Guild Wars 2

Kal Spiro.9745:

phys.7689:

I would say that the grind in gw2, is caused by them creating a grindy philosophy for endgame. (which is cosmetic)

unfortunately they extended the grind to best in slot with the addition of ascended, most specifically the armor and weapons.

Which is fine because you don’t actually need either of those things. Anyone should be content to be in exotics and don’t need to go all the way to Ascended unless they’re willing and prepared to grind it.

The same with anything cosmetic, if you really want it be prepared for grind. But to progress through 80 levels, to complete the dungeons, to complete the personal story, even to complete the living world story, at no point during any of this do you need grind to complete it.

In my opinion, which isn’t really relevant to this, but I feel like putting it in, endgame needs to be grindy. If there is no end to the game and you can just get whatever it is you want the first time you do it, there is no point in repeating content. In order to ensure repeated content and continued game play for endgame there has to be grind.

you can make something satisfying,and highly repeatable, without making it grindy

art
music
sports
food

there are many things people repeat that doesnt feel grindy.

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is there are 2 elements to grind. Game design and player behaviour.

I personally think its a mistake to except any game design alone will ever solve the grind issue. Case in point there were examples given of what Arenanet could do to make the game less grindy that people pointed out would actually make the game more grindy if implemented.

It has to come a bit from both.

Anet can only provide the tools essentially but its players who have to use them.

That gold like in real life is a token system meant to translate one value into another is one such tool. You want reward X? put Y work doing whatever you feel like and you can get X. That makes it possible to avoid repetition for a long long while. I am sure if people wanted they could spend at least 500+ hours doing stuff that earns them gold without repeating a single thing, even on a complete new alt if they choose. repeating everything once every 500 hours isnt really that grindy is it? but like its been pointed out many many times thats something that players have to choose at the expense of time which is where behaviour comes in.

game design includes player behavior. The simple answer, is stop developing rewards based around 500 hours of play. Why isnt chess grindy? because it isnt designed around 500 hours of play, that is most likely to succeed with repetive play. Why isnt basketball grindy? because its not designed that way.

You mentioned this before, when you say content should last a player 100 hours. Yes, you want to design content that is highly replayable, no, the best answer to that is not to make you have to repeat it for 200 times to get some reward, that just makes the journey less entertaining. It actually tends to make the repetions themselves, less entertaining.

For example, a playoff player may have hit 800 shots in order to have a winning season, many of those shots may have been exciting, some more than others, doesnt feel like a grind, but if you tell the same player to shoot 800 shots before he can win, you make it feel like a chore, and whether you have to shoot 1 shot a day, or 800 shots in one day, its still gonna feel like a grind.

point is, focus reward on the best, most entertaining gameplay possible, in small bursts, with short term goals. Long term goals should be a collection of SATISFYING short term goals.
In the basketball example, winning a game is a satisfying short term goal, shooting till you hit 30 shots a day and going home, is less satisfying. (for many people)

Like i said for guild halls, building a room, is a satisfying short term goal. Grinding 20 gold a day so that when you hit 4000 gold you can buy a compeleted guild hall, is less satisfying (Satisfaction per day is low)

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

playing things many times to get better isnt really grind, because its not based on how many times you do it, but how well you do it. I mean, you may find it boring, or frustrating, but thats not a grind.

That’s actually precisely what a grind is.

What makes something grindy is a repetition of an action that is essentially boring.

now if its a challenging content and that you have not conquered it makes you want to try again.. than sure, that could make repetition completely non-grindy but the moment you become frustrated and bored if you’re forced to repeat that content or else you have no other option than thats where grind begins.

frustration just means you are annoyed, that can happen at any time on one try or the 1000th
boredom is the same. If you define something as being bored, as grindy, then even doing something once is grindy, which is not what grind is about.

Also, i contend that repetition to achieve skill/knowledge isnt really grindy, because doing the same thing(that doesnt work) will not allow you to progress.

now this isnt to say you want people to quit from frustration, but just that frustration and grind are two different types of issues

Kal Spiro.9745:

IndigoSundown.5419:

eithinan.9841:

Grind is not repeating specific content, Grind is having content locked behind repeating specific content. Repeating specific content in this game is self imposed grind.

Carry on…

edit: notice the capitalization.

While that would seem to be where ANet has hung their hat on grind, it is not the state of the word as it is evolving in real time. Buzz words in popular culture seldom retain consistent definitions across time. There is too much access to information and exposure to different ways to view things for a given definition to hold for the long term.

As such the actual purest meaning of the word is the only one that should be considered as a promise.

If the word is evolving to mean repeating actions, then playing a game is grinding, period. If you do the same thing twice you’re grinding. That’s a load. That is also what most arguments claiming grind break down to. Anyone who actually puts any thought into it should realize that most of these arguments, and especially the original argument that brought this thread into being, are meaningless.

What was described is what a grind is. I’ll go farther as to saying a real a true grind requires the acquisition of the items the content it gated behind to be based on RNG. Do content for a chance to get an item. Repeat content until item is acquired. Move on to next content for chance at different item.

rng is irrelevant to grind. If you have a rng of 75% chance at a drop, i doubt that would be a grind, but if you have a guaranteed drop that you need to get 2000 times, most people will call that a grind.

grind has to do with the amount of repetitive activities you need to do in order to progress.
Its never going to have a pure non subjective meaning, because, different people are going to have different thresholds for repetition.

However, just because something is subjective doesnt mean you cant get some type of understanding.

I would say that the grind in gw2, is caused by them creating a grindy philosophy for endgame. (which is cosmetic)

unfortunately they extended the grind to best in slot with the addition of ascended, most specifically the armor and weapons.

Jerus.4350:

Thaddeus.4891:

I really don’t think it will be power creep Jerus (Or at least I really hope it won’t lol).

Specific mastery that we know of are learning a new languages, gliding, jumping from mushroom, gaining access to new reward, etc.

Total speculation on my part but here some possibilities of Fractal Masteries

- Unlocking new recipe to upgrade infusion. Right now, crafting +5 is easy, crafting +8 is hard, crafting +10 is stupid. Maybe a new recipe will make crafting +10 and +15 more accessible so we can do higher level of fractal.
- Unlocking new skills that allow you to go through some higher level instability.
- Unlocking new collections and rewards.

Reread their list.

-Master Lore: Attunement with new ally races can be trained to understand their language, unlocking secret locations and access to battle techniques that can weaken your shared enemies.

Does that not sound like you’ll get some debuff to them, essentially giving the player more power… aka power creep.

-Master Combat: The Heart of Maguuma will be home to some of the most challenging combat in Guild Wars 2, and Masteries will give you the tools you need to excel in these fights. Hunt new enemies, master abilities to defeat champions, and become more deadly against the new creatures waiting in the jungle.

