Guild Wars 2

Happyfool.8951:

I don’t miss being in a queue for an hour as a DPS role.

Get friends. “queueing” is not the right way to play an MMO.

Joonks.7501:

The whining is incredible. I suggest you all get jobs/lives outside of the game and then maybe you won’t feel compelled to “grind” out an ascended version of every weapon you have immediately.

“You mean I have to PLAY this game more to get a better item?! This is unacceptable, Anet is screwing me.”

To Anet: thank you for introducing some more progression I can work towards on my character, I like the fact that the materials for ascended weapons come from a variety of different game elements. I’m sorry for all the entitled children on this forum, but I’m sure you know they don’t represent the majority of players.

The problem is there’s nothing creative or interesting about grind-based gameplay. There’s no narrative… there’s no teamwork… there’s just a list of repetitive chores in front of you (or a visit to the cash shop.)

So, yeah. Feel free to defend it but more and more I’m convinced GW2 was not designed as a game at all, but rather a monetization vehicle completely.

With all the quotes from Anet about anti-grind, the irony couldn’t be thicker.

The majority has spoken.

Tom Gore.4035:

Interestingly enough the cash shop will not help you in collecting the 500 pcs of ascended materials. It can help you to skip the other parts by converting to gold, but the ratio sucks.

For whatever faults I could attribute to ANet for not fixing the skill lag or introducing gear grind, I still have to take my hat off when looking at the gem store. They still don’t sell power or even measurable shortcuts. It’s still mainly cosmetics and convenience, just as it should be: People spend money on it because they want to support the game.

The day they introduce clear shortcuts to BiS gear or blatantly start selling it, I’m out, for good.

Oh, but the cash shop isn’t there to help you at all. Economic tip: monetization is never in favor of the spender

The fact is, time is the only finite currency we have. So while there may not be direct ways to “buy” all you need for an Ascended item, the time you spend doing it leads you conveniently to the cash shop for other items… wether that’s as benign as a “convenience” item to make up your lost time or not.

It’s all part of the grand design, my friend. There is psychology at work here that goes far beyond what most workaday players understand.

Power should not be sold (and it isn’t, directly.) Convenience should not be sold (but it is, directly.) Only cosmetics should be sold… things that you cannot get in-game anyway. Then you are not trading money for time, you are only trading money for goods. Further, there should be no random elements to cash shop purchases (mini pets.)

MikaHR.1978:

As long as they can show good concurrency/login numbers they will not care.

They will not tell us… if it’s so great, why not put a live page up that shows, at all times, how many players are logged in at any given time?

Of course, they could just define what an “active” player is and tell us how many there are, but they don’t seem to want to do that either…

Everyone that posts things like this doesn’t realize because ArenaNet chose a free to play model, they have to design monetization tactics into the gameplay… that is quite simply what you are seeing with so much grind (and ways around it – the cash shop.)

The game would not exist with a fraction if it’s current player base. Which is already a tiny fraction of other games.

ArenaNet knows MMORPGs sell, and that’s why they made one… unfortunately with the business model they chose, we’re all victims of nickel-and-diming and in some cases predatory monetization.

Yargesh.4965:

Sil.4560:

Non-zerg raid gameplay.

non-zerg raid is kind of redundant isn’t it?

Not if you know what raiding is. (which isn’t present in GW2.)

Trajan.4953:

With all the complaining about “Endgame”, what is it you actually want and/or consider Endgame?

Players want to feel like they’ve graduated to something… that there’s a “next level” of sorts.

Similar to playoffs in pro sports.

Wolfs Shadow.7234:

Played the game since launch for 6-7 months and than took a break. I came back because my friends got into it again, but are on a different server. The moment I realized I had to pay $20.00 just for a server transfer my jaw dropped. I don’t expect GW to change based on this post, but I hope someone from their team reads it because I can tell you right now I lost all feeling to return to the game when I saw that.

Even in Guild Wars one at the very least it didn’t feel like we were being nickel and dimed.

