It takes the same amount of time to get X amount of currency. However having a Z cap will force players to use that currency and not hoard it,
This far I can accept as a logical fact…
therefore allowing Arenanet to add new items for that currency.
The link between aforementioned fact and this effect I cannot understand.
What mechanism stops ANet from adding new items to currencies that do not have caps? (Such as, gold)
We have already established that it takes the same amount of time to get those items, no matter if there is a cap or not.Simple. Without a cap, they can’t add new items for a particular currency because old players will be overflowing with it. So, they’d rather add a new currency on every map (so all players start at the same place), rather than use the existing ones. Why do you think they don’t use dungeon tokens for new items anymore?
Also, an artificial cap has the potential to hinder everyone who casually play the game, hoarder or not. As long as you get some of that currency every once in a while without using it, you’re running a risk of being forced to
A) Lose potential gains
B) Get something you weren’t planning to
C) Find another area with a currency you don’t have maxed out.
I just don’t find that desirable.How is it hurting someone who is not a hoarder? If you spend it already then it won’t be any different
one thing lishtenbird alludes to, which is accurate, is it is more effecient to keep a currency sometimes over an item.
Because honestly the item glut in this game is really overpowering. 20k dungeon tokens is many sets of armor potentially, without taking up all that space.
then again 5 stacks of bandit crests is just as annoying.
You can already forge your karma into linen, turn tokens into ectos etc I don’t see your point. Why do it all at once, and not as you get it? No sane reason? How about keeping the old currencies important and adding new items to buy with them instead of adding new currencies all the time?
Because today I don’t feel like doing it, and tomorrow I don’t? Because it is a frigging game to enjoy and not a daily inventory management simulator (oh wait…) or something to feel bad about simply because I don’t feel like doing it today and not tomorrow? We already have enough stupid daily limits and daily chores and enough of bank/bag space issues which turn this game into Click Wars. No need for more.
Imagine that. Players can already destroy the market if they choose to convert all those currencies into something else, yet they don’t for some reason. All hoardable currencies do is increase the prices of everything. If Bandit Crests were capped at 1000 or 2000 then there would be little reason to price Carapace armor pieces at 1000. So yeah, hoardable currencies make everything cost more, and force people to grind more for whatever they want, while also making those currencies useless once someone gets what they want.
You know why they don’t do it? Because
a) it’s boring to do it,
b) they don’t need to convert it at the moment,
c) they’re waiting for something to happen to use all of it (remember the laurel to UnId Dye conversion) since at that moment it will be worth the effort,
d) they expect something which will require these items in the future.
This isIf someone is sooo indecisive then they will have bigger problems
That’s plain silly and you know it.
If I want to play AC today, I want to play AC today and not sit on my new character and buy armour for it, or sit and choose between two skins in a rush because I’ll miss on tokens.
If I want to play EoTM, I want to go play EoTM and not convert karma to linen.
If I want to play SW, I want to go play SW and not decide which of the tonics or skins to choose at the moment. And so on.The only things that your suggestion adds are frustration from lost rewards, excessive time sinks and stress on managing capped currencies, inflexible markets, and inability to freely play the content you want with your friends when you have limited time (like 90% of players do). And all this in a game you paid for to enjoy in your free time.
Im as lazy as the next guy, and dont really like the insane amount of inventory management we currently have to deal with, but to be honest, i would rather have less currencies cluttering up inventory, and greater value for my old currencies, as well as new things that can use some of the work i have previously done, rather than new currencies every day, or things requiring 10000 of something because people have built up more than anet can handle.
i mean there are pros and cons, but we been on this road for ahwile, and it only seems to be getting worse.
It takes the same amount of time to get X amount of currency. However having a Z cap will force players to use that currency and not hoard it,
This far I can accept as a logical fact…
therefore allowing Arenanet to add new items for that currency.
The link between aforementioned fact and this effect I cannot understand.
What mechanism stops ANet from adding new items to currencies that do not have caps? (Such as, gold)
We have already established that it takes the same amount of time to get those items, no matter if there is a cap or not.I don’t think anyone needs 2000 dungeon tokens or 20mil karma to play the game. An artificial gap won’t make a difference on players getting items and using said currency, it will only affect those who hoard large amounts of it.
