Guild Wars 2

EremiteAngel.9765:

and voldermort?

:D

LegallyBinding.4937:

Please. I am about as casual a player as they come. I work 60 hrs a week as an attorney, I play only when I have a little free time. Even I haven’t had trouble slowly acquiring ascended items.

If you don’t want to acquire them, fine. But you can’t complain about other people no wanting you to be the weakest link in their raid team.

You work 60 hours a week, but you have the time to come on the forums and argue about ascended gear?

Hmm.

I smell hyperbole.

laokoko.7403:

Quite honestly, NCSoft is probably the most honorable game company in Asia.

Players unwilling to pay 10-15$ per month are the problem.

Instead of complaining, try thanking those players that spend money so you actually have a game to play.

Lol, whatever. Even if they are the most honorable in Asia, that says nothing for how honorable they are in America and Europe compared to others. I’ve seen game companies that cling to integrity and I’ve seen game companies that try to grift you at every turn. Anet is somewhere in the middle right now. I can’t speak for NCSoft as a whole, as I don’t follow most of their titles.

That said, advertising gems to gold on the Gem tab is not unreasonable in itself. It seems it is just the straw that broke the camel’s back for the OP.

Collections annoy the heck out of me and not just legendary collections. When they were first added, I thought, “Hey, cool, some optional off-the-wall stuff to do that doesn’t really matter, but adds to the game in a unique way.”

Now it seems like collections are another word for “crafting recipe that wouldn’t fit in the mystic forge.” Getting tired of having so-called optional systems shoved in my face because I deigned to try an unrelated system.

Yes. I’m madbro.

You guys say it’s obvious, but it’s unintuitive design to have every profession weapon in the game be something you can equip by default and then throw a new one into the mix that requires you to have a specific specialization equipped to allow you to equip the weapon.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

adormtil.1605:

Especially if you do not craft because I am a warrior not a blacksmith who has the time and patience and gold to do that job. Do you get more exotics and rare from rewards and chests if you have full luck?

Controlled tests (see more below) determined that higher magic find does the following:

• It increases the amount of items and decreases the amount of junk.
• The proportion of greens increases, at the expense of whites and blues.
• The number of rares & exotics increases slightly (roughly at the expense of blues).
• The proportion of Tn+1 vs Tn mats also increases, depending on the zone.
• The differences aren’t measurable, except over 100s or 1,000s of drops. -> most of us won’t be able to tell the difference over short periods of time.

It’s currently very hard to do controlled tests on this because there are a lot more variables involved and each account has a different base MF, from achievements or from luck. The original testing was done before MF was account based, when it was still mostly armor based. Folks used armor to get 0%, 100%, and 200% MF and then ran a near-identical route, killing the same type of foe(s), and counting everything that dropped. They then compared the results.

Over short periods of times, it was usually hard to tell any difference: a high-MF run might have bad luck; a low-MF might have lucky drops. Over extended periods of time, there were consistent patterns (noted above).

tl;dr Magic Find makes a substantial difference in the overall value of your drops from foes over extended periods of time; most of us won’t notice, because we don’t do a good job of measuring or comparing.

Good breakdown.

Basically, OP, it’s best to think of luck as, well… luck. Just like in RL, luck doesn’t necessarily get you what you want. It just drops cool stuff in your lap every once in a while.

The percentages for increased luck make you a bit more likely to have cool stuff fall into your lap. As Illconceived said, it’s not something you’ll notice most of the time. In fact, you may at times think you’re noticing it, when all you’re noticing is normal fluctuations of dice rolls. My philosophy on it is… boost it when the opportunity arises and otherwise ignore it. If you do a lot of stuff where luck matters, you will be giving yourself a percentage boost in good drops over a long, long period of time.

Chances are, you will never notice it while it’s happening, but you will (in theory) get more valuable stuff than you did prior to boosting.

I think some of you guys are underestimating how much can be manipulated with system design (as in, they don’t need someone with a top hat and long nails cackling behind a curtain while pulling strings).

For instance, as far as I can tell, the gem/gold exchange is such that the richer people get in raw gold and the more enticed everybody is to spend large amounts in the store, the worse the exchange rate is going to get for the average person doing gold to gems. Or to put it differently, imagine that only 20% of players have the RL funds to buy gems regularly, but 80% gets enough gold to exchange a fair bit. This is probably not an accurate assessment of the numbers in game, but the point is, if/when it’s lopsided like that, the exchange rate is naturally going to shift in one direction or the other.

With HoT, there was a decrease in the gold cost for getting gems with gold (not much of one, but something) and this makes sense because 1) the economy and guilds and such as they are, are heavy on gold sinks due to everybody wanting stuff immediately and 2) a lot of people probably splurged on the full version of HoT, giving them each 4k gems to potentially convert to gold.

The instability and the gold sinks, yes… in the short-term, at least, it looks quite a lot like incentivizing people to buy more gems. That part is probably true to a point. It seems unlikely to me that they are sincerely just trying to lower the overall pool of gold in the game, considering that the wealth of players seems only to push the gem exchange in a direction that incentivizes people to buy more gems for gold. Either way, it seems the incentive largely goes in the direction of “buy more gems,” which, if it isn’t intentional, must be a very happy mistake for them.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Let’s not resort to sensationalism. All it does is discredit your post.

I think people were expecting precursor crafting to be an alternative means to acquiring precursors. Not necessarily a cheaper alternative, but just an alternative to praying to the RNG gods or spending a large sum of gold in one go.

The issue is that in a lot of cases, not only is the precursor crafting more expensive than than the base precursors, but it is also time gated. It doesn’t make sense to spend 1000 gold crafting a precursor that costs 200 gold on the TP, for example.

If a system is horrendously unbalanced, then naturally people will criticize it. It doesn’t mean they’re asking for freebies, it just means they’re asking for balance.

(That being said, some people do go to extremes in their complaints).