$20.00 doesn’t seem like much, but include the price you paid for the game ($80.00). I am not jamming more money into a game that everyone is saying is dying. Now I am understanding why.

kitten I miss GW1

Because you’re playing the game for free, and they need to ding you when you want to do anything else.

tanto.4217:

first game ever to get complaints about to much content too fast :P

No, WoW is the owner of that title. This past year of updates has been blistering, p;layers can’t even keep up.

You’re correct about GW2, but you’re making things up about WoW.

Nikaido.3457:

You want both gw1 player base/the ones who listened to your manifesto, and the locusts from WoW? You’ll end up with neither. The locusts will move on to the next buzz mmo and the non-locust will have stopped playing long before the locust moved on.

WoW fans have proven they are the LEAST of all locusts. They are loyal to a game longer than anyone – as long as that game is quality. That’s why so many players fled GW2 early on.

You don’t have to craft – you can buy gems.

Working as intended. Welcome to f2p.

This is one of the major problems with “legendary” items being aesthetic only, and only having ONE choice.

Frostfang.5109:

Keep doing as u do A-net!

Their pase of in wich they release things is just fine! I don’t think the two week rate is a problem…
For example. I find the SAB content plain boring and will therefor not play it but do other things instead… Not all contetnt suits everuone and therefor this release pase makes sense. Some is fun, some is less fun.

How can you tell a story from start to finish in two weeks? How can you create meaningful characters in two weeks?

Two weeks is doing no one any good, except for ArenaNet. The content patches are nothing more than cash shop sales vehicles – that is the true reason for the pace of the shallow content. “Because they can.” “Because they have to.” Not “Because it’s awesome content.”

hellokittyonline.7532:

With all of these winning, raging and kittening in the forums about the recent patch.

Why Anet you no reply?!

I agree with most of the raging, but at the same time I do advocate patients. Anet is probably busy figure out how they screwed up.

But I have to say they should reduce the overal time to get materials. Champion Bags were well done, other mats, not really, especial to the casual folks. I feel a buff the drop # should be looked into, such as emprical frag or w.e is called. I did a jumping puzzles today and got 7, I need 500 to craft a weapon.
Which implies it is gonna take me 71 days to gather enough materials.

Monetization is causing the grind you are experiencing.

Xae Isareth.1364:

So ever since Ascended stuff came out everyone’s been screaming that the game turned into a huge grind. So…… where is that grind?

On paper, Ascended stuff looks like a hugeass list of mats to put on your to-grind list but if you just look at what it actually is, it’s basically stuff you get from playing any of the major contents of the game. Comparing it to a grind is like saying every Zelda game is a grind for pieces of the Triforce/whatever else is in its place.

There is a very subtle difference between a grind and not giving it to you on a silver platter.

Besides, when was the last tone you saw half the Temples in Orr actually uncontested before this update?

It’s the sheer volume of repeating content that you have no interest in… in other words, nothing new…just grind.

Vayne.8563:

The more you focus on a legendary, the worse the game will be for you.

That’s not a very good end game then… when ArenaNet specifically talked about Legendaries being the end game.

For many players, getting to 80 and completing the zones is the whole game… what more for them is there to do, besides this?

SkylightMoon.1980:

Hey, guess what, you represent the minority. The very very small minority. Id also think you must not know much about the decisions being made in the game by the devs, as stated in the interviews. If you don’t have at least 5 hours or more in your week to play the new content, then maybe you shouldnt be playing games.

Hehe, no. No sir, YOU are in the small minority. It’s a wasted life playing a game so much.

The problem is, these content updates are not really content, but sales vehicles for cash shop items. So, the people that can’t play as much at least feel like they can be a “part” of it by buying some stuff.

Welcome to predatory b2p.

I do agree that the pace of content is too quick. In turn that has made the content itself very shallow… it’s a lose/lose proposition of you ask me.

I’d rather have monolithic content patches similar to what Blizzard does every 2 months, and a proper expansion every year and a half or so.

People that think this is “content” have not come from any real MMO. Maybe a Facebook game or an asian grinder. But this stuff is about quantity, not quality… but that’s how America seems to be tuned these days.

I feel sad for people who think this is the best it can be.

goldenwing.8473:

Google search on “GW2 what to do at 80” brought up a fair amount of responses.

