Guild Wars 2

Ashen.2907:

Previously if you wanted laurels and AP you had to log in and do your dailies.

Now you can log in and do almost anything in the game.

I mean, unless you need the AP to save Wintersday from the evil Grentches.

. . . what do you mean wrong time period?!

X T D.6458:

I guess it might be one of those the cure is worst then the disease kinda things

Well, more like “invasive surgery to fix an unsightly blemish”, in my eyes. Sure, it could work . . . but why leave a scar by doing it? Or make it worse by trying to fix it?

Well, some people have given you fair answers, even if they’re not integral to the game rules themselves. I’ll recap the ones I can think of.

1 – It dilutes the difference between one character and another if you can just shuffle gear around. There’s literally little difference mechanically now, and no drawback at all to having several dozen characters if gear is simply able to be pushed around anywhere.

2 – It leaves a dent in the need to actually acquire any further gear, meaning crafting is even more pointless than it is currently. It also makes it less necessary to do anything besides salvaging/selling gear drops since . . . well . . . “my alt could use that” is no longer a concern since you can just move your current armor.

3 – There is already less need to work on builds, than there is perhaps a need or request for a service to swap Runes/Sigils outside the Gem Store. In all seriousness, that would cure some of the problem experimenting with builds . . . unless you really needed to get three different prefixes in all slots. (I don’t see why, but then I’m not one to go min/maxing for effect . . . I’m more “go general and then adapt strengths as needed to cover weaknesses”.)

I don’t think it’s as terrible an idea as it used to be (“No Trade” + “No Drop” = “Loot You Can Only Destroy”).

I also think GW2 makes it incredibly easy to gear up . . . until we talk Ascended, which is another can of worms. Exotics are pretty much as far as you need to go, and they’re not too difficult to craft or get your hands on via straight-up buying off Black Lion. I mean, unless we’re talking specific skins. In which case, you only need one of those and some transmutation charges.

. . . I also think less “Unique needs to go” and more “it needs to mean something outside the six slots it actually affects”.

Linken.6345:

X T D.6458:

exactly, I cant understand why anyone would oppose making anything more convenient for them

And I cant understand why anyone would want less to do in the game, Like only having to craft 1 set of items and move it around to other characters

If they see it as a grind, then I’d say it’s understandable.

By the way . . . no. Don’t think Soulbound needs to go, but I do think “on Acquire” might need to be trimmed from several particular items. (Unsafe Wintersday Gifts….)

DarcShriek.5829:

Of course you’re alive. It’s not skipping you that kills them. I’ve come to understand that the new dailies are so grindy that it’s doing them that kills you.

Well, either that or you can make a fabulous cup of coffee by letting your beans do the work for you.

. . . probably achievements. Or new (seriously new) starter content.

So, this is your interpretation of a charr cub visiting the Grove for the first time?

yolo swaggins.2570:

You all lie. You died when you didn’t finish the dailies and are currently stuck in Limbo which conveniently has internet.

This explains so much . . .

Olvendred.3027:

Guhracie.3419:

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?

I haven’t felt compelled to do anything particular in PvE for a long time. I just do what I feel like.

Admittedly, I haven’t made a new toon since the trait revamp, and that is a horribly restrictive change I’ll agree. But only because, in one way or another, you do have to get your traits if you want a fully functional character.

But all of the rest is just perception, really. People feel compelled to do things, because they feel compelled to do things.

Pretty much how I feel about this, but the reason I don’t make a new character is less the Trait business and more . . . they just don’t feel natural in my hands. I mean, I can’t really handle an Elementalist, Mesmer, or Necromancer – they don’t work for me. I can work a Thief but not nearly on the same level as my Ranger. My only Engineer quickly became a dumping ground for items I don’t need immediately or stacks of things for when I might need them again. (WHY SO MUCH BUTTER, SIX GODS?!)

I kind of play my Guardian since she is part of the Priory and I wanted to see what that plotline was like. I love my charr Warrior because I fell in love with the character from the first chapter of the Personal Story . . . but I run into problems wanting to play less like a Warrior instinctively and tending more towards Ranger behaviors.

So that’s where I wind up staying, and I don’t need another Ranger so . . . no new characters. If I really wanted a new character and had to get Traits? I’d make it a point to request for help from my Guild – ostensibly, that’s why guilds exist, right?

Anyway, I’m at a point with Guild Wars 2 where I log in, I fool around for a little bit, maybe look up an achievement I want to finish (fricking Dive Master . . . soon) or check out which World Boss is up and I can jump in on . . . or maybe I’ll go for gathering materials so I can keep working on my Wardrobe collection.

I don’t feel compelled to do anything, or even to play. I instead feel . . . I guess “satisfied” with what I have.

Lyssan.3768:

At the daily system before the one before this latest one, you had lets say 14 daily choice items to pick from 1 section, just PvE, just WvW, etc. , and had to do 5.

WvW was lumped into PvE while “Daily PvP” was still separate, from what I recall. either that or it was not separated at all and was all “Daily”. I know because Daily WvW never showed up on my tabs. Ever.