Basically, people asked for one thing and Anet gave them something else, that looks kinda like what they asked for but isn’t really what they asked for. Like if I asked for a Playstation for Christmas and got A Tale of Two Cities. I mean, they’re both entertainment! And both enable me to “enter fictional worlds,” but that’s about where the similarity ends.

I think the bottom line is, there’s a portion of the playerbase (in terms of my analogy) who just wanted the entertainment and fictional world in some form. And then there’s the portion who specifically wanted a Playstation and nothing else. Well, the first chunk got what they wanted. The second one didn’t.

I didn’t have any expectations about the system myself, cause I wasn’t paying much attention prior to its release, but what I would have hoped for is an account bound precursor that was mostly acquired through an adventure-like process. Or a precursor that could be acquired with numerous different currencies (albeit with an expensive price tag).

But I think Anet didn’t want to give up their pet economic structure surrounding the precursor market. I’m pretty sure, for example, that precursors have affected the exotic weapon market since their inception and still do, to a point. Now they have integrated precursors even more into the economy, rather than less.

Which is probably a gems to gold fueled decision. If this game had no micro transactions, precursors and legendaries would probably be an account-bound process start to finish. It’s either that or GW2’s obsession with having a functioning RL-like economy, though I’m inclined to think that the two are not that far apart in motivation.

Labjax.2465:

I don’t get what the aggression is about from people. If sPvP people get some hero points through their play, it doesn’t suddenly take away your own. Sheesh man.

I’m not an sPvP exclusive player (I rarely play it) but I see no reason why not to give sPvP players some hero points through reward tracks or some such. They already get most other stuff through reward tracks. It’s not like this would be unprecedented.

Additional thought: Think of it this way. If people who do sPvP 90% of the time get elite specs slowly unlocked in other gameplay by playing sPvP, they will then be more likely to want to go play other content knowing that their new specs will be waiting for them. If they have to go do the other content to unlock their specs for that content (specs which they are probably already familiar with from PvP) they may do it, but they will probably do it more grudgingly than if they can go straight into the other content with some fresh specs in hand after doing a lot of PvP.

As it is, the fact that WvW already gives tokens for HPs refutes the “you should have to experience the content to get the spec” argument.

I don’t get what the aggression is about from people. If sPvP people get some hero points through their play, it doesn’t suddenly take away your own. Sheesh man.

I’m not an sPvP exclusive player (I rarely play it) but I see no reason why not to give sPvP players some hero points through reward tracks or some such. They already get most other stuff through reward tracks. It’s not like this would be unprecedented.

IntheCoconut.3497:

I think these are the most official-unofficial troll monsters in the game. I laugh every time I see someone get attacked by these guys when they aren’t expecting them. Except when it happens to me. Then its not funny any more.

Smokescales are more trollish to me by far. They evade near constantly. At least pocket raptors don’t dodge like crazy when you try to take them down. U.U

If I had a dollar for every “why do people have a different opinion than me, if only they’d be me, there would be no problems” thread, I not only would never have to work again. I’d be able to buy the state of New York.

Wanze.8410:

Would you log in less, after you obtained your precursor?

I’m going to answer this question as if it’s about the legendary itself: Would I log in less?

Probably not because there’s still a metric ton of goals to work toward and content to enjoy. Would I feel less pressured to log in without a goal as huge as a legendary? Probably.

Would I actually log in less? Not necessarily. In fact, long-term I’d probably play more, instead of tending to get burned out from crazy goals and never wanting to play again.

That said, this question coming from the guy who could buy Manhattan if it was for sale in the game, I’m not sure what sort of point you’re trying to make.

Kraggy.4169:

Not at all .. they designed HOT for the vocal minority that say they want 1990s group-or-die over world content then implemented Masteries in such a way everyone else who doesn’t particularly care for that type of game has to endure it or give up and they know most won’t give up due to their addiction.

Since we’re speculating… I think you’re close, but not quite.

I think they heard a lot of people clamoring for more challenging content, saw people getting bored, and said yeah, let’s add more group content (especially since SW did so well, which is true).

I also think (from the really early HoT ads that I saw) that the original vision was not so much “force people to group up” but “give people an increased feeling of power in an unstable world.” I remember seeing some of the ads about hero challenges and masteries early on, and imagining a thing where you’d slowly build up your power and then go challenge some mob who was near impossible to beat without the power build up. I was imagining techniques for taking down specific mobs that were more like a puzzle than point, shoot, and DODGEDOGEDOGE.

What we got (which isn’t too surprising, given that it’s an MMO, not a fantasy in my head) is a bunch of systems tied together in ways that pressure you to do stuff you don’t want to do (ex: mastery points and adventures, elite specs and champ HPs, etc.). And a very hapdash system of power increase that does very little in terms of increasing your actual power (mostly just gives you a big ’ol bag of tricks, like some kind of magician).

My take is that what happened overall was… there was the game vision and then there was the MMO standardization reality. Had the vision been brought to life in its own space, free of MMO tropes, it might have looked more like what I imagined. But due to the whole “carrot on stick” on-the-rails mass appeal that most MMOs fall prey in a big way because of the desire for more green pieces of paper, they ended up with the husk of a wonderful vision. What remained is a pretty cool experience on the whole, but doesn’t really feel like the adventure RPG vision that I got from the ads.

Who knows though. Maybe my vision was just wack.

I’m guessing they’re designed to hit for more when behind you. If you run, they will annihilate you (that is, if you’re running zerky glass gear/build). If you stand in the middle of them, it’s not as big a deal.

If you spend most of your time in the jungle, it’s advisable to equip a soldier’s trinket or two for the toughness and HP. The specialization collections hand them out like candy.

Thanks, Belzebu!

Hey guys, so I want to try a condi spec on one of my chars (a ranger) but I’m saving up funds right now for something else and I want to spend as little as possible. I’m figuring WvW merchant will be cheapest route, but I’m not sure what out of those options is best for a condi build?

Also, if I were to get some pieces from other route, what, in general, is the best condi gear that is not sinister or viper’s?