This set of systems is vertical progression from what I’m reading today. Whether that will be true in fractals… we’ll see.

it will be vertical progression. They will have skills/traits/something that you need to have or you cannot beat certain enemies. They have said this a lot. Mastery bars are also tied to expereince. It doesnt seem that the combat related ones will be as integrated as zelda or metroid, though they keep bringing those up. I doubt you ll see too many things like bombs in zelda, it will probably be like agony or lightbringer points or something.

My guess?
either he is on extended haitus, or he is working on a new game property

Vayne.8563:

Ah the old common sense argument. Given the number of games that attract people sololy on grind (candy corn crush, farmville), I’d say there’s more chance people stay with a game with grind in it than a game without it. That’s common sense to me.

Unfortunately your common sense tells you I like this so there must be enough people like me. That’s not really common sense. It’s just human nature to think that way.

I know that I’m not a typical gamer and most players aren’t like me. But a large group? How large?

Basically I think that if they made the game you wanted, the way you wanted it, there’d be less players long term. I can’t prove it, but that’s what I believe.

candy crush isnt grindy, it has unique levels, you are playing each level just to play that level. It works by making you feel good for beating something. There is no grind at all in candy corn, no rewards, its actually the opposite of grindy. Its whole entire reward system is based on the rewarding feeling you get for beating a level.

Its basically works by giving people challenging content and lets them work their way up as far as they can go.

perhaps the key to getting rid of grind may lie in looking at candy crush. They created a viable, profitable, addicting game that has made tons of money, and has zero grind.

Coalwhite.2571:

This has to be said.

I haven’t played GW2 for about a year, maybe a bit more. I reached end-game back then, played around and after a while gave up because I got bored and lag was pretty bad back then (this was also around the time the trading shop was down for a few days for Mac users only). Then ESO was announced and I was like: suck it ArenaNet, Bethesda is going to take all your players.

In any case, fast forward almost a year and despite seeing tons of new and exciting GW2 news I decide to buy ESO Online now that it’s finally B2P. This thing costs 60$, and there’s no refund – but I think: hey, how bad can it be – it’s from the guys that made Skyrim.

ESO is so darn uninspired it made me upset! I’ve logged 25 hours in the game, around 13 of those are install hours o_O

Battle is a drag, the in-game world is boring to explore and the skills are not adding to the battle at all yet. Lore is great though, I’ll give them that. But really, there’s no strategy and hitboxes are deplorably bad. After about three days of frustration and boredom I can no longer force myself to play it, and am downloading GW2 as I type this.

Maybe because I’m older or have just played more games, but I look back on my time with GW2 and I remember excitement, mystery and great, challenging combat. Glad to be back, let’s hope the magic hasn’t faded (…. and that they didn’t stop working on the Mac client!!!!)

Anyone else come here from ESO?

eso is actually not made by the people who made skyrim

i dont love guild chat spam, however i think for the community as a whole, its very worth it.
I think the people against it are being a bit selfish. There are people out there looking for guilds, and guild spammers make it a lot easier to find a guild that fits your needs.

Until anet sets up some better systems i think guild spam is an acceptable annoyance

Lorgus.6148:

Lets go through these in order:

-Remove trash mobs: Why? The mobs are there so that the players who can’t/won’t skip have an alternative, and can clear them out for loot. As it is now, both those who want to skip and those who don’t can have their way. Don’t change what isn’t broken.

-“Change boss fight dynamics”: here you’re clearly referring to the “Cardinal sin” that is stacking. Once again, there is nothing wrong with stacking, and adding collision between mobs/players would add a great deal more problems than it solves, let’s be real.

-Changing damage output of mobs : Most encounters in the game are already incredibly simple, what would be the advantage of simplifying them even further? At least with one-shot mechanics players need to be a little active with their playstyle and dodges, rather than just spamming 1 like in open world events.

-Soloable story modes: A large majority of them already are. If you don’t believe me, check gw2dungeons.net where they even host solo speedrun times of many of those paths. And making it so that people are encouraged to play alone in an massively MULTIPLAYER online game, would be sort of removing the meaning of the genre, don’t you think?

-Clearer paths: So you’d prefer a more linear approach in dungeons which are already pretty simple, what with waypoints and quest markers? What would this accomplish, other than simplifying the game further?

sorry, but number 2? bosses arent that well designed here. There are few interesting ones, but most of them are fairly boring.

tfcgeneralkmk.9508:

for the jumping puzzle yes you could do it flawlessly the first time and never need to do it again but most people aren’t able to do JP in one try I know i can’t so then it would become a grind if you could ONLY get it that way as you suggest even if they are only account bound items you don’t want to introduce that do you?

playing things many times to get better isnt really grind, because its not based on how many times you do it, but how well you do it. I mean, you may find it boring, or frustrating, but thats not a grind.
Also if something is so difficult you cant easily win, most attempts will be fairly different, and the moment to moment gameplay will be a lot more compelling (because every moment matters)

essentially you can not beat difficulty by doing the same things over and over again, if you play the same, you will basically guarantee failure.

now im not saying difficulty will be the perfect solution for everything, but beating something one time that is skill based, cant really be called a grind.

hmm i guess it comes down to salesmanship. The post should have been something like
LESS CURRENCIES!
MORE COOL ITEMS FOR CURRENCIES!
NO INSANE CURRENCY COSTS FOR COOL ITEMS!
CONTENT REWARDS THAT STAY RELEVANT!

I mean thats actually the reason for this thread, the cap is just one means to achieving those ends.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

There are plenty of sinks for every currency in the game. If people are hording that currency then it is because they value the currency more than the sink. Capping the currency doesn’t solve anything, it just makes more problems. With a cap people will continually spend the currency to stay below the cap, meaning everything tied to that currency with trend towards vendor value since you will increase supply without increasing demand.

All this will accomplish is a ton of worthless rewards that people just sell to vendors, and people feeling much less rewarded for their play time.

you realize, if you find the currency more valuable than the items that you can exchange for it, you are very separated from logic?

The only value the currencies have is what you can trade it for. Thats it. You are basically saying people just like having a high arbitrary number that has no use for them. Which is probably true, but it is also pointless.

Seera.5916:

phys.7689:

Rasimir.6239:

phys.7689:

Jana.6831:

Devildoc.6721:

I’d be happy to just see geodes and crests go to the wallet instead of taking inventory/bank space..

I second this – reason why I have no interest in the new zones whatsoever “Take this junk to get that junk oh and you also need this junk and that junk and here’s some more junk and we also have that junk – all of it is 1% useful so don’t delete it”.

this is another thing i dont like about the currency implementation, its super unwieldy, and its getting worse with every zone.