Here is a sample one that is worth reading:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1188171-So-what-IS-there-to-do-at-80-in-gw2

WvW, SPvP, Crafting, World Explore, Map Completion, Legendary, Explorables, Fractals, Guild Activities, etcetera.

If nothing there appeals, please fee free to move to a game that holds your hand.

There;s a difference between lack of direction and hand holding.

The biggest problem with GW2 (besides no group content) is that there’s no character progression… you have all your weapon skills nearly immediately, all of your skills and traits by like what… 30 or so? So for 5 levels its nothing but slogging through the same stuff doing the same hting with no progression.

Players are zombies by the time they hit 80 because they desperately want something to change… that’s the whole point of end game in games, which GW2 lacks.

I definitely support those who say this shouldn’t have been changed. It’s unfair that what is the entire reason someone even got the thing in the first place (cosmetics) is fundamentally changed without recourse.

Also, it’s an interesting twist because people may have paid real money toward acquiring this.

What right did ArenaNet have to make changes to something someone paid for?

How bout this: 1000 gems to unlock account-wide Legendaries.

Because the reason they aren’t right now is due to monetization, so you’d have to make up for it,

1) They have to monetize the game.
2) See number 1.

Kozai.8269:

Zeldain.5710:

If you can’t ever improve your character, what’s the point? That means the biggest part of an MMORPG – the item hunt – is over one year into the lifecycle of the game.

Depends on how fanatic of a item collector/player you are; only one friend of mine has any Ascended gear yet, a trinket or two, and I just finished completing trinkets on my main. My second character doesn’t even have all Exotics yet, none of my friends is fully Exoticed on all their 80s either. With the recipes I’ve seen for Ascended weapons, I would be surprised if any of us has any sooner than 6 months from now, let alone any fully equipped, let alone progress on armor, if that gets released.

I’m contemplating slowly working on Ascended weapons and armor, but if its only going to last a year before needing to be replaced, I won’t bother.

We’re good now, never increase. [gear or levels]

You are on the very very slow end of the curve. Just like they can’t cater to the hardcore, they can’t cater to you either.

But progression has to happen… the game will die without it.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Just because it wasn’t a ‘real mmo’ doesn’t really make any difference. There are plenty of niche games out there. The point I was making was that games have done it, and have been successful. A small player base true, but still running with no plans to close those servers, which says a lot considering the number of other games that have failed.

That’s actually the biggest reason and difference. GW2 is competing in an entirely different space and charcter progression is the name of the game – and that includes, primarily, power.

Sure, there are folks that just enjoy skins and titles and things, but that number is much smaller.

Also, if GW2 had “non-combat” activities, it would be more plausible. If you could progress through fishing or housing or diplomacy or something. But since everything you do in GW2 is combat-related and one-dimensional, players need to eventually feel like their character is getting better, not different.

I understand what you are saying, it’s just not the reality of the genre GW2 lives in. If ArenaNet is happy with GW2 continuing to be that niche game, then they are set… but I have a feeling they are not ok with that, given Mike O’Brien’s quote about “beating Warcraft.”

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You can improve your character without ever climbing stats though. This was proven in GW1, which had a level cap of 20, and yet people loved the horizontal progression.

Eh, you can’t really point to GW1 as the bastion of MMO success. One, because it wasn’t a real MMO. And 2, because the number of players was very small compared to what success is measured by in the space.

If you can’t ever improve your character, what’s the point? That means the biggest part of an MMORPG – the item hunt – is over one year into the lifecycle of the game.

Not good.

Galen Grey.4709:

Zeldain.5710:

MikaHR.1978:

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

Do we think GW2 has to make all the money spent in first 3 quarters? Nope. Look at 2-5 years span on ROI.

I’m not denying that, but some others don’t seem to understand what shouting “profitable” really means. I was correcting the

If you remember a time where it was rumored that swtor cost $300m to make and EA rebutting that and analysis estimating the cost was around $80m I think its probably quite likely Gw2 already made its development costs back.

I have no clue what they are, its total speculation on my part but people seriously.. $189m is a lot of money!

