Guild Wars 2

Well, it’s coming up over and over again as the “worst of 2014” in GW2, so at least there’s that. Although I’m not sure why it would take yet another thread about it to get some attention, I really don’t care what the actual catalyst is.

Subdue.5479:

Zero Day.2594:

There are two people that seem to be trying to derail the thread by trying to switch it to how fast people acquire resources and now legendaries (btw the root of that evil is precursors…)…

That’s not true. While precursor prices have risen, that’s more a response to an increase in the availability of gold. It’s not like there are fewer precursors dropping now than a year ago.

The whole premise of this thread is that there are options being taken away from PvE players, when the only reward for dailies is AP, something that is abundant in PvE relative to the other game modes. I think the availability of the singular reward which is apparently forcing PvE players to grind painful events or travel begrudgingly outside their comfort zones is extremely relevant to a conversation about PvE players having choices in what content they want to do.

And, like I said in my original posting, the change to dailies is merely the impetus to having this discussion. There is a larger picture, here. I also object to your assertion that the way to bring PvE in line with PvP and WvW as game modes is to make a more restrictive game for PvE. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you- I genuinely do not know.

But if the shift in philosophy to fewer choices was meant to balance things out for the other game modes, it has sorely failed in many ways. There’s no reward track for the personal story in PvP yet. Most of trait acquisition is located outside of WvW, and none of it is in PvP.

Do you genuinely feel as if PvE needs fewer choices to be in line with WvW/PvP? I am just really struggling with what people are even defending, at this point. Are you saying that there hasn’t been a distinct trend toward a more rigid structure to the GW2 PvE experience in the last year?

A complete overhaul of the trait system. I’d roll a new profession, as well, but probably only long enough to see how it plays. And I’m certainly not buying any new character slots until the traits are fixed.

Subdue.5479:

Just something I’d like to throw in here as food for thought. You’re all complaining about some perceived loss of choice, when really, for the longest time PvE has been BY FAR the fastest and most efficient source of pretty much every available resource in this game aside from WvW badges and PvP rank points. It is so far above and beyond the other two that if you want to make a legendary, or even just amass some gold to buy an expensive (100g+) skin, you typically go to PvE content to grind it out. And as I mentioned before, PvE is already by far the biggest source of AP too. If PvE rewards were taken down a peg or two so that it was more in line with the rewards in the other two modes, wouldn’t that be making room for more choice, as you aren’t pigeonholed into having to go into PvE to unlock content that you want?

You seem to have missed my whole premise, which is that I’m all for choice for other game modes, but the reasoning that it has to be at the expense of choice in PvE is nonsensical.

I’ve skipped most of my dailies since the patch. I skipped some before the patch, too. What’s the point of this thread? Because I’ve never had a problem skipping dailies before.

The good:
1. Filtering in the trading post!
2. Adding in a wardrobe system.
3. Dismantling the champ trains in the low-level zones.
4. Bobbleheads
5. Halloween was much more rewarding than last year.
6. Zephyrite Sanctum’s return, and another chance at S1 rewards.
7. John Smith’s interactions with the BLTP community.
8. Outfits being free to apply.
9. Dyes being account-wide.
10. The compass! (I just got 100% map completion because of it)
11. New hair colors.
12. The mini interface.
13. The crafting interface.
14. Improved combat log.
15. The dodging tutorial, and some of the new level-up rewards.
16. Some of the smaller QoL changes, like the merchants recognizing currency that’s in your bank and new items being highlighted.
17. Account-wide commander tags.

The ugly:
Let me preface this by saying that I’m not going to bother listing things I’m indifferent about, because the worst of it is bad enough that outweighs the rest, for me.
1. The trait system. It’s bad. Other than the ability to retrait anywhere, out of combat, it is all bad. There’s a 70-page thread detailed all the many ways in which it is bad. And it’s not just the trait system, it’s ANET’s response, or lack thereof. I just cannot express my utter disgust at the whole situation adequately.

2. No Super Adventure Box. It’s now been a year and several months since the infinite continue coin was sold in the gemstore. I will never buy anything in the gemstore that lacks a distinct, transparent timeline, because of this debacle. Please note: Refunds for this item have been denied.

3. The complete lack of foresight with just about any of the changes implemented this year. Notable examples include: The trait system (it’s so nice, I had to say it twice), megaservers (low level events don’t scale with the world boss train), the gem conversion UI, commander tags (thankfully changed before implementation due to the uproar it caused), the silverwaste chest farm, the impact of removing town clothes, among others.

4. The communication policy, despite repeated claims at attempting better communication.

5. The level-gating implemented by the NPE for weapon and utility skills.

6. The enforced level-gating of the personal story, also implemented by the NPE.

7. The removal of things like golem chess from the entire game.

8. An exceedingly rare Halloween mini that was RNG-based and also account bound.

9. The lack of comprehensive patch notes.

10. The loss of the Black Lion Trading Company subforum.

11. Absolutely no flexibility in the Wintersday meta achievement.

12. This philosophy shift to less choice that I’ve observed.

13. Did I mention traits?

Reserving the right to add more.

Subdue.5479:

Guhracie.3419:

Hamfast.8719:

Subdue.5479:

If there were 12 choices for pve dailies but they were all difficult and or time consuming, but entirely available without venturing into pvp or wvw, would that satisfy your desire for choices?

A choice of 6 PvE (and PvP as well as WvW) would probably be sufficient. As pointed out, 50% of today’s PvE choices included Fractals achievements. Not a lot of variety to choose from there.) I’m not sure where you’re getting that they have to be extra difficult or time consuming, but I would prefer choices on par with the old ones and not any super-simple new junk they’re giving us like viewing a vista or chopping 10 trees in a specific zone.

This. I simply do not understand why there was a need to remove so many choices. Not from a game design perspective, and not from a coding perspective. Certainly not to reduce it to choose 3 out of an available 4. It doesn’t make any sense to me. And there’s no reason why the choices need to be arduous. I don’t understand this sudden desire to penalize choices that were previously available. Why?

