an exercise to please shareholders for sure.

Astralporing.1957:

Galen Grey.4709:

On the other hand there would be with your proposed method.

Person A works/has a family and a 2nd job, 2hrs now and then is all he can afford 6hrs a week max.
Person B works so for him/her 8hrs of farming every day is completely out of the question, 4 hrs per day is all they can afford
Person C is A student on summer holidays, 8hrs per day of farming in summer is not a problem
Person D is unemployed 12hrs of farming per day is welcome as it helps them forget their troubles

Thats your inequality right there.
360hrs for Person D is nothing… 30 days and done.
360 hours for person C is though but not a problem 45 days and done
360 hours of person B is though but they can get a piece every 90 days
360 hours of person A is impossible 420 days just for a single piece

For a full set, person D will take a Year … thats fine
For a full set Person C will take 1 year 6 months … thats already a problem
for a full set Person B will take 3 years … Hmmm nope
For a full set Person A will take 14 years… Game is not likely to be around long enough to finish the set.

How is that equal?

Person E plays every day. Person F plays the same amount of hours total, but due to work plays only on weekends.

With time gating:

For one piece, person E needs 15 days (2 weeks and a day)
For one piece, person F needs 7 weeks, and one day in the 8th week’s weekend (so 7 and a half weeks)

For a set(*), person E needs 225 days.Two-thirds of a year.
For a set, person F needs 112 and a half weeks. That’s 784 days (and half a week ;P). Over 2 years.

Both play the same amount of hours.

How is that equal?

(*) 6 armor pieces, 5 trinkets, backpack, 3 weapons(1h+off/2h set), Let’s ignore aquabreathers as they are not craftable now. Let’s ignore the fact that 15 days is the cheapest cost, and lot of pieces are priced significantly higher.

small correction… but I am not saying you’re wrong… just you got a small mistake

Person F needs 5 weeks not 7 (4 weeks = 8 laurels from daily + 10 for monthly then another week to get the missing 2 laurels)

So person E is 2 weeks + 1 day
Person F is 5 weeks exactly

Person E needs 225 days
Person F needs 225 days as well but they will take him 525 days to complete those 225 days or 1 year and 1/2

No one said the system was perfect, Just thakittens better then the alternative. If there was no time gating and price was set to a reasonable 8hrs game play time per day (its actually small cause I am sure plenty of hardcore players play a lot more then this) and lets say Player F plays 16 hrs during the weekend and player E plays 16hrs in the entire week. It would take 1800 hours to get the entire set (farming! that alone already is a no no imho) at 16hrs per week it will take them 112 weeks to complete which will mean 2 years and 2 months.

So they’ll both put in exactly the same amount of effort to get the reward. With laurels Player E is going to get it before hitting the theoretical minimum exactly (225 days) while Player F will get it 58% of time later even though s/he has to put in the same exact effort)

without time gating both Player E and player F will get it at the same time more or less but both will get it 71% more then the theoretical minimum time.

I would consider that as a worst out come personally.

Vayne.8563:

I’d be much happier if people just discussed opinions instead of trying to discredit other people by calling them fan boys or white knights. It’s not constructive.

I totally agree with this. If we like the game we like the game, its only natural we’re going to support most of those design decision because well we agree with them and like them. It has nothing to do with white spray painted heavy armor.

That doesnt make us right and those who disagree with us wrong.

Thats the whole point of having discussions. maybe we miss something maybe others miss something or we just like different things who knows. Who we are doesnt get into it though.

People, once again dont loose sight of what a manifesto is… its a statement of intent. That intent is then translated into fact through an design decision. Like everything in life not everyone will see the exact same thing the same way.

Example Acquiring Ascended gear Through dailies….

Some feel spending 30 minutes a day, every day for 180 days to get a full set of ascended gear is an example of how this game is grinder then any other out there. Fair enough.