Exactly my point… even if SW:TOR cost $300m, they didn’t have to make it back in the first 3 months! They were on track toward ROI within a year or two though… so when the EA CEO talked about breaking even at 500k subscribers, you have to take that into consideration for similar numbers for GW2.

Even if it’s half of that thanks to ArenaNet’s magical ability to produce things with half of the staff and no infrastructure costs, 250k players doesn’t sound all that far off from what GW2 probably has right now – and that would mean 100% of them would have to be spending money every month in the cash shop.

eisberg.2379:

If you take what they made in the last 3 months, figure out on the average how many boxes they have sold per month since January minus 3 months worth of that from the last 3 months, and then divide the remaining number by 3 months, and then divide that by $15, and you see that GW2 has been making sales that is equivalent to 508,000 subscribers paying $15 a month. According to some reports by Free to Play MMO developers over the years, a small portion of the active players spend money, and of the players that do spend money a very small portion of them spends more then $15 a month. Now at 460,000 concurrent players on at once, would mean that 1.84 Million were active (about 20% of the active players play during the peak times, the busiest times of the day, which is a 4 hour period, and the other 80% play at random times some where in the other 20 hours of the day).

Even then lets say there are only 300,000 peak concurrent, that would mean 1.5 Million active players, and that would mean ~ one third of them are spending about $15 a month.

Hehe… no, there are not 1.8 million players active in this game. Not even close.

People are REALLY not understanding what that concurrency number means.

That was PEAK. It was the HIGHEST. It happened ONE TIME to measure.

They need to either report: active players (logging in once per month) or average concurrency monthly.

Only then will we know how many players are actually playing this game.

MikaHR.1978:

Zeldain.5710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

Do we think GW2 has to make all the money spent in first 3 quarters? Nope. Look at 2-5 years span on ROI.

I’m not denying that, but some others don’t seem to understand what shouting “profitable” really means. I was correcting the

NoodllZ.8376:

For the living world event people realized that failing the event still counted towards your achievements, so they just go in to farm aethers. Yea they’re annoying and really kitten me off while working to complete the event but I can’t really fault them. Mindless zerging is fun sometimes and you alot of loot which means money.

This is the problem with “everyone wins!” There has to be failure, if not consequence for failure. If the focus is only on loot or points and the most efficient way to get it, the game content design has failed undeniably.

Godzzila.3752:

So I didn’t play Guild Wars 2 for a long time, and I decided a few days ago to get into it again.
I had never played in a living story or anything but I just finished leveling my guardian to 80 and was giving it a try with the invasion and stuff. It was really fun and stuff but the game was divided in 2 groups, the group that wanted to farm and the group that wanted to finish the event. I was just going arround in the zergs and didn’t bother with any of those 2 I was just playing for the fun.
The problem is, the 2 groups besides completly not wanting to help each others, they were just being complete and massive jerks to the others… Especially people that were just farming…
Like people would ask for help to get the scarlet side to go down and not only did the farmers not help, they were just saying stuff like: “LOOK AT ALL THIS LOOT”, and “CAN’T GET IT ALONE? 2 BAD!”
I mean, WTF? I don’t remember the community being that kittenty, what the hell happned?

I think your own experience explains it.

You weren’t engaged enough to continue playing the game so you left, as did many many others. In the mean time, ArenaNet has been trying to correct that course and in that effort made some very shallow progression paths that appeal to obsessive compulsive people… not the best audience for socialization and teamwork in an MMO.

Tom Gore.4035:

Zeldain.5710:

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

Which accounts are those?

NCsoft financial reports, as they do not break out profitability by game, only sales revenue.

Do we think GW2 cost just $40m to make or something? Including all development costs, infrastructure capital (and ongoing), support and marketing?

Galen Grey.4709:

Small game? 3.5m copies sold in a year makes it a small MMO? Over $189m profits in the first year of its operation. If what analysis call the fastest selling MMO in history is a small game what is a medium mmo or a large mmo ?

It’s that old circular argument again….

1) How many PLAYERS, not sales. Those numbers are without question very different, or they would definitely be tooting their horn on how many active players they have. It’s small in terms of the active player base. And not much more than SW:TOR sold in its first year.

2) Remember, it’s the fastest* selling MMO… emphasis on the asterisk.