It’s pretty obvious that the goal of the revamped dailies is to encourage people to explore other game modes. That’s why each game mode tends to have two easy dailies and two difficult/time consuming ones. You can easily complete them by hopping around game modes, but if you absolutely are unwilling to do that, you’ve got two more difficult options to choose from.

If they were to leave the old, easy options, people would just default to those and the whole point of the revamp would be lost.

So the point of the change is to diminish choice of preferred game mode? That is exactly what this thread is about. I don’t see how that can possibly be a good change, but you clearly disagree and appreciate the narrower structure.

In another thread, someone else pointed out that there’s no system that is going to look exactly like you think it will when you suggest it, and while that’s true, I’d really like to point out that this was implemented in response to players asking to hunt down new skills in a manner reminiscent of the original guild wars. Kitteh, I’d be happy with just the new grandmaster traits requiring the hunting.

But I’d personally like to see the metrics that pertain to this system. We’re 2 weeks away from NINE MONTHS with this albatross. That’s three quarters of a year. If Anet’s hands are tied and they really are forbidden from touching trait acquisition, they bloody well need to come out and say that this is the final iteration. No more hand-waving, no more smoke and mirrors. Take the trait system out back and shoot it, if that’s to be its fate.

I am going to continue to bang this drum until something happens, even if it’s nothing, confirmed.

Hamfast.8719:

Subdue.5479:

If there were 12 choices for pve dailies but they were all difficult and or time consuming, but entirely available without venturing into pvp or wvw, would that satisfy your desire for choices?

A choice of 6 PvE (and PvP as well as WvW) would probably be sufficient. As pointed out, 50% of today’s PvE choices included Fractals achievements. Not a lot of variety to choose from there.) I’m not sure where you’re getting that they have to be extra difficult or time consuming, but I would prefer choices on par with the old ones and not any super-simple new junk they’re giving us like viewing a vista or chopping 10 trees in a specific zone.

This. I simply do not understand why there was a need to remove so many choices. Not from a game design perspective, and not from a coding perspective. Certainly not to reduce it to choose 3 out of an available 4. It doesn’t make any sense to me. And there’s no reason why the choices need to be arduous. I don’t understand this sudden desire to penalize choices that were previously available. Why?

Subdue.5479:

snipped for space…

Then there are some things that have been changed which have been poorly implemented, even though the concepts themselves are solid. The biggest offender of this is the trait acquisition system. Questing for traits is great, but the quests should have been more relevant to the trait both in terms of activity and level.

Even with the case of dailies, considering the laurel has been separated from them and the number you have to complete has been reduced to three while the choices remain at twelve, that’s objectively more choice, even if those choice aren’t necessarily ones you like.

Hi, thank you for this response, as it seems to be both in keeping with the topic and in good faith. I must say that I feel like I did specify, in my original post, a lot of the areas in which I feel choices are becoming a thing of the past. I’m going to address your points in order.

Overall, more things to do in the game than there were a year ago at this time: I can kind of see that, since the new living story zones have been added. However, last year at this time, we still had the Tower of Nightmares update running, we all got the new heal skills, and the event wasn’t gated behind level 80.

I can’t fault Anet too much for the level gate on the living world. It had to be a balance, in order to make it repeatable- and an overwhelming number of people wanted to be able to replay the story. And I’ve heard rave reviews about the new zones, overall.

However, last year’s meta achievement had many more ways to complete it than the current one does.

Objectively, you can replay S2 to your heart’s content, and that counts for a lot of new stuff. Okay, there’s more stuff to do than there was last time at this year, objectively. There’s no objective way to measure quality, and I’m not qualified to speak about the quality of the new zones, anyway.

I’m not sure I agree that there are more ways to earn gold, nor that they’re more effective than methods we previously had access to. I’d be happy to discuss if you’d like to elaborate on this.

I do not believe that there are more items to customize your character with than there were a year ago. We lost a lot of options when town clothes were turned into potions or outfits. We might be breaking even, if you’re counting the outfits as customized items, but there are many arguments that customization of characters was damaged heavily in the last year.

Your argument about laurels is flawed. Previously, you’d log in, do your dailies and get a laurel. Now they don’t come every day, and not everyone is using them for big purchases, like ascended accessories. Some people use them for crafting materials, so waiting until you can log in on 7 different days to obtain 2 laurels actually does slow down that progression. It’s not a real problem for me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see how it is a problem for other people. I can see how they might prefer the old system, even at the cost of 10 or so laurels.

Assuming a person was getting every monthly by logging in 3 days a month and powering through the monthly, that’s 156 laurels. In this system, they’d get 66 laurels for the same login rate. That’s not reaching for reasons to complain, it’s a significant loss for the exact same time investment a year ago. They’d have to spend a week out of every month instead of 3 days to get a comparable amount (165), which more than doubles the amount of days to log in.

The time commitment (specifically for the laurel reward) is less in this option, so maybe some of those people simply will log in for 20 seconds each day, for a week out of every month, but work schedules and such could interfere with that. And, it’s also less incentive to spend time in the game. That seems counter-productive to me.

Okay, look. This last paragraph of yours makes me feel like maybe you didn’t post this in good faith, and that’s disappointing. I’ve explained it. Other people have explained it. You’re choosing to ignore those explanations, so I’m simply not going to respond. But unforeseen issue or not, the daily we just had is an example of why it’s a bad idea to shuffle such specific dailies together. 2 of the 4 were fractals. And next time, in theory, we could have “daily fractal,” “daily fractal 1-10,” and “daily fractal 11-29” as our “choice.” Add Aetherpath as option number 4, and watch the forum burn. It’s such a narrow scope. If you really don’t see how that limits options, I don’t think the issue is with my communication skills.

Okay, this is long enough already. I’ve listed a number of places/systems in the game that were added this year that support my premise of less choice, and I don’t feel that your counterpoints cancel those out.