FWIW, my primary goal with trying a condi spec is damage output. I’m not worried about survivability.

I think masteries are a great premise, but they could have been executed a lot better. Making any of them zone/area specific was a mistake, imo, because it detracts from the sense of having mastered something.

The Pact Commander ones are pretty good, I think, in terms of being universalized. Things like vacuum loot, better revive when rezzing lower level players, mentor tag, swiftness in cities… all very cool to have and also not vital enough to count as anything more than horizontal progression.

Then you have maguuma masteries, which feel rushed and hapdash. Lots of abilities that are hardly horizontal at all – instead, they are all but required to navigate the areas that they are useable in. Some even that are required for collections (I’m looking at you, Exalted 6) and serve no other purpose.

I’m not saying none of the maguuma masteries are interesting or fun to use, but the point is that the design of them is less optional utility and more “you’re going to feel it if you don’t get these pretty soon.” That’s not horizontal progression, imo. That’s vertical dressed up to look like horizontal.

Even the legendary ones are kind of silly and feel like someone stuffing one system into another. You’ve already layered precursors into collections and then you want to layer them into masteries as well? It’s unnecessary layering that serves no purpose other than to make the average player scratch their head and go read a wiki for an hour. Or play something more simple.

Both masteries and collections have examples of use that feel like “we wanted to make sure these systems weren’t going to waste, so we shoved [other system] inside them.” It’s the opposite of future-proofing. It’s laying down the need for mass system overhauls down the road.

I really feel like they’ve gotta make a choice about what these systems are supposed to be for and stick to that one main designation. What invariably keeps happening is that a new system works great for a few months and is enjoyed by a lot of people, but falls to the wayside and gets neglected, or gets used for whatever random purpose comes to mind next, instead of consistently having its own niche usage as part of the overall design whole.

It gives the impression of a stream of new devs coming in with no familiarity with the game and slapping together whatever they can into the existing systems..

Lolyta.4582:

I’m just wondering if the choice as to who to kill off during the Personal Stories is made based on who is the most endearing and personable character in the game?

To a point, yes… most definitely. Killing off the character that everybody loves is a common trope in storytelling to pull at peoples’ heartstrings. I’m guessing the only reason they haven’t done so with Taimi yet is because she’s a child and they don’t want their game to be known for killing children. The foreshadowing is in place though. It’s just a question of whether they’re willing to be that dark of a game.

I’m pretty sure back when I was puzzling over it, the reasoning I came to was:

• If you want the bonuses (char slot, mini, glider skin, etc.) then Ultimate is a way better deal, cause you are essentially getting Deluxe plus $50 worth of Gems, making the price value more like $125. (This is only a good deal if you are somebody who spends money on gems to begin with.)

• If you don’t give a crap about the bonuses, then it’s kind of either or. Basic or Ultimate. If you’re the type who spends lots of money on gems, you might as well go for Ultimate and get the bonuses. If you’re not, Basic is best deal.

And yes, apparently I think in if-then statements.

Very skeptical of the numbers and it probably includes every region, including China.

I’m not sure how they measure numbers without subscription. If they are going by monthly login, that could be counting a ton of players who log in as little as once a month, which lowers the pool of active players significantly. As in, if you log in all the time, you may only see a fraction of the monthly pool.

It’s also possible that if they are lumping regions together, one region could only house a small percentage of the total active players compared to another. And then factoring in time of day too, your pool can get even smaller.

I don’t think anyone would be surprised if Anet is doing well monetarily and even less surprised at Anet heads talking positively about the game (what else are they gonna say “we think we’re on the way down”? lol). How the alleged numbers impact day to day play for any given individual is another matter.

That said, it sounds like Esports are only becoming a higher priority for them over time, so if you play for content other than Esports in GW2, except to feel like the red-headed stepchild for the foreseeable future. Sounds like they are seeing dollar signs and picking up momentum in their rush for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It’s unlikely that GW2 is doomed in any way. It’s just going to change a lot and shed/gain players until it hits the spot they’re looking for. No one can stop the Esports train. Chug chug chug.

Bolbo Baggins.8594:

I’m really getting annoyed of the cashshop tactics of late. So soon after a buy to play expansion and most of the Hot rewards are in the cashshop or locked behind a massive grind wall. I’m at the point of not playing anymore for now (no you cant have my stuff :-p). Used to invest in services and convenience items now and then (storage upgrades, salvage kits etc) buying gems. Even those never seem to go on sale anymore.

I’m sure it means little to them coming from a guy like me (my purchases are few and far-between) but I have no intention of dropping so much as another penny on this game until they make some effort not to look like a money-grubbing Zynga game. It’s been nothing but downhill since HoT, in terms of cash shop and reward grifting.

(I’m not trying to be hyperbolic and say the whole game is bad. Just that the money-generating aspect is going in a shadier direction.)

joshua valentine.2593:

I’m wondering just WHAT it’s gonna take to drive this point (and many others) home for ANet…especially if they get so teary-eyed at the truth.

There is only one way they will listen and that’s if people vote with their wallets, consistently. When it comes to low level game design, a little feedback can make a difference. When it comes to corporate heads making calls about cash shops, they only speak one language: Profit. And it doesn’t matter one lick how the devs feel about what they’re being told to produce for said cash shops. It only matters what the company executives decide.

Cyninja.2954:

This one gets it.

Now that we’ve established that if we remove the “endgame” from guild wars there would be no game left, can we move past this nonsense? Or are we seriously arguing about removing the little bit of endgame design this game has?

Yes, if you consider fashion as endgame GW2 is very grindy. Especially if you have to have every single skin there is. Even some of the more luxorious ones end up demanding much of your time.

Yes, temporarily ascended gear has become more difficult to obtain (who would have guessed this might happen when a majority of players try to gear up in a very short amount of time, prices might spike… /sarcasm. Small note, most people who have multiple ascended sets did not pull their first set out of thin air, but built it over a much longer periond of time than 1 week. Except for the ones who built it on release. Deldrimore Ingots were 30+g the first 2 days, so we have a LOT of room up).