3) There’s a difference between revenues and profits… by all accounts they are not yet profitable.

cesmode.4257:

We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.

That’s the funniest part of the quote, honestly.

dalendria.3762:

Vayne.8563:

The Quarterly report from NcSoft, which is a publicly held company, shows that Guild Wars 2 is doing fine.

Your comments about an expansion don’t make much sense from a business perspective.

Right now, Anet is giving away content every 2 weeks. They’d sell an expansion. MMOs often come out with expansions when there’s less interest in their game to bring people back to the game and to get some more money to fund future development. The fact that Anet isn’t doing an expansion is evidence of the fact that they’re doing okay.

I suspect a good percentage of their profits are from the cash shop.

Thanks Vayne.

1. As Vayne points out, their public financial statements show that GW2 is meeting their financial targets (translation – it’s profitable for them).
2. Arenanet has hired people within its first year. Other recent MMOs have laid off people within the first year. No company is going to hire people to support an unprofitable product.

So yes, GW2 is doing well financially.

BioWare was hiring right through the layoffs… it’s all about getting the type of staffing you need, not quantity.

GW2 is a small game… it’s fine, it has it’s niche, it is well-run, well-engineered. But it simply isn’t a great MMO nor is it ever going to have the impact on the genre or players or mainstream than WoW has had.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, unless you’re a player looking to invest the next 5-10 years in a game and would like alot more depth and content than is currently being provided.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Zeldain.5710:

So you enjoy making a checklist then doing your chores to get your allowance each week in your video games? Not me.

The act of surprising the player is a key tenet in good game design. Currency lacks every single ounce of that.

why not having both? A random chance and token for people who have bad enough luck and don’t get it at the mathematical droprate. I mean: droprate at the dragon-tickets was (I think) so that you need 1000-2000 coffers to get one. Some guys didn’t get one after opening 6000 coffers. If those guys would have gotten 1500 token and this would have been the price for the ticket – it would have been much userfriendly.

This is pretty much the ideal scenario.

Random drops are fun when you get the big prize, but frustrating when you don’t get anything. Pairing random drops with some sort of progress bar (whether that’s done as currency, a literal progress bar, or what have you) is the best of both worlds. It means you get the chance to feel like you won the lottery without the despair of bankrupting yourself on lottery tickets.

Only thing worse than currency? Progress bars Seriously, there’s nothing adventurous or spontaneous about that.

The skin from Tequatl should be accessible only by killing that particular beast, not from saving up and buying it from a vendor (why would some random vendor have Tequal’s rare item “in stock” anyway? If it’s supposed to come from a creature of epic proportions…)

Also, it’s ok if not everyone gets everything.

MikaHR.1978:

SW:TOR had 300 employees, I can tell you f
1. SWTOR by all estimates costed 2-3 times more to make
2. by year 1 SWTOR went F2P because it was losing money, subs dropped to abysmal levels (200-250k subs)
3. SWTOR had 400 employees at launch and 2 rounds of layoffs that included lot of higher ups. Even CEO of EA being sacked, many estimate largely due to SWTOR (he brokered Bioware takeover etc.)
4. SWTOR had over 200 severs at launch (226 iirc) and had 2 rounds of merges and is now at 17 (completely shut down oceanic servers)
5. SWTOR has to pay Royalties to LA (estimate 30%) for IP

The fact is we have no official estimate on the cost of SW:TOR nor do we have one for GW2. But what we do know, as is the case for all forms of financing, you aren’t expected to pay it off day 1. If you are making your payments, it’s a good financial bet over time for the “lender.” So total overall development cost has little to do with this in either game’s case.

Do the math even with 250k subs. That’s almost $4m per month, or $12m per quarter just in sub revenue… With estimates of active GW2 players being less than 500,000 active players, at best, that would require a full 50% of those players to spend the equivalent of $15/month just to MATCH SW:TOR’s levels. And I guarantee you 50% of players are not using the GW2 cash shop at the $15 level

Speaking w/ Gordon Walton at GDC Online 2011, he revealed about 250 BioWare team members working on SW:TOR. I will take my direct source over your no source.