How about soft-capping the extra currencies in a way similar to how dungeon tokens were handled before the introduction of the wallet: Add a currency storage (wallet or whatever you like to call it) that holds a finite amount of the currency in question (e.g. 1.5k bandit crests, 500 geodes and whatever), and add any currency overflowing that storage to the inventory just like it is now. That way, you have an incentive for people to spend their currency (because, after a certain amount, it will clog their inventory/bank space) while still allowing everyone the freedom of setting their own limit. Pretty much the way it is with materials now.

no point in a soft cap unfortunately. But honestly im willing to let the idea go. People dont really like how the word cap makes them feel, even if it can create more actual value for your time spent in game.

Worst case, too many currencies, and no real value outside of whatever they gave people when it was released. It makes the game messy, and makes earning currencies, in the long term unexciting (how many people still excited about their dungeon tokens after a year?)

but its not the end of the world. Eventually they will build better systems (maybe in HoT) and people will just ignore old content with inferior systems.

It doesn’t make my time more valuable. If I’m in the area to get lucky with an rng drop, eventually I have to decide to waste time to unload geodesic to something I’m not needing or wanting or get no return on any set of drops that would have given me geodesic without a cap. So a cap wastes my time.

so basically, you have to use your geodes in order to give them any real value, basically the same thing whether you do it now or later.

eventually I have to decide to waste time to unload geodesic

no matter what, you will eventually have to waste time unloading geodesic to get any value out of it.

to something I’m not needing or wanting

so the currency has no value to you

or get no return on any set of drops that would have given me geodesic without a cap.

so now, the currency has value to you, even though your premise is there is nothing you want.

You want to save all that currency so you can get a return on it, but you dont want to exchange the currency because you dont feel like trading it gives you anything of value.

hey i understand, its psychological. Its not really a logical response. But it appears it is a common response. Sometimes you have ineffecient systems because thats how the user wants to interact with it.

we ll just keep getting more and more currencies that become useless over time. Or they ll make a better system for new areas, and people will ignore those areas as far as rewards go.

and it will make your time more valuable because they will start creating currencies with more uses, and unify currencies that serve similar purposes, they can then put them in the wallet without having to update the wallet every few months, and create a more unwieldly database.

So then you would be searching for a drop, and get a valuable currency, which is more likely to be useful for something you want, because it is tied to more things, it wouldnt fill your inventory, and they wouldnt have to make the numbers as high for new objects because some people wouldnt have millions of it on patch day.

which is a better system, but yeah, youd actually have to use your currency instead of holding on to it, to get nothing of value.

Many.8419:

open source products are usually free arent they?
if gw2 was f2p i would understand ppl involvement in testing.
but this is a b2p game with cash shop so for me personally pts would be a cheap way to cut costs with shrinking QA team

well they shrunk (well perhaps a better term is outsourced)the QA team without throwing in a PTS for like a year now. Annnd id rather have a pts if these are the results.

I get what you are saying, but at the end of the day, id just like a better game, even if the community does some of the work to get it there.

Many.8419:

I know, I still dont understand why anyone would test the product without being paid.

because they want a better product. If participating in ptr reduces bugs, and improves user satisfaction, there is a benefit as a user. Its not for everyone though, and thats why its optional.

Many people enjoy putting effort into things they like in order to improve them. Kids, arts, crafts, inventions, music. Did you know a lot of software that is developed is based on open source technologies? Which is essentially a bunch of people working for free?

This forum itself is probably an inferior iteration of an open source project

Olvendred.3027:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Styxx.1564:

Humans are quick to forget the amazing time they spend, and always whine about the few moments where things don’t go their way. It’s universal.

Most whiners have probably over 1000h of playtime, but that’s irrelevant.
Bugs now! Anet sucks!

its more like how did they not see this bug, we noticed it within 10 seconds.
they need a PTR, it would benefit their style and reduce predictable bugs on live greatly.

As I’ve said before, Rift had a PTR and plenty of bugs got through and every single patch required multiple down times to correct those bugs, PTR and all.

The problem is test servers are never identical to the main server and never end up with the same traffic.

not all bugs are related to traffic. messing up post processing effects, not related to traffic, skill/traits not working as advertised, not related to traffic, achievement errors, not related to traffic.

I have participated in a ptr, and if you saw the releases before PTR, you would realize how useful the ptr was So many bugs/bad implementations/errors never reach the users on the main server, with just a few dedicated ptr people.

Rift may have been bad it, but most likely the amount of issues before the ptr people got to it, was huge as compared to what you got

to be clear PTR doesnt eliminate all bugs, it reduces bugs. Thats all any quality control in any system can do. perfection is not the goal, less bugs/errors/bad implementations is the goal.

A PTR is a method of quality assurance, but by no means the only one. Anet uses a different method, and each methods has its own pros and cons. To say that a PTR is better, simply because it detects bugs, is misleading, because a patch would be released to the PTR at a considerably earlier stage of development, than a patch going into the live game from Anet. Participants in a PTR get to see bugs and resolve them, because that’s what they’re there for.

the methods they are using are passing by too many obvious bugs. If that wasnt the case, i might not suggest it. But if these bugs are hard to find with automation, or whatever other techniques they are using, then maybe they need to add a ptr to the quality control.

Ptr has the added advantage of being a testing ground for ideas as well. They refined some implementations greatly based on feedback on the ptr i participated in.

Many.8419:

Being a free test subject is an illogical idea for me. Why PTR servers? if they want players to test their game they should pay testers.

PTR is purely optional.

Rasimir.6239:

phys.7689:

Jana.6831:

Devildoc.6721:

I’d be happy to just see geodes and crests go to the wallet instead of taking inventory/bank space..

I second this – reason why I have no interest in the new zones whatsoever “Take this junk to get that junk oh and you also need this junk and that junk and here’s some more junk and we also have that junk – all of it is 1% useful so don’t delete it”.

this is another thing i dont like about the currency implementation, its super unwieldy, and its getting worse with every zone.

How about soft-capping the extra currencies in a way similar to how dungeon tokens were handled before the introduction of the wallet: Add a currency storage (wallet or whatever you like to call it) that holds a finite amount of the currency in question (e.g. 1.5k bandit crests, 500 geodes and whatever), and add any currency overflowing that storage to the inventory just like it is now. That way, you have an incentive for people to spend their currency (because, after a certain amount, it will clog their inventory/bank space) while still allowing everyone the freedom of setting their own limit. Pretty much the way it is with materials now.

no point in a soft cap unfortunately. But honestly im willing to let the idea go. People dont really like how the word cap makes them feel, even if it can create more actual value for your time spent in game.