For anything besides endboss raiding and very high level fractals, ascended armor is not needed to enjoy the game content. Neither are legendarys. There go about 80% of the gold needed to gear up. On top of that, arenanet have stated that fractal rewards are to low and should get buffed.

I appreciate the vote of confidence. Unfortunately, I’m not sure you got my main point. I’m not ok with the fact that this game has an evergrowing glut of skins as its primary end-game, but makes zero effort to make a portion of older skins easier to obtain for players who are entering the game late and instead, in many cases, does the opposite, if only through inaction.

You are on point in that I see no reason to make everything immediately accessible to everyone (though I’m not sure that anyone is seriously suggesting such an extreme).

But I also feel that some rewards should be made more accessible over time, to ensure that new players don’t get endlessly left in the dust.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not sure that they can solve things to everyone’s satisfaction, but they should err on the side of the person who is happy having what he wants to have, rather than the person who has what he wants, but actually gets upset that other people can have it too.

I may be in agreement with you in one sense and here’s why:

People love to go on about how GW2 has no gear treadmill, but this is mental gymnastics. In raiding games, generally speaking, they have to antiquate old sets of gear (making them easier to obtain or obsolete) so that new sets coming in don’t make the treadmill too hard for new players entering the game.

For example, a raiding game might start with blue > green > yellow. Blue and green are super easy to obtain. Yellow takes some work. Yellow is also vital for contributing to the latest raids. Later they release Orange, which better than yellow. So yellow now becomes almost as easy (if not as easy) to obtain as blue and green, with Orange being the new Black. I mean, cough, yellow.

Many of GW2’s players and the devs themselves have no doubt told themselves that they don’t need to do this antiquating thing in their game with gear. Which is partly true, but more on that later.

What they are consistently missing is that in raiding games, the main end-game content is raiding and in GW2, the main end-game content is fashion. In neither case is said content the only kind of end-game content. Raiding games invariably have some content outside of raids at end-game, it’s just not very robust or has much longevity. Similarly, GW2 has some content outside of fashion, but (for the most part) it has never had much longevity to it. The illusion of longevity only comes from the treadmill for unlocking a seemingly infinite number of skins.

If you look at GW2 in the context of fashion being its raiding, there is an evergrowing barrier of entry to new players that is only increasing over time, instead of being addressed in the typical way – with old rewards becoming easier to obtain.

One might think this is some sort of twisty mind game I’m playing, but if we look at it in the context of what we’re discussing about psychology, it makes a lot of sense. Gear treadmills and barrier to entry in raiding games isn’t just about the hard barrier of not having the right gear. It’s also about the psychological barrier of feeling that you will never catch up to your peers in a meaningful way.

Some examples of how fashion has gotten worse, or stayed in much the same place: Ascended gear (which is a can of worms in itself and I don’t want to fit it into this post in full) is now harder to obtain than before. Dungeon skins are harder to obtain because less people are playing them, while the content itself remains at the same level of difficulty. Old Legendaries are still pretty much as costly as ever, despite the ability to craft the precursor. And most generalized tradeable skins are all but completely controlled by the whims of the market, so obtaining them as a new player is a highly fickle process.

Here’s the kicker (and maybe this is why some people aim their crosshairs at TP flipping): If you hit this barrier of entry in its various forms, there is one consistently effective way to get past it and that is to become good at playing the TP. It’s not an instant solution, but it is an effective long-term buffer. The problem is, it is also the only significant one in place, so if you aren’t excellent at trade or economies, then you can kiss your luck and place among your peers goodbye.

Both the GW2 community and its developers need to recognize that there definitely IS a barrier of entry to enjoying end-game as your peers do. Many of them, in fact, and the argument that the barrier is not “hard” (e.g. not Agony type hard) concerning fashion is an impersonal argument that fails to take human psychology into account.

There is also the matter of ascended/legendary gear and actual raids, but that’s a post for another time.

So it occurs to me (and I don’t have an answer to this question – at least, not right now):

Is it possible to help people get into the sort of reward spot that satisfies their needs without disrupting the needs of other groups? And if so, how?

For instance, say you have Tom, who only feels satisfied with a reward system when he is doing significantly better than an average level of reward progression (meaning that he needs to have numerous up-to-date reward systems where he is way ahead of the pack). And Tom is significantly lacking in progression without a good way to catch up.

Then you have Chris, who feels the same way as Tom, but is way ahead of the pack.

If you hand Tom a way to catch up, Chris might get angry at the injustice of (in his mind) being brought down to Tom’s level (or Tom being brought up to his) through effort that is not on the “elite” level that Chris put in. Chris may quit as a result, feeling that his investment has been undermined and his satisfaction destroyed.

If you hand Tom nothing, then Tom will be on a treadmill of dissatisfaction until he gives up and does something that will give him that feeling of satisfaction he’s looking for.

What do you do to solve this? Or can you?

You could have just said, “Look at how awesome I am and how bad you are” and saved everyone the trouble of reading between the lines.

It never fails to tickle me, the mental gymnastics of saying “this is easy,” while simultaneously calling it “hard content.”

Oh and if you are on NA servers, I would be happy to portal for you. If you are on EU, I don’t think I can help you.

Only solution I can think of is ask a mesmer to portal you there. I know it’s dumb that you have to do it, but I’m pretty sure that would work.

…assuming the portal doesn’t disappear before your game allows you to use it. >.>

I’m a bit worried about how they’re going to address the fact that in your typical raid, gear progression allows you to make bosses slightly easier the next time around by getting a few pieces of new gear, over time, strewn across your raid.

Are they doing this with masteries already? Cause if not, the raids will not get any easier, except through practice, which is a bit harsh compared to raids in other games.

Daddicus.6128:

I tried to get into Arah solo, but I don’t see how. Is there a trick to it? (I want to see what one of the other posters meant by “exactly like Arah”.)