The licensing fee is your only valid argument. SW:TOR had to overcome an artificial hurdle that doesn’t exist for GW2, WildStar, Elder Scrolls, etc.

Mosharn.8357:

RNG will never be fun. I have 2k hours on my war with 0 precursor drop. If i had a currency i could have bought the precursor at a set amount of time. RNG is stupid and only encourages people to do repetitive kitten to get something they want. RNG is a bad deal. Ive played games where it was hard to get the super cool drops but in this game its a miracle if you pull a precursor. RNG promotes dull gameplay and this game cant use more of that it is already a chore to do some of the stuff ingame.

So you enjoy making a checklist then doing your chores to get your allowance each week in your video games? Not me.

The act of surprising the player is a key tenet in good game design. Currency lacks every single ounce of that.

Galen Grey.4709:

Thats a different story. Swtor went free to play cause they projected free to play would be more profitable which it was.

Her’s what I’m getting at… GW2 sold 3 million in about the same time that SW:TOR sold 2.5 million. At the same relative box price.

SW:TOR had a large number of those players pay at least a month, if not 6 month or 12 month subscriptions at $15 a month.

GW2 had an unknown number of players spend money in the cash shop, but it looked positive.

Even in the best case of cash shop sales for GW2, it would be easy to see how SW:TOR would be at, if not beating GW2 revenue levels for Year 1. Yet, they saw wholesale need to change their business model. That kind of success should have at least gave them confidence. But it didn’t.

SW:TOR had about 250 staff at launch. GW2 over 200 from what is said. So the staffing levels were also not different.

Infrastructure? There’s nothing magical about it… they are basically the same in terms of hardware, bandwidth, defense budget, etc.

So what makes GW2 a resounding, growing success when SW:TOR by all counts was more successful revenue-wise in year one? Yet was viewed as a failure?

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is the more you charge money the less players you’re going to get. A free to play is gonna get the most number of players.

That’s simply not true. Cost is not the barrier to keeping players. The industry has shown that players will pay monthly for a game if it is worthwhile. The fact is the turnover rate of f2p games is about the same as subscription games.¹ Money is not the issue.

Galen Grey.4709:

12m of WoW seem impressive? how about the 50m of perfect world? B2P is gonna be some where in the middle and P2P is the hardest to get players for.

Simply not true… can’t compare one game with an entire publisher’s worth of games. Plus more importantly… every one of those 12 million were actually active players. When someone plays a f2p game, there’s no value to them so they stop whenever. Yet the publisher likes to somehow count them. Same thing Anet is doing… 3.5 million sold – how many players? If they said anything over 1 million I’d be impressed. My guess? Less than 300,000. And is that enough using a 5% mtx conversion rate to support triple-A MMO development? It doesn’t feel like it to me.

Blaine Tog.8304:

In any case, we’re talking in circles. I’m confident that I’m describing the system Anet has chosen.

Why do you then suppose they didn’t do this from the launch of the game?

If they really wanted it would take leadership, teamwork, coordination, communication and strategy to down the world event bosses, that’s what they would have done.

So if this ends up being “slightly harder and different” then they failed in their mission. If it ends up being nearly impossible without a boot-camp style leader and strike team, then it’s not fair to the people who DO put forth that effort that those who do not qualify for exactly the same rewards. It was different when no effort or time was required to do something… this, if done right, will change everything.

Blaine Tog.8304:

You’ve seen Star Wars: A New Hope, right? Should Han have been blown off by the Rebels because all he did was fly in at the end and fire a few shots? No, he got his Medal just like Luke did and nobody in the history of movie-watching has ever argued that Luke should’ve whined to the Princess that Han got the same Medal as him, or that Han wouldn’t have shown up unless he knew he was getting the same Medal as Luke.

People should be encouraged to help each other out and facilitate each other’s goals. That’s been a central pillar of GW2 and I don’t see Anet turning their back on that philosophy now.

Well, I was at game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals this year, but the Blackhawks still haven’t told me when my day with the cup will be.

There are asinine examples that can be trotted out on both sides of the argument.