Other look at exactly the same thing and think, what? I can just play the game anyway I want and after 180 days of playing the content I choose every day I will get a full set of ascended gear? Awesome thats like no grind at all, definitely much better then MMO X where I had to repeat this raid for 6 months before I finish off my set or MMO X where I had to gather and craft rubbish for months before I could finally build my set. Or in some MMOs where I had to farm for months before I had enough mats to build my BiS gear. etc….

What does this tell us? Did ArenaNet lie about grinding when it comes to dailies? No, its undeniable that dailies remove some repetitions like running the same dungeons / gathering tons of mats. They definitely attempted to implement the vision in the manifesto.

For group A they didnt manage, they still find dialies grindy but are group A lieing? Nope if they feel that way they feel that way.

For group B this really solved the grinding issue, are they lieing? No like group A if they feel that way the feel that way.

What I am trying to say is these things are subjective… just cause something isnt true for you, it doesnt mean whoever said they were trying to avoid that particular thing didnt really try to avoid that particular thing.

Like others have said. Though now with the changes planned in the next patch that hits tomorrow IE champions dropping unique skins Orr might get new life since events there can have multiple champions.

Only I didnt say a person who spends less time playing deserves the same reward. Did I ? I said the effort required should be somethings thats reachable by both.

Someone who plays 2hrs a day 3 times a week, still needs to complete 20 dailies just like the player who plays 12hrs a day every day. The person who plays 2hrs isnt being rewarded for playing less, he is being rewarded for reaching the required 20 dailies just like the person playing 12hrs a day will.

The person who plays more will still get rewarded more MUCH more.

In 20 days the 2hr guy 3 times a week will earn something like a couple of gold, some karma and have 6 – 8 dailies completed out of his required 20.

The 12 hr a day player will have a single ascended piece, close to a 100 gold, A ton of karma, whatever else s/he decides to pursuit.

You keep thinking of this as some sort of making everyone 100% equal. Its not that as I have already explained its just to balance goals so they’re reachable by everyone.

Gehenna.3625:

Galen Grey.4709:

How is that equal?

Oh you’re a communist then?

People are not the same, they don’t game the same but they should all get the same, in the same way? That’s just Anet making it easy for themselves.

Call it what you will, I believe someone who can only play 6hrs per week shouldn’t be left out because content is designed for players who can play 84hrs per week. Thats not what this game is about. Plenty of games other where if you want the best rewards you need to complete hardcore raids that only a few guilds can afford to run.

These 2 category of players will not be on exact equal footing. The 6hrs per week person is going to take 1 month and 1 week to get a single ascended piece while the 84hrs person will get it in 10 days. But at least the 6hrs a week player can still realistically work towards the goal and isnt left in the dust just so the game caters exclusively to hardcore players.

how would you feel if the game went the other way like many of us wanted and ascended gear never made it in game at all? Would you like to have your desires disregarded? would it be fair? like wise how is it fair to exclude people just cause they cannot game as much as you do.

But the more important question is what are you trying to achieve exactly? do you want to feel superior because your free time allows you to get stuff busy people cannot hope to ever have? Do you want to put in a larger effort to get Ascended gear? what is it exactly?

Craptrain.7203:

Galen Grey.4709:

Can you think of any other reason?

I honestly don’t try to put myself into the heads of video game developers. It’s a scary place I have desire to visit…like Mississippi.

But no, I see what you’re saying. My point is simply this: if the absolute value of an ascended item is 15 days, they would not be obtainable through RNG fractal chests. We can say the value is close to 15 days, but even that becomes muddy. How are we defining days? I get my laurels entirely through PvP. 3 matches a day and I’m done. That’s less than 30 mins. Are we then defining days as 30 min play sessions? See how trying to establish the absolute value of an item is problematic?

Poor devs. I am sure their heads are wonderful worlds to be in… anyhow…

I see what you’re saying to an you’re right.. RNG is an imperfect way to dictate time but I am sure they tried to tweak it for their chosen goal. Now they could have tweaked it to match the same 15 days but went completely wrong because they never imagine people would farm more then 1 chest per day. Or they could have gone completely wrong because they didnt expect Fractals would get abandoned so fast… I dont know, they dont know, no one knows.