Thanks!

I believe he is referring to the Personal Story step Victory or Death, where you fight Zhaitan. It was originally balanced as a 5 person instance (story mode Arah, I think?). Now you can do that story step with one person.

Concerning the topic in general:

• My impression is that most of the people who are ok with the reward system in this game are either mostly unaware of the progression of others, mostly hang around a group of friends who are at about the same place, or are at that sweet spot where they have good access to most of what they want but it’s an ongoing challenge to maintain so they feel pretty satisfied with where they are.

• My impression is that most of the people who are unsatisfied with the reward system in this game are either aware of the progression gap between them and others players and can’t seem to escape being aware of it, or would very much like certain items but notice a negative disparity between their ability to obtain these items and the ability of their peers to obtain the same items.

• Note that people who view themselves as “elite” or “hardworking” are more likely to be upset at the disparity between them and others if they are way behind the pack (this is part speculation on my part, part personal experience, but I think it stands to reason because people who view themselves as “average” or “lower tier” will have less of a reason to be bothered by a negative disparity with their peers… if only because they need only average progression to feel satisfied with where they are, whereas “elite” mindset people need above average progression to feel satisfied with where they are).

• An interesting note here is: If you see yourself as an “elite” or “above average” person, your best bet is probably to join an MMO from beta (or launch) and stick with it, giving you the best opportunities to stay at an above average level of progression, even with only average time investment. Due to the inevitable barriers of entry in any given MMO, coming late to the game and seeing yourself as elite means that you’ll need to put in an amount of effort that is consistently top tier, i.e. higher even than above average players. Otherwise, you will endlessly be playing catch up and never getting that satisfaction of being on the elite level.

• Retaining players is definitely a balancing act and an imperfect one. I make no apologies for the current state of the game, despite that. Some are ok with where it is, others are not, and I have no desire to make excuses for Anet at this stage. However, I don’t think it’s all wrong or all right. Some aspects work well for me. Others do not.

• Entitlement shouldn’t even be a word in this discussion, unless it is in academic reference to the phenomenon of people getting upset about handouts (ironically, there are those in this thread who are calling some of the posts entitlement, while somehow missing the fact that the study in the OP academically references how upset people get when their neighbors get a handout and they don’t – being upset about entitlement is really just being upset at the anticipation of said handout happening). In other words, the psychology in here only confirms the study mentioned in the OP.

• It is clear, I think, that people don’t like others getting handouts that put them on or below the level of the people who got the handouts. The psychology of it matches the studies rather well. This, unfortunately, is part of a more complex problem: The perception of earning one’s place versus the perception of being handed that place. For example, we all recognize winning the lottery as a handout, but few would probably recognize superior genes or unknowingly “being in the right place at the right time” as a handout. Most would probably say that the latter is inconsequential or find a way to see it as something of their own doing, i.e. “my genes may be good, but I made the right choices that led me here” or “I may not have realized it at the time, but my gut lead me to being in the right place at the right time.”

• It’s all very complicated and perhaps the underlying theme here is that how people feel and how they perceive is far more important than what one believes or thinks they should feel or perceive. But equally, what one believes or thinks another should feel or perceive is itself, at times, a product of what they feel and perceive. If that doesn’t make your head spin, then I don’t know what will.

Kayberz.5346:

This comparison isnt even related. In the example the people are being GIVEN something while the others arnt, when it comes to legendarys in gw2 no one is getting free handouts while others arnt, people who put in the work get the reward, and those who dont complain its too much work. Those players complaining have just as much access to those legendarys, its their own choice not to work at it

Quick thought here: Sorry to be blunt, but you’re simply wrong. No, people are not being handed legendaries, but they can very easily be handed things like precursors, which is something that a significant percentage of the population will simply never see due to the rarity of the droprate. They are just one example of how RNG can work in a way that is not at all dissimilar to the experiment cited in the OP’s post.

Another example would be Teq weapons (which are a bit more precisely fitting, since precursors can now be crafted and don’t fit quite as well for that reason).

Kormeg.2469:

How is this significant. It’s words on a screen. It’ll be gone soon. Why does this warrant being talked about?

If you don’t like it fine. Why are you on the forums whining about why you don’t like it? Group approval? Solidarity? Text-abolitionist movement scouting????

Because UI clutter is a thing? It’s bad enough that the UI basically can’t be customized at all (ok, maybe there’s like 1-5% customization… I’m not firm on the details).

Then you’ve got stuff like this taking up your screen and you can’t get rid of it. If I’m wrong and you can get rid of it, then, as Scooter once said in BL2, “Hang me upside down from a telephone pole, cover me in honey, and leave me to a slow death at the hands of hungry spiderants!”

It’s not a HUGE deal, but it is consistently annoying that the game basically decides what my UI looks like at all times. Understand that in my case, I came from a game where it was the complete opposite; you could basically customize 99% of the UI. I’ve grown accustomed to the lack of customization here, but I will never forget it completely and moments like these are like a fly buzzing around my head… an irritating reminder of how lackluster the customization is. It’s like that RedLetterMedia quote for me most of the time, “You may not have noticed it… but your brain did.”

Again, if I’m missing some huge customization method, then I would be happy to hear it, cause afaik, there is virtually nothing.

Sounds like a neat idea. What comes to mind for me is how in another game at one point there was this new map that was going to be coming out in the future, but no one was really supposed to be able to reach it yet. But a few people were able to reach it anyway.

It would be interesting if they did a thing where they added some in-progress maps early for exploration, before the maps are fully populated with NPCs and events and whatnot (but rather than the example from the other game I mentioned, you’re allowed to reach these maps). This could have two benefits: 1) Giving exploration-oriented folks more to look at and 2) Having guinea pigs to catch map bugs before the majority of players are using them.

