Guild Wars 2

You´re right, but how does this alter my level of recognition for a raid only reward?
It is basically the same reasoning for me that LucosTheDutch already stated so fittingly:
Oh, you managed to complete the raid. Big whoop, anyone who has a guild of like minded friends and a lot of time for tries/guides can do it.
Of course this would come first on the things he listed in terms of difficulty, but the reasoning stays the same.I would not even agree with the idea that anybody(slow, old, young, disabled etc etc) can do it, but let´s just assume it for the sake of a general feeling.

I also saw how people reacted on the electro blue gift for 3 year old players toons, and it was actually hillarious to watch how people clutched to a claim for something that had been invalidated over night. This is the kind of false fame I was writing about, with a healthy dose of entitlement and a pinch of I waited too long and screwed up feeling.

And for the ghastly grinning shield, a friendly nod and a smile because I remember people falling all over each over in an attempt to get one. Yes, it is rare, and people are glad if they somehow get it. Wasn´t it a RNG item? I don´t really remember much from it, only when a lucky guy posted it in the map chat then and when.
And again:
Oh, you managed to get the ghastly grinning Shield. Big whoop, anyone who was at the halloween event 2013 could have dropped it.

As long as Anet does not list people or guilds in meaningful categories(not pvp tables with private servers or something like that) and rankings, any claim of fame is weak at best in GW2 for me personally.

Edit: You can also prove that you were at the Halloween event if you have the witch outfit. Was available for corn or something, and shows you being there as good as the ghastly grinning shield.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Torolan.5816:

maddoctor.2738:

Actually you do. Players with higher skill want recognition for it, I know if you’ve never tried to better yourself you won’t get it, if you are always happy to be mediocre and average, but if you ever try to do that something more in a game, you will understand.

They may want it, but they will never get it. At least not from people like me. Pretty surprised about this argument to be honest.

I am actually the target of good natured puns from my fellow guildies with my heavy ascended armor because it looks a little like the bottom of sexy Flanders in that iron trouser, and up until the introduction of legendary armor this is the best armor available.
I also have any fractal success since ages. You won´t catch me parading this around when new people come in to play a fractal with me. I don´t care if they know about that, and they should not care too.

If people are so easily influencable that you can actually impress them with your shiny fractal back, legendary or similar rare item, I know they have a long way to go and smile at their efforts.

You say that, but I’m 100% certain that subconsciously you definitely do give recognition to people with impressive titles, impressive-looking armors, rare weapons or rare minis.

If you see someone with a full set of fractal weapons and the fractal backpiece, you’ll definitely notice it. You might not think “wow, that player is so good”, but you’ll definitely think “huh, that guy has a ton of fractal skins, he probably plays fractals a lot”.

Of course, nothing in GW2 is actually hard to get, so this (subconscious) sensation of seeing someone with impressive gear is not very present right now in GW2. Which is one of the issues of GW2. Skilled and dedicated players want recognition for their achievements but aren’t getting any because there is no way for them to show off their accomplishments other than maybe a title and a finisher. On top of that there really isn’t any hard content in GW2 right now, so there isn’t really much to brag about anyway.
So you managed to beat fractals at lvl 50? Big whoop. Anyone who isn’t senile can do that with a little practice and a proper team-comp.
Oh you managed to get to rank 80 in PvP? Big whoop, anyone who spends enough time in PvP can do that, even people who lose most of their matches.
Oh your server is the number 1 in WvW? Yeah, tell me more about how you outnumbered and outzerged the other servers.
Oh you have a legendary and full set of ascended armor? Good job, I’m sure mindlessly grinding your butt off was hella fun. Or did you use your credit-card?

It is a known fact that GW2 is not a very rewarding game and does not encourage people to try new things or challenge themselves. This would be fine if GW2 was an sandbox MMO, but it isn’t. It’s a themepark MMO, but it doesn’t have any interesting attractions for those who seek a real thrill. Right now GW2 is more like a kindergarten playground, not a proper themepark.

But I digress. Luckily, it does seem like GW2 is taking a step in the right direction with HoT. Challenging raids and exclusive rewards does sound like fun to me. It remains to be seen however how challenging these “challenging raids” really are.

I, as you and every other human on planet earth subconsciously saves everything that happens to us. So if a title, value or deed does not sit very high in my personal list of priorities, it will quickly sink in the list of things I actively remember. My claim to fame and recognition by strangers has severely weakened over time, so it sits really low on my list of priorities.

If you only mean by recognition that I give these guys a friendly nod and a good job, then yes, I do this of course.

That is exactly the point, I most of the time don´t want it, and if I do, I put effort into it. If you already have it, good for you, but why should I recognize you for this instead of recognizing you as a person?

I dispute the claim that every gamer with a certain AP, PvP rank, world rank, fractal level seeks recognition as motivation, or is a lazy bum or a smartypants if he is willing to wait that things get more accessible for him because he does not like the first content it is in. Parading around was maybe a little bit harsh, but if you don´t show your stuff, nobody will recognize it.

I would have had spite for this if I would not take the effort serious you have put in to get your legendary armor by not saying good job in chat or TS. If this already is the type of recognition you mean, then yes, I would recognize you.

maddoctor.2738:

Yes I know there are different kinds of people. Of course there are people like you who spite others when they have something you can’t get. Instead of trying to get it themselves.