Worst case, too many currencies, and no real value outside of whatever they gave people when it was released. It makes the game messy, and makes earning currencies, in the long term unexciting (how many people still excited about their dungeon tokens after a year?)

but its not the end of the world. Eventually they will build better systems (maybe in HoT) and people will just ignore old content with inferior systems.

Zenith.7301:

Brown.8560:

spoj.9672:

Why no mesmer? Mesmers are actually really good for mossman if you need some extra defence.

In order have consistent and relatively fast low man fractal runs, I try to form groups that can provide the following:

- fury
- might
- blind
- weakness
- projectile defense
- good dps

1. Fury – Every class can bring a sufficient amount of fury except for the mesmer. Although the necro can only bring fury for themselves, it has a decent up time. Warriors are nice not only because of for great justice/battle standard, but also because anyone in the party can use the discipline banner to fill in the gaps. An elementalist really shines with persisting flames. Fury is just plain wonky to provide consistently with a mesmer. You either have to use a staff or trait for bountiful disillusionment, both of which reduce the mesmer’s dps significantly.

2. Might – Similarly, mesmers have a hard time bringing might to the party. They can’t provide fire fields, and only have 1 blast finisher. Six points into chaos for bountiful disillusionment or bountiful interruptions lowers their dps, as does five points into illusions to get shattered strength.

Perhaps a traited signet of inspiration can cover fury and might. I haven’t spent any time trying it. Scrap that. SoI doesn’t double the duration on yourself which means you’re still depending on the other team mate to provide all the fury/might. I have a charr mesmer so I could use battle roar, but that seems kind of crude.

3. Blind – Again, mesmers are not as effective at bringing blind to the party. A portal with dazzling glamours is actually pretty good (think chest seal, or the start of volcanic), but you have to sacrifice dps in order to trait for it. The torch and signet of midnight are another option, but those aren’t nearly enough.

4. Weakness – This is typically provide by the guardian shield of the avenger when commanded, as well as the use of the consumable skale venom. The other two party members don’t really have to concern themselves with weakness.

5. Projectile defense – Projectile defense is one of mesmer’s strongest suits. Unfortunately, the guardian already covers that so it’s somewhat wasted to have an overlapping mesmer. Additionally, reflect damage makes up a large part of the mesmer’s damage. Unfortunately, it is frequently blocked in our trios because blinds and shield of the avenger are necessary to sustain the health of the party. For example the mesmer can’t reflect the archers nor the mages because those groups contain cultists and warriors that need to be blinded. Ashym’s FGS phase is one particular fight where the mesmer shines, but it can be done without one. Mesmer reflect is really good on harpies and dredge, but it is even better to just stealth past those mobs.

6. Any class can provide good dps. Unfortunately for the mesmer, a lot of the dps must be sacrificed to provide other utilities for the trio. To put it another way, trio utilities are not inherent in the zerk mesmer meta build. Finally, their reflect damage is often neutralized by the guardian or blinds.

I may have to revisit the mesmer, but the last few times that I tried it, our runs were pretty bad.

Plus mesmer phantasms are often dancing dagger bait. Mesmer damage will continue to be inconsistent so long as their illusions remain so fragile (the entirety of their viability relies on having 3 phantasms up, any less and you are already a dps loss to the group), not to mention illusions also have their aggro quirks that would probably screw with your anchor.

Mesmers have also much less cleave than guardians, and more importantly less burst (shatter is virtually the equivalent of having whirling wrath reduce your subsequent autoattack damage by a large % for 10+ seconds).

Mesmers have some neat tricks no doubt but I think part of the reason why they’re still not that used is because the drawbacks kinda neutralize the gains.

If HoT however brings more mobs like the dredge, and rooms in which you can’t just stealth through everything, mesmer with null field, disenchanter might be pretty great. Medic’s feedback would also be a boon if there were encounters where being downed is unavoidable and part of the encounter strategy is safely coordinating rezzes.

well, pretty decent chance mesmer specialization will be more tank/support oriented, also they will probably have best access to slow. which means, they will be able to steal the tank guardians spot! too bad the tank guardians spot is so tiny.

maddoctor.2738:

fishball.7204:

Rather than screw with all the old currencies perhaps ANet can add a new one with more stringent stuff so that you can’t “hoard” 10000000000000 of it, maybe. Although personally, I hoard a lot and don’t really see a problem with it.

There is hope that in Heart of Thorns they will add only one, or at least very few new currencies.

The difference between an expansion and the LS is that in the LS they want players to experience the new episodes in the new zones, so they add new currencies for each new zone. However, with an expansion, there is no need to focus on individual zones and instead focus on the entire expansion at once.

You don’t see a problem with hoarding, yet I see one major one: they haven’t updated vendors for currencies. I believe a cap would make old currencies usable again

hot may have avoided the currency problem. Most progression is mastery based now, and masteries are based within the whole zone.
So maybe you have to get to level 5 lore to find some area where you can get some item for a collection. But the only way to get level 5 lore is to generally play in Hot.

old tyria will have its own masteries, that will probably be less integrated.

looks like specializations wont be that different.

based on some of the info thats out there, my guess would be the biggest difference is them changing the what the class mechanic does, but not how it works

for example, ele will always have attunements that change
mesmer will always have shatters, though they may change the shatter abilities
thief will always have steal, though they may change what steal does
guardians virtues, etc.

so you get a little more flexibility, but if thats the case, a specialisation will never be able to step out of the class mechanic, which means new classes will continue to be something of value.

However, i dont think they really want to make any more professions, and will probably only do it under duress.

fishball.7204:

It takes 10,290 tokens to finish each dungeon’s dungeoneer collection. Let’s say we set a cap of 15k, how many people have 15k dungeon tokens? Is it worth the dev time to even bother? Probably not.

you wouldnt set the cap that high, because people can turn it per item.

Mourningcry.9428:

phys.7689:

Mourningcry.9428:

@Phys

The difference being that the current implementation offers an optional conversion. A hard cap forces a conversion.

With respect to your analysis, the current conversion rates may be considered poor by some, and hence they chose not to convert, rather opting to bank the given currency. A cap will force such a conversion or result in wasted currency.

Regardless of what this rate is, it will be an increase versus the current rate.

In the simplest terms, an increase in gold and it’s resulting impacts.

it wont be an increase in gold, currencies pays out direct gold at abysmal rates. Its will be an increase in items, but thats why all the items currencies can make tend to be ones that are destroyed.
basic materials/crafting mats, which are destroyed so fast that if everyone cashed out, it would probably still recover in a few days.

so basically you get a small hiccup, and slightly increased supply, but that wont rock the market in the long term.