The bottom line is, they could have easily made them work like this when the game launched, but they chose not to. Now, they are asking for players to come up with extra effort and coordination (and no doubt time) to be able to sucessfully pull this off on a regular basis. A real teamwork-driven goal.

Why should someone not on the team get the same rewards just for showing up? Why would anyone expect them to, is the real question?

Again – those drive-by players can get the loot they always have. But restrict the chance to get rare loot only if you are part of the core organized group to kill it.

chemiclord.3978:

Well, let’s break it down like this.

Say the 500,000 number is accurate, even as merely an average.

There are 51 worlds… now granted, some worlds are more populated than others, but that will average out to 9,804 players per world at any given time.

From there, we have 28 explorable zones, 6 cities, 17 different WvW groups with 4 maps each, and a sPvP area. Assuming an even distribution among all those areas (which again, despite being a logical fallacy is simply to prove a point), it averages out to roughly 96 players per map.

Now when you consider the reality (where most players gravitate to certain worlds and most hover about in cities), it’s easy to see that even when you have 500,000 concurrent players how some places can look really, really lonely.

There is no 500,000 number. It’s 430,000 PEAK concurrency, which means it’s the highest ever… not the constant. That could have been just after the game came out, for example.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Zeldain.5710:

Just to reiterate… you can’t have teamwork matter and be all-inclusive at the same time.

Nonsense. You accomplish that by either being all-inclusive to the team and/or by creating multiple objectives. WvW is a good example of a place where teamwork can do some serious damage to your enemies, but there’s still something for everyone to do.

Zeldain.5710:

I’m not saying that players who just “show up” get 0 rewards, but they shouldn’t have a chance at the best rewards (the unique Ascended weapon skin or whatever it is that will be dropping from this boss, and presumably others in the future.)

Gear drops are not a zero-sum game in GW2. Whether random Player X who just happened to be in the area and went along for the ride gets an Ascended drop has nothing to do with whether the Guild Leader who set the whole thing up gets an Ascended drop.

I see no reason for why the social distinction of being a guild that can properly execute Tequatl kills shouldn’t be added incentive enough for guilds to try to tackle this event. As soon as this launches, I expect to see guilds racing to be the first to take him down, for example.

Sure it does. It makes them question the effort entirely.

“If I can get the same thing without going through all of this organizational hassle and wipes, I’d be stupid to do so.”

Rational human thinking.

But if there is an incentive, the Tequatl-exclusive weapon skin for example, then it becomes something to aspire to. But not if someone who is accidentally walking by can get it too.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Having said that, I think I would actually prefer this to be a 50-man raid…

I think that’s what they should have done, actually. Came up a lot in beta (at least form me!)

Why not slap down a little green glowy star in the area that represents and instanced copy that an organized guild group could enter… the open world stays as is, but the challenge is in the instance.

Seems like that would have been the best of both worlds.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Zeldain.5710:

If they do this right, it won’t be possible for anyone BUT a big organized guild to pull it off. So why should a passer-by have the same rights for putting in none of the same effort?

Because they still showed up to the fight. It’s conceivable that the fight may not even have succeeded without that outside help. Would you prefer everyone fails together than everyone succeeds together?

“Showing up” for the fight is no longer enough. That is exactly what they talked about in the livestream.

They want to make players communicate, coordinate and strategize… that does simply not happen in the open world with any manner of player wandering around, and if it can be killed that way, then they will have failed in their mission.

So the passer-by should get the loot they always would have, but the in-charge group should get the rare pieces.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Zeldain.5710:

The most important thing about the rewards needs to be that it rewards the team who was able to muster the organization and develop a strategy, and that they have access to rewards from the kill that others in the area do not for simply “being there.”

No, if they were going to do that then they would’ve made this a Guild mission-type of thing.

Killing the Dragons is supposed to be in everyone’s best interest. Not just the best interests of one big guild.

If they do this right, it won’t be possible for anyone BUT a big organized guild to pull it off. So why should a passer-by have the same rights for putting in none of the same effort?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Colin: Players numbers and player login time, total hours played per week have consistently gone up since we did the biweekly cycle. This is even during the summer when MMO player population drops.

What does that even mean? I just would like a number: How many total unique players logged in at all in August.

Simple.