Since there would be no rewards yet on these maps, it would be completely optional to visit them in the pre-fleshed-out stage – no pressure to do it. And if they wanted to encourage those into lore, I don’t think it’d be that hard to write up some exposition and slap it on some clickable items throughout the map.

zombyturtle.5980:

I explain in a previous post why it would kill grouping. heres a TLDR:
people only do dungeons frequently now for tokens. If they can get tokens in solo mode they wont go through the effort of grouping even if they dont mind it because the extra challenges arent worth it.

Anyway the purpose of a solo mode wouldnt be to get rewards easy. It would be to give people who hate grouping a chance to experience the content in a way they find fun. I still think it would be necessary that rewards are harder to earn in solo as many of the challenges are removed by being able to do it alone.

I guess I’m just not seeing it. A 1/4 of the normal rewards would not be quick gain, even solo. Maybe we are imagining different kinds of difficulty. In my mind, solo does not necessarily mean easy. It just means balanced for one player. Some of the story instances are not what I’d call “easy” for one player, but they are balanced around one player. The same could be done here.

zombyturtle.5980:

I would be FULLY behind you if there was a guarantee that it would not destroy the grouping aspect of dungeons. I even think though that 1/4 of the rewards would still mean solo would become the dominant way of earnign tokens and gear. If tokens were removed from solo mode, and only gold were given at 1/2 of the current rate then that might be a solution that doesnt harm either side. I would be behind that.

There are still many issues though that I think means this is really unlikely to happen. The biggest being Anet hates dungeons and has declared them dead for development purposes. They wont even touch them to fix bugs anymore.

Why do you think the grouping part would go downhill? I mean, more downhill than it is already. Something as low as 1/4 would be brutal to do over and over, even with being able to solo it. The incentive for partying up if you want to be efficient would be readily apparent.

Altair.8402:

I’m not trying to attack anyone for their preferences but I’m honestly surprised there’s so many who don’t want to play with other people. I’m genuinely curious, what draws you to MMOs? There’s so many good RPGs out right now that offer an amazing single player experience (Witcher 3, Skyrim, FO4, Dragon Age, etc.)

• Played Skyrim until I couldn’t play it anymore. Then came back and played it a bunch more. Have basically played it out with mods and everything
• Dragon Age and Witcher 3 – too graphic intensive. Don’t want to fiddle with upgrade costs at the moment, so buying games like that is on stand-by
• FO4 – checked reviews, seems to be “Fallout made mainstream.” Far too expensive for a game that probably won’t give me the kind of RPG experience I’m looking for in that genre

That said, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
1) I like playing games with other people.
2) I don’t like committing the time and social obligation to doing that on a regular basis, at this time in my life.
3) I play MMOs anyway (if they’re good enough) for the same reason that you go to the cafe to work, instead of sitting at home. Sometimes I want to be around people while I’m playing a game, even if I’m not playing with them in a strictly engaged way.

Case in point, the primary content I play in this game is open world PvE (drop in / drop out events) and EotM. Both very casual atmosphere that can have some extemporaneous interaction, but has no obligation of interaction or commitment. I’ve been down the commitment road and, frankly, I’m bad at managing it without a strict schedule I can use as an excuse to back out when needed.

I have no interest in being the guy who says he’ll do X and then can’t. Or the guy who says he’ll do X and then does, at the expense of his personal life.

It all comes back to time commitment for me. I’m not actually that asocial.

Possible fixes? (I’m just brainstorming – brilliant breakdown btw):

• Give ascended armor stat swapping and give legendaries rune swapping (in addition to their stat swapping). Over time, add minor skin variants for ascended pertaining to crafted stats, so that there is a reason for different recipes (not unlike weapon variants).

• Add full set of ascended armor to various currency merchants (e.g. laurels, badges of honor, zone-related tokens, karma) and make it a one-time account purchase for each class (light, medium, heavy). You would be able to choose your stat set for this armor the first time, but once you’d chosen it, you’d have to go the expensive route to swap or craft another set for more stats.

• Make it such that legendary armor is faster to acquire through raids, but can be acquired through other means (and make this readily apparent to players).

(Note that I’m not suggesting all of these ideas be implemented. Some of them would work well together and some would be unnecessary with one or two of the others.)

I have a total of 1 ascended GS and 2 ascended amulets (for MF and Karma – which I keep forgetting to transfer around from character to character… oops). Oh and a Teq staff, but I barely count that cause the stats are such that I never use it.

I got the amulets through laurels mainly, I think. The GS I got before HoT wasn’t too bad, since I’d been stockpiling mats for a while when I seriously started going after it. Probably ended up costing me more on getting the rest of the way to 500 weaponsmith than it did for the weapon itself lol.

I’ve never seriously considered working on a set of ascended gear. Partly because of crafting level and partly cost (I have 500 tailor, but only 400 something on the other two). Plus my playstyle has never made the motivation strong. I simply don’t do content that makes it noticeable. Now that raids are out, I’ve considered tagging along a few times, but figure it’s not worth trying without ascended.

I’ve had enough of gear grinds to last me a lifetime and because of how stat variation works in GW2, there might as well be four or five tiers of gear per class if you want to be optimal.

Is this really proven tho or is it just the result of napkin math and testing under perfect conditions?

Well now that the rewards have been nerfed and dungeons are going to be overshadowed by Fractals and Raids for the foreseeable future, it would be nice to have, since the interest level in doing them is likely only to decline more over time (making it harder to get groups to do them).

If rewards are a concern, just nerf the drops a bit for solo mode runs.

MithranArkanere.8957:

There’s people sitting on over 100K gold.

They want those people to use that gold.

Because of that, prices and scarcity are set considering those amounts.

Just look at freaking scribe. Right now someone with over 1k gold can easily get as many dye pigments as they want.

Someone with less than 10g will run out in seconds if they try to make more than 3 scribe recipes and buy dyes or pigments off the trading post. And they never freaking drop. You can literally gather every single plant node in the game and get less than 10 pigments of each color.