Only Anet has the numbers to determine the actual size of the blip.

On an individual basis it maybe small, but the immediate and ongoing impact would be essentially the scope of the entire player base.

To discount the overall impact so casually is optimistic at best.

im not really being optomistic, John smith and his bunch basically sit and figure out these things, thats why currencies are restrictive as they are.
the reason you cant directly salvage karma armor is because they decided thats too big a payout.
the reason they allow you to mystic forge it, is because they figured that payout is low enough not to be blip. They made some mistakes early in the games life, but they have been careful with it for some time. They got it down now. Its no longer a mistake, its part of their calculations now.
When they are unsure, they give them no value at all. account bound, cant salvage,
cant sell, like personal story drops now.

Im telling you anet has done the numbers, and if everyone liquidated all they had, the economy would still be going according to their plan. Aside from a dip before correcting itself.
none of these transfers are sustainable supplies for items. They have methods that earn you more of the items much much faster.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Styxx.1564:

Humans are quick to forget the amazing time they spend, and always whine about the few moments where things don’t go their way. It’s universal.

Most whiners have probably over 1000h of playtime, but that’s irrelevant.
Bugs now! Anet sucks!

its more like how did they not see this bug, we noticed it within 10 seconds.
they need a PTR, it would benefit their style and reduce predictable bugs on live greatly.

As I’ve said before, Rift had a PTR and plenty of bugs got through and every single patch required multiple down times to correct those bugs, PTR and all.

The problem is test servers are never identical to the main server and never end up with the same traffic.

not all bugs are related to traffic. messing up post processing effects, not related to traffic, skill/traits not working as advertised, not related to traffic, achievement errors, not related to traffic.

I have participated in a ptr, and if you saw the releases before PTR, you would realize how useful the ptr was So many bugs/bad implementations/errors never reach the users on the main server, with just a few dedicated ptr people.

Rift may have been bad it, but most likely the amount of issues before the ptr people got to it, was huge as compared to what you got

to be clear PTR doesnt eliminate all bugs, it reduces bugs. Thats all any quality control in any system can do. perfection is not the goal, less bugs/errors/bad implementations is the goal.

Jana.6831:

Devildoc.6721:

I’d be happy to just see geodes and crests go to the wallet instead of taking inventory/bank space..

I second this – reason why I have no interest in the new zones whatsoever “Take this junk to get that junk oh and you also need this junk and that junk and here’s some more junk and we also have that junk – all of it is 1% useful so don’t delete it”.

this is another thing i dont like about the currency implementation, its super unwieldy, and its getting worse with every zone.

Mourningcry.9428:

@Phys

The difference being that the current implementation offers an optional conversion. A hard cap forces a conversion.

With respect to your analysis, the current conversion rates may be considered poor by some, and hence they chose not to convert, rather opting to bank the given currency. A cap will force such a conversion or result in wasted currency.

Regardless of what this rate is, it will be an increase versus the current rate.

In the simplest terms, an increase in gold and it’s resulting impacts.

it wont be an increase in gold, currencies pays out direct gold at abysmal rates. Its will be an increase in items, but thats why all the items currencies can make tend to be ones that are destroyed.
basic materials/crafting mats, which are destroyed so fast that if everyone cashed out, it would probably still recover in a few days.

so basically you get a small hiccup, and slightly increased supply, but that wont rock the market in the long term.

Styxx.1564:

Humans are quick to forget the amazing time they spend, and always whine about the few moments where things don’t go their way. It’s universal.

Most whiners have probably over 1000h of playtime, but that’s irrelevant.
Bugs now! Anet sucks!

its more like how did they not see this bug, we noticed it within 10 seconds.
they need a PTR, it would benefit their style and reduce predictable bugs on live greatly.

Vayne.8563:

most of the issues have been fixed, many of which had a workaround right away.

Having played many other MMOs before this, I think people greatly underestimate the development team.

Thanks, Anet.

i dunno what games you have been playing, the turnaround on hotfixes for bugs introduced in games i have played is usally the same.
And they tend to introduce less bugs than this last one.

I will say to their advantage, they can fix the bugs in general without having to take down the server for 2-4 hours at a time. That is definately one of their strong suits.

Anets new patch rating:

New bugs introduced: 3/10
timely fixing of bugs: 6/10
short downtime for bug fixing 9.5/10

imo

Mourningcry.9428:

As long as there a method to convert a given currency to a standard one (gold), creating a cap on a currency naturally will force a conversion to that standard as the cap is reached.

Without taking that flight into account, it’s irresponsible to simply implement such a cap.

For all those requesting a non-gold currency cap, how do account for this conversion and it’s impact?

they already accounted for that. Thats why all the conversions are so crappy in terms of value of the cash out.

keep in mind that these items arent free, they are obtained through effort. a dynamic event gives like 2 silver and 378 karma. farming any event besides a few, is giving you virtualy no value. 378 karma
266 karma for a linen item.
you need 4 of them to make one salvageable item
1064 karma for one salvageable linen item
3 events, in exchange for 1 drop.
thats crappy payout. You are basically wasting your resource, and the time earning it. Its easier to get profit by killing bandits than by getting karma.
and thats one of the best payouts using karma.

Point is, they already figured in people offloading karma into their equation, people cannot earn enough to actually effect the economy for more than small amount of time, because the payouts are designed to be poor.
People built up tons of karma by playing for a long time, they dont actually earn that much, after an initial drop, these currencies can only add a very small amount of supply relative to any particular market.

just like when they added orrian boxes
at first everyone was burning them up.
then they ran out of karma, and had barely any profit to show for it, and couldnt earn new karma fast enough to make a dent in any of the markets.

Rasimir.6239:

Iason Evan.3806:

If it took up inventory space, I would say put a cap on it. The currencies like Karma, Laurels, Fractal Relics don’t take up space though so no cap is necessary.

But the currencies that take up inventory space, like geodes, bandit crests or pristine fractal relics, effectively are already capped. Only it’s not a hard cap, where the game says "you may store 3 stacks of that currency, and not a single bit more), but instead a soft cap, where you decide yourself where to put the cap. You are free to dedicate a full bank tab to one currency (at the expense of not being able to store other stuff in there), or only keep a single stack and spend it all as soon as your stack is full.

While inventory management can sometimes be a nuisance this way (personally I am often so indecisive about what to spend my currency on first, that I end up not spending it at all and dealing with the hassle of not enough bank space instead ), to me it is still infinitely preferable to a hard cap that doesn’t leave any room for each person’s priorities concerning whether to save or spend their loot.