The definition of a day is right now doing the objectives related to the daily which ever those might be. Because you’re limited to 1 laurel a day there is no problem the effort they require is infinitely less then what a whole day productivity can be game wise. You might general participate in 30 matches but get the daily done in match 3… doesnt matter. Part of what I like about this system is it doesnt tie you up and is fair on everyone. For Person A a day of pvp might mean 30 matches, for person B it might mean 5 matches. So what would be a fair number? the daily makes it so you just complete 3 then you’re free to do what you wish. Its good you can also work towards other rewards at the same time if you wish or it leaves you free to enjoy whatever content you find fun.

Dog.1472:

Do you have any idea how frustrating it is that you completely fail to comprehend the point here? I’m just going to copy and paste this ten times until you understand this.

Yes, I can assure you I know how frustrating it is.

You listed lots of things but failed to answer my central question. What is the advantage?

The only think you listed is because it creates inequality. Which is false btw. I’ll get into that soon. But even if you were right how is equality an advantage? How is we’re both been forced to play 360hrs in content we may both not enjoy for this one piece an advantage over we played a different amount of time of content we enjoyed before we got a reward?

now as for the equality argument itself. You have to complete 10 dailies and a monthly or 20 dailies. I have to complete 10 dailies and a monthly or 20 dailies. It takes you 30 minutes per day to complete 1 daily, it takes me 30 minutes to complete 1 daily. Where is the inequality cause I surely dont see it?

Just cause I quit the game 1.5 hrs after my daily while you quite 9 hours after the daily does that mean you work more then I did on the daily? no we both worked exactly the same. There is no inequality. Simply speaking if I go buy a meal from a fast food I use a fraction of the money I earned that month but it doesnt mean I worked the whole month for that meal. Same here just cause you played 9 hours it doesnt mean your effort for the daily was the whole 9 hrs, it was a fraction of that, the time it took to complete the objectives that are the same for everyone.

On the other hand there would be with your proposed method.

Person A works/has a family and a 2nd job, 2hrs now and then is all he can afford 6hrs a week max.
Person B works so for him/her 8hrs of farming every day is completely out of the question, 4 hrs per day is all they can afford
Person C is A student on summer holidays, 8hrs per day of farming in summer is not a problem
Person D is unemployed 12hrs of farming per day is welcome as it helps them forget their troubles

Thats your inequality right there.
360hrs for Person D is nothing… 30 days and done.
360 hours for person C is though but not a problem 45 days and done
360 hours of person B is though but they can get a piece every 90 days
360 hours of person A is impossible 420 days just for a single piece

For a full set, person D will take a Year … thats fine
For a full set Person C will take 1 year 6 months … thats already a problem
for a full set Person B will take 3 years … Hmmm nope
For a full set Person A will take 14 years… Game is not likely to be around long enough to finish the set.

How is that equal?

Craptrain.7203:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Craptrain.7203:

So then, for the purposes of analogies, using 15 days as the measure of an ascended item’s absolute value is flawed, yes?

All analogies are flawed. It’s like trying to create a perfect sphere from a block of wood with sandpaper and bare hands only.

Yes, but to use your imperfect analogy as an imperfect analogy, using 15 days as the measure of value is like using a football as a measure of a perfect sphere…for the wood-sanding guy.

Only 15 days for 20 laurels isnt an analogy. Its a fact. Its a perfect amount in that no matter what any other variable is, how much you play, how much you farm, how lucky you are… it will always take 15 days of playing the game to earn 20 laurels.

In fractals the other variables change things drastically. How many times you play, how many even levels you farm per day, how lucky you get with your drop etc..

Craptrain.7203:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Craptrain.7203:

Galen Grey.4709:

Craptrain.7203:

Why are we ensuring an arbitrary 15 days minimum? I must have missed that part of the conversation.