I don’t think that’s true for a couple reasons:

1) That would be hurting the gameplay of countless players just to get gold sunk from a few rich (cost/benefit would be wonky as hell).

2) People who have stockpiled that kind of gold aren’t likely to be the type to go and blow it on five sets of ascended and full scribe. There is a misconception that rich people spend as easily as they gain, but those who are actually like this don’t stay rich for long. People who stay consistently rich do it because they spend conservatively.

In other words, trying to get gold off a bunch of rich players is as fruitless as it is unnecessary (e.g. because they spend conservatively, most of their gold doesn’t make it into the economy anyway… the exception here would probably be hardcore TP market players and you aren’t going to trick them into spending their money).

No, I think it’s more likely that they are trying to avoid the “material becomes useless and has no market value” thing. Which is basically what they did with leather (they made it worth something again). AFAIK, they didn’t make the other mats more exclusive. It’s just the demand has skyrocketed because so many are wanting ascended gear for raids, mixed with the increase in value of leather.

I don’t know that there’s a simple solution that everyone would be happy with. I mean, look at the Bloodstone situation. They actually made special items that consume things like Bloodstone daily because there is such a glut of it that everyone has way more than they will ever need. If they tweaked most ascended mats even a margin too far in the wrong direction, it would be Bloodstone all over again (as it is, that was already the case with leather, prior to the HoT tweaking).

I’m not sure there’s much middle ground they can do. Because ascended materials and creation is so heavily influenced by demand, droprate of materials that is even a margin away from Bloodstone can still be uber expensive (overall) because of how many people want those materials.

That said, I’m of the opinion that some of the mid-level materials could do with a touch more tweaking in the Bloodstone direction. The issue with them (ex: Linen) is that there is no way to acquire them at the same rate of other materials on a level 80 character. They could mix stuff like Linen into high level mat drops, but then you have the issue of getting less of the high level ones (creating roughly no change overall). It would have to be a “in addition to…” kind of tweak for it to work.

nGumball.1283:

Some of the comments don’t make too much sense here. Apparently ‘’all content that is tied to rewards is forced content that is ’’garbage’’. That’s why people are forced to do them.’’

Going by that logic, I wish people would stop complaining about rewards. Because apparently it is enough to enjoy the content that is fun. Rewards are only given when the content is bad to motivate people to do it.

There is nothing wrong with adventures. Aside from being bugged sometimes (which is an issue), they are fun minigames and I am confident that alot of people enjoy doing them. They are simply different, and just because they are different doesn’t mean they are bad.

The complaints here remind me of those who were strongly against jumping puzzles and Super Adventure Box. And that no rewards should be exclusive to these ’’garbage’’ gaming types.

I’m gonna assume you were partly referring to what I said:

1) There is nothing inherently wrong with adventures having rewards, BUT

2) There are what I’d call “mainstream” rewards and “niche” rewards. Mainstream rewards are stuff that basically everybody needs and wants. Mastery points, for example. Masteries are highly mainstream content. Mastery levels are something you almost can’t not gain if you’re playing the game for any length of time.

But adventures are not mainstream content. In fact if you set aside the idea of any mastery points being attached to them, the average player can ignore them forever. While I don’t like that the elite spec collections require some silver adventures, it would be harder to argue that those collections are mainstream content, so that’s not so much of a problem in the context of the argument.

The main problem here is the overlap between mainstream and niche. Does that make sense?

Kyon.9735:

Now am I? Please listen to my side of story.

I consider myself a casual gamer as I can only allot 1~2 hours at most every night because of work and other IRL stuff.

Let’s say the DPS meter was implemented and meta builds came out. Believe me, PEOPLE WILL WANT TO ONLY PLAY WITH META BUILD USERS UNLESS YOU ARE IN A GOOD GUILD. If for example a full Sinister/Viper set completely becomes the meta, this will require people to finish living stories and do achievements because you can’t just buy them from TP or from laurel vendor. While casuals are busy wasting their limited time doing living stories, they are getting left behind with raids.

How is this different from now though? I’ve already seen people asking for specific meta builds with ascended.

A meter could actually help in this regard if the game is balanced well; it could show that you don’t need the one type of theoretical build/class you think you need, but that you can manage fine with a few others as well.

If you need to tie rewards to content to get people to play it (particularly content that was supposed to operate on its own merits with leaderboards!), then you know that content wasn’t very good to begin with.

But in the spirit of being nice, I don’t think the content is that bad (personally, I’d probably enjoy it more if I didn’t feel the reward tug). It’s just that they are sort of like JPs. They appeal to a niche audience. And you have locked mainstream rewards behind niche content, which is a big no-no.

Alternatively they could get rid of falling damage, but I imagine that would receive an angry horde of players saying that it’s not only immersion breaking, but also undermines the point of gliding being in the game.

I played a game with no falling damage for a while, so I got used to it. But that’s just me.

Sometimes complaining is more interesting than the game itself.

Yours is one of the more measured and kind variations on this topic that I’ve seen, but I still disagree on principle.

Here’s what I do agree with: If you aren’t getting any enjoyment out of the game, but are continuing to play it anyway, that is largely on you. I say “largely” because there is room for addiction in this equation.

However, what you have to realize is that a lot of people enjoy parts of the game and dislike other parts. Sometimes there is even content that is a mix of parts they like and don’t like.

It would be silly to think that you will enjoy every moment of a game, or anything in life for that matter. But when people get consistently upset about some aspect of a game, it is usually because that aspect of the game has a significant impact on their enjoyment. It does not necessarily mean they enjoy no parts of the game. And suggesting that they adapt is like suggesting that a Pepsi fan “adapt” to drinking Coke.

There are two underlying points here:

1) Sometimes people complain to vent (it doesn’t mean that every time they complain they want something to burn, or change to meet their demands).

2) People aren’t “unwilling” to adapt. They are uninterested. If my taste buds say that Coke tastes like crap, there is little point in me trying to convince myself that Coke tastes good. That’s what it’s like in a lot of cases. Preference, in a word. Preferences can change over time and acceptance can happen with a heavy sigh (see grief and loss), which is where the illusion of adapting comes from, but it doesn’t mean that any person in a situation of dislike can easily change their preferences to make themselves happier.