Besides, one of the technical advantages of new currency is that it gives people incentive to play different areas of the game. Take dungeon tokens as an example: Let’s say they unify tokens from different dungeons to all be the same kind of currency. New dungeons are added, that also give unified dungeon tokens and offer rewards for that. Even with currency cap, how many people do you think will go through the process of truly learning and running the new dungeons compared with people just running CoF1 and SE1 daily to grab the new rewards?

New rewards for old currency are nice to have every now and then, but let’s face it: they also take away incentive from diving deeper into new content if you can just collect the currency needed by running old stuff brain-afk. As such, I don’t see currency caps as nothing but an artificial barrier to different playstyles and priorities. We already have soft caps on all the inventory-based currencies (due to limits on available inventory space), no need to make it more of a nuisance by adding hard caps.

you make the unlocks for the dungeon require gameplay within the dungeon.

Beat all paths and you have access to a hidden room in the dungeon with an npc who sells items.
so you basically have to beat the paths, and then whenever you want to spend them you need to do at least one dungeon run.
If you have beaten every path, and can beat the dungeon itself in order to get the npc, you have proven enough skill at it. After that point its just repeating something you may not want to do, for something you do want.
If they want some rewards to require more effort, make them have different npcs they unlock after dungeon completition that require harder achievements.

That type of method makes dungeons relevant, but also doesnt force you to grind specifics too much. and keep in mind you can already get dungeon tokens now, without doing any dungeons, in spvp.

renown/achievement based systems can better reward gameplay, without adding grind, and inventory issues. The tokens in that case would be your effort put in, and the achievements/renown is your key to make sure people do, and have reason to do the content.

Erus Keb.8379:

“New work, items, content etc will not be given to players so they can get it instantly based on past work” How about new legendary weapons that were announced? Or the new content that was ascended gear. Those with plenty of gold were even able to bypass the time gate for ascended items. Which leaves me to believe that they want people to do things in a specific area. So, new content comes along, and let’s say they use crests again. If I don’t like the new content, what’s to stop me from going to Silverwastes to earn them for the new rewards? In essence, defeating the purpose of new currencies.

Dungeon tokens are not at a fixed value in relation to gold. One can use them in different ways and get different amounts of gold out of them. For one particular use, the value of them has gone down over time. I suspect that with a cap that value would just go down faster as people wouldn’t hoard them any longer resulting in more supply. Which does make them competitive depending on how they are used.

If we’re going to get a cap, I’d greatly prefer it if things that can be converted into gold are not capped.

As I said, gold is different.
The prices for items based on gold are competitive, and gold doesn’t directly create items. The player gets the items through play and then he sells it for what he thinks its worth.
No amount of gold can make a precursor. You can buy one, but only for what someone is willing to sell it for.
Gold is competitive, they have decided for those items its ok that its pvp.
Token items are supposed to be different, they exist to represent actual game play

The fact that you can some times trade currencies ineffeciently for gold is not relevant. Because you can’t trade gold for the currencies, its primarily one way.

A cap doesn’t stop you from trading items for gold. It just means you trade it before hitting the cap, that’s all.

As for tokens being about new areas, that is very rough solution. It would be better to create a renown system.

fracture.9754:

While I agree doing the story on warrior and necro was miles easier than my ele, I still didn’t die not once on ele during the entire story.

That said, I always bring full DPS to content and make up for the lack of defence via skills (cleansing fire, arcane shield, ice bow #5, …). You can also trait for quick glyphs and use healing glyph + elemental elite in water for additional heals.

New players can’t trait easily, and might not even have access to a minor trait by 40.

runeblade.7514:

phys.7689:

Erus Keb.8379:

Even if there is a cap and old currencies are re-used, then people will hoard them. Put it this way, when I finish getting everything I want with a currency, then I’ll max it out and leave it that way for the next thing that comes along that will use it. I don’t see it solving anything as I’ll still have a head start.

From a QOL perspective, how about making a collections tab for new currencies? If you think about it you may come to the conclusion that everything in collections are already currencies. Would be a kind of cap without an actual hard cap if one wanted to use normal bank space for more.

I don’t even see how karma belongs in this discussion. It’s a different animal – game wide like gold. Unless you propose a cap on gold too.

My view at this point: Just say no to CAPS

the cap is generally set at an amount that gives you a jump ahead, but not enough to make it that big a jump.

lets say the cap on dunegon tokens was 1000, they release an elite version of the dunegeon armors, with some added stuff. They make each piece cost 600.
yeah you get a jump on it, but you dont have it all in one day, and new players arent given some insane number like
5000 tokens per piece, which is designed not in terms of a good amount of runs before getting something, but in terms of how much old players have stacked up.

Why shouldn’t players get it instantly? What differences does it make if it happens 5 days later or instantly. Those players worked for it.

It doesn’t matter if they should, they won’t give it to you for that amount of past work. It just won’t happen. New work, items, content etc will not be given to players so they can get it instantly based on past work.
They may allow people to get a slight advantage, but that’s it.

The end result is more and more currencies, less inventory space, and less value per currency.

Erus Keb.8379:

phys.7689:

the cap is generally set at an amount that gives you a jump ahead, but not enough to make it that big a jump.

Following that line of reasoning I believe that gold would also have to be capped. I recall a post some time back (possibly over a year ago) where a person bought every legendary weapon in the game with gold earned in game. The figure of 60K+ gold comes to mind as to what they made on the TP. That is a huge jump. And I’ve since heard others say that they have more on-hand than that 60k figure.

The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of caps.

Gold is a different beast
1) its heavily managed
2) its relative; earning potential changes, costs change, etc
3) gold earning is pvp.

Tokens/other currencies have fixed values, in earning and in spending. And they are not competitive, you don’t have to out earn ot outbid players for dungeon tokens. How much you make isn’t effected by other players

Knighthonor.4061:

ronpierce.2760:

Essentially, with a lot borrowed, new specializations are “new professions”. A druid is not a ranger, and will certainly not be a… Poacher, or whatever, later. I think now that armor weights are evened out, I’m pretty sure we’ll just see new sub-professions. But that’s fine too. I’d prefer 9 new sub-professions to a new class personally. I like the set up.

I doubt that. From what we see from the Elementalist’s specialization , the special is still very much similar to the parent class, it just gets some unique weapon skills, and a few new skills and traits to go with it. But the Melee Ele is still similar to an Ele. Just different skills. Would be little different from just adding a new weapon to the parent class.

That IMO can’t replace the brand new mechanics of a new class altogether.

I could be wrong though.

ah, yeah looks like attunments still main mechanic. come to think of it, traits are too ingrained for most classes to get different mechanics.

oh well

sadly they will probably not add new proffessions, yet the game is still without a martial artist class, how can this be?