I do not remember the exact total choices. But that ratio works out to approximately 35%.

Mmm, not that I recall, honestly. I think it was larger than that with regards to PvE vs WvW on the panels I used to look at.

Mostly because there was an overlap with availability . . . things such as “Condition Remover/Applier” or “Daily Dodger” could be done in either mode so I don’t know if it’s fair to count it as PvE or as both (similarly, “Daily Gatherer” could be done in WvW, and depending on where you did it, was probably better for you). But the WvW only achievements outnumbered PvE only achievements most of the time.

With the update before this one, you have the total choices available reduced to 10 within the chosen section, an increase in percentage of the total to 50%. With this last one, yes you only have to do 3, which most would say is less than 5. That is correct. But when you compare it to the available options of 4, some of which are not even reachable by some people on some of the days, the new percentage is 75%. So while it looks like you now have to do less, you have to actually complete a larger percentage of the available choices.

Mmm, a valid point regarding the available choices, but at the same time most of the requests seem to be centering on allowing PvE more options again compared to the other two. I think that’s were this is going slightly astray in my mind.

Let the players decide what they want to do, and hold to the “play how you want to” idea.

Again, that idea is largely null and void since “play as you want to” is already a broken promise from the time the servers opened publicly. You couldn’t play as you wanted to because the very construction of the game makes it impossible to turn charr into hide rugs again.

Djinn.9245:

Increasing restrictiveness is not a part of “play as you like”.

Neither is what a lot of people seem to think the term encapsulates, along with the grind comment from the videos before release . . .

I mean, it’s already a pile of dolyak droppings since a lot of people (disruptive sorts) can’t “play as they like” by deliberately disrupting the game, or scream RL racial slurs all over map chat. And I, personally, can’t run around beheading charr and punting asura out of the zone just for being in my way on a jumping puzzle or for existing . . .

“Play as you like” never existed in the first place if we’re going to be completely serious about interpreting it.

Elden Arnaas.4870:

Most of the old daily rewards were shifted to login rewards. The only “old” reward left on dailies is AP.

Shh, no, no, we can’t talk about that here. It’s forbidden to try to speak about such things lest it start another debate over “value”.

Morte.5916:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Just accept it.

ANet wants people to play fractals. Achievement hunters deserve to suffer.

They do seem pretty desperate.

Both Anet and the achievement hunters, that is.

Hmmm. I don’t think the AH Crew knows about GuildWars 2 at all. Now Destiny . . . they know all about that.

Ashen.2907:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Astralporing.1957:

Nope, they keep repeating on a constant pattern. There is no chest you won’t eventually get again if you keep earning AP – there are only 4 different kinds. You need to earn (“pay”) 500 AP to get an achievement chest (or better). You need to earn 1000 AP to get a large chest (or better). You need to earn 2500 ap to get a heavy chest (or better), and you get a massive chest for each 5000 ap earned.

This I had not noticed, nor kept track of closely enough. I see these chests pretty rarely.

Also keep in mind that even if it does not seem like a huge impact the increase to gold and magic find from a chest affects every mob drop thereafter.

This is true, but I think there’s a good number of people who have insane +% MF who don’t get a Precursor and someone walks up to the Forge, throws in four junk swords and “oh, look, Dusk!” . . .

RNG entirely dilutes the meaning of the +% MF because there’s no telling just what’s going to drop, and no amount of it guarantees anything.

+% Gold, well . . . seriously, since most things tend to drop copper or less than ten silver from my experience? Whee, +10% Gold Find to 100 copper means I get a whole extra 10 copper.

Settes.3960:

There are 2 questions in the game I really hate now – “When is the [Boss]?” and “Any event?”. It’s so pathetic when maps are full of 80s only to do quickly 4 events and go away (especially on maps before big bosses it’s great).

Not like this wasn’t happening before hand with event zerg trains and such. It’s a player mentality issue, fostered pretty much by the community itself rather than “this is how ANet wants you to play their game”. (No, they don’t, they’d rather you . . . you know, play their game rather than run the same set of events in a cycle in the same zone over and over. There’s also a difference between ‘not stopping you from doing it’ and ‘intending for you to do it’.)

Guhracie.3419:

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.

I find I have, when playing my main, a bit less restrictive game in GW2 these days. Mostly because I’ve passed a point where I have many things to get done. I don’t really need AP, or Laurels, or anything which the system was giving me before this last update.

However. I have not experienced playing through a second character due to always feeling like I should be playing my main rather than messing around on alts. This isn’t pressure from the system, per se, more like pressure internally for “you know you could be doing this on your ranger . . . you have so much more fun playing him than this stupid mesmer”.

I also don’t have the drive to rake in Gold/Laurels/AP for the sake of having them. I never really . . . got . . . the point of that in my games. I would do things to get these bragging rights awards and realize I had almost nobody to brag to about them who didn’t also have them.

(Seriously, the only one sitting there is completing the new Pokedex of 700+ and that’s . . . that’s not happening anytime soon.)

So while I’m happy to chase silly achievements like finding the Lost Coins, I’m really not a typical player.