Because a single ascended piece is set at 20 laurels. you can get a maximum of 40 laurels per month thus 20 laurels take 15 days to get on average.

The 20 laurels price is specific. They could have priced each part to any amount of laurel they choose. They priced it at 20 because they want a 1 per 15 day acquisition rate.

That’s how I thought you’d answer.

Question: If any given piece of ascended gear is worth 15 days, then how is it possible to get a ring from one level 10 fractal run? If Anet truly wanted the price of a piece of ascended gear to be 15 days, they wouldn’t have included this.

I can answer that:

They wanted it to be RNG or 15 days, from the assumptions of the timeframe. Therefore anyone really wanting it could farm for it from the Fractals or wait it out. Similarly, the Accessories and Guild Commendations.

. . . and no, I’m not saying the values are good, but that’s the theory I’ve determined is behind it.

So then, for the purposes of analogies, using 15 days as the measure of an ascended item’s absolute value is flawed, yes?

could be or could be not depends how much the average time to get the ring you want in fractals is And even then it would depend whether the real drop rate in fractal matched with the expectations Arenanet had it would be.

Like Tobias pointed out they could have used a token system like they do in dungeons instead. They did RNG instead as well as limiting the tries per day simply to slow the acquisition down.

Craptrain.7203:

Galen Grey.4709:

Craptrain.7203:

Why are we ensuring an arbitrary 15 days minimum? I must have missed that part of the conversation.

Because a single ascended piece is set at 20 laurels. you can get a maximum of 40 laurels per month thus 20 laurels take 15 days to get on average.

The 20 laurels price is specific. They could have priced each part to any amount of laurel they choose. They priced it at 20 because they want a 1 per 15 day acquisition rate.

That’s how I thought you’d answer.

Question: If any given piece of ascended gear is worth 15 days, then how is it possible to get a ring from one level 10 fractal run? If Anet truly wanted the price of a piece of ascended gear to be 15 days, they wouldn’t have included this.

I would hope so since I am replying in what I truly believe to be the logical reason and not some invented excuse to win the argument

Acquisition time in fractals is controlled by limiting the daily chest to once per day per 2 levels, the drop rate and also because by the drop being random. Ie just cause a ring drops it does not necessarily mean you got the ring you want, it could have stats you didnt want. I never farmed Fractals for rings so I have no idea how long it takes to get the ring you want running fractals.

That being said they’re allowed to fine tune stuff that doesnt work out as intended. Looking at crafting celestial gear for example, thats exotic and now with the charge crystal its being gated at 5 days per piece. There is no reason to put a gate on it stats wise, it isnt any better then other exotic gear so I can only assume that they intended exotic gear to take 5 days to acquire per piece as well its just that reality didnt meet their projections? I don’t know its a possiblity.

what I know is laurels give them a perfect mechanism the control acquiring speed. If they wanted ascended gear to take 5 days to acquire and not 15 they could easily price it at 8 laurels. The fact that choose 20 instead of 3, 5, 8 etc… has to have a reason and the only reason that fits is because they wanted it to take 15 days. Can you think of any other reason?

Craptrain.7203:

Why are we ensuring an arbitrary 15 days minimum? I must have missed that part of the conversation.

Because a single ascended piece is set at 20 laurels. you can get a maximum of 40 laurels per month thus 20 laurels take 15 days to get on average.

The 20 laurels price is specific. They could have priced each part to any amount of laurel they choose. They priced it at 20 because they want a 1 per 15 day acquisition rate.

We also went on speculating on the reason for that. My theory discussed in detail in previous posts is because of vertical progression. This game is split into two groups. 1 group wants vertical progression and doesnt care about cosmetics. The other group really really doesnt want vertical progression and they care about cosmetics. Ascended gear is a compromise, one that has an expirey date. Once people who really want vertical progression get the sets they want that compromise becomes null and void. Arenanet will then have to either introduce a new tier or hope this group will stick around even though they no longer have anything they consider a meaningful reward. The 15 day per piece simply ensures ascended armor remains in play for a long time.