Now, there are few points here that I disagree with:
While you don’t need 2000 dungeon tokens or 20mil karma, because if you did, I sure couldn’t play the game, but it doesn’t bug me that there is some guy who happily sits on a pile of 20mil karma. Good for them.Also, an artificial cap has the potential to hinder everyone who casually play the game, hoarder or not. As long as you get some of that currency every once in a while without using it, you’re running a risk of being forced to
A) Lose potential gains
B) Get something you weren’t planning to
C) Find another area with a currency you don’t have maxed out.
I just don’t find that desirable.
the point is, it actually does stop them from making new items, designer at anet have mentioned it. Its why they constantly create new currencies.
They dont want people to be able to get things day one, so they dont release new uses for many of these currencies.
no, people arent the problem, the problem is that they want to force everyone to experience the game at the same pace.
Imagine if books limited you to a page a day, because they wanted you not have to wait for the next book.
many people would rather read the book at their own pace, and then buy the next book if they enjoyed it.You dont have to force people to play your game slowly in order to have them enjoy it, thats just not true
Anet gives lots of optios for play style in the game. We aren’t forced to really do anything any specific way.
The game isn’t limiting you to ‘a page a day’ using your analogy. You can burn through the available content as fast as you please. However, like a book, once you hit the end, you have to wait for the next “book” to come out. Which means you either entertain yourself with what you have, or you go do something else. You don’t kitten and moan “gimme gimme gimme, me me me, mine mine mine” in the mean time.
well my post was more in the context of time locks/deciding you want people to do X for Y amount of days before completing it
as that is what we were discussing recently.
If they added a cap, people would start trading even more outside the trading post, using other items as currency.
The cap can’t be in the currency.
What makes guild marit work is not the upper cap they have as much as the weekly cap in how much you can earn.
Since you can’t earn too many weekly, you have to repeat the guild missions each week, or you’ll eventually run out.
If you really want to bridge the gap between the highest and lowest income players, make earning caps harsher against repetitive gameplay.
almost all the currencies he is talking about dont give you items that you can trade.
I dont think he is talking about gold here
No. Just no. I dont want a cap on my karma, dungeon tokens, fractal relics, or anything else in my wallet.
Why? You want to have thousands of dungeon tokens and millions of karma just staying there being useless? You want to hoard your currencies for no reason at all, and the developers never ever release anything new for those?
Yes, I want to hoard them. If I want to hoard 5 million karma and then craft 5 new or old legendaries in a row or take a week to forge it all into linen, there’s no sane reason not to allow me to. If I want to hoard dungeon tokens and turn them into ectos, insignias, collection unlocks or new character armour, there’s also no sane reason not to allow me to.
There’s also a very important part about hoardable currencies from the economical point of view: it reduces market elasticity. As stated by John Smith, the system has been designed to resist influxes of players and other changes in supply, and having hoardable currencies is one of the things which brings the scales back to the equilibrium if one of the sides shifts for whatever reason.
But you know what is the worst part of your suggestion? Chores:
- Hey, wanna go for AC?
- No sorry, my tokens are capped.
- Use them?
- I haven’t decided what to use them for. Well, if you give me half an hour…
- No way! party disbandsWhen was the last time you saw anything requiring karma introduced in the game? Or dungeon tokens? Or Fractal relics? or any other old currency?
There have been rumours of that thing called… expansion, I think? And… new legendaries. And… new tribe NPC traders unlocked at different mastery tiers. And… new tiers of fractals and fractal masteries.
How can you say that it is broken when you don’t know what it is going to be used for in the future?
your complaints make sense, but the reality is its just not worth it.
now we have too many currencies, and they have to create more for every content. Many of these currencies have low, to no value. And you can still do the same things you are talking about with them, you just dont wait for a million currnecies to do it.
heres what you gain with no caps
the ability to save a lot and spend all at once
heres what you gain with caps
less currencies
more value per work
the ability to use old work for new rewards
prices based around how much people can earn instead of how much they can hoard
i mean if you have other solutions fine. but we cant keep getting new currencies every couple months, that they either add no new uses for, or they make the amount of currency required too high too match the way the content is supposed to be experienced (halloween 2)
Dungeon tokens are already plenty relevant with many sinks (eg. ectos, insignias etc). You just sound like you’re jealous of people who hoard dungeon tokens.
for people doing what you are talking about, you lose nothing.
you just turn them in consistently instead of building up insane amounts.
It really changes nothing, other than limiting the upper cost for new goods.
also he is not saying to remove the amounts people already earned. Thats the biggest issue he will have, coming up with a way to institute caps without invalidating old work.