Astralporing.1957:

Nope, they keep repeating on a constant pattern. There is no chest you won’t eventually get again if you keep earning AP – there are only 4 different kinds. You need to earn (“pay”) 500 AP to get an achievement chest (or better). You need to earn 1000 AP to get a large chest (or better). You need to earn 2500 ap to get a heavy chest (or better), and you get a massive chest for each 5000 ap earned.

This I had not noticed, nor kept track of closely enough. I see these chests pretty rarely.

Astralporing.1957:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Those chests are a one-shot deal, remember? Laurels can be used over and over for materials, if I’m not mistaken.

No. The same laurels cannot be reused for materials. You need to get new ones. Exactly like with APs and chests.

You’re . . . not quite getting what I said. If I get the AP chest for 1000 AP, then I can’t get that chest again. I would need to earn the next chest. These are one-time awards.

If I use a Laurel to buy a bag of crafting materials, I would have to earn another Laurel but I have less to do to earn one than to get the next AP chest.

I find a good way to handle Toxx is two people with the hammer “Toysmashers” doing dodge-based melee on her and cycling through the knockdown and basic swing so she stays away from the center platform.

Catapults are incredibly useful, but there is a cap to how many objects may be placed. So once you hit it, it might be a good idea to upgrade the ones in the middle to Mega-rank so they can just hit anything.

Ashen.2907:

Subdue.5479:

Laurels are universally beneficial. Even if there isn’t any laurel locked content you are interested in, they can be converted easily into gold. Ap on the other hand, has very little if any impact on gameplay for most users.

AP generate gold directly through gold rewards in AP track chests.

AP generate gold indirectly by increasing magic find and gold find.

I like the new system but if you are going to argue that Laurels are universally beneficial because they can be used to get gold you might want to remember that AP can as well.

Those chests are a one-shot deal, remember? Laurels can be used over and over for materials, if I’m not mistaken. So AP can generate gold by the chests, but it’s a one-shot deal. (They also generate Gems directly too, which is perhaps more vaulable.)

As for the Magic Find +% . . . I . . . am pretty sure that’s a non-issue due to how terrible the RNG can be sometimes. Gold Find +% doesn’t come into play enough to give a significant boost, from what I know.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Well, unless I’ve misread you terribly, you’ve been very middle-of-the-road about the entire subject anyway, so I wouldn’t expect a different reaction.

It’s okay, that’s my personal reaction. My full consideration is more complicated, which is why I’ve been discussing the matter here and in other topics rather than just dismissing it as “not my problem”. It could be my problem if it happens to something I care about, after all. Though . . . honestly, my play style has slipped quite a bit with my lack of play time into “whatever I can do in the time I have”.

(And that’s often a lot more than others might expect.)

Here’s the reason it would work for me, which I didn’t really have time to get into earlier. I don’t need or particularly want any of what’s on offer for the daily log in rewards. There aren’t any permanent AP opportunities left for me that I see myself ever going after, and I do like to see my AP grow over time for the AP rewards some of which I like.

I want to point out, there is a cap on the AP from Dailies, and I’m not sure what it is but I know people have hit that cap. Which is why I sort of approach it more leisurely – eventually I’ll hit the cap and be done with it.

With the rewards reversed, I’d get some AP for loging in, which would be nice, and if I ever felt I’d want some more laurels or some of that other stuff now awarded on log in, I’d have the option to do some dailies. Totally self-serving, sure. Unashamedly so.

It’s okay to propose a theoretical situation which is. Why do you think there are so many threads about mounts, or the discussion of raiding? People want those things themselves, and think it would be a good idea to include them.

Regardless of all this, my only major problem with dissecting this new daily system and discussing it . . . is how the same problem/request keeps coming up with regard to Dailies and I don’t think it is either a good idea or really smacks of believing one game mode more important over the other two (namely, PvE vs WvWvW and PvP) despite the desperate need to give those other two some love before people just start abandoning them. (Or keep abandoning them.)

Trying to invoke the concept of PvE meaning more, and thus having more choices for them and not the others, is a proposition which should be courted lightly. Increasing the choices all around (say, to 5 or 6) is one of the better hopes I have of actually being done.

One of the better changes is one Lichtenbird . . . I’m sure I didn’t get it right . . . posited in their thread about this system. Specifically, limiting each zone’s appearance in the task menu to specific level ranges, so Level 80s won’t see “Queensdale”/“Plains of Ashford” showing up.

DarcShriek.5829:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Lenny.2053:

I believe its like this:

We feed Grawnk to obtain ornaments.
But he accidentally die (or he ended in coma, you can´t die by eating Bloodstone dust dishes, i tried).
So we collect all ornaments, send them to childrens. As thanks they send back Christmas tree decorated with ornaments.
Therefore you still have all ornaments.

And a certain chef continues to try cooking with Bloodstone Dust, while I pine for seeing the Tyrian equivalent of Chef Ramsay show up to clear up the issue.

Of course, there is one man who can cook with it, and make it not only delicious but nutritious . . . A.B.

“You’ve got too much Bloodstone Dust in the Risotto, you donkey!”

