Guild Wars 2

That’s not how Metas work.
They’re not written in stone. You have to constantly re-evaluate, and people can come up with combinations months later that upsets them. Especially a racing meta, of all the crazy bassackwards things I’ve ever seen in an MMORPG. There is no middle tier in a racing meta to help stabilize it, it’s just a top and a bottom and difference between them is measured in seconds.

Statistical significance just says there’s a good reason to believe the results you see don’t result from chance and would happen again even if you ran the test a bazillion more times.

As it only proves a repeat of the same test, it only applies to exactly what you’re testing. I’d recommend to save yourself some headache, choose a Null hypothesis that’s centered on CoF and interpret the results to apply for CoF. You can still make assumptions about what you think might happen in other dungeons (and it would be reasonable to a certain extent). But, just be aware it’s not possible for the data you’re collecting to prove or disprove anything about larger dungeonplay unless you actually go run all the dungeons.

I imagine that’s probably not much of a big deal, given the meta’s all about farming one path anyway. Just keep things like this in mind so you put together a good Null Hypothesis and understand what exactly the results can tell you.

I don’t know.
It kind of depends if your null hypothesis is meant to be self-enclosed to the speedrun farming meta or if you mean to extrapolate larger implications for dunning running as a whole? Two totally different kinds of tests, there.

Even then, critical hits and weapon variability and the daunting human factor is enough of a swing that you should really be focusing on statistical significance. It’s just too easy to find correlations in smaller population sizes.

To be fair, Nemeth, you can see where people get that impression.

Unlike, say, WoW where almost every fight has preplanned phases that forces you to accept the consequences for longer cooldowns, there are a smattering of mid boss fights in this game that just let you go from 100 to 0 with little resistance and don’t present enough of a HP sponge obstacle to make up the difference. Hopefully the dungeon revisions address this, and if the living world dungeons are any indication they are.

There are indeed fights in this game that favor burst. And a farming meta, because of it’s nature, can simply choose to farm the path that favors burst most.

And if the Meta was knowingly self enclosed, that would theoretically be the end of it. They’d run slave driver tests for the sake of running better slave drivers, and that would be all well and good. But running a test on slave driver to see how you’d fare on Lupi, or running a test on Lupi to see how well you’d fare on slave driver is kind of a mixed up notion. And it’s mostly because the community doesn’t really have much of an open dialogue about examining the different qualities between fights.

Just to be clear, I’m talking specifically about abusing terrain to skip events entirely.

I’m not entirely sure how gold got brought up? I think you might be reading a bit too much into what I’ve said.

OH yes, how rude of me.
I didn’t thank you for typing up your process earlier. That was very enlightening. Thank you, Guang.

I don’t blame the guy, I wouldn’t of done it either.
Frankly the passive aggressiveness of the whole thing is kind of off-putting.

@Odin

Path of Least Resistance isn’t carte blanche to cheat your face off. You can wield that phrase pretty effectively for all sort of grey area stuff like running past mobs, but this jumping thing is pretty black and white.

Good God, you guys are lucky Anet is such a soft touch. I’ve played games where such bold faced cheating got you the banhammer.

And yet I’m not yelling at everyone in my dungeon group when they’re bad. When we got to mossman, I told the group “go full melee” and then “rally on the wolves” because the ranger was shortbow spamming , and then at jade maw I told the scepter guard “colossus reflects projectiles” – and they kept firing their scepter. Sure I’m forceful on the forum, but considering I went in to a fractal group and then started playing with them, knowing there was a ranger and they were mostly new to fractals (besides this other mesmer with us) and so most likely weren’t full berserker, why would I then yell at them for something I knew the answer to?

I think we might have had a bit of a miscommunication.
I was talking to OP directly and answering his question, not continuing the semi-derail thread of conversation you folks are on.

Oh my, yes.
He’d of gotten the boot so fast he’d need to see a proctologist about my six inch heel.

Why would you subject yourself to such rotten company?

That’s pretty consistent with my testing, Terkov.
There’s, like, fractions of seconds of difference between Longbow and Greatsword in practical tests in favor of Greatsword. Though my baseline testing actually favors Longbow by a slight margin, and oddly it does so when I’ve made an effort to avoid all weapon-specific traits such as Eagle Eye. And yes, I’m counting Maul’s bleed.