Spite? Where did I spite others with smiling politely at them when they parade their stuff? What should I do instead, clap and congratulate them for their effort or talent in something I don´t want to put effort in or suck at? Why? Should they also applaud me when I can do something they can´t? Why should they do this?

I would not actually call it respectable, but tolerable and valuable. A litlte bit like a mercenary you want in your army for a short amount of time to spearhead something, and then both parties part ways with no bad blood between them.

maddoctor.2738:

Actually you do. Players with higher skill want recognition for it, I know if you’ve never tried to better yourself you won’t get it, if you are always happy to be mediocre and average, but if you ever try to do that something more in a game, you will understand.

They may want it, but they will never get it. At least not from people like me. Pretty surprised about this argument to be honest.

I am actually the target of good natured puns from my fellow guildies with my heavy ascended armor because it looks a little like the bottom of sexy Flanders in that iron trouser, and up until the introduction of legendary armor this is the best armor available.
I also have any fractal success since ages. You won´t catch me parading this around when new people come in to play a fractal with me. I don´t care if they know about that, and they should not care too.

If people are so easily influencable that you can actually impress them with your shiny fractal back, legendary or similar rare item, I know they have a long way to go and smile at their efforts.

SixxxZ.4317:

Ok so you release the season 1 living world special items that you needed to be playing at that time to receive those items, but you only release certain items i.e. fused gauntlets and the selfless potion. Why haven’t you released the other skins? I felt like it was cool when I had skins like the fused gauntlets and selfless potion but now that everyone can get them again even for a short time aren’t so special anymore are they? If you plan on releasing EVERY single skin this way that would be fine but it does not look like anytime soon ill be able to get shattered holographic wings, fleshy wings or any of the rest of the achievement only skins from past events also Super Adventurer Box Skins and Finisher, I mean come on its harder to get a Fused weapon skin then it is to make a legendary at least make some similar or better looking black lion weapons instead of these crappy past 6-8 releases of them. It would cost 1000$+ to get one even if you saved up 1000g already. I honestly thought the Selfless potion would be the LAST thing you would release or at least all the skins before it first. Well I guess GW2 team likes 3 year veterans who played GW1 and GW2 since they were first released to feel like they cant get anything new because it costs real life money or who knows how long of playing 6 hours+ every day to get enough to buy a new skin or never have that skin even after patiently waiting a year or 2 not to mention the achievement skins, Anet its so lame that the only new skins released in the past year that was actually cool looking was hellfire armor and NOBODY can EVER get the full set even after 6 years I’m sure. So the players who play this game for mostly looks and cosmetic stuff should just quit because you’ll never get anything new unless you pay real life money or wait for 3-6 MORE years. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on this game and I’m just saying, what a waste of every single penny.

Thanks, not.

What would someone like you do with the SELFLESS potion anyway? OP, your position is nearly as salty as the people that had electro blue for sale and were salty when it came out for free for some people^^

Even if raiders were 10% of the general population how it was in LoTR as it seems, common sense would dictate that you give it SOME attention, and to add a special attraction in them to lure people in and try it. SOME. Please don´t forget that the Raid population does not necessarily come from the outside only, but could also come from already existing WvW, PvP and PvE players. Of course you can say that X accounts who registered after raids were inserted have raided so it more or less drew people in, but there are so many variable playmodes there that you can only make a guess and not a very good actual number how much is the drawing and staying power of raids. Add to that that Anet has a strange love affair with PvP, so I guess it won´t be priority Nr 1 for long and raiders will realize this and move on.
This is now the time for raiders, their 10% of the development time. Good for them, not so good for all the other people. As soon as the novelty wears off, Anet will make the first raid easier anyway or drop them from the schedule that has to be updated and enlarged, so there is probably no need to be worried.

And, oh yeah, we need tear buckets then too.^^

bladex.9502:

Ever since the launch of f2p it has been impossible to sell dungeon paths for lower level dungeons (AC, CM) without tons of new players joining without reading the LFG.
These said f2p players can’t send gold or items to someone, so they are not even able to buy a dungeon path.

Selling dungeon paths is something that is acknowledged and allowed by Anet, so I think there should be filters that prevent certain people from joining groups.
This doesn’t only apply to selling dungeons, but also to normal LFGs which frequently get joined by low level f2p people, even tho the LFG specifically asked for someone thats level 80.

It would at least be reasonable to prevent people from joining your group after they have been kicked once, since I had people join my party over and over after being kicked repeatedly, making it impossible to let other people that have genuine interest join.

F2p ruined a big part of this game for me, and I find it sad that people that play this game for free negatively influence people like me, and lots of others, that payed 100+ euros for it

I want to have some sympathy for you, really. But I simply can´t. If you were selling hard to get stuff like Arah and Aetherpath or paths where people that play longer fail if not properly equipped or prepared that are rarely done like the various SoE paths, you would have my sympathy.

And aside from that, a gray market is a gray market and can not except protection by the authority. If the tide turns against you, crafty vendors in shady stuff change their business modeol. If you sold a can of oil yesterday and tomorrow a farmer digs up oil in the town you live, you sell crops instead.

So you obviously can´t win the original Basketball trophy by playing soccer. Granted, taken as fact, at least by me.

You also can obviously buy a Basketball trophy which is made exactly of the same materials as the original one if you put enough money on the table. You can´t buy the original one if you´re not the owner of the wininng team and sometimes not even then, it´s one of a kind.