Create a non-human character? This has been going on for days now.

To your corners, please, for a breather. This isn’t a shouting match, it’s a discussion. I’m totally guilty of letting people get under my skin from time to time, but let’s all try to remember that we’re people here, and that we still have the choice to respond to people who aren’t communicating in a way that is conducive to honest discussion. I sincerely hope that I have done what I can to foster good communication, here.

Could we try to get to the overall picture again? My premise is that we’re looking at a much more restrictive game system in GW2 than we were last year at this time, and it’s quite sad, to me. Thanks so much, folks. I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad, so please accept my apologies if you do. Like I said, I have this issue, myself, and I think it’s a human issue to be so invested in things we have a passion for.

Welcome to the game!

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

New players that only have lower-level character would not even see the World Boss as a Daily Achievement.

But, for anyone interested, they can get the information by typing in chat…/wiki (insert World Boss designation here).

Voila!

An account with only a level 1 might not see a world boss, but an account with only a level 13 could get Frozen Maw as a daily. I hit level 13 on my second day playing the game.

Charrbeque.8729:

Guhracie.3419:

Lillith.5724:

Guhracie.3419:

Lillith.5724:

My hubby has his monthly completed. The Monthly Completionist finished it for him. So when did it change? Mid month?

It changed when the new login system was introduced.

I guess I should read more Thanks all for the replies and Merry Christmas

It wasn’t announced as a change, so there’s no reason you would have known. It’s a bug associated with the new login rewards, and since there are no more monthlies, it’s not a bug they’re going to try and fix.

Charrbeque, the issue is that the current and final monthly “Daily Completionist” broke when the new system was introduced, and no longer advances. That’s what is being discussed.

Sorry. I could have sworn this thread was in ‘General Discussion’. My mistake.

Yeah, it’s in general discussions, but the context is the original post of the thread. You were answering something completely separate from the issue the OP had. There’s not a subforum for this specific question, but you’re certainly welcome to start your own general discussion about the new login system. I don’t understand this snark.

I’ve been absent for the holidays, and I hope everyone is enjoying themselves, regardless of how meaningful today is for you personally. I seem to have fallen a bit behind on this thread, but I want to thank Hamfast from the bottom of my heart for cutting to the heart of the matter. I do feel as if I have been exceedingly clear about where I’m coming from, so I’m really too tired to address people who haven’t bothered to read it.

One thing I will say about laurels is that it’s an issue of: “I used to be able to get a laurel every single day I could do my dailies, and now they’re time-gated.” It’s working out well enough for me, personally, but it still has the potential to negatively impact other players.

Another comment that I am having trouble with understanding is people who have said that dailies are a snap to complete now, and then turn around and talk about how I am obviously someone who wants something for doing nothing, as if more choices somehow diminish the “accomplishment” of achieving the daily. Which one is it? Do the new dailies require more effort or less? Because either way, you’re contradicting yourselves.

Additionally, I would like to thank Iason Evans for summing up my feelings so well in such a succinct posting. It was such a delight and a relief to play a game so very different from any other MMO I’d ever tried, and this year has made the experience same-y in a lot of ways, and that’s disappointing.

People, choice isn’t the same thing as freedom. I feel like a lot of people are conflating the two words, and perhaps it’s because I misused them at some point, and if that’s the case, my apologies. In the context of this thread, I’m talking about diversity of options.

Lillith.5724:

Guhracie.3419:

Lillith.5724:

My hubby has his monthly completed. The Monthly Completionist finished it for him. So when did it change? Mid month?

It changed when the new login system was introduced.

I guess I should read more Thanks all for the replies and Merry Christmas

It wasn’t announced as a change, so there’s no reason you would have known. It’s a bug associated with the new login rewards, and since there are no more monthlies, it’s not a bug they’re going to try and fix.

Charrbeque, the issue is that the current and final monthly “Daily Completionist” broke when the new system was introduced, and no longer advances. That’s what is being discussed.

World bosses are now on a set schedule. You can look it up on the official site to see. The bosses in starter zones spawn every 2 hours.

Lillith.5724:

My hubby has his monthly completed. The Monthly Completionist finished it for him. So when did it change? Mid month?

It changed when the new login system was introduced.

Kal Spiro.9745:

exp.3178:

I have 7 level 80 older toons, i made recently a new elementalist, and leveled it to 80 .
to bring it to 80 i did all towns , starter maps and the maps where the PS led me. after level 70 I just did mapexplore and worldbosses.
I think I played as it should, and ending up with only 2 or 3 unlocked traits is stuppid.
A’net please bring back the old trait system or do a better overhaul.

Played as you should doesn’t mean anything. The point of the “new” trait system is to get you to go beyond all that. To go off and try to accomplish some extra stuff that maybe you wouldn’t have bothered before.

I think some of the traits are problematically located. Like a tier 1 trait in a level 55-65 level zone. I shouldn’t have to get all the way to level 50 or 55 before I can even hope to access a trait that might be integral to my early build. But it’s still a good system, because I might not have sought out the event, or location otherwise. So it’s doing its job and inspiring exploration.

Really? Because it’s inspiring me not to play at all.

nGumball.1283:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Copestetic.5174:

My point is, if there’s an expansion they’ll deny it/remain silent up until the last possible minute like everything else so they don’t upset people or set weird expectations. Just because you have the “proof” they’re not working on an expansion with old interviews, means very little given their closed-lip policy.

Like Vayne said, you have to read between the lines with ANet.

How about I read what they said instead? Again, no plans for an expansion. This idea that keeping quiet, and not promoting a product, flies in the face of everything any MMO company has ever done.

Including this one.

It’s like saying they think promoting their own product is poison and would lead to decreased hype, discussion, and word-of-mouth. Which, as anyone in business knows, is a whole lot of nonsense.

But, hey, if repeatedly citing, from the source, developers coming here and saying, “Nope,” doesn’t convince you or the others, far be it from me to spin my wheels.