Heavy golem tests (Regular weapons / Crits / OS / No weapon-traits)
Greatsword; 9.6, 8.5, 9.1, 9.0, 7.5, 9.8, 9.3, 9.0, 8.3, 7.3 = 8.74
Longbow; 8.9, 9.1, 8.3, 9.1, 9.2, 8.4, 10.2, 7.8, 9.3, 9.3 = 8.96

Baseline testing (Steady Weapons/ No Crits / no OS / No weapon-traits);
Greatsword cycle (Maul, Autox3, Maul, Autox3, etc); est. 14,755 over 60 seconds
Longbow cycle (Hunter’s, Rapid, Auto x10, Hunter’s, etc.); est. 16,269 over 60 seconds

Can I trouble you with another question, Guang?
You sound like you’re using DPS, like, the actual meaning of the word and not just a blanket synonym for damage. That’s not something very common around here! And I wanted to jump at the rare opportunity to ask something that’s been bothering me mathematically.

I’m curious what your packet cutoff is for calculations? 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes? Or is there a Patchwerk somewhere?

I’m asking because in GW2 there just isn’t any standard slice of time or overarching time-based feature like enrage to help guide what a practical timelimit for a ‘battle’ consists of, and where you choose the cut off point can wildly swing a set of data in favor/against people whom are using high-cooldown utilities to generate bursts of damage versus more sustained outputs.

Oh, that jumping thing?
I wouldn’t worry too much about that. There’s just no way that’s not getting fixed. That is like, exploit with a capital E. And people aren’t even being subtle about it.

That’s an excellent point, Shiren.

I have played longbow, and I hate it. Hence why I think it should be changed.

That’s probably the most egregious sin of Longbow.
It just doesn’t feel very good to use. It’s like Sword, but without the small dedicated fanbase of people taking a certain masochistic pleasure in overcoming the obstacle it presents.

Now Wintersday scout. Snowblind and Sniper Shot nailed the Sniper dynamic and feel with all the deadly precision of a .50 caliber bullet straight to my heart. I don’t even play PvP in this game, and I was in there daily. It had just done such an excellent job of capturing a good feel.

That’s what this weapon is really missing. A good gameplay direction that’s really fun to execute.

I’m all for replacing rapid fire with a charged shot.
Prettymuch anything that brings Longbow closer to Wintersday Scout in A-OK in my book.

Do you think the methods of acquiring legendaries and other prestige items in this game decreases their value?

When I first saw a legendary months and months ago as a newbie player, I was in awe of it. It was wielded by my one of my teammates for my first run of SE Path 1. The guy just walked around and pools of black ichor shimmered in his wake, I dare you to think that’s not cool on an intuitive level.

Dungeons were still pretty new around that time, and runs weren’t always smooth. So seeing that obviously cool prestige piece, I felt like I was in good hands. I had immediately assigned a skillful competency level to the player, because that’s how prestige items are usually won in other games I’ve played. Then he proceeded to cheese and bug his way through the dungeon like a simpering coward. In the span of mere minutes I had discovered a long term gameplay goal and watched my desire to undertake it evaporate into thin air. I literally felt the smile slowly melt off my face and my wide eyed newbie awe chill into a cold disregard.

Since then I’ve learned what the process entailed, and I can hardly begrudge the guy. But I’ve just never been able to look at them as any kind of real badge of honor ever since.

So what are your thoughts?
Does a having a prestige item be achievable with grind as opposed to overcoming a technical challenge of some kind alter your feelings on it, or does it not matter so long as you get the look you want? If you do or if you don’t, do you think it has something to do with your gaming history? And does this feeling translate to the rewards system at large for even minor things? (Like if you’d gotten holographic wings for the lightfoot achievement as opposed to candy grinding or purchasing, would you feel differently about them?)

Ahh. You’re into might stacking. I would be interested to see how that fares post patch, I also just haven’t had the time to sit down and see if it makes up and exceeds the difference of the nerf. Thank you for sharing, Guang.

Mmmm. I’m guessing from the comments I should expect a ‘No’. But, Guang, are you willing to share some advice in the Ranger forum for how you achieve the numbers you’re talking about?

I’ve really yet to find a good power build I’m happy with, it’s always too situational. I think the closest I can really get is a Longbow build; but it’s pretty Fury dependent, completely gets derailed if a Cat dies, and the range ends up super duper awkward with Hunter’s Tactics and Spotter.