But the type of trophy is for sale so that you can carry it around and pretend that you are a basketball champion. The NBA for example would be stupid if they made their merchandise only for actual Basketball players and not the couch basketballers that could not differentiate between a basketball and a football if they were hit bei either straight in the face.

So what does this mean?
Anet would be ill advised to keep the rewards exclusive to raids for too long, and they already showed that they are willing to divide loot this way with PvP and the lumi armor. Exclusivity sells, but it is just sustainable and not very grwoth inducing in the long run. It´s the companies that sell large quantities of cheap stuff or electronical garbage like Apple, Walmart or H&M that are making the bigger money. There are only limited quantities of people that can afford exclusive stuff, and even less people that can win exclusive stuff, and as soon as the first guilds managed to cut their teeth in the raid, exclusivity will sink and availability will rise in time.

tl:dr The NBA trophy itself is one of a kind and impossible to own except for winning it by playing basketball. A copy of the NBA trophy is always available in your local sports store and sells like hot cake if your team win the original.
Although not everybody can win a hall of fame ring by playing basketball, you can buy one from a broke legend player, taking nothing from it´s value but maybe something of it´s fame.

Edit: A basketball player is probably not mad that people buy his jerseys, shoes, a copy of the trophy or his autograph, so the cry for keeping rewards exclusive for all times is unfounded.
I am pretty sure that guys like Michael Jordan, John Madden, Oliver Khan, Lionell Messi or Usain Bolt could not care less if you own a copy of their world trophy from 1999, a piece of the WM grass from 1990 or something like that.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Windsagio.1340:

Even more, we know from the nature of raids as multi-group time-locked content there will be extra barriers to access as compared to other game modes.