How do you propose to implement this on the existing system? And how large do you want the caps to be for specific currencies?
The “simplest” Solution is to prevent players from earning anymore of a specific currency until they are below the cap. As for how large the caps should be, it depends on the currency itself, they can’t have the same caps
The problem with that, is getting rid of the excess. If the cap for karma is put at, say, 1 million, then there are people who are going to need to get rid of >10 million before they can start earning again. To allow players to get rid of that amount, you need to add fairly large sinks. And if you’re willing to add sufficiently large sinks to that currency, then people are going to wonder why you couldn’t just do that without adding a cap.
i think karma is a ship that has sailed, i dont think we can come up with a number that will solve the karma issue. However, you can come up with something for things like geodes, bandit crests, dungeon tokens, etc.
To get rid of grind/farming, you need to do actual content. The thing is, doing content is not an easy task. You either have a game without anything to do while waiting for another content bath that you’ll burn through many times quicker than it took to make and proceed to whine that there is no content, or you get something to grind for alongside content patches and proceed to whine that there is grind existing.
You cannot eat the cake and have it too. People ripped through the base game and got legendaries in a month or two, and it took half a decade to craft that game for aNet. There is nothing that they can do to satisfy hardcore and semi-hardcore playerbase in terms of content without turning to grind.
You need to understand that people are the problem. They have too much time on their hands, and they want to do everything at once, they put 40 hours a week into the game and then are surprised that there is not enough content. I’m not saying that this is invalid way to play the game, but you have to understand that if you want to play the game in such a manner, you have to be ready for consequences, and the consequences will be that you need to either stop playing or resort to grind. There is no possibility of producing content fast enough to satiate playerbase, there will be always demand for more. So just put the game down or do some grind for some skin, since there is no way aNet will put the content fast enough.
Also, if you want to remove grind from your game entirely, play pvp for the fun of playing pvp instead of trying to get max rank. If you don’t like pvp, well, tough luck.
no, people arent the problem, the problem is that they want to force everyone to experience the game at the same pace.
Imagine if books limited you to a page a day, because they wanted you not have to wait for the next book.
many people would rather read the book at their own pace, and then buy the next book if they enjoyed it.
You dont have to force people to play your game slowly in order to have them enjoy it, thats just not true
Why? You want to have thousands of dungeon tokens and millions of karma just staying there being useless? You want to hoard your currencies for no reason at all, and the developers never ever release anything new for those?
Wait, what’s wrong with having millions of karma in your wallet? It’s not like your character would run slower from being encumbered. It doesn’t even consume any inventory slots. And there is always few repeatable uses for Karma anyways.
In other words, anything that goes in your wallet, is just a figure. It doesn’t hurt you, no matter what that figure is. Why’d you want to hurt that figure?
All those can be added to the wallet. And why should they have a use only on those zones? I doubt you will ever see anything new released that will require geodes or bandit crests, but why not? Why not keep those currencies relevant and make them more important altogether?
Now, I think we can all get behind that. Give more uses for old currencies. Absolutely. I disagree on throwing in some arbitrary cap tho. GW1 had a cap on the amount of money you could have. That was horrible, I maxed out and still didn’t have enough to buy certain equipment.
i dont think he is talking about gold, and you make the caps higher than the most expensive things.
baiscally lets say the most expensive thing on geodes costs 200 geodes, you might make the cap 1000 geodes. this allows you to go over what you need, but not so much that they can never use geodes in new content rewards for fear of you getting everything too fast.
Essentially this makes your time getting geodes, more valuable in the long run.
“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.
lets face it, your old currencies are basically valueless, once you have gotten whatever you want out of them. They will very rarely offer much of value for them because they want to slow you down.
you are not gaining anything by having 1000000 geodes, they wont use them for anything else, because they know you have 1000000, and you dont want any thing that they are currently allowing you to get with it, or you would have already spent it.
it honestly works so much better, and keeps various gameplay valuable,
No. I don’t want to have caps. I want to invest my time like i want, not being forced to login every day.
caps dont force you to log in everday.