…Kinda’ yeah.
I mean, the general majority still cowers at Kohler.

But, I wonder if you couldn’t get the best of both worlds? Like getting to set the F2 skill to any family skill you wanted?

Potentially :p

It seems like pretty obvious stuff to me.
More unified focused feedback, less aimless cries for attention. But, I’ve been mired in industry stuff for years now, and I’ve ended up baffling people by taking game design stuff for granted as common knowledge in the past. So I take great pains to explain things in way too much detail, like that long bit about metrics, because I’ve kind of lost sight of where the ‘no kitten sherlock’ line is.

Lemme’ cut out some of that rambling.

@Indigo

I agree, you should absolutely be campaigning for changes to Ranger, especially in terms of pet survivability. But I think you should be doing so with your feet firmly planted on the ground speaking from a position that shows your understanding of the mechanics and where they’re falling short. Not drumming up aimless drama.

If you mean to say:
‘I hate that my profession mechanic’s skill floor is so variable based on encounter, and I notice the skill floor becomes so high it’s unapproachable in AOE heavy fights like x, and y and z. This is a problem because popular Power building options are especially dependent on the pet. Active offense is ultimately a beastmaster role because of the nature of signets and shouts, and passive offense relies on the pet to make up the difference of lackluster marksmanship minors. I notice as dungeon teams continue to iterate on the direction of dungeon design with temporary content, these sorts of problematic fights are becoming more of a standard and as a result working with the mechanic is becoming progressively more frustrating.’

And you end up saying:
‘my pets are dying all the time, and because of that ranger deeps suxxx’

You don’t really present the problem in the most focused light, and you could invite alot of misconceptions and miscommunications. It’s not as though they aren’t aware of what the problems are, what they don’t know is how much you hate each one. Use your discontent as a vote, and properly assign it to the actual specific problem you want fixed instead of grand sweeping hyperbolic statements that lack any real direction.

If you’re after some perspective, why don’t you just ask on forums for it?

Now, the Ranger sub-forum is admittedly kind of……well…
But I’m sure a fansite like Reddit or GW2Guru could give you some solid benchmarks to better align your expectations, and in depth descriptions of what the gameplay entails so you can have a better understanding of where the shortcomings come into play and where they’re non-issue.

Although I’m surely not an expert, I’d offer to help. But I gotta’ admit, saying words like ‘calling out’ sort of sets off red flags. It’s kind of hard to give other people advice when you think they’re going to interpret it as some kind passive aggressive maneuver of competitive forum oneupmanship. Especially since you’re not really out for advice, exactly, just attempting to prove a negative bias as a part of a larger competition started in another thread. You can’t really blame people for not wanting to reach out their hand to somebody whose made it so clear they ultimately want to bite it.

You don’t get the overall impression Strooper is asking for a more pragmatic down-to-earth perspective on Ranger, the COE example as an attempt to get there aside?

Hmmm, well, I guess I might be reading him wrong.
My apologies.

I changed that to OP’s performance, because I realized numbers was too vague.

C’mon Swiftpaw, it’s not like people are coming into this thread making bold claims of meta superiority that needs to be endlessly debated, they just seem to asking to tone down the caricature. It’s got nothing to do with other classes and the comparison thereof, merely fair representation of what Ranger is for better or worse. I don’t think that’s such an outrageous request, really.

I’m all for finding a little self deprecating humor in all of this, I think Eugene is laugh out loud funny. But the difference here is that Eugene is playing up Ranger’s problems in such an over-the-top way everybody’s in on the joke, whereas OP and his chorus either genuinely believe this is output what Rangers can aspire to or are playing halfhearted for humor’s sake so subtly it leaves the third party viewer the impression that this is all par for the course.

In 700 hours of playing can you honestly back OP’s performance with your full faith and confidence? Because that’s kind of the impression I get from your defense of it.

My point is; you have to take pet survivability on a case-by-case basis and avoid terrible outliers dictating your willingness to work and adapt.

Seeing the Aetherblade’s laser room reduce your pet to a buff bot else being crispy fried is genuinely disheartening, but that’s not license to throw a melee pet at Melrona and say ‘oh well I tried’, or keeping the pet to heel on the multitude of loot pinata bosses like Wraithlord that are so nonthreatening we have to check the wiki to remember their names.