To go all absurdum, it would be like saying “the precursor requires that you beat Liandri” All the other bits are the same, but that one part being outside the access of a huge% of players makes it much much less accessible to players.

~~~

The somewhat irksome thing here is that it’s almost certainly not going to be difficulty (as in Liandri), but rather straight up logistical limitations.

Which goes back to the non-reward issue: They promised hard content, they gave us less-accessible content.

Why is logistical difficulty not a valid form of difficulty in your example? In the same way the Liandri aspect of the fight is a combination of reflexes,learning the positioning and dps. Co-coordinating a group of 10 players in a highly organized fashion is a form of challenge and difficulty by itself.

Probably because GW2 was not a hotel manager game where someone has the role of entertainer, with his goal being to herd vacationers to participate in such stupid activities as water jogging.
It was supposedly also not the office of unemployment where clerks try to find a suitable job or enforce the laws of your given country upon you.

I replaced “is” with “was” while typing this, realizing that we now are on the way of getting both a hotel manager game and the office of unemployment all at once with this risen level of organization required.

Can´t believe that I write this, but I am with maddoctor in this one. You can indeed tank good even with cloth wearing characters here if you know how to do it, the heavy armor guys can just makie it in a more forgiving way for the new player.

I also actually should be excited that Anet gives players that like tank and heal orniented toons new chances with raids, if it did not reek so much of needed effort to do a raid that gives me headdaches. I don´t mind and even like filling both of the more unwanted roles if you explain the boss mechanic really, really slow to me and swallow your urge to yell at people that don´t crunch numbers and so don´t get it at the first explanation. That´s probably, aside from actual comradrie and funny stuff in TS, the reason to join guilds in any MMO.

PopeUrban.2578:

• Special Snowflake: One player is designated the Special Snowflake. All other players can not deal damage. The Special snowflake can not heal or grant boons. When the entire party leaves combat, a new player becomes the Special Snowflake at random.

This is great. Especially if you´re not a zerker.^^

As far as I can remember it does not matter which camp you had choosen, you get access to special items once things get heated in the game. It wasn´t important if you were an old camp, new camp or swamp camp guy for this, that I can remember well.

Just that I get you right here, what about Gothic 1?
There are 3 camps, you can join the camp you want. Each has different motivations, posibilities and goals until the endgame of Gothic 1 begins.
Have you not 3 different way to get to the endgame then?

In a pen and paper, you can get a specific item in different ways if the DM allows it. You could find an ally that the owner of the items owns a substantial favor and agrees to part with it if X is done for him.
You could equal this with not doing the initial content but working or paying for it.

And maybe I get this wrong, but isn´t your scenario invalidated in every scenario that has factions which share the same loot table, but have other goals to achieve? You can either grid for points or try to take it from the faction by force. But I have to admit I can´t name a good example because GW2 is the only RPG I play on the computer, I am usually more of a war games player.

How about GW2?
Once you had made all necessary steps of a given episode of ls2, you can always buy the same ascended jewelry from vendors in SW for a pocket change.
Following this model you would have to do the raid once before you can access the gear by grinding it in the open world.
Stone Insects can also be gained through PvP or opening chests.

Maybe not the answer you were looking for, but I have not played enough enough online games beside GW2 to say that game X holds this or that.

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

Huh? The one ring is as much a RNG item as a special item. It can evidently be obtained by:
a) defeating Sauron
b) killing a human warlord
c) go fishing with your friend
d) take it out of the hands of a halfling and his bulky friend
e) defeating a creature that is half rat, half halfling
Put that on top of the description that the ring wanders from wearer to wearer in an attempt to reunite with Sauron, and yes, a random Goblin could have carried him at some point.^^

Another one the misses the point entirely.
And for the silly one ring example you still can’t get it from multiple content at the same time. When it was on Sauron’s hand you couldn’t get it by fishing. Which is the whole point you and others intentionally miss.

Specific rewards behind specific content, it’s how the entire RPG industry work and always worked like. And you want to joke around find me a true RPG where it’s possible to get an item from multiple types of content.

Oh yes, I forgot. When it was on Saurons finger, you could only get it with a desperate swing of a broken sword that was wielded by a defeated king in the middle of the biggest zerg available in Middle Earth, the Elf/Human coalition. That indeed loudly screams 10 man raid content for me…

How about the Rattlesnake battleship in eve online? It was once a gem of pure rarity for the rich and vain, but was quickly made accesible for a faction in the form of the copied scorpion battleship and finally opened to the broad public with the opening of the pirate facton to players. Granted, the Rattlesnake was not one of a kind, but your copied raid ring would be neither as this is indeed impossible in an online game if you are not absolutely unforgiving and invalidate your raid by saying that this ring will drop only one, to the first lucky person that happens to down the last boss.

Ok, then let´s indeed play a little bait and switch here.

Let´s assume that GW2 indeed is a meal. Open world is the flesh, raids are the vegetables, dungeons and fractals are candy bars wvw and pvp are corn flakes and sweets.
I personaly, like flesh, some candy bars and sweets, but I´ll eat a bowl of cornflakes then and when and also eat my vegetables if they are cooked in a certain way. Te largest majority of children is like me in this stuff, I know it because I see them every day, making long faces as I do inwardly too when vegetables are on the table.
Maybe you are a vegetables loving child. I know that they also exist, I see them every day with my own eyes.

To strengthen my point, I could say that meat was served longest in GW2, and so it should be served most and first as most persons reserved tables in this particular restaurant for this type of food, aka content.
You could reply that people got sick of meat and asked for vegetables.
We would both be right.

The debatable point, which I also broadly argued with or against maddoctor for example, is
a) have enough people asked for vegetables to justify the cook ordering large numbers of cucumbers and melons
b) should the people that have asked for cucumber get only a little golden star in their book, or a dessert for being a good boy and asking for vegetables
c) is Anet a Texan all you can Eat Steak Ranch or a French Noble Restaurant and, if it is the first one, does it want to shed that mantle and become a French Noble Restaurant with naughty and highnosed waitresses instead of tramply girls with big, uhm, melons…^^

So if you eat a wagonload of melons and are still malnourished, you win this argument?^^

Lyp Sao.1375:

ah, now I understand. Only my own Asura are lovely (hug them, beautiful one).

-

Thanks a lot, I forgot that they can also serve as an example for a puppet haircut ^^

Seera.5916:

You can’t claim in one instance that a meal can be analogous to a game and then tell someone else that it can’t be. You said food a child hates. 9 times out of 10, that food is a vegetable. Can you come up with a food that a parent may serve at dinner that has no nutritional value? If not, then you can’t claim raids are a nutrient free food. Not in your analogy of a dinner with a food a child hates.

A raw cucumber has 56 kcal per 100 g. A healthy man needs 8000 kcal(2000 kj) to hold his weight or 4800 kcal to avoid malnourishment. So a cucumber is basically just solid, dirty water. Best of luck with eating so much cucumber that you don´t starve or are at least not malnourished. And I know forst hand that many children hate cucumber.
A melon has 72 kcal per 100 g. Although love them, they are also solid, dirty water from a nutrition point of view.
So either if you hate cucumber or love melons, their nutrition value alone is not enough to keep a man alive.

And for those of you that think something dirty with cucumber and melons: Tsk tsk, naughty! ^^

Sadly not.

But rejoice, I can still see them in some useful capacity though:
-Background dancers when “I´m blue” from Eiffel 65 is played
-Bait for a nearly bald wizard
-Kind of a stool where you put your drink on
-A blue man group tribute act
-Cheap laborers whenever a mushroom village is built
-Destroyer bait
-A dumbo look alike contest
-Replacements for the flying apes of the wizard of Oz

I alwas knew that Asura are just flappy eared smurfs. So please Anet, the jig is up, we all laughed pretty hard when you introduced them. Now you can sit them on the backseat where they belong and make Tengu playable please!

“This shameless Anti Asura and Pro Tengu Message was brought to you by, well, me.”
^^

maddoctor.2738:

That reward wasn’t behind “random” farming like you want to do in GW2 to get your legendary armor. To get that ring someone will have to find said cave. It’s still a reward behind content, which is the whole point. Thank you for proving my point.

It was not a special cave, it was just an ordinary cave, it just happened to have a great treasure as a random drop. Again, if you think that proves your point, then you must have a very weak point.

[/quote]

Huh? The one ring is as much a RNG item as a special item. It can evidently be obtained by:
a) defeating Sauron
b) killing a human warlord
c) go fishing with your friend
d) take it out of the hands of a halfling and his bulky friend
e) defeating a creature that is half rat, half halfling
Put that on top of the description that the ring wanders from wearer to wearer in an attempt to reunite with Sauron, and yes, a random Goblin could have carried him at some point.^^

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

A raid is, from a point of lore, as uninteresting to me as a dungeon after I have seen it´s cinematics once. The story always stays the same, no progression for me there, just a number of items to collect. Fractals kind of have a privileged status for me there as they are only random islands from the mists and let you have a glimpse in the past.

And doing SW, DT, or any of the LS1 dynamic events more than once was so much more interesting to you from a lore point? Doing the Battle for LA more than once didn’t make any lore sense, killing the Triple Trouble Wurm, destroying the Marionette, cleansing the Tower of Nightmares, fighting an invasion by Scarlet’s minions etc was so much better to you than dungeons?

To make SW again makes sense lore wise if you don´t fight any legends or vinewraith, it is an embattled place at the border to the realm of Mordremoth. You could even argue that it makes sense to make Vinewraith again because it is a plant that can sprout again, but this is indeed a little far fetched.
Fighting against a scarlet invasion makes sense if it are not the same minions attacking over and over. As the places were always different where they attacked and the mob combination was always different, you could reasoanbly believe that it were not the same monions over and over again.
Triple Trouble, Tequatl, Shatterer, Jormag and any other, named mob does indeed not make sense more than once lore wise, but that does not negate my argument that it is the same with raids. I still did them quite regularly for a time because they could be made in 10 minutes or less, but never for a specific, for example Jormag only item. And not because I did not have the time else wise, I just did not want to commit an hour to making a whole round of world bosses, so we´re back at casual vs organized game again.
Individual parts of LS 1 indeed lost their magic to me after they were done, but that did not negate them being great while they were fresh. I see it lorewise the same with a raid. I do it once, get the item, look the cinematics, done. Next content please.

I don´t know about your Pen and Paper group, but my players regularly loot random mobs for weapons and money because they are greedy and most of the creatures I use are classical fantasy figures of the poorer kind like Bulettes, shambling mounds, bandit captains, slavers, dark Knights etc etc.
I avoid money hoarding villains in general because these creatures completely kill an economy after their hoard is divided under the players, just take a look at what most regular things in a PHB costs and tell me how many lifestock you could buy with a dragon hoard. With a lot of money, you face players raising an army or the good old Zombie in the Box trick to clear dungeons without much effort and the authorities looking away because they are bribed with the riches.

We´ll see then how many casuals are really at home in GW2. I am really anxious to see how this plays out. I even understand your point. I guess I probably just never was the kind of guy that wanted to be the first under equals and found that living story 1 was giving me what i was looking for, a dynamic world that made me part of the battle group that brought Scarlet down.

A raid is, from a point of lore, as uninteresting to me as a dungeon after I have seen it´s cinematics once. The story always stays the same, no progression for me there, just a number of items to collect. Fractals kind of have a privileged status for me there as they are only random islands from the mists and let you have a glimpse in the past.

As with most things, that easily swings back at the Dungeon Master.
According to this logic, every random Goblin Minion has to drop something as he has a sword, club, some kind of armor and maybe a handfull of stolen coins.

Make it that every trash mob drops appropriate equipment he displays wearing (Bandits and Centaurs have weapons, Dredge have Armor etc etc), and the analogy you made is indeed hard to deconstruct. But sadly, they don´t follow this rule to save the economy, so it´s a little bit of cherry picking.

it would also stand when there is only ONE item ever to obtain, because the ONE wizard has only ONE Item. But again, everybody that does the content gets a copy of the supposed regular item, requiring you to suspend your urge to call fool on the system.

Conski Deshan.2057:

The money analogy doesn’t really work in the fantasy world setting.
Think of it as , The magical item is only equip-able by those it sees as worthy and it set raid A , as the test for worthiness. Or something along those lines.
Bottom line the games a series of tests and challenges: you pass test A you get item A you pass test B you get item B, being able to pass test B does not and never will give you item A because test B is not test A and they are not equatable.