You keep looking to that crystal ball, the tea leaves, read ‘between the lines’, and hope no actually means yes or maybe or it’s a secret. Shhh. Ta da! Miracle expansion to be released next month!

Right.

I guess a conspiracy theory is always more fun than reality, but let me not point that out either.

Since when do companies promote an expansion a YEAR before releasing it?
While I personally don’t think an expansion would come soon, there is a high chance they will announce it at 2015 and hype it up for 6 months, as in a release at the end of 2015 or 2016.

WoW: Burning Crusade: Announced Oct 2005, released January 2007.
Wrath of the Lich King: Announced August 2007, released November 2008
Cataclysm: Announced August 2009, released December 2010
Mists of Pandaria: Announced October 2011, released September 2012 (so, not quite a year)
Warlords of Draenor: Announced November 2013, released November 2014

I’d say there’s some pretty significant precedent for announcing an expansion a year in advance.

Edit: I personally don’t care if there’s an expansion or not, I’m just pointing out that it’s not unheard of to promote for that length of time.

Thank you for informing us, Ms. Gray. It is much appreciated, and I hope you have a wonderful holiday.

BlueBoy.1236:

Guhracie.3419:

BlueBoy.1236:

I honestly don’t understand where you get this idea of less choice. Have you ever tried to get 10 AP before the patch? You had to do ALL of the dailies. does having to do 10 out of 10 dailies mean more choice to you?

And how long have you followed gw2 living story? Many of the prev meta achievements required you to finish all of the achievements before you get the grand reward.

Trait? maybe, but anet still give you the easy/gold way to unlock it. The difference (excluding the new GM traits) is only 8g. Yes, you need an extra couple hundreds of skill point, but with the new champ bag system, skill point is not a problem anymore. That if you really care to unlock all of the traits (we knw most ppl here only use meta build).

Pls do research first before making another ignorant post

Uh, maybe you should do some research. The difference in trait cost is 360 skillpoints and 40g. And the rest isn’t even worth repeating myself over.

Ok, my mistake, it should have been 25g and a few hundred skillpoints. Still it’s not really a big problem. If anet didn’t give us a way to farm gold or skillpoints, then yes you have the right to complain. Didn’t they give us champ bags and new dungeon rewards to compensate those changes? also didn’t i say excluding the new traits? If anet released a manual that cost 15g for the new traits, would that satisfy you? You also forget that you now dont need to pay a dime when you wanna retrait.

After reading your other post, i finally understand what you mean. Just like most ppl who replied to your post, i also had problems understanding your point. I’m gonna quote one of the most important question from Vayne.8563:

“How do you keep adding more dailies, without falling into the trap of everyone doing the ones that absolutely take no work?”

And please.. 10 out of 10ach for meta has been there since season 1

Most people who (I’m not swearing, forum filter) responded to my post didn’t have a problem seeing my point. I don’t want them to add more dailies, I want them to stop taking them away. And I’ve been playing since the original living story, and despite the fact that I wasn’t talking about living story specifically, I was talking about festival meta achievements, you’re still wrong. I can’t think of a single living story meta that required all of the achievements in order to complete it. There was usually a pool of options, and you could choose which ones to complete. Anet even facilitated this by giving credit for each daily related to the meta event. For someone who accused me of being ignorant, you are appallingly uninformed.

And, once again, the difference in trait cost is not 25g. It is 40g and 360 skillpoints. Per character. Traits now cost 43g and 360 skill points, where they previously cost 2g60s.

BlueBoy.1236:

I honestly don’t understand where you get this idea of less choice. Have you ever tried to get 10 AP before the patch? You had to do ALL of the dailies. does having to do 10 out of 10 dailies mean more choice to you?

And how long have you followed gw2 living story? Many of the prev meta achievements required you to finish all of the achievements before you get the grand reward.

Trait? maybe, but anet still give you the easy/gold way to unlock it. The difference (excluding the new GM traits) is only 8g. Yes, you need an extra couple hundreds of skill point, but with the new champ bag system, skill point is not a problem anymore. That if you really care to unlock all of the traits (we knw most ppl here only use meta build).

Pls do research first before making another ignorant post

Uh, maybe you should do some research. The difference in trait cost is 360 skillpoints and 40g. And the rest isn’t even worth repeating myself over.

Subdue.5479:

Guhracie.3419:

Subdue.5479:

I’m just going to say the premise of this thread in itself is rather misleading. How does shifting the rewards for the dailies into the login result in fewer choices? The fact that the all important time gated currency (laurel) is now no longer tied to any activity means you can log in and do whatever you want without issue. And should you -choose- to hunt AP, it’s now faster and easier, but it’s treated as an actual reward for going out of your way to do something, just like everything else (pvp, dungeons, etc). If anything, the recent daily changes add MORE choices rather than remove them.

Okay, first of all, the premise of this thread is to have a discussion about the topic. So that is in no way misleading.

Shifting the rewards for dailies into the login system isn’t the issue, and it’s either dishonest to suggest that’s what I’ve said, or you honestly didn’t read the original post.

I’d be happy to discuss the actual contents of my posting with you.

You can claim it’s to have a “discussion” but you’d have to be kidding yourself if you think there’s no bias in the original post. That aside, I’d be happy to explain further.

1. Dailies: As I mentioned in my previous post (which you basically dismissed with a “you didn’t read what I said” comment, by shifting rewards to login rather than tied to random activities, A.Net made doing the dailies a -choice- rather than a requirement. You’re not locked out of any content by not doing the dailies anymore, where as previously if you weren’t doing the dailies you’d have reduced access to laurels, a time gated currency. Edit: And I am just going to add this. It should be obvious, but for many it’s not. You -cannot- analyze the daily change without considering the shift in rewards. The two go hand in hand.

2. Wintersday Festival Dailies: If I recall correctly last year’s festival didn’t reward you with a laurel, they were just factored into the regular daily. This year, they provide you with a laurel on top of the set you get from the 28-day track. Greater reward, greater effort required. Is that really unreasonable?