Also, the only explanation I have for my odd successes in that regard is that the Ice-AOE must have a five person limit which gets hit by virtue of stacking. Just swap frequently enough to mitigate the damage of the earth spike/flameblast, and don’t use a ranged pet that incurs the wrath of dragon’s tooth.

Yes because pets are a reliable source of damage.

They are not.
Don’t get me wrong, pet survivability is a major problem with the class in dungeons. There aren’t enough tools that are appropriate for dodge heavy game-play, and the skill floor is unapproachably high. But there’s a difference between acknowledging that flaw with a frustrated sort of sigh on specific unfriendly pet encounters, and keeping a pet useless and limp beside you on principal alone.

You’re playing Ranger like a Warrior.

I mean no offense by this, I’m sure you’re an excellent player.
But it’s pretty clear you’re new to the class and have yet to catch on to some of the differences between it and other classes. For example; unlike warrior’s Utility-dependence, Ranger is heavily Trait-dependent almost to the point of malfunction. You’re not going to do well running without them, and I’d recommend against upscaling a Ranger whenever possible.

Additionally the core concept for these weapons are different from what you may have come to expect, and you need to play them differently to get the most out of them. For example, Sword builds up might stacks on the pet. If you’re not using it with an aggressive F2 you’re sort of missing out. If you’re having problems micromanaging a pet’s survival long enough that you can’t go in with Sword and make the most of the might building, you shouldn’t be switching to bear, instead consider devourers and spiders while you’re still figuring things out as might stacks affect their condition based auto-attacks and F2s.

Ugh. Yes.
And I don’t even have points in beastmastery anymore.
Razzafrazza muscle memory.

That’s not healthy for the community, and Metrics analysis would suss out any noteworthy outliers anyway.

Though if poor Xsorus never wanted to post a build again, I wouldn’t blame him.
Sense of social responsibility be kittened.

As far as I can tell
It’s a ‘Subject Alpha if you don’t bug it’ kind of stack, not a ‘Colossus Rumblus’ kind of stack.

That is to say, somebody isn’t cheesing a mechanic with terrain, it’s part of Spider Queen’s AI behavior set that she starts throwing Poison Fields at ranged players. You can technically take advantage of this behavior anywhere, even in the middle of room, just bust out the ole’ melee weapon and go to town.

Stacking in the corner just starts your dungeon off with a hearty helping of otherwise easily avoided spiderweb, and the pull itself is problematic. You’re attempting to trigger the line of sight chasing AI behaviors before the AI has a chance to recognize your pull attempts as the ranged attacks they technically are and load up the Poison Fields. And this is true for the initial pull, the attempt to get her past the pillar corner, and the overall mechanic that causes critical hits to gently nudge an enemy ever so slightly away from the player (because in this stacking tactic, the fairly corpulent spider queen often ends up facing into the corner and has room to be nudged around).

I swear, I’ve only done it a few times but it’s rapidly earning a place on my big list of ‘cheesy tactics that are way more trouble than they’re worth but will probably become Meta anyway/are inexplicably a part of the Meta’.

Complaints aren’t baseless, but they are awfully awfully dramatic.
Kind of par for the course on patch day.

It’s important to keep in mind what you see on forums is not a representative slice of the game’s general population. It’s as Doug says; Happy players are too busy playing the game.

Although fansites like GW2Guru and Reddit are probably in a better place overall than the Official Forums. Honestly, if the hyperbolic atmosphere is getting you down, go get your daily recommended dosage of Fansite.

Mmmm.

I think we’re missing one of the real > of focusing on might stacking gameplay and downplaying our glass cannons. Cat/bird burst is limited to cats and birds, and might stacking works for every pet. A damage spec was previously limited to bringing vulnerability and swiftness and blind to the table, because cats/birds were far and away better options. Now the opportunity cost for swapping one out and picking another pet to throw different utility on the table is much less.

This is basically an offensive mirror to what they’ve already taken steps towards defensively. Pets were given better defenses so that they could survive better in more dangerous situations, and people migrated away from devourers/bears and a larger swath of pets became acceptable to carry around. Granted, they obviously need to take greater strides in the field of pet defenses, or take a different approach with damage output in dungeons. But both these changes do fit a theme; they seem to be helping builds avoid being pigeonholed to specific pets.