Wrong person. The man I speak of is not a chef by trade.

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

How people find this Bell Choir mini-game so difficult is beyond me. Hit the corresponding button when the light is in the blue circle… So hard. So impossible.

I tried it the other night and there was something up – all my bell notes were coming out about one second or a half-second delay. And it would change. I failed an easy song because it was always hurting me for missing the note.

I’ll still wind up getting it eventually, but it’s going to take a solid effort of making sure I keep plugging at it.

Astral Projections.7320:

They are doing their responding in that thread but as she said, they are reading the other threads on this subject also.

. . . though, you know nobody posting in any topic on this believes they’re going to do anything.

Manasa Devi.7958:

munkiman.3068:

I’m an AP hunter (not extreme, but i don’t need more laurels, till they do more with em). Someone earlier posted something about them being switched, getting AP for logins and only getting the goods when you complete your dailies. I thought that was interesting.

I asked how people would feel about that reversal. No one answered. Now I can’t help wondering if that’s because it would lay bare a hypocrisy people don’t want to own up to.

The reverse scenario would certainly relieve me of the issues I have with this update.

I’m still thinking about it, but first thoughts on it?

I wouldn’t care any more about it than I do now. “Oh, they did what? Meh.”

. . . remember, I already stated I’m pretty good on the stuff which would be locked or was locked behind Daily Achievements. And I’m also not a big chaser of AP. Achievements, sort of (freaking Dive Master… one dive other than Not So Secret and I don’t know which one it is.) . . . but the AP doesn’t really MATTER to me.

Erukk.1408:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Of course, there is one man who can cook with it, and make it not only delicious but nutritious . . . A.B.

Sadly, Chef Oxbone saw him as competition and paid 5g to sabotage him. All of Alton’s cooking utensils got replaced with mithril foil, and he had to cook over a lava font.

It would still be delicious, bystanders said.

yolo swaggins.2570:

With the new system, there is a good chance I will have to go out of my way to get it and I don’t even get my laurel in the end. However I can get them by logging on. So now if I want my Laurel, I have to log on each day.

Evidence suggests this is incorrect – you will get it no matter what even if you miss a day. You’ll just cycle through it slower.

If I want the AP I can’t just do the boss train to get it. I have to go to Mag and forage for plants I most likely do not need. I have to kill a specific world boss, which wouldn’t be a problem except if its one I can’t get to due to schedule or one I don’t like going to. Not only that my choices are limited unless I go into PvP or WvW which lost its appeal to me months ago.

And I don’t get anything until I do 3 of them.

Ah . . . yes? Though if you’ve been playing long enough, you may have hit cap on Daily.

Things that I used to get by playing the game how I saw fit is now gate behind things I don’t want to do. That is what some people don’t understand about the old system compared to this new one.

I still have trouble grasping why it needs to be done now as opposed to eventually . . . but then, I’ve grown patient lately when it comes to my games due to necessity.

It’s not only native to Game of Thrones. I’ve seen it before / heard it before through other stories.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

• Fix 2 – Daily Map Events – change to Daily Zone Events to counter zergs which faceroll poorly scaling content. Most likely won’t help because of the megaserver system.

Not sure what this is, but could also suggest the fix previous would slap that down a bit. Besides, if you try too hard to break the zerg, you hinder legitimate events in high level zones getting open participation. Which goes much more against the spirit of the game than this problem of facerolling things easily due to zergs.

Oh, by “zones” I meant “regions” – Kryta, Ascalon etc.

Oh, makes more sense doing that word swap. Still going to barely result in changing anything, I think . . . the zergs congregate where the easiest pickings are. Daily Kryta Slayer would still see Queensdale overrun for the quick kills, and Daily Shiverpeak Events would see people stick their nose into Wayfarer Foothills and run around the forest outside Hoelbrak to pick up the 5-6 events which are there and quickly recycle.

The zerg gravitates to the path of least resistance and then grinds it down into a path of no resistance.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

We had these in the old system too, such as “Dodger”, “Ambient Killer”, “Skill Points”, “Leveler”. I’m somewhat happy with them reduced in scope. So long as there’s never more than one of these “gimme” tasks? I’m kind of okay with it.

Oh, right, could also throw “WvW Dolyak Killer” and “WvW Land Claimer” / “WvW Ruin Master” on the “gimme” achievements. Those are often painfully easy to get done.

“Dodger”, “Skill Points”, “Leveler”, “Condition Applier/Remover” are a part of the general game process; it’s not like some idiotic task to do which you were never planning to, rather, “since you’re in the shop anyway, get me some cheese and I’ll give you a candy”. “Ambient Killer” – yes, that’s more like vista viewer.

Yes, well, Dodger was seen as an idiotic task by many and it was often stated to run counter to the intuition of the game – “Don’t help me kill that, I’m working dodger.”

The other three? It’s like the “Press Start” achievements people really don’t care for. It’s basically achievements for not doing anything but playing the game. I have issues with that, deep down, because I feel it cheapens the system somewhat. But that’s another thing entirely. I suppose they’re most useful for when you can look up a profile and see which achievements someone has, so you know how far they made it in the game . . . or where they stopped playing. Or just to review and go “oh, right I’m at that point in the game” if you’ve put it down for a month.