@Dog. I am happy you made that example cause maybe you’re see what i mean if I use your own numbers.

So you state 15 days is equal to 360hrs thats a bit excessive but it doesnt change things just their relativity.

So in your example spans 4 days:
Now, I can spend 3 hours today farming for it.
Then I can spend 12 hours the next day farming for it.
Then I take the next day off.
Then I spend 4 hours farming for it.

out of the 360hrs you did 19 hrs progress. That means you didnt even do a full day progress. Had this been using the laurel system you’d have done 3 days progress.
Base on your example I could have no logged on once and made the same exact progress you did logging on 3 days out of 4. But thats not the real point either No one is expecting rewards for free, this isnt about that… however in your example those 19hrs were spent running specific content, the most profitable dungeon or farming the mob that drops whatever you need. with the daily those 19 hrs where spent playing whatever I want to play be it WvW, PvE, Dungeons, Crafting, whatever…
So let me ask you this.. Whats the real advantage your system gives players? Cause all I can see is disadvantages…

It will take you longer to get the reward… based on your progression in these 4 days if you had to repeat that pattern it would take you 76 days to get a single ascended piece while if that same pattern was repeated using the daily it would take you 20 days to get a single piece (instead of 15 days)

With your system I have to spend 360 hrs farming the same content, with the dailies I just have to spend a minimum of 10hrs playing whatever I enjoy doing for a single piece.

With your system some one who cannot afford to play long stretchs like 12hrs in one day but can only play 2 – 4hrs max will take 120 days (based on your pattern of 2,0,4,4 hrs played over 4 days) to get a single piece. With the current system that play will still get his piece in 20 days.

Really what tangible thing would we gain by switching systems?

The P2W argument is actually quite valid. If they switch on to gold / mats they’ll have to make it really steep to ensure it takes 15 days minimum to everyone. Then people will feel this is just a ploy to get them to buy gems and convert them to gold. That will surely lead to a p2w feelings by people who will then feel its not feasible to get ascended armor without taking out your credit card.

One more reason why I feel the current system is a better idea.

@dog part 2…

I feel perhaps its better to visit what it means to get something at your own pace rather then a dictated pace. Asking for something like 8 hrs of farming per day is a dictate pace. I have to dedicate 8hrs in a specific task in a stated time frame or fall behind. (its not a big deal for me but it is for you) The chances of finding 8hrs to dedicate to this are none there is no way the majority of us can find 8hrs everyday to farm.

How about dailies? how do they help here?
Dailies are just asking you to play the game for at least 30 minutes. If I am going to play the game thats no problem. If today I can play just 4hrs … no problem thats enough to meet my daily. If today I can only play 2hrs, no problem you still meet your quota. Even if today I really shouldnt have time to play I can still pop in 30 minutes and finish the daily quota (its not required, there is really no need to do it 1 more day isnt going to change anything but if you feel strongly you can).

I have no idea how you feel being forced to farm for 8hrs per day is allowing you to play at your pace where as just play whatever you like for as little as 30 minutes is not. To me seems like the opposite is true.

@dog

are you completely incapable of discussing something without being offensive? Is it really that hard for you to focus on arguments rather then people saying them?

You keeping saying “There has already been countless people in the thread who very clearly understand that time gating content sets progress at a pace decided by Anet, while removing those constraints allows you to play at your own pace. Get it?” You’re either not understanding that if they remove the time-gate they’re going to replace it with an equivalent requirement or you’re not realizing that 15 days of farming require you to log in and play 15 full days one day after the other if you want to get what you’re after in 15 days.

Either way your statement is the opposite of reality. Dailies are allowing you to get ascended gear at your own pace, the alternatives will not.