If you think about it, a mechanic that can swap to pets with various utilities on-the-fly was not being best served by options that encouraged pigeonholing. I think we’re moving towards the removal of ‘Tanking pets’ and ‘Glass Cannon pets’. And I think that’s a good thing. (Even if flattening the higher points of our damage curve in an effort to give optional higher sustained damage to all pets currently strikes an unfortunate juxtaposition with the burst-heavy meta, and pets that don’t have traits are taking an awful pounding right now)

Shiren, Don’t be such a pessimist,
If you found yourself in a group utilizing that strategy, you’d simply mind your own position relative to the mobs. Who knows, you might even be able to corral some strays by positioning yourself next to the mobs and aiming for the straggler on the other side of them.

Chopps, Don’t be such an optimist,
There’s an awful lot of opportunity cost making investments to pet survivability that could be spent on greater damage. You have to ask at what point does something like that become self-defeating. Especially now that the reward for doing so is…notably less.

I rarely find myself agreeing with Mr. Positivity, but you do kind of have to qualify what you mean. If the thing you think Ranger is poor at is the Speedrun Farming Meta, you should actually say so.

Nobody could really say for sure.
But, I think anytime you see solid changes to all classes you should expect a period of evaluation in this sort of a Meta.

It’s competitive, so classes not only have to re-evaluate themselves, but they have to re-evaluate their standing in comparison to other classes that are currently re-evaluating themselves. It’s also a Racing Meta that often measures performance in terms of seconds, if it has any seeming stability it has more to do with the game’s balance direction being cautious to a fault than any actual security. Any Meta that measures resounding success or everlasting failure equal to the space of time roughly similar to a bio break is a delicate delicate thing.

It’s Satire.
Awww yeah.

You should have seen the run we had earlier today. I actually had to explain to the level 80 ranger how to put his pet on passive.

That’s not surprising, it’s not something you really do in the open world.

Look, the community either shuns players under 80 and accepts the fact this will create level 80 newbies, or it accepts that playing with lower leveled players is a part of the dungeon experience and it can start holding level 80’s to certain performance standards. We don’t get to have it both ways.

To be honest, achievement points are a pretty bad way to judge player skill.

I agree with you, Milennin.
Achievements Points are an…okay…indicator of experience, but, unlike older MMOs that’s not the alpha and omega of this game. This game has action-oriented combat, so it’s more skill-based. Somebody could be fresh off the boat and dodging like a champ because reflexes are reflexes no matter what game you’re playing.

@Kagato

I have to admit, as an old school MMO gamer that same line of logic has crossed my mind more than once. Maybe I’m just getting old, but if you can find time to spout endless drama about farming of all things, you have it pretty darned good.

I’m happy for them that they don’t have to deal with real design problems, you know, in between bouts of rolling my eyes.

The silliest part is that a Ranger is passable (I don’t think it’s competitive given the nature of pets in dungeons, but it’s passable) in melee, while close to useless at range. I understand the whole risk-reward thing when it comes to balance but at what boardroom meeting did it make any sense for a Ranger to be most effective (relative to himself) in melee?

I think in order to avoid breaking the risk/reward dynamic of melee and range the ‘ranged specialty’ of ranger is a factor of distance as opposed to a factor of damage or impact. Technically you’re the only class that can interact with something up to 4800-odd away. It’s a sound theory…it’s just that in practice it kind of ends up being like the aquaman of superpowers.

And dungeons are the desert.

But you know, it’s not like the meta is revolving around niches. Even classes with well defined niches in dungeonplay are subject to this endless caterwauling because the speedrun meta doesn’t care what your niche is, only that it isn’t burst.

A Mausoleum is kind of gravesite, so given what the area beside it is called I would imagine the bloke inside must be Khan-Ur.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Khan-Ur

‘Utility’ is more of a general catchall term for something made up of many parts having a collection of support and control options. Not a word you use to inexplicably shy away from using the words ‘support’ and ‘control’ when it comes to identifying particular parts within.

Like; Mesmer Focus has good utility, ‘Into the Void’ is a good control skill and ‘Temporal curtain’ is a good support skill. Not; Mesmer Focus has good utility, ‘Into the Void’ is a utility skill, and ‘Temporal curtain’ is a utility skill.

I don’t have much direct experience with Guardian per se’.