If enjoyment was that simple, the world would probably be nicer, but we’re human beings with rampant emotions, not souped up android beings.

Vayne.8563:

It’s not an absurd defense. You have an tendency to see anything you disagree with as absurd or wrong, which is frankly absurd. Nor is it a defense.

End game content always changes the rules. It did in Guild Wars 1 and it does here. For example, when most of us played Guild Wars 1, we could have heroes and henchmen, but in certain areas, you couldn’t have henchmen…end game content.

Map completion in the original game, originally had WvW, which was something you couldn’t do when you wanted. I remember waiting for weeks to get a single point of interest in a single tower, because we were never the right color.

That was map completion at launch. Do you think I didn’t keep returning to WvW to check it time and time again?

Are you saying this isn’t the case.

Map completion was taken out of WvW after two years. For two bloody years, some people had real serious problems getting map completion and now you come out and say waiting for a meta event is a bogus defense? It’s not a defense at all.

Some people are suggesting that all map completion was always easy and never required any time or effort or waiting, which is absolutely demonstrably false.

So you miss there the vine is a couple of times. So a collection depends on it. So the collection takes longer. It took me longer to get my world complete to get my first legendary because I was held up by WvW.

Saying that collections or map complete or world complete was never gated by anything and you could always do it any time is simply wrong.

Lmao, what? “You have an tendency to see anything you disagree with as absurd or wrong, which is frankly absurd.” Seeing something you disagree with as wrong is part of the meaning of disagreeing.

Stop using strawman arguments and utter nonsense, please. They changed the WvW thing, presumably after enough time of people complaining and realizing that it was inconsistent with the design of the rest of the game. Then they go and do it again (albeit not in as large a way) in HoT? And you’re defending that? Justifying it? I don’t even know.

1) Anet obviously disagrees with your end-game analogy, considering the change they made to WvW and world completion.

2) I said the spirit of map completion with few exceptions. WvW was obviously one of those exceptions, which they rectified by making it something you don’t really need, unless you’re OCD about exploration. I never said anything about world completion being easy or that parts of it were never “gated.” When I talk about choice, I’m talking about map completion and most maps were (and are) straightforward and could be done when you want.

3) You having problems with getting a legendary in the past because of WvW does not somehow justify future design problems of the same kind. That is absurd. You are making it sound like it’s ok because you had to deal with it. It’s completely screwy.

Vayne.8563:

However, map completion doesn’t have to be done right now.

That’s an absurd defense. The spirit of map completion has, with few exceptions, always been “do it when you want to do it.” The issue is not “wanting to do it right now” versus wanting to do it later. The issue is lacking the freedom to do it when you want to do it. That’s the point.

Video games run on choice. Every time you take away choice, you are left with less of a video game and more an interactive graphic novel. I’m being a tad hyperbolic to make a point here. The principle of the thing is rather important when it starts adding up.

I hate grinds.

Actually, that’s not totally true. I loved vanilla SWG which was insanely grindy.

What I don’t like more than anything is inconsistent pacing, which is absolutely rampant in modern MMOs. In vanilla SWG, before any kind of mounts, you could literally spend like 20 minutes going from one place to the next. You could burn (trying to remember the numbers) I want to say 15 minutes waiting on a shuttle to go to another planet. May have been longer. That game was very grindy, but the thing was, every part of it moved at a glacial pace. It had a true feeling of being a virtual world.

The grind was bad, but you didn’t have to ever think about the grind unless you really really wanted to because the pacing was such that the rate of acquiring skills, for example, felt like a fitting speed for the glacial pace of the rest of the game.

Most modern MMOs that I have tried work in much the following way (and even later forms of SWG went in this direction): The pacing is lightning speed. Travel is streamlined, progression is largely done in the UI and can be picked or changed in an instant. Basically 90% of the game is designed such that you move very fast through it.

This has some awful consequences, despite it apparently having mainstream appeal. Most modern games also have the 10% of the game (what we usually refer to as “content”) that is designed to slow everything down to a crawl. The pacing is molasses when compared to the rest of the game.

So what happens is this awful contrast where people are literally being conditioned to GOGOGO, while the part of the game that is supposed to keep them playing is SLOWSLOWSLOW. It’s jerky, I’ve never liked it, and what I increasingly find is that it’s actually hard for me to slow down in such games. No matter how hard I try slow myself down, the pacing of the game keeps trying to turn up the dial.

The result? Lots of people getting burned out and/or citing grinds as an awful thing.

So I guess what I want is a bit complicated and it’s also totally unrealistic for the game we’re talking about, but I’ll say it all the same because it’s something I feel strongly about concernings MMOs in general: I want a game that is consistent in its pacing. If you’re going to make me put in months for a single item, don’t do it artificially, with things that take you out of the moment, like “you can only craft one of these a day for no logical reason” or “you need to go do the same content 500 times to get enough currency to make/buy this.”

Instead, slow me down by making the game world function more like the real world. Make travel take longer. Make an event more like a campaign that you can duck in and out of, instead of a brief and efficient attack that takes anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours, and that you go and do again 20 minutes later. If any actual game dev ever reads this, just review the features of the original SWG and you’ll get the gist of what I mean.

Granted, the pacing does not need to be as slow as vanilla SWG. It just needs to be consistent. Indulging peoples’ impatience completely in one area while giving it the middle finger in another area is, imo, simply not good game design and chips away at player interest until otherwise interested people don’t want to play anymore.

In fact, it would seem that the majority of lasting players in games like these (I’m talking like vets of the order who are around from launch to the end) only survive by going to one extreme or the other: They either embrace the grind 100% and eat it up like it’s their job, or they somehow shut it out 100% and slow themselves down through means that are beyond the game itself.

It’s pretty weird to see.