3. Traits: Previously you had to buy all of the traits in each section, and expend the gold to do so, even for traits you have no intention of using. There was no way around this. Now, you can choose each individual trait you want to get, and you can choose to buy it with currency and SP, or do the quest associated with it. More choices!

There’s a big difference between “having choices” and “getting everything you want for doing anything at all,” and the points you bring up do not support the premise of fewer choices. They support the premise of wanting to have everything without expending any additional effort for it.

Wait, what? Where did I ever even try to imply that my original post is without bias? I literally said that I was going to list changes to the game that I perceive to have led to fewer choices, and then explain why I don’t like that. Bias is not a bad thing, in the context of discussions, because we all have inherent biases. I did say that the number of dailies available to PvE players has been demonstrably reduced twice this year, and that’s a fact, without bias.

1. Dailies were always a choice. So are achievements. So is playing the game. My issue is that this, in the larger picture, is part of a more regimented, structured system. It’s a symptom, not the entirety of the problem.

2. My issue with wintersday is not the dailies. It’s the fact that festivals have, historically, offered a choice in how to complete the meta achievement. This meta has 11 achievements, and requires 11 achievements.

3. Better people than I am have already addressed your statement about traits, and I addressed this line of “reasoning” once already in the thread. It’s laughable to say that instead of having to buy the whole line, you can choose to buy a single trait. The reason that’s so funny is because each individual trait costs the same in coin currency as it used to cost to unlock the entire tier of all 5 lines. The additional skill point cost is just insult to injury. So, if you can honestly look at unlocking 30 traits for 10s as being less flexible and more restrictive than doing 30 “quests” (including zone completions, obsidian sanctum, at least two dungeons, and the grub in wvw) or spending 3g and 60 skillpoints, I think you’ll find yourself in the minority.

Your final paragraph is just insulting, and if that’s really your takeaway from this discussion, I don’t know how to get past that hurdle.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s likely not advancing as the current daily completion is tracked through an achievement whereas the old one was through the UI.

Yeah, I know the new system is interfering with it, but it’s pretty poor form to refuse to so much as comment on an issue that’s clearly causing problems for a number of people.

I just hit 40 on one of my low-levels, and I have one trait unlocked. I was really happy to discover that I do have at least one character on my second account who was grandfathered in under the old system.

Desiani.5218:

Structure changed? Was there a reason given to cut out so much story that made you feel your character was important inside the game world?

They’re planning to fix it. Maybe. Someday. But there’s no timetable. It’s been like this for almost 4 months, now, though.

A year ago, you guys would’ve fixed this by now, or at least commented to let us know that it’s not going to get fixed.

Aguri.2896:

It’s a nightmare trying to give asura and sylvari lore correct names these days. Sure, you could just use a title for asura but it almost always sounds bad and if you RP it hinders character development. Would be really helpful to people who actually care and play the game to be able to name their character without taking 2 hours to find a semi-decent available name.

All but 2 of my ~20 characters have lore appropriate names. I’ve spent that amount of time coming up with the perfect name, but never just grasping at straws for any decent sounding name. And to say that it’s hard for asura? Come on. Throw a couple of k’s in there, and an i on the end, and you’re golden. For sylvari, add an ae to the middle and a ‘vyn’ or ‘ella’ or ‘ette’ to the end, maybe throw in an ‘r’ somewhere. Boom. Plenty of names.

My asura and sylvari all have a single name, as well. (With the exception of my very first character, because I didn’t know asura weren’t supposed to have last names.)

I’ve never had a problem coming up with names in GW2. I’ve occasionally run into one that’s taken, sure, but that’s to be expected. There are tons of online name generators out there, and countless “baby name” websites, too.

nGumball.1283:

Once upon a time when SAB was released, there were alot of threads with people complaining about how Anet is releasing childish games instead of real content to the game.

It is just great to see how threads and subjects eveolve over-time in this lovely forum.

It’s only evolving if the same people are flip-flopping their opinions. Just stop trying to use the argument of “Oh, you people are impossible to please! You said X when it started, and now you’re saying Y!” because all that means is that there are many different people, who like different things playing this game.

Subdue.5479:

I’m just going to say the premise of this thread in itself is rather misleading. How does shifting the rewards for the dailies into the login result in fewer choices? The fact that the all important time gated currency (laurel) is now no longer tied to any activity means you can log in and do whatever you want without issue. And should you -choose- to hunt AP, it’s now faster and easier, but it’s treated as an actual reward for going out of your way to do something, just like everything else (pvp, dungeons, etc). If anything, the recent daily changes add MORE choices rather than remove them.

Okay, first of all, the premise of this thread is to have a discussion about the topic. So that is in no way misleading.

Shifting the rewards for dailies into the login system isn’t the issue, and it’s either dishonest to suggest that’s what I’ve said, or you honestly didn’t read the original post.

I’d be happy to discuss the actual contents of my posting with you.

CalamityO.2890:

Guhracie.3419:

If this is what you think, then you didn’t read the original post in this thread. Or any of my replies.

I have indeed read your original post. And your replies. One word keeps cropping up in my head: conflicted. As some one who does PvE, I get that you want more variety in your dailies. But as some one who also dabbles in WvW. I understand that there wasn’t enough variety in WvW dailies. This attempt was to address something, the game has gotten wrong over the last 2 years. Balance. Everyone should enjoy their game mode equally. And not have it so loop-sided.

Yes: everyone should have variety in their chosen game mode. And I have addressed that over and over again. I’m extremely happy that other modes are getting more variety, but there’s no reason it has to be at the expense of variety in PvE.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Well i recall some people asking for traits to be obtainable by questing like in gw1. So while i don’t like the change (especially the one trait point every 6 levels one) i can’t pin the tail on a-net for this one after recalling that part.

No, some people asked for new skills to be more like skill hunting in GW1. Traits are obviously a nod to that request, but just barely, and poorly implemented.