The whole “put equal effort” in is bull , if test A is jump 10 feet in the air, I don’t care how far you can swim or whatever else you can do, because that’s not jumping 10 feet in the air.

As to your example
Capable of minding and developing a child without damage or loss of life = 90%~ of the adult population
Capable of managing a multinational company in a profitable and sustainable way = 1%~ of the adult population.
The man minding the children is easily replaceable and the skill is widely available, due to supply and demand his position is valued less.
The woman acting as CEO of a fortune 500 company or the like has a rarer skill it is in high demand and slow supply so the value of her position is higher.
I.E part of the basis for capitalism supply and demand.

You can´t get lucky to get the item of a raid in open world, they are only in raids.
You can´t win the football championships if you are not part of the winning team.
You can get lucky and find a precursor from a trash mob.
You can win a car in RL without putting much effort into it.
The central question here is, is GW2 more of a street full of common people or the olympic village? And will the regular people pay by buying the game to watch the athletes play the game?

Regarding the CEO and the kindergarten teacher, ask 10 people on the street what they think about it, and you will get 15 opinions. Ask attac and they´ll shower you with arguments why the CEO is vastly overpaid. Ask the same question with a conservative, economy friendly political party and you will see them swarm out and shower you with arguments why the CEO is worth the money.
Ask the communal government if the kindergarten teacher is underpaid, and they will fight tooth and nail to prove that they are not underpaid and they could not pay more in any way.
Ask teachers and parents the same question and you will have to wade through arguments why education is important and the kindergarten teacher should not be forced to build programs for their children that involve begging for every penny from thier superiors.

The basis for manchester capitalism is indeed supply and demand only, the more social marekting models have long ago seen that this is not the case if the corporations loose money because they are stupid. Big, big banks came sniveling and groveling to states when their house of cards was blown away. i would have hesitated to use this argument before the world economy took a dive some years ago, but now I feel completely comfortable with it because the biggest CEOs have proven that they basically have no idea what they are doing and most of them don´t even care.

And regular, non-rich people could not just have inherited, won it on the lottery or have lend the car because of…?

Everything revolving around money and people deserving it is a highly unstable ground to move on when you try to argue for exclusive rewards. Does a CEO of a company really deserve to make so much more money than the friendly kindergarten teacher that takes care of your kids?

Canakun.8031:

I made my initial analogy while walking, on my phone. I appreciate that it has flaws.
The point I’m trying to make that if two people have equal access to something, but only one of them is willing to do the task required to get it, only that person is entitled to the thing. The other person can’t flounce and cry and scream and demand it be handed to them the way they want it to be handed to them. They just don’t get it. They can stand themselves up and do the task required to get the thing, and it will likely be waiting there for them for a long long time, but until that happens, they don’t get the thing.

The people in this thread demanding they get raid rewards for doing open world content are that second person collapsing to the ground, demanding they be handed something, just because person 1 has it, despite the fact that person 1 actually did the task required to get it.
They are the younger sibling, refusing to eat their (perfectly healthy, nutritional, and tasty) dinner, yet screaming and complaining and flailing and demanding they have dessert, just because big brother already has his.

The thing that they want is there. It’s been put in the game so that they can have it. They just need to get over themselves and do what’s necessary.

I think the really contestable part of your argument is for me that everyone can do the raid if he can put the ressources and time into it, like you can do when you eat.

But raiding is not as easy as eating, and not as hard as higher mathematics. The largest majority of humans can count to three, but only the tinest minority can do mathematics at the highest level.
For you, raiding is probably near simple counting and easily in the reach of everyone if they really try.
For me, raiding is more of a junior college level thing and out of the reach of someone who barely managed to make a high school diploma.
Therefore, the real questions for me are:
Is it justified that high school diploma graduates have to fight for the same jobs as college level graduates? Of course not.
Is it justified that the college guy earns more money? Of course.
Should there be an extra currency for you just because you are a college guy? Of course not.

You would be right if all people were more or less the same in certain parameters, but they are not.

As you probably also noticed, I am not a fan of raids in general, but I am also generally willing to give them a try again in GW2, mainly because my guild mates demand it.^^

Offair.2563:

I would shoot a cannon too on a 1v1 just to teach them to duel on one of the many desolated spots people can duel at. Fighting next to a keep that is under attack then whining about being interupted LOL.

^^This. Is someone makes a duell at in this case the bay keep, he deserves to be shot, stabbed or becoming steamrolled by the next zerg. Preferably best finished with the dancing Quaggan finisher…

Canakun.8031:

But we aren’t talking about inability, we’re talking about refusal.
If you’re unable to move your character, use your characters skills, dodge roll, jump, press keys, target an opponent, then I’ll agree that you have an inability to complete raid content – but you also have an inability to play Guild Wars 2 at all. Arguably that’s all you need to do in order to complete raid content, and since we don’t know enough that would suggest otherwise, I’d suggest there’s no point even complaining about it.

The issue people are having is that the rewards are gated behind content that they don’t want to do (they don’t even know what the content looks like, they just see the word raid and suddenly spit the dummy), not that they are unable to do it. That’s fine. If they refuse to do content, and they want to constantly go on and on about how they’re refusing to do the content, cool. That’s fine. But they don’t get dessert.

If something has happened to the child that has made them physically incapable of consumption, then something is medically wrong with that child and they shouldn’t be at the dinner table, they should be at a hospital.

But raids are supposed to be hard to eat. So let´s assume for now that a meal that is a raid is by definition spicy. With all things spicy, this is a highly variable term. There are people that would say a simple sausage is already spicy, while others think of a green pepper only beginning to be spicy.

So assuming from the point that I maybe am severely hindered but not that ill that a hospital would let me go on station there(thinking about diabetes for example): If I am able to eat a sausage, am I also able to eat a Texan Firefighter Chilly?