I see your point, but . . . “reward me for what I have to do anyway”? I don’t get why that should work. I don’t get a bonus at my job for doing my job, that’s why I get paid hourly. I get a bonus at my job for exceptional service, or for particular sets of sales. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned that way, but . . .

I played MMOs before UO was even a “thing”, and can slightly agree as far as there is a lowered potential of our voices (individually or otherwise) having a major effect on the game we love to play. (Or in some cases, loathe to play, or stopped playing and won’t stop mentioning that.)

On the other hand, there are signs we are being heard, and what we say is being listened to. The problem seems to come when what’s asked for is not exactly what we get . . . which, I’m afraid to say is my opinion . . . is very hard to understand how this surprises anyone when it happens.

Designing anything is simple compared to the act of developing it and then making it real. Let alone the issue of what happens when an idea seems real good on paper and turns out to be a real turkey when practiced.

One of these I recall being around for was back when games didn’t shy away from having PvP in the open world . . . and the bright idea was asked for and implemented to give people who didn’t want to partake a way of not having that happen. An attempt failed in my first beloved MMO pretty hardcore, and is pointed to as one of the things which “killed” Ultima Online. And in almost every game since then, I’ve seen it asked for over and over. I’m not sure which side is really the best option, but I do know it’s a real stupid maneuver to either add it to a game which wasn’t developed with it in mind, or to remove it from a game with it developed in mind.

And that’s just one in my gaming lifetime. I’ve seen other things which have been requested and given, then wound up basically diluting and reducing the potential of games.

It’s not even that, I’ve had a firsthand experience of watching a game where one rule, one simple rule which everyone hated, was unanimously agreed upon to not be in effect anymore. The result was a game which was completely devoid of fun . . . so much so, we don’t touch it anymore. I try to bring out the box and everyone groans and tells me to put it back.

Anyway. It sounds idiotic when you hear it but it is often true – not every player request for change will result in a positive effect on the game, and sometimes a good idea might not be the best fit for a game.

Vayne.8563:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

You know what a daily is. If you’re actually roleplaying your character, even inside your own head, dailies break immersion no matter what.

I could make the case it isn’t quite necessarily so. It just requires getting . . . creative.

You should use that prodigious creativity to help solve problems, not create new ones. lol

My friend, every solution creates new problems anyway. That’s just how things work, from an engineer’s perspective. Also, as much as I want to fix things, I don’t have either the authority or the desire to try forcing my solutions into the game.

Besides, being creative writing around systems is what I get for being a fanfic writer and a GM who transcribes game sessions over into text about what happened as seen from the characters of the group.

There’s a ton of opportunity for interesting things to make up . . . it’s just a matter of coming at it from a direction other than head-on (apply directly to the forehead).

Vayne.8563:

You know what a daily is. If you’re actually roleplaying your character, even inside your own head, dailies break immersion no matter what.

I could make the case it isn’t quite necessarily so. It just requires getting . . . creative.

Manasa Devi.7958:

The only way I can respond to the start of your post is to single out specific people and quote their opinions so as to prove there is definitely some hypocrisy going on. I don’t want to do that because singling out people never ends well.

The smiley was there to suggest I was kidding . . . I understood why.

About the separation of rewards, I disagree that it’s a good thing. The previous system got people playing for their reward, be it laurels or AP. The only problem with them was apparently that some obsessive players needed to be protected from themselves because they felt “forced” to do 12 dailies.

I very much agree here, and we had a ton of people who would come on here and complain about being “forced” to do things. Much like how people want to claim “forced” over the AP currently with the new system . . . but that’s been buried in this topic for a while under the repeated back and forth semantics over the words “forced” and “optional”.

(Note: I can see why people really chase the AP, and could see a case for it being claimed to be important ever since the AP rewards got introduced a while back. I personally thought they were kind of cool, as it gave some of a reason to earn them. On the other hand . . . I also see it went awry.)

I feel a far better result might’ve been accomplished by mostly keeping what we had before, just changing to the ‘gain max AP for doing x achievements’ that we have now, and perhaps adding some more possible tasks to the mix instead of stripping most of them and leaving us with stupid pet tricks.

I honestly gave a description in another post about how I would have done this whole thing over to give more choice and more potential for “choose how you play”. I’ll have to dive and find it, then edit a link in. And even then I sketched it out broadly and saw there would still be issues lobbed at it over being too restrictive, not enough choice, and “forcing” people into doing things they don’t want to do.

Edit: Post is here

Honestly, the whole root of this thing is choice. I understand that problem, but it also ticks me off a bit since that has always . . . continuously . . . been what people kept/keep asking for in the past with regards to Dailies. And, amusingly, it seems only the PvE players are the ones getting terribly bent out of shape.

I don’t think there’s a single possible system to put in place which will make the lobby to keep reinventing the Daily/Monthly ever stop. It’s why I suggested simply destroying it might have been best when the new Login Rewards went live – the only reason to do them is AP, and the reasons to design them into the game have long since been rendered moot.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Small comfort to the people who couldn’t care less about the laurels because they already have hundreds sitting there in the idle hope there’s ever going to be more stuff to spend them on.