Sleepwalker.1398:

When I look at this thread and for how long this is going on for, I thank god that ArenaNet only develops games and not medical equipment for hospitals.

Eh. I’m pretty vocally disgruntled, and even I have to say that this is some crazy level of hyperbole. I get where you’re coming from with it, but they’d be subject to different standards in that industry, for exactly the reasons you’d think.

It’s just… not a good comparison. Lives are not at stake, and I can only assume that if they were, the good people at anet would do everything in their power to save them.

CalamityO.2890:

Has any of the PvEr’ ever thought of actually seeing it from their perspective?. I don’t think they have.

If this is what you think, then you didn’t read the original post in this thread. Or any of my replies.

Sins.4782:

A revert on the trait system would make a lovely wintersday present, ANet. If the gold sink is still needed, I’d gladly take increased waypoint costs or repair fees or whatnot over this. The ‘new’ system discourages build experimentation, which is very unhealthy for the game.

It seems like my waypoint costs may’ve increased slightly here recently. I remember porting from one zone to another for about 4s, and while it was pretty far apart, it was nowhere near completely opposite ends of the map. I don’t recall seeing costs much above 4s for very many trips, but this is just speculation on my part.

Guzzi, I almost feel like even that would alleviate some of the issues with the trait system, if it would let me choose a specific trait to unlock, as opposed to being a random unlock.

Well, I’ve changed the title, but it’s not looking very likely that this is even being investigated, so… looks like I won’t be getting my last monthly.

Page two, we meet again. For the first time.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Guhracie.3419:

Vayne.8563:

The choice issue actually has a lot to do with whether or not you’re actually an achievement hunter. Before I could get ten points a day through achievements, but I had to jump through many hoops to do it. It was a project.

Now, I can do just three achievements and I get ten points, every day. So far, nothing has been particularly onerous to me.

This gives me the freedom to do what I want the rest of the time. This change frees me up. Again, because of my emphasis on achievements, I sometimes didn’t have time to do everything I wanted. I have more time to do everything I want now.

Thank you. This is the kind of discussion from the opposite point of view that I’m looking for.

I’m not arguing that the new system is bad, but you’d still be just as free to do what you want if there were 8 options per mode, and you still only had to complete 3 to get the points.

While that’s two, it’s pretty obvious that ANet intends the tasks rotate so one does not see the same thing every day in a given mode. PvE presents a lot more opportunity for generating different tasks. There’s a lot of zones.

It’s also pretty obvious they were reaching pretty hard to generate a pool of tasks for WvW and sPvP. The “Win as a <insert profession>” task is going to be ignired if you don’t want to PvP as that profession. Also, we’ve seen “take land for your world” twice in WvW tasks and are nowhere near exact duplication in PvE. Then there’s the WvW kill one of three specific Vets."

Thank you for this. I don’t PvP, and I only occasionally do WvW, so this isn’t an issue I would have easily thought of. I do think there is some room for more variety, especially looking at the achievement sections of both modes. If you take some of those achievements and put them on a smaller scale, like… disrupting a caravan or successfully escorting a caravan, for example, in WvW. Or viewing a vista in a WvW map. You could translate events, gathering, and several others into WvW, too. PvP seems more limited in scope, admittedly. Maybe kill variety (kill 2-3 different professions in a PvP match) could work there. I don’t know enough about it to offer many suggestions, but maybe other people who do play that mode could come up with some, or address that it’s difficult to implement a variety beyond what we already have.

Sizer.5632:

Guhracie.3419:

Vayne.8563:

I just keep coming back to it’s only for achievements. That’s it. If you don’t care about achievements, it shouldn’t matter at all. If you do care about them, it matters in the positive way. There’s no way you could have gotten 10 achievement points before without going much further out of your way.

What option was taken away exactly? The ability to get five achievement points in a shorter time or with less effort?

What do achievement points mean anyway? Why are they important? If they are important, why shouldn’t they require us to go out of our way?

Edit: Okay, I think I understand where we’re not connecting. I’m in no way saying that the old system was superior and should be returned. I’m saying that there’s no observable reason to continue to cull the number of options from which to choose our 3 dailies. Does that make more sense?

The number of dailies keeps diminishing, at least in the PvE category. Before April, we had something like 10-12 choices, just in PvE. I find it discomfiting that the variety is slowly being sapped out of things.

I don’t miss getting the points for each daily, I miss having a wider pool of options.

I… am kind of at a loss here. I honestly don’t know how to make this more clear. I will keep on trying, though.

Instead of doing 3 out of a choice of 4 dailies, give the game modes 6 each to choose the three from. 10 APs. Map specific, just like they are now. I just don’t like that wanting more options is being misappropriated as wanting stuff for nothing, or being unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable. We had it. Anet took it away, for no apparent reason.

I’m not making stuff up out of thin air. This is not the alleged “I want to stand in Divinity’s Reach and chat with my friends and be rewarded for it” thread. This is me going:

“Hey. We had more options, and now we don’t.”

It’s becoming narrow and linear, and that alarms me, personally.

You are wrong though, because you absolutely, positively did not have more options before.

If you were an ap hunter (and if youre not, then there is no point in complaining about this), then counting only the pve ones, you HAD to do 8 of the 8 daily achievements, many of which were just as specific as the ones we get now.

So before, do 8 specific dailies out of 8, get 8 ap (or 12 out of 12 if you wanted to get max). Now, do 3 out of 4, and get 10 ap, with zero need to do more to max out your ap/day. Not to mention that you dont have to go outside of one game mode to max your ap/day, which is also giving people MORE choice.

You can argue that before if you really didnt like 2 of the choices, you could still get 6 ap, but now if you dont like 2 of the choices, you dont have an option to get partial credit. But again, if youre an ap hunter, then before you would have gone out of your way to get all of them done no matter what, and if youre not an ap hunter, then again, this shouldnt be a concern, because other than ap, these dailies give nothing unique at all.