Erus Keb.8379:

Even if there is a cap and old currencies are re-used, then people will hoard them. Put it this way, when I finish getting everything I want with a currency, then I’ll max it out and leave it that way for the next thing that comes along that will use it. I don’t see it solving anything as I’ll still have a head start.

From a QOL perspective, how about making a collections tab for new currencies? If you think about it you may come to the conclusion that everything in collections are already currencies. Would be a kind of cap without an actual hard cap if one wanted to use normal bank space for more.

I don’t even see how karma belongs in this discussion. It’s a different animal – game wide like gold. Unless you propose a cap on gold too.

My view at this point: Just say no to CAPS

the cap is generally set at an amount that gives you a jump ahead, but not enough to make it that big a jump.

lets say the cap on dunegon tokens was 1000, they release an elite version of the dunegeon armors, with some added stuff. They make each piece cost 600.
yeah you get a jump on it, but you dont have it all in one day, and new players arent given some insane number like
5000 tokens per piece, which is designed not in terms of a good amount of runs before getting something, but in terms of how much old players have stacked up.

Astralporing.1957:

Galen Grey.4709:

42K karma meant 100 events at max level.

Yes. Once. Now it’s 4 teq events.

phys.7689:

but they dont want to put interesting things in currency, because then people with a lot will get it instantly.
They will never put anything valuable for karma again because of this.

You are still thinking only about singular, high price tag purchases.

What needs to be introduced is karma purchases that offer a constant sink (for example consumables, crafting materials and one-use vanity items of some kind). Guild Halls might possibly offer a nice karma sink source, as (since it would be pooled together by many members) there would be far less disincentives to use big price tags on things.

Generally, do not think in terms of storage space. Think in terms of supply and demand. Adding one-time purchases will not increase that demand significantly, cap or no cap, while adding many small sinks has a potential to increase demand to the level where caps would be completely unnecessary.

(think of karma as silk from pre-ascended armor era. There was a huge supply, and massive amounts of it stored on TP and in personal accounts. And yet one change managed to exhaust all that almost instantly, with no cap needed for this at all. All that was needed was to introduce a sink that was significantly bigger than the supply)

pdavis.8031:

Of course it is gambling, but as you said, you can get karma from doing just about anything, it’s easier to get than gold. So if you are sitting on millions of karma, have the skins you want, you really don’t have much to lose forging rares/exotics, and have a chance to get something cool.

You have. Time. If i could just pour karma into MF (or something similar) directly for a result, i’d likely have far less of it than i have now. Now, all that stuff with buying stuff, forging stuff, salvaging stuff? Too much hassle, i’d rather farm sw.

if karma is silk, from pre ascended, the best solution they can come up with is to create an insane grind, which gives karma use, by mechanically requiring you to burn thousands of it every day for months to achieve a goal.

The reality is, such perfect sinks arent easy to come by, and if they did, they would probably put them on other things related to the gold economy.

I dont really feel there is much gained by having no cap, except the ability to be more lazy, or stack up a lot at a time and spend it in one go. Which is nice, but it isnt really worth it in the long run, because really how much something is worth depends on what you can get with it.
once you cant get anything new with it, its worth less than before. and you can generally just use it for converting, which you can still do with a cap system, you just cant wait until the number is super high to do it.

basically you lose the ability to store a lot of currency at one time in exchange for the possibility of having that currency be more valuable, and have less currency glut.

Now dont get me wrong if they could make great, non grindy sinks that would be awesome, but i really dont think its very likely.

Astralporing.1957:

phys.7689:

Lishtenbird.2814:

“I am too inefficient at earning and spending and don’t want to improve, so let’s make EVERYONE ELSE equally inefficient!”

Where do people even get those ideas from?

thats not really how it works.

Basically what happens when you have caps, is people spend their currencies. You can then keep using the same currencies, in non stupid amounts for new content.

For this to work, there should be something interesting to spend these currencies on. The point is, if such things existed, the unlimited cap would not be needed, because people would be spending it.
Case in point? Laurels.

No, instead of caps, what needs to be introduced is interesting, continuous (as opposed to things you buy only once) sinks. Laurel vendor crafting bags are a good example.

but they dont want to put interesting things in currency, because then people with a lot will get it instantly.
They will never put anything valuable for karma again because of this.

runeblade.7514:

Even if karma gets capped, ANet will end up making more currencies anyways because:

• It brings players to other parts of the game.

If the new Living story uses karma as currencies, would you want players to farm EOTM so that players get what they want or farm the new area they added?

a currency/token for every area is a very inelegant solution. It would be better to use a renown system, and an event based system.

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

you should never want your reward to require X days, thats the flaw.

you may want your reward to require X skill, or X effort, but deciding you want it to last 100 days basically screws up the design.

but people will get bored! see its fine for people to get bored, if they enjoyed something, they will come back.

many people get bored when they have something limiting their progress.

Now there can be some things where time may be a useful tool, or by combining it with other mechanics, create something different.
but simple hard lockouts on time, is more frustrating than it is useful imo.

You’re seeing the issue from a player perspective, I am looking at it from a developer perspective. What developers need to address primarily is the longevity of the game. Secondary its trying to have that meet what players want/need. Rewards are at the core of a game longevity. You can have the best content in the world but for most people if that content doesnt give some kind of reward they arent going to play it. That means that if developers focus on what people want but that turns out to excaust rewards too quickly the game will suffer.

Thats where fluff comes into the picture. Instead of a straight up timer for receiving a reward they do what you said, they break it down into components that feel less cold… Skill and Effort. When you have something like 250 ecto to craft item x its merely a time frame translated into effort because they believe for the majority of the players gathering those 250 ecto will take the amount of time they want that reward to be in play.

That being said you’re right.. time gates are frustrating not disagreeing with you there. The problem I believe they are facing is when you go in a direction other then vertical progression you’re kinda forced to give a long time frame to your rewards which is where the crux of the problem is in my opinion.

People find it hard to accept a reward may take up to 100 days to earn. hence without a time gate they’ll grind far more then what the developers intend to get that down substantially. Grind isnt exactly exciting either for most people and doing far more then required is what you get. So in the end I guess it will depend on the individual. What do they prefer? time gated rewards but enjoyable game play or quicker rewards but grindy game play.

Whats for sure is I dont envy the devs. Anyway they go its a minefield.

longevity doesnt really come before player satisfaction, you will lose too many players. Also you get more people hooked by giving them satisfying rewards each time. Like when you give a dog a treat.

Something that requires 100 days before you get any satisfaction isnt really a good plan.

This is why i say that was mistake. They have to reward the journey, and have many satisfying points along the way.