Are . . . are you bouncing from the rest of my post to the one thing you can pick on?

Though I agree. I stopped going for Laurels after I got my mini I wanted. (No, not the cat. That cat can go back to the moon.) I have little interest in the extra accessories, Ascended or no, and am ambivalent about buying the crafting bags.

Manasa Devi.7958:

I was actually trying to point out the hypocrisy of some people who in one breath call it lazy that we could gain a handful of AP through normal play with the previous daily implementation but applaud the new log in rewards and point at those as the answer to all our woes.

Hmmm. Hard to reconcile, yes. Not sure if I’d go so far as to say it was “hypocrisy” though. There are similar examples to reasoning which makes no sense when looked at as “A and B” but start to make more sense when you look at it more broadly.

Personally, starting off with the log in rewards would have been better than the Dailies. We could have avoided retooling the darn things four (at least) times between then and now trying to satisfy players.

It’s the separation of those rewards from Daily Achievements which I think is the positive step. Or at least the positive step for the segment of players who would complain about being “forced” to do them so they could get Laurels.

Olvendred.3027:

But you can do 3 of the new dailies faster than you could ever do 5 of the old ones.

Well, that depends. I (personally) might be able to. Assuming two of them aren’t something like Harathi Hinterlands or Mount Maelstrom events and a World Boss off schedule of my login. I have 99% of the waypoints available, and know where I can go for easy completion of things like the gathering ones.

But as someone suggested, I’m trying to think of people who haven’t hit 100% completion and don’t have resources banked up. Or happen to have started in the last year and aren’t yet level 80. (Some of them do, in fact, exist.)

And even assuming I could spend 20 minutes to knock out the Daily (or 60 minutes as the absolute longest I’ve spent lately – thanks Claw of Jormag… 15 minutes just to complete :P ) . . . I actually have not entirely had that time to play the game all that much. I’ve had time to log in and bank the reward, maybe make some day-limited items and collect my home instance nodes.

. . . it’s not just the aforementioned work schedule, it’s a bunch of other things going on which sort of take top priority rather than the game. (Such as family.) So I can sort of get why some say “I just don’t have time” even while thinking it’s not that long when looked at objectively and outside of what might be going on in their lives.

The only part I keep saying remains: it’s only AP now, as opposed to also being Laurels/Coins/Karma/AP. This is an improvement for those with the limited time.

And, of course, my perennial rebuttal: It’s not like the main game will not be here when you have time. Wintersday, probably. The normal game . . . hopefully is going to be there when your schedule frees up. There’s no need to rush it.

Olvendred.3027:

Get daily in 10 mins on your lvl 80 (if you think daily is important). Then play alt.

It’s not complicated.

It can be, if (like myself) their play time is currently pretty limited. I barely have time to log in, do some minor things, then log out on most days.

I blame the fact I need to work for like 10 hours tomorrow . . . and 8 more the day after that, and follow that up with another 8 hours . . . and yet more 8 hour shifts, not getting a truly open day until Monday.

Therefore, I really have to get on with the intent to do something and hope I have luck doing it.

Manasa Devi.7958:

timmyf.1490:

None of us will bridge the gap between players who want credit for their dailies and APs just for playing for 30 minutes and players who think APs should actually require some effort.

Well, if it’s effort they want, they must be grinding their teeth in frustration at all the free log in rewards being handed out recently.

Yeah, going from some of the crosstalk I hear sometimes? There’s a lot of that too. Of course, there is a point I’m fast approaching where I just want to not bother talking with other people because saying I like anything seems to be tantamount to me wanting to take away their guns. I mean, fun.

Manasa Devi.7958:

I confess, I don’t play events anymore. Why? Because I no longer get an AP when I’ve done 5 on a day, and I don’t get a laurel when I get to 5 AP. I just run past or through events, on my way to where I want to be. The pitiful few coppers and smattering of karma isn’t worth the delay.

Huh. I do events for the fun of doing it, really. I did them for that reason a long time ago when I passed the point where the Karma was pointless for me, as was the cash award. I just liked doing them, rather than rushing through them and ignoring them.

I think the only places I seriously do that are starter zones . . . so I can leave players with a more appropriate level something to do. But with resource nodes being thinned out in starter zones, and no need for Copper/Green Wood I generally don’t bother starting zones unless I am after something specific.

Yes. I’m very weird

• Detrimental dailies – dailies which cause distress because of too many players focusing on them.
  • Fix 1 – Daily Map Events – remove from starter zones entirely to let new players complete events instead of competing for tags with zergs.

I’m on board with this, unless they only appear for the level ranges appropriate to the ones which trigger Daily Tasks. For example, a level 1-20 being told to do a starter zone, a level 20-40 getting another tier of zones . . . but level 80s only getting zones 40+. There, somewhat mitigates things, right?

It still will draw complaints like a pie out in the air draws flies . . .