Of course there is something that probably everyone heard when at the table at home: Just try it before you say you don´t like it.
That is something I can fully agree with. But only unreasonable parents force their children over and over again to eat the same vegetable because they happen to like it themselves, hoping that finally, maybe the day before the children leave the care of their parents, they will start to like it. This works as good for my point as it does for yours, raiders were fed open world for years. So if raids turn out to be not the success Anet is looking for, would you agree that they, as reasonable parents, should try to feed us something else to get our sweets we all want?

Canakun.8031:

I prefer the following analogy (I’ll keep it food themed):

A child wants dessert.
They must eat their dinner before they can receive that dessert.
Their older sibling is provided the same set of rules for getting their dessert – that they must first eat their dinner. The older sibling does so, and does it faster because they are better at handling cutlery, or they enjoyed their dinner a bit more, and so they get their dessert.

You see?
If you want your dessert, you’re gonna need to eat your dinner first.

And if you want your legendary armor, you’re gonna need to complete your raid first. Just like older sibling did.

And again, I agree with that. But that is not my point at all.
I will stay with your analogy and throw in that the younger sibling has maybe a slow metabolism and so prefers food with much sugar because a piece of dark bread will rummage in it´s belly for hours. Not a problem at all until here, he just takes a little time to do it. This is the group of people that can do, but won´t necessarily do it.
But let´s say you try to serve him a salty meal with him being allergic to salt. He won´t eat it, because he simply can´t. This would be the group of people who simply can´t do it, even if they wanted to do it.
Should the younger sibling not receive a desert because he was unable, not unwilling, to diggest the salty meal that is prerequisite for the dessert?

I am really curious if Anet will someday really give in to these mount complains, and Colin comes to the desk with a lobster red head, screaming in the microphone:
“OK, HERE ARE YOUR SHINY HORSES, COMPLETELY WITH A STABLE BESIDE YOUR OWN HOUSE! HAPPY NOW? ANYTHING ELSE WE CAN DO FOR YOU?”

That would be awesome.^^

Ghotistyx.6942:

Y’all should’ve been there during the vanilla beta. People had the exact same complaints about the basic mobs in Queensdale and other starter areas. It’s likely the unfamiliarity that’s the big kicker. Once people are more familiar with these new mobs, people will get through them just fine. Part of the idea behind these mobs is that being a berserker should be scary. Early launch Orr was a scary place for everyone, even in soldiers, but people eventually got used to it. Now granted, mobs in general were weakened, and Orr was hit twice, so nothing is nearly as scary as they were at launch.

Indeed, whole zergs were easily wipped by life sapping champion ghosts that dominated the field with 1,5K+ range abilities. Or the illusionary gorilla champion, that mob was nothing than scarily brutal. People waited for hours to try Grenth again and again, until crafty guys found out that five peole can make Grenth much easier. then fifty.

Canakun.8031:

You don’t seem to be understanding this too well.
Rewards aren’t gated to certain people. They are gated to certain content.

EVERY. SINGLE. PLAYER. Will have an equal opportunity to earn the legendary raid armor set.
If you don’t want to do that content? Oops. Too bad for you. No legendary raid armor set.

Maybe you have seen this too at some restaurants:
No shirt, no shoes, no service.

In this case, this means that everybody does NOT have the same opportunities. Some types of people are excluded by default(old, very young, disabled, slow in general), some have to have all the stars align for them to make it happen(the curiously particulary despised group of working dads and moms, guildless, the non comformists, solo players, small guild players, the perceived as worthless class players, the right class but wrong style of play gamers) and some simply have the necessary time and commitment to do it.

Oh wait, can i hear you say, the Average Joe with 2 kids, bills, normal friends, a house in need of repair and a wife can of course make raids! All he has to do is organize his guild in a low friday night and practice, practice, practice until he makes it in the course of some weeks. It´s entirely his fault if he does not invest the time or motivation needed for it because he is lazy or has other duties, then the raid is just not for him.

Funnily, this is even the truth. But that truth does not help Anet in the slightest when the Average Joe outnumbers Hardcore Hans.
Some years ago, I read an article that the most sold game in my country in Central Europe was indeed an agricultural truck driver simulator. The article stated that even grown men still love to play with big machines, so construction and agricultural games sell like crazy.

tl;dr : Raids are now a reality, best of luck with it, but the premise that everyone has equal opportunities to make them is at least highly debatable.

Windsagio.1340:

Said this in another thread, it’s still true.

Every exclusive reward is another sign that Anet thinks most players won’t raid without being “incentivized”.

If fractals or dungeons would not offer gold, skins or tokens, people would make the story once and every explorable path also only once to look at the cinematics and maybe for the AR. Maybe a few more times when people are new in the game, join the guild and the friendly guild organizer needs a helpful and friendly person to fill up the group.

I don´t know if that is a pro or con raid argument to be honest. My first impression is that a raid here still looks like a lot of work. You better have TS, need 10 people that know what to do and it will take some time no matter how good you do it. Why take the pains of organizing that more often than after the first time you beat it if not for new people that have not seen it before?
Challenge and Improvement are the counter arguments for this, and rather good ones to be honest. Once you have bested the content, you either set yourself subgoals like beating it faster, with X happening or not etc etc. But someday the well of subgoals has run dry, and the content loses any worth if there is nothing exclusively sellable or usable in it. And even with that mindset, if the raid stays alone for too long, it will have lose it´s magic on the hardest raider types by then.

The problem seems to me that Anet has to fill the bucket of raids or any other content more quickly than even the more active raiders can consume it, and I highly dobt that they are able to do that.

Tl;dr Raids are hard and take time, of course most people need to be attracted with shinies to do them.

Maybe you are asking yourself a question right now:
“Did I pay real money to be a guinea pig running through a maze without even getting the goodie at the end?”
Shockingly, the answer is yes!

Of course you could calm yourself if you think that you would have bought and played the game anyway, but within the beta days, you´re a guinea pig.^^

Hm, ok, lets drive that train of thought for a little bit.

So it would have been the same for two gentlemen who have a dispute in the lets say, early 18th century, to
a) duel for their honor
b) one of the gentlemen asking the other gentleman if he has some money for him
to settle their dispute in socially acceptable ways, and people from the society around them would say:
“Oh Lord Highnose, did you see how expertly and repeatedly Lord X asked Lord Y for money yesterday? That was marvelous!”

Really? I mean, there is still something as being appropriate for a given reason.

runeblade.7514:

Would you be driven away when XX Roxxxor XX ask you to give him gold? Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.

Dueling = Game feature
Begging for gold = Not a game feature

See the difference? If it an official feature, how could I justify to hang someone in for using it? Spamming probably if it happens too often from the same person, but with F2P accounts, who cares?

And even if that is not a concern for you, why should I have the unpleasantry to fend off unwanted duel people just so that you can have a game feature for something that you can do consensual in 3 places anyway?

Ohoni.6057:

I suppose. Has there been any talk about the next great “GW2” game, the one that will pick up where GW2 left off like Wildstar picked up after WoW? If raiding does take over the game’s high end, then we’ll all need something to play. I’ll really miss GW2 though, it’s the longest I’ve stuck with an MMO, specifically for the reasons that they now seem to hate.

I don´t know if you´re into Space MMOS, but Star Citizen sounds promising, although it is not done yet. Avoids the hardcore PvP of Eve online and looks fantastic. Bonus is that Chris Roberts is at the helmet of this one, the guy is the legend that made the classic Wing Commander. I was initially sceptic if this could really be done and you´ll need a top notch computer to play it in all its glory, but big gaming magazines tested the alpha modules again lately and they give thumbs up.

As duelling is the little sister of open world PvP and open world PvP is the little brother of forced PvP everywhere I would rather not have Anet open that box.

Btw, why not use a PvP server for duells, or WvW? Just don´t duell where zergs run, so you already can duell.

One of the few things that would really drive me away from GW2 would be a:
XX Roxxxor XX challenges you to a duel Accept/Decline
window.
Rinse, repeat, rinse repeat. Please no.

SkiTz.4590:

Torolan.5816:

I guess the both of us know after a content drought of 10? months that Anet is incapable of doing both raids and open world all at once. Maybe we open worlders will get thrown a bone then and when, but the general direction where GW2 goes seems pretty clear to me.

You realize they were working on the entire xpac (not just raids) …. I think its better to 100% focus on one thing (xpac in this case) than a 50/50 between xpac and LS…. if that is what you are asking for , that means you preferred low quality LS/open world crap and delayed release on HoT …. that sounds awful to me. I’m glad anet isn’t trying to do both at once…..

You open world lovers have had your content for years…. have some kind of patience.

It is not up to me to decide how Anet divides their budgets on their projects, but of course I, as everybody else, have my preferences. If open world event content like Marionette was not that much of a success for them, it´s only logical to look for a more promising source of income. I also already said that I don´t mind being on the backseat for now.

And not that we confuse something here:
LS2 was utter garbage in my eyes, that was already not the kind of content that I am looking for. From this step of adding new content, a HoT stand alone new open world to explore is a vast improvement already. Even raids are probably a step up from this mess.

Loboling.5293:

um….. relevance…

It is more like if in order to host the special olympics, they had to remove the regular olympics. I think people would be upset. When the devs update content to make it easier, NO ONE gets to continue to do the hard content.

Try and get some sleep before responding randomly without thinking through the problem.

I am not against them offering a hard and easy mode. But if they do that, they have to be cautious of reward distribution. I just don’t want to see hard content removed before I’ve even tried it.

I can only imagine the outrage if Dark Souls had an “everything is easier” patch. Anyone looking for the challenge the game used to offer, now without hope for a challenge. Removing content shouldn’t be done too much, and especially with such unique content as Raiding is being hailed as.

I know talking about WoW is taboo, but in that game, I was always more casual. I did all the raids eventually, and found them all to be a snore fest. I was told by many players, including my friends that it used to be fun before the nerfs. I only even enjoyed one raid due to being dragged by a friend into it when it was released, and it was fun. I just didn’t normally have time to dedicate to raiding, and by the time I could organize going to them, they had been reduced to shells.

In response to Torolan:

Do not replace the upcoming olympics with special olympics due to player complaints. If you have to, add the special olympics, but do not REPLACE the old olympics. They are very popular.

Ok, if you don´t mind that there will be easier raid ways added when the raid is old and never much played anyway and you want to keep the old raid for memories sake and for the case that you want to someone through, I indeed misunderstood you.

I guess the both of us know after a content drought of 10? months that Anet is incapable of doing both raids and open world all at once. Maybe we open worlders will get thrown a bone then and when, but the general direction where GW2 goes seems pretty clear to me.

Valento.9852:

I hope they don’t nerf raids aswell. Content intended to be difficult should never be downgraded to a laughable level because some individuals can’t overcome it. If the devs have balanced around it and it is doable (specially without bugs), then there is no need to dumb it down.

I absolutely support this idea. Why not implement it in some RL scenarios?
Senior person olympics? No way, if these old geezers are too feeble to compete in the real olympics, no fame to them.
Special olympics? No way, the disabled should be glad if someone carries their disabled bottoms for example up some stairs.
And by the way, stairs are hard raid content! Never build a ramp beside a stair!
Brail language? If the blind can´t read regular books, who cares? I am not blind yet, so how can this be of concern for me?
Lets pick up all apples from a tree on an alley because there could be someone eating them, for free! Ban ladders from climbing on trees too…

Really, you people sometimes. Want to keep other people away from shinies you own for month because of the off chance that you ever want to return to a raid once, maybe twice because you would be forced to help a friend out and it would be boring for you.

Just yawn at the first guy that comes over to show you his new shinies like I do too, Ohoni. Smile and wink. We open world supporters had our time for nearly 3 years, and it was a funny ride at least for me up to this point. Now it´s raid time and we are in the backseat. You have to know when a battle if lost, and if raids are not the surefire success Anet hopes them to be, maybe it will be our time again.^^

Take a nap, buy some groceries, watch some TV. Maybe play a little bit GW2, but not sure about the last idea^^

You would have loved the clockwork/molten alliance invasions, OP. Reasonably hard mobs everywhere on a given map. I add reasonably hard because some people, like probably you too from your post, would not see a clockwork horror champion as challenging, but for the large majority of people, they were.

If it had not only be this pesky open world stuff with that mob of random peasant running around, my oh my, how great would it have been(yes, a little sarcasm hurts no one…)