I cant think of any reason why more choices would be a BAD thing, especially with all the stuff in pve that could count towards it. Dungeons/fractals can easily be a guaranteed option each day, just like world bosses/events/gathering/kills/ect., which should be easy enough to add up to 6 options per day.

There is no excuse to not give more options in the future, just like the pvp/wvw ones could also use some work (the pvp class specific ones in particular are a terrible idea), so the system isnt perfect at all.

But the entire purpose of this thread is still misleading because, once again, you dont have less choices by any means now.

This is baffling to me. I absolutely, positively, had more choices before now. This is an empirical fact. 8-12 is greater than 4. The purpose of this thread is not misleading. What you’re arguing is that it’s now easier to earn those 10 achievement points, and that’s true. I don’t see that I’ve indicated anywhere that it’s not. But it’s not even slightly misleading to say that there are fewer options to choose from.

Vayne.8563:

I just keep coming back to it’s only for achievements. That’s it. If you don’t care about achievements, it shouldn’t matter at all. If you do care about them, it matters in the positive way. There’s no way you could have gotten 10 achievement points before without going much further out of your way.

What option was taken away exactly? The ability to get five achievement points in a shorter time or with less effort?

What do achievement points mean anyway? Why are they important? If they are important, why shouldn’t they require us to go out of our way?

Edit: Okay, I think I understand where we’re not connecting. I’m in no way saying that the old system was superior and should be returned. I’m saying that there’s no observable reason to continue to cull the number of options from which to choose our 3 dailies. Does that make more sense?

The number of dailies keeps diminishing, at least in the PvE category. Before April, we had something like 10-12 choices, just in PvE. I find it discomfiting that the variety is slowly being sapped out of things.

I don’t miss getting the points for each daily, I miss having a wider pool of options.

I… am kind of at a loss here. I honestly don’t know how to make this more clear. I will keep on trying, though.

Instead of doing 3 out of a choice of 4 dailies, give the game modes 6 each to choose the three from. 10 APs. Map specific, just like they are now. I just don’t like that wanting more options is being misappropriated as wanting stuff for nothing, or being unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable. We had it. Anet took it away, for no apparent reason.

I’m not making stuff up out of thin air. This is not the alleged “I want to stand in Divinity’s Reach and chat with my friends and be rewarded for it” thread. This is me going:

“Hey. We had more options, and now we don’t.”

It’s becoming narrow and linear, and that alarms me, personally.

Olvendred.3027:

As someone who wants to someday max out my daily AP, I find that the new dailies give me a ton more choice. Because it’s incredibly easy to complete 3 in under 10 mins. I can then use the rest of my gaming time doing whatever I want, rather than spending 1-2 hours ticking off boxes.

Now, you may say that it’s my choice to want to max out AP, and if I didn’t want to… I could’ve just done whatever I liked and got my daily anyway. Perhaps… except, the new system takes that into account too. All your former daily rewards are now log-in rewards… the only thing you get from completing 3 dailies is the 10 AP. So really, if you’re not interested in AP, you are now completely free from ever having to do dailies ever again. Which gives you more choice.

The problem is not the new system. The problem is that all the players have gotten into the habit of having to do dailies, and can’t get themselves out of that habit. The choice to do whatever you want in game is there. You just have to make it, rather than blindly doing dailies.

Okay, so… as I’ve tried to explain, repeatedly, I’m protesting the culling of the number of dailies available for my game mode. Having more options to complete those three dailies for those ten points would NOT affect you in any way, would it? Can someone help me phrase this better? I feel like I must be spewing gibberish, at this point.

Vayne.8563:

Guhracie.3419:

Vayne.8563:

The choice issue actually has a lot to do with whether or not you’re actually an achievement hunter. Before I could get ten points a day through achievements, but I had to jump through many hoops to do it. It was a project.

Now, I can do just three achievements and I get ten points, every day. So far, nothing has been particularly onerous to me.

This gives me the freedom to do what I want the rest of the time. This change frees me up. Again, because of my emphasis on achievements, I sometimes didn’t have time to do everything I wanted. I have more time to do everything I want now.

Thank you. This is the kind of discussion from the opposite point of view that I’m looking for.

I’m not arguing that the new system is bad, but you’d still be just as free to do what you want if there were 8 options per mode, and you still only had to complete 3 to get the points.

I’m not at all against more options per mode. I’m quite happy to see people happy with the game.

What I think Anet was trying to do was stop everyone from just doing the absolute easiest daily in the absolute easiest way.

For example in the old dailies, if you got Shiverpeakes killer, Wayfarer foothills was packed. If you got vet slayer, tons of people went to Wayfarer as well, to the dolyaks and spiders in the North East corner.

It trivialized dailies. Now they are a bit more involved…but just a bit.

And the rewards you got for doing the easy old ones you get anyway…all except for the achievement points.

I know that people are used to and enjoy achievement points being given out for sneezing, but I don’t mind going a bit out of the way for an achievement…and so far, that’s all I’ve had to do.

I don’t mind going out of my way either. My issue is that they are removing options previously available. I agree that tying rewards to specific dailies should help combat the “go to wayfarer foothills” mentality, and I’m not talking about narrowing the dailies to be more zone oriented is bad. I believe that I, in the past (at least in passing), even suggested more zone-specific dailies. But I’d like to see the variety of options in all modes that pve players had prior to April’s feature patch.

I find myself almost always opposed to a move away from diversity.

There are many positive things about the new system. I’m absolutely not denying that. Again, thank you for your commentary. Very well-reasoned stuff.

Hannelore.8153:

3) They have added yet more psuedo-loot – rewards that were already part of the game but were changed from automatic to now requiring you to click things. Just what we needed, more junk on our already overflowing characters and banks. In theory, this lets us use the experience and other rewards on any character, but in reality the boost that it gives is way too low to matter.

I personally used dailies as a form of map completion incentive. I would go where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do, while completing them.