• Fix 2 – Daily Map Events – change to Daily Zone Events to counter zergs which faceroll poorly scaling content. Most likely won’t help because of the megaserver system.

Not sure what this is, but could also suggest the fix previous would slap that down a bit. Besides, if you try too hard to break the zerg, you hinder legitimate events in high level zones getting open participation. Which goes much more against the spirit of the game than this problem of facerolling things easily due to zergs.

• Fix 4 – Daily Map Events – change to Daily Zone Level N-M (or higher) Events. Having to do Queensdale events instead of Dry Top makes me feel like an idiot (sorry). Undesirable because of low-level characters, but it’s like that now anyway.

It shouldn’t be producing impossible zones for low level characters. That’s an issue which would need to be looked at. And the first fix should also fix the problem of getting drawn to a much easier area.

• Fix – Daily WvW Veteran Creature Slayer – remove not to disrupt productive play.

I don’t see it as disruptive since I think those creatures are in the Borderlands and all spawn events to tag. There’s also three of them. But to fix easier, I’d suggest maybe not caring what monsters are killed, so long as they’re not guards/lords, and are at least Veteran level. Hey, look, lots more potential to kill things and a broader assortment which don’t have terribly long respawn times.

• Fix – Daily World Boss ABC – replace with “Daily World Boss (any)”, or at least large subsets of world bosses. Time restrictions are bad, time restrictions with no in-game schedule – twice as bad.

Going back to a much more loose “World Boss” seems okay with me, but maybe just changing it to “Group Event” and increasing the count to requiring 3 is enough.

• Not enough PvE choices. We all know that it’s a mainly PvE game, okay?

. . . something which I can never stop hearing about, and would like to keep seeing some bones thrown to the non-PvE players rather than “easy mode” being thrown to the PvE crowd. And this is from someone who is primarily a PvE player. If the choices are bumped up, bump it across the board.

• If I don’t want to play PvP now, I won’t. If I don’t want to play WvW now, I won’t. “Encouraging” me to play other modes leads to frustration and feeling of being forced to jump through someone’s hoops.

They did have the “encouragement” before just as strong with how there were PvP or WvW achievements in the previous Daily system which were easy enough to do if you just went in and messed around. (Capture Towers, for instance, can often be simple.) I think you’re only noticing it now due to PvE being pared down quite a bit from the previous choice disparity between modes. (Or at least PvE and WvW, since PvP had its own section I think.)

So, it’s always been there. And they’re doing the “Call of the Mists” type buffs to try to encourage people to jump in and try it. Honestly . . . I like those encouragements better, so they’re not that bad. And so long as they don’t change it so I have to do at least one PvP/WvW task to do Daily, I don’t see a problem. Right now you can safely ignore one task in the PvE section and still finish the Daily. Coupled with how simple they are . . . this makes it unlikely you get forced into a mode you don’t want to be in, just for the achievement.

Of course, that’s from the PvE side of things. Who knows about the other two . . .

2/2

Lishtenbird.2814:

Okay, my review of the new system after “testing”.

Likes:

• More tomes of knowledge, both in login rewards and achievement chests.
• Passable XP containers – can do on level 80 and pass to alts.
• Less RNG in when you get BLTC items.
• Has specific things to focus on if I simply want “something” to do.
• Choice of the form of the final reward – choose laurels, tomes, ascended – whatever you need at the moment!

Good to see you can point out good things to go with the bad. I was almost prepared to read nothing good about it in the post.

Neutral:

• Login rewards – sounds cheap to me (and a step towards “precursors for AFKing in LA”), but as long as it pulls the metrics in the required way…

Yeah, I can see this. But if you had to separate Laurels/Coins out of Daily Achievements . . . this is probably the least painful way to go and the one most like to satisfy people rather than other options.

Dislikes:

• “3 or nothing” AP.
  • You can no more get some AP by simply playing, and full 10 AP is not the point.
  • Fix – Daily Completionist – introduce tiers of rewards, like with many other achievements – the system is already in place! These can be 1 AP for one daily, 5 AP for 2 dailies, 10 AP for 3 dailies (or other reverse combos, like 5-8-10). You don’t feel (that) forced to do the 3rd daily even if it’s PvP/WvW only.

Ehhh, okay. I can agree this is a problem, but once you hit a certain level of AP it’s really not all that worrisome. Plus, there’s a cap – once you hit it, it no longer matters what you earn per day from Daily. It’ll always have zero impact.

• Far too specific dailies. This punishes players who play relatively long (and contribute to metrics!) but don’t want to do specific things.
  • Fix 1 – give an excluding choice of doing a specific short achievement or a generic long achievement. Example: 1 achievement “Gather 4 plants in Ascalon, or gather 20 of anything anywhere.”
  • Fix 2 – add generic achievements which have no chests but count towards Daily Completionist. Example: 2 achievements, “Gather 4 plants in Ascalon” with a chest and “Gather 10 of anything anywhere” without a chest.

I think Fix 2 is better for what they’re going for, but both fixes have the problem of both diluting how it means anything (first one), or “forcing” people to do it for the reward as opposed to not getting the bag (second one).