Its like, if you get some subways cupon where you have visit 30 times and you get a free meal, its too far away, i would just throw it in the garbage. Unless, you were planning to go 30 days anyhow, in which case the coupon isnt keeping you interested.

hmmmmm no idea.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If the rewards are behind quest chains, it won’t take more than a couple of days before all the information on how to do it is in wiki. With a cooperative game like this where each person gets the loot, parties of fully geared level 80s will blow right through the quests to get the reward. Unless the content is gated in some manner or is made so hard that most rage quit, they’ll run through the quests that the Devs spent weeks working on then turn around and say, “Is that all?”

whats wrong with that?

If someone could do all the homework/tests/projects a teacher was going to assign for the whole year, then they have earned the right to sit on their butts for awhile.

I am not saying things should not require effort, im saying that you shouldnt artificially spread out that effort in illogical ways just to get people to keep playing. Make the effort required logical to the task, instead of logical to how long you want them to play.

Nike.2631:

Get over it. Literally, that’s all there is to say about that perception. You’ll still have 5 weapons skills. 5 new skills is not better than 2 new skills and the ability to mix and match your choice for the other 3.

5 new skills is better than 2 new skills, if you are looking for new playstyles.

especially considering you generally use the main hand more often on most classes.

As far as other class mechanics, traits, etc, yeah everyone else is getting that too, AND 5 new skills versus 2.

The first 3 skills always defines the weapon set, the 4 and the 5 complement the weaponset, or expand its uses. With the same first 3 skills, your play only changes so much.

This thread is interesting. It looks like the main issue is a psychological one.

Ok So with that in mind.

They start to use a new more universal currency for open world type things, it has a cap. They allow you to trade away old currencies for the new currency, but it has a time lock on how often you can trade an old currency.

New zones use renown based systems that give you discounts on how much the items cost, and have the vendors locked behind zone conditions. Or something like dry top discounts based on the state of the level.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

Doing a quest to get a drop is different to doing PvE that could easily be the same as a quest, selling the drops and buying the skin… how?

I’m not a fan of everything being gem store either, but let’s be honest: aside from a couple of lines of rushed dialogue – it’s the same. Well, apart from it being 100% chance instead of RNG… oh, and you can earn the money through whatever playstyle you prefer.

is buying from a restaurant the same as cooking a meal?

is buying a table the same as designing and building one?

i mean if you dont care about the process, sure its the same, but people who enjoy the game, want more of it to involve the best parts of the game.
making money in this game seldom represents the best parts of it.

pdavis.8031:

I still don’t understand how adding in a cap will allow the devs to release new stuff to buy.

If they felt so inclined to release new items for the currencies we have now, then they can release new items.

“But they are worried that people will be able to buy them all in a day! So thats why they don’t bring in more uses for currencies we already have.”

That doesn’t even make sense. If they were worried about it, all they needed to do is A) increase the price of the item, B ) Time gate it in some fashion, or C) Lock the vendor/use for currency behind some mechanic or event (i.e. Balthazar temple karma vendor)

Although as a side note, If they were to release new uses the best way would be to ninja patch it in. Instead of making an announcment. Thats just me though…

1) increasing price to accomodate people with large pre investment basically makes it go beyond good design for the content itself.
you would need 1million karma items for example
2)time gates suck
3)they need to be behing more than something like balthazar, any event should only last at the most a vcouple of hours.

they dont want people to get new stuff in a couple hours.

their are some solutions that can work around C) in other ways

cranos.5913:

phys.7689:

cranos.5913:

maddoctor.2738:

Why do you think they don’t use dungeon tokens for new items anymore?

Why would they add new rewards to old content they no longer update whatsoever? Aside from a few stealth updates every now and then they don’t give a crap about dungeons. Has nothing to do with having too many tokens. Besides, there’s still a pretty good sink for it.

because inspite of the fact that its old, they still want people to play it, and in general they plan to have a smaller world, to keep people together.

they want people to feel like their is a reason to be in old tyria.

And people still have a good reason to play it considering the gold reward. I highly doubt they would add more to something that’s already so rewarding, not when they pretty much consider it a failure anyway.

Now fractals, that could use extra rewards. Which they are doing, according to reddit posts of ppl who’ve been to PAX, regardless of this “cap”.

the problem with gold rewards is they cannot build them without large implications for the economy. Which limits their ability to reward gameplay.

thats part of the reason almost all currencies(non gold) are designed to have little to no trading power, or a very ineffecient one. Tokens allows them to reward people based on good design, rather than economic concerns.

Pandaman.4758:

maddoctor.2738:

Pandaman.4758:

To quote Koptev from SE P3: “No no no. No no no. No no no.”

If you place an arbitrary cap on a currency without addressing the generation and destruction of said currency, you’ll wind up with the same problem GW1 had: fiat currency. Do you really want 1 ecto to represent 1000 platinums again? Especially in a game that doesn’t have player to player trading?

This would be horrible for the health of the game, because you’ll have people leaving once they hit cap (nothing to buy, no reason to do any content because they won’t receive any monetary rewards and the item rewards cannot be sold), or leaving because of rampant scamming (fiat money and lack of protection in mail-trading), or leaving because the currency they do have is rendered worthless (everything is priced in fiat money); all you’ll have left is an extremely small player base of players who refuse to leave because they invested too much time in the game and a market environment that is downright unfriendly to new players.

So, to reiterate: “No no no.”

Not talking about gold, gold is an exception because unlike all other currencies in the game, it gets constant sinks (gem store items for example), however the other currencies do not have anything similar to gems so they have limited usage once players get what they REALLY want from them.

Even taking gold out of the equation the other currencies would still suffer the same problem: if you cap it without addressing how quickly they can be earned or have adequate sinks in place, you’ll just create a situation where people will simply stop doing the related content because it will literally become unrewarding.

Instead of the current behavior of having people constantly grind the same content to hoard currency in anticipation of new sinks, they’ll simply hit cap and not bother with the content until there’s actually something new to spend it on. You’ll see far fewer people in dungeons, Dry Top, and Silverwastes; the karma trains in Edge of the Mist will be replaced almost entirely by leveling trains bloated with uplevels; and there will be a massive uptake in people complaining about the lack of sinks and rewarding content (so they’ll either be demanding a cap increase or new alternate currency).

In essence a cap doesn’t solve the problem, it just drags it out and makes it painfully obvious in the process. I can only see that as being bad for the health of the game and its community.

to be honest dungeon runners dont care about currency other than turning it into gold anyhow. Which is still doable. you just cant wait for a million tokens to get around to it.

people on karma trains, want karma to spend on something, not for the joy of having karma

anet has straight up said they cant use things like karma/tokens in other content because it would give older players too much of a headstart.
The end result is a lot of near worthless currencies, and new ones all the time

a cap could solve that