But of the classes I have played generally speaking there seems to be different defensive styles. There are classes and specs that can square their shoulders, lower their heads and plod forward at a steady pace cloaked in an armor of buffs or shrugging off the pain with blocks, cleanses and stunbreakers. Then there’s the classes and specs that are nimble, focusing on position and avoidance and either leaving the battlefield a hornet’s nest of angry mobs behind their flapping coattails with nary a scratch, or making the gauntlet of mobs in front of them knee deep in a particle effects soup so thick attacks or attackers are kept at bay.

So I guess I’m saying; Less Quarterback, More Ninja/Manipulator.

Going Ninja for a Ranger requires staying ahead of the pack and avoiding the combat state entirely with good dodging, good blocking, and good use of evade skills along with timing your leaps to propel you past clusters of mobs (instead of towards them) before they technically strike you. Going Manipulator for Ranger involves voluntarily going into combat and works best when you’re being proactive on the AOE snares, and pet distraction tactics. Meshing the two styles together has mixed results, so my general advice to you would be to choose one way and go whole hog with it.

@ Black Box

[deadpan]Oh no, please don’t exclude people from grinding. Anything but that. You utter monsters, you.[/deadpan]

I don’t mean to make light of design issues and balance problems.
It’s just…this is by far the most frivolous meta I’ve ever seen in an MMO. And I remember typing ‘N’ to go North. Opting out of it doesn’t keep you from new exciting content, or the next rung of a gear treadmill, or anything like that. It’s just grinding the same exact path for hours and hours and hours to afford a skin.

I can hardly believe there’s human beings that do that voluntarily, much less clamour for the privilege.

@swiftpaw
As much as I like a rousing game of theorycraft; the game where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.

We can’t actually come to a finite decision here. There really aren’t any universal numbers involved with factors like ‘waiting for people’ and ‘communicating with other human beings’. There’s just an observation from me that you can undermine yourself with your own pickiness so maybe when folks go above and beyond to the point of risking that it might be because they feel there’s a value in the act of being picky itself. And fervent pledge of hope from you that multitude of tricky human factors aside it’ll all work out in the end. That’s prettymuch the extent of where either of us can go with it.

If you’re spending 5 minutes finding specific kinds of people, making them all link gear and then hemming and hawing over minutia like sigil choices in hopes to shave 4 minutes off your run, it’s not really about efficiency.

Also, it’s not like this is the first time somebody’s tried the “Don’t call me Elitist, I’m just obeying the meta!” angle. Elitism is a derogatory word people sling at an attitude problem, not any particular level of Meta participation or discussion. If you’re getting called it, it’s time to dial back on the rude and the forum-speak. It’s very easy to lose sight of this fact when you’re on them, but very few people within any MMORPG’s population ever comes to forums, so it’s important that when you’re in the game interacting with others you don’t take forum-knowledge for granted in your fellow player.

So my question is: if you’re not spamming SKP, how exactly are you attacking the mob/boss?

I actually don’t take it off autoattack.
That sort of thing might be fine in sPvP, but do you know how often you have to click that button to chew through the massive HP bars of your typical dungeon boss encounter? There’s less licks to the center of ten thousand tootsie pops, I swear to god.
With sword you’re not trying to find a way to keep it from being annoying, you’re just trying to figure which way annoys you less. Play around with it a bit, and see what approach makes it get more liveable (if it ever does).

ANet made and advertised ranger as a jack-of-all-trades profession

Where people keep getting that?

The snark is a little much, but Yaki’s got a point.
Not only is that ’it’s my playstyle’ argument kind of flimsy in that it can technically apply to anything, but it’s pretty disingenuous on it’s own terms.

What really makes the whole ’it’s a playstyle’ thing come off on the wrong foot, is that playstyles tends to involve an ongoing discussion and a meta other than ‘it exsists’ and ‘please don’t get rid of it’. Nobody’s sitting here railing against Swiftness Stability Stealth for being too overpowered. Nobody’s kicking Mesmers because of their skipping options. Nobody’s calling out Utilities, Weapon skills and Traits for not being balanced with skipping in mind.

What you do hear pretty often is whole contingents of skippers blaming the reward system and saying how fast they’d drop it like a hot potato should that change, which doesn’t exactly leave the impression of attachments to the skipping gameplay.

It’s really hard for that argument to seem genuine, and the overall impression is less the protection and growth of emergent gameplay and more trying to immunize the practice from scrutiny via political correctness.