Overall, I see the new daily system as just like every other system Anet has implemted: Very good idea on paper and very poor implementation. Just like everything else, such as megaserver and world boss timers, they seem to’ve stopped development on the feature about halfway through and released an unfinished product that did not have the thought and polish of a proper QA team or any actual players.

The bolding here is mine, and that’s what I’m addressing first.
Hannelore (great username, btw), this is an interesting point. However, I can use “Iron Marches event completer” as an incentive for doing map complete in that zone, for example. To me, it seems like it can still fill that niche for you.

It’s interesting that you say that it seems unfinished. To me, this is probably the most polished feature they’ve released in a long time. Perhaps since the implementation of the account-wide dyes, in fact. Other than the inability to pull up the login reward chart, what is it that feels unfinished to you?

Vayne.8563:

The choice issue actually has a lot to do with whether or not you’re actually an achievement hunter. Before I could get ten points a day through achievements, but I had to jump through many hoops to do it. It was a project.

Now, I can do just three achievements and I get ten points, every day. So far, nothing has been particularly onerous to me.

This gives me the freedom to do what I want the rest of the time. This change frees me up. Again, because of my emphasis on achievements, I sometimes didn’t have time to do everything I wanted. I have more time to do everything I want now.

Thank you. This is the kind of discussion from the opposite point of view that I’m looking for.

I’m not arguing that the new system is bad, but you’d still be just as free to do what you want if there were 8 options per mode, and you still only had to complete 3 to get the points.

Filaha.1678:

Technically, before, you could only unlock your traits to use by paying gold to the trainer. Now, you can unlock them by either paying gold/SP or doing a task that costs you nothing but time.

So, technically, you have more choice now than before, as far as unlocking traits goes.

As well, there were 12 dailies to choose from before, and 12 dailies to choose from now. Same amount of choice on what dailies to do. As well, one can choose to get their 10 AP by never leaving PVP or WVW, while before they couldn’t always choose to do so.

There’s a difference between “less choice” and “making different choices”.

I’m going to assume that you are posting in good faith, and are not being disingenuous.

Previously, the way to unlock traits was to level up, and spend under 3g. Now the choice is between spending up to 43g and 360 skillpoints or doing 65 specific tasks that are the exact same on each profession. So, if we’re splitting hairs, you’re right. There are two choices for unlocking traits instead of one. But, for me personally, the 65 tasks have diminished the choices I can make while leveling, and it paints a very narrow, cookie-cutter path to unlocking builds. So, no, I don’t find that to be a step toward more choice, I see it as being a step toward less diversity and less character development.

I tried very hard to be polite in my original post, and I thought I covered my points about the dailies that you seem to have ignored. So I’m going to continue to be polite:
I am aware that the total number of daily quests has not changed. Thanks for the head’s up. My point is that choice has been removed twice this year from my preferred game mode, and there’s no real reason for it.

I’m over the moon that PvP and WvW have options now, too. Imagine me, right now, dancing a jig. It’s great. It’s better than great! But it did not have to come at the cost of variety in the pve daily.

I sincerely hope that is clear, and that you’re not seriously going to try to argue that you’d rather have fewer choices in whatever your preferred game mode is.

Instead of bickering over semantics and whinging and complainers and white knights, I’d really like to have an actual conversation with people (actual people, so let’s throw out all usage of the aforementioned forum slurs that are so prevalent everywhere else) about the shift in design philosophy we’ve seen from anet in the last year.

The first thing to do is explain the design choices that I perceive to be making this shift. Then I’ll tell you why I don’t like it. Ideally, you’ll read what I’ve written and respond with your own facts, and then your opinion about why it makes for a better or more interesting or engaging game, one way or the other.

This year has seen a drastic decline in the amount of choice and flexibility offered in my chosen game mode, which is open world PvE.

Please note: I am all for more choice for the other game modes, but I do not believe it has to be at the expense of choice in any one game mode.

The recent change to dailies is a small part of a larger whole, but it is the impetus to this discussion. The April feature patch saw fewer options in the daily list, and now there are even fewer options (again, please remember that I am speaking about my preferred game mode, PvE), and those options are incredibly specific.

I think it is fantastic that PvP and WvW now have more options, though it could be argued that many PvE objectives translated over to, at least, WvW (gatherer, reviver, recycler, kill variety and others). I am merely confused about why it had to be at the expense of the selection that was previously available.

The festival meta achievements used to have a ton of options. Wintersday has absolutely no flexibility in it. You do the specific 11 achievements, or you don’t get the meta rewards.

Leveling and trait acquisition is not only narrow in scope (do specific, time intensive, buggy and/or level inappropriate tasks), but it is repetitive; utterly without variation (except for the location of a couple of the tasks on the trait tree) among the professions. Leveling has become a checklist of chores, or a grind for skillpoints and/or gold. Why take a crucial part of character building and make it so inaccessible?

Some of you will argue that the idea is to force players into other modes of gameplay. Perhaps this is true, but is it necessary? Are we really too stupid to know what we find fun and entertaining? Should ‘force’ even come into the equation when we’re talking about leisure time? Does the removal of options register as fun to anyone out there? Is doing it worthy of defending?

I feel like this has all distinctly impacted how I choose to spend my time in game and, ultimately, if I choose to spend time in game.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and respond thoughtfully.

I usually highlight the 2 and type in 5 manually.

Ashen.2907:

Guhracie.3419:

Coulter.2315:

Can you imagine there is something YOU like to do that another person doesn’t?
Can you imagine there is something another person likes doing that YOU don’t?
If you can then you must see that dailies cannot please everyone all the time.

But…. they actually can. If they’d stop reducing the number of dailies for artificial reasons, there are plenty of things to please everyone, or at least most of everyone.

Dailies are themselves artificial. They exist to offer incentives for stepping outside of one’s norm.

And no they can’t. There is nothing that can be done that will, “please everyone all of the time,” as the person you quoted said.

….yes, and I acknowledged this by saying “most of everyone.”

The whole game is artificial, by that reasoning. Nice cherry-picking of my overall point.