For the billiont time if they feel a single ascended piece has to last at least 15 days dropping the time gate will not make that requirement magically disappear. They also cant make those 15 days apply just to casuals and ignore hardcores because the hardcores are precisely who they need those 15 days for. So dropping that time-gate will leave you with something like 8hrs of farming at least per day… maybe more. So tell me how will require you to do 8hrs of farming everyday for 15 days let you play at your own pace more then just essentially show up and play what you wish? How is requiring you to farm for 120hrs to get a single piece forcing you to log on every day any less if you want to get this reward in 15 days because getting it in 20 or 30 or 40 days seems to be a big tragedy?

From where I am standing it will not, not even close. It will just make it so its impossible to get in 15 days for all but a very few people who can spend all day playing. Well some of us have jobs and while we can afford a couple of hours per day we could never afford 8hrs per day.

Navzar.2938:

Galen, the lollipop doesn’t cost a days wage because you earn things in addition to the lollipop.
@threadtopic The problem is that the only way to get a lollipop is through the extra that you can only get once a day, rather than being able to continue to work for more lollipops at a lower rate.

You’re right you do earn more stuff but it has no bearing on laurels because they’re different currencies.

Its like saying that if you earn 2g in a day, the value of it isnt really 2g because you also earned 8k karma. Thats incorrect, the karma has no bearing on gold.

they didnt price each piece 20 laurels by rolling a dice. Its a conscious amount to reflect a certain amount of time… 15 days. They let you earn other stuff simply because there is no reason to stop you from earning other stuff. anything you earn is not going to negatively effect the intended 15 days. Thats the beauty of it, because this is time gated they have no reason to have you spend all day on it because 30 minutes or 10 hrs you’re still going to get 1 laurel and in 15 days you’re still only going to afford 1 piece.

If they charged gold instead for example, in order to keep that same 15 day it would need to be 8hrs worth of gold per day (or what a full day play time would reasonable be since people play different amounts) … Laurels simply avoid the need of forcing players to farm a full day but that doesnt mean thakittens not worth the equivalent of a full day farming.

simply speaking if say in a full day someone who plays 8hrs earns say 4g then you’d need to charge 60g to keep the reward within 15 days. That leans that 20 laurels are essentially the same value as 60g even if a player took 120hrs to earn 60g and 10-20hrs to earn 20 laurels. So you could say a single laurel is the equivalent of a full day worth of farming.

Smith.1826:

Why are you assuming that’s what I meant by ‘epic quest chain’? I’m not sure you know what you’re agreeing with.

More importantly, why do you keep quantifying everything by how much time – not skill or effort – it takes to complete? That does nothing good for the game.

Because there are two possibilities here. Ether a single quest chain for the whole set which is unfeasible (it would require 180 days to complete) or a quest chain per single piece that requires 15 days to complete. In either case you might want to respect in which case the quest has to be repeatable so you can get a set for your new spec.

The reason why its bound to time is because thats the real cost of loot. This is not something gw2 does, its in every game MMO or otherwise. Why are raids limited to once a week? why are drops control by RNG? Why is loot distributed between party members? Why does crafting require materials? etc.. etc.. everything gives a time cost to objects. In case of ascended gear we know exactly what that intended cost is… 15 days (20 laurels… you can get 40 laurels in 30 days so 15 days for 20). What ever method they decided to give out ascended gear in, it stands to reason it will have to keep that 15 day cost. I already explained why thats important, in a nutshell for some this is the last reward they’re interested in the game. Once they get it they have nothing else to work towards. Hence a quest that gives them their set in a few days wouldnt work.

Smith.1826:

If they’re not having fun doing it, they shouldn’t be doing it – and proceeding to ruin the game for themselves shouldn’t ruin the game for other players. There’s no subscription fee here, there’s no money to be made in determining how someone should spend their game time.

That, or maybe content that can be considered “dull” shouldn’t be “rewarded”.

And thats exactly what dailies do. They let you play whatever content you find fun and they reward you for playing it. If you go the quest route someone you enjoys WvW and hate PvE would be force to play content they hate. If you go the karma way people will be forced to do dynamic events and not everyone enjoys them. You can litterally play everything to get the dialy done so what system could possible better fit your definition of a game should not tell players what they have to play / dull content shouldnt be rewarded?