I’ll propose Fix 3: “Gather 4 Plants from Ascalon, or 16 anywhere.” Rewards the bag of plant goods either way. Given there are a lot of places there are like 9 plots close together (Dry Top, Potato Farms, a garden in Mount Maelstrom’s lake…) . . . it’s painless for the players who want to min/max time spent versus reward if they just park someone there for the daily purpose. (Like they park people for jumping puzzles.)

• “Idiotic” dailies – dailies which make me feel like an idiot, or like a child who has to go buy a bottle of milk for his insane old grandma while there’s a full fridge of milk already.
  • Fix – Daily Vista – no ideas… it’s just… eeewh. How about renaming to Daily Nice View and adding “or kill 20 monsters for a picturesque landscape of corpses”? Or… ambients?
  • Fix – Daily Forager/Miner/Logger – see above, adding optional larger but generic achievement at least makes more sense.

We had these in the old system too, such as “Dodger”, “Ambient Killer”, “Skill Points”, “Leveler”. I’m somewhat happy with them reduced in scope. So long as there’s never more than one of these “gimme” tasks? I’m kind of okay with it.

Oh, right, could also throw “WvW Dolyak Killer” and “WvW Land Claimer” / “WvW Ruin Master” on the “gimme” achievements. Those are often painfully easy to get done.

1/2 for length

Subdue.5479:

You’re taking a very silly view on this. You don’t go into ac, kill the spider queen, and then go. "Okay where’s my 1.5 gold?

Also, it’s very silly to compare the old old system to this new one. The old old system required you to so the dailies to get your laurel. Not doing them would actually lock you out of stats. In contrast, the new dailies give only ap and activity specific rewards. Furthermore, the old old dailies took much more time to complete than the current ones.

Old old system? The old-old system didn’t have Laurels. Just Karma jugs. And before that, there was nothing.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Filaha.1678:

The actual objective facts of the current system is that for some effort, you get more rewards.

The actual results is that with same effort, you get zero APs.

No, the actual result is me logging in, doing twenty minutes of work, and getting 10 AP instead of 5 AP two days in a row. And being able to blow off the other days I don’t feel like it without losing Coins or Laurels. Why is it people seem to think it’s simply not possible to get it done as fast or faster . . . ?

Once more, I’m going to throw my vote for “really should have never overhauled the system for Dailies in the first place” and possibly never have introduced Laurels as a thing. Of course, I also think achievements are a stupid arbitrary thing in the first place.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Just as what we have now isn’t better for everyone now.

Yeah, but I suspect no matter what they do, it’ll always be someone standing up and going “no, this doesn’t work for me, you have to change it”.

Why? I’m going to go with experience and precedent.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Filaha.1678:

3 dailies gets you the AP of 10 dailies previous.
You also get the bonus box rewards.
On top of the daily log-in rewards.

How is that less?

It’s not, unless you ignore the fact that one has to do the dailies (for 10AP) instead of playing the game as they liked (for 5-8AP)… and – surprise! – you are conveniently ignoring that fact.

. . . and what about those days where the other Dailies were nothing I wanted to do? But if I wanted the AP/Laurels/Coins, well, go forth and don’t spend your time doing crafting. Instead, you need to go do events. Or group events. Those did come up, and I would have to hang up doing anything else since I stink at PvP and often am on past prime time for WvW to get in on that.

So, let’s see . . . how about that situation? I know I ran into it where I was basically “errrrgh, right . . . well either Dailies or trying to earn me some Geodes . . .”

That’s a better situation than this one, where I can just ignore the Dailies since all they are are AP now?

fireflyry.7023:

lol

I expect the imminent arrival of veteran D&D players at any second.RUNNN!!!!

I should be honest, that club? Never did D&D since it was held at a Catholic school. They barely did MTG, except as a filler when two or three people were stuck outside of another game. But for the most part we found other games to play.

. . . most of them I can’t find anymore.

Notably also, D&D players could be said to approach their play groups with similar dedications to a job (and sometimes more than their job – the GM has a lot of work to do to set up a campaign or even a one-shot adventure and have it turn out well). So, really, I find it amusing to hear the derision about treating a game like a job . . .

Oh, and if you want to say video games are different? Try looking up Achievement Hunter. (Warning – mature content from about four to nine guys.) They treat games as their job. And it produces some of the outright funniest kittykat stuff I’ve seen.

. . . if it’s anything like my after-school Gaming Club I did for a year in High School? Yes . . .

They always wanted to play Nuclear War. I hated playing it. I always jumped in, because it was better to play than be left out.

Ben K.6238:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Carbon Footprint.3421:

I miss Ambient Killer. That was my single most favorite daily.

I felt really really guilty about that one. Who smites bunnies?

Surely not I.

But seriously, lighting bunnies up is immensely satisfying – and tasty besides.

As long as you eat what you kill.

. . . even the Risen Bunnies, yes.

retsuya.4708:

They keep changing the things people like and don’t change the things people complain about.

In retort: The last batch of major ranger changes, which gave them mostly positive effects to the point people were claiming for a while they were OP.