He is not talking about a time gate on earning, but rather a cap on your max amount of the currency
The reason why they chose not to do that was they didnt want to exclude anyone’s playstyle, meaning you should be able to get any weapon regardless of how and what you play
That’s ridiculous because there is only one reasonable way of getting weapons that require gold, such as all those skins obtained either through RNG gambling crap or buying them outright on the TP: farming gold through dungeon tours. Anything else would take so much time it isn’t even funny.
actually farming gold through dungeon runs isnt the best way
TP playing is probably number one
And though i havent run the numbers in awhile, effecient open world farming is probably number 2
ok looking at it, with close to record runs on every path, it would still take you 180 minutes to run all paths, im guessing the record runs dont include loading transit, cutscenes etc,
running every path would give you 36 gold,
so 12 gold an hour, but only if your a doing record times on every path.
now, if your just above average, you will probably take twice as long. (whens the last time you did a path in under 3 minutes?)
which puts it at 6 gold an hour, which isnt really a lot.
Im not really part of this world, but i would reccomend with major version alterations you save the records and give them post.
Wall of records PRE 3/17/2015 (a cooler title might be better)
so peoples records under the old mechanics would be there forever.at the same time you inspire people to create new records with a clean slate.
that said, this patch was pretty buggy, have these changes been confirmed as working as intended?
We have all time records for that. No record is deleted from the database.
right, but all time only considers highest, it doesnt consider lowest.
for example lets say they have some really hard dungeon mechanics and the best times were low. Then they add a new patch, making things easier, you arent really giving people their respect, to be able to set record times under a more difficult situation.
Anyhow its possible yall got it all down already. Im not familiar with your style of record keeping and the variables you are using in your data.
artificial time gates are stupid.
Its a bad mechanic. Especially ones like 100 day things. Keep people logging in by making a good game, not by limiting progress.It doesnt really matter if someone does something that takes 24 hours, in 24 hours, a week or a month.
the same time was invested.the type of mechanical, simulation inspired changes you are talking about, are part of why the game feels grindy.
the average person/group taking a week to master a fight is not the same as making someone wait a week to do something.time gating isnt about making people logging in or some way around a bad game.
Think about it, why would you log in every day to get rewards in a game you dont enjoy playing? no time gate is going to force you to play a game you have no intention of playing.
A time gate is a great mechanic when it comes to remove grind.
An MMO is made up from a ton of fluff to hide cold boring mechanics.
A reward’s cost always boils down to time. If something requires 250 ectos to craft its not because it needs said raw material but because its a reward for playing x amount of time where x is the average time needed to gather 250 ectos. This however creates a ton of problems.
Player A might play 1hr per day and what they usually play gives them .5 ectos per day.
Player B might play 8hrs per day and what they do gives them 10 ectos per day.You want your reward to “cost” 100 days but for Player A that means 50 ectos while for player B that means 1000 ecto so what do you do? You may find if you take all players in consideration that means 250 ecto but obviously thats not perfect. Far from it. You’re forcing player A to work 250 days for his reward.
You’re over rewarding Player B by giving him his reward in 25 days instead of 100. The majority of the players need to spend 100 days going after ecto.Enter time gating. With time gating you dont need players to spend a whole day doing a specific thing so you can keep your target time cost for the reward. With laurels Anet had us spend 30 mins in game and that was enough. Hence Player A and Player B could do what they want and still both get their reward after a 100 days. Perfect timing for all.
More importantly no need to spend a whole day potentially doing something you dont enjoy only cause it gets you your reward faster.
Like you said though that also means you cannot rush your reward… is that really a bad thing though? its exactly whats causing people to feel the game super grindy. You’re compressing 100 days of work down to 25 days. Thats like working 4 jobs at once, of course its going to feel grindy!
That time gating is forcing to log in is also a fallacy really.
Yes if you dont log in, it will take you 101 days instead of 100 but then again without time gating, you could slave and get your reward in 25 days instead of 100 sure.. then again if you dont log in one day that 25 will become 26… how is it any different?
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.
It’s just my idea and it’s not something I am really passionate about.
Anyway, there are a few ‘problems’ with your scenario. First of all there is the 100 day limit you want to keep in order. I understand why you do that but by doing you limit the possibility too reduce the grind to less than 100 runs.
That is simply a limitation you put on there. Then there are the eco’s. I usually refer to gold as that is the main currency in GW2 but it really is about currency and in a way eco’s are the currency here.
Personally for crafting all the mats (where you need many of) I would not make the mats hard to get. It should be something you should be able to get pretty easy, so go to one spot, farm it for half an hour and be done with it. The hard thing to get would be one ingredient you only need 1 of, or the recipe itself. Depending on what you want to achieve.
Anyway, for your example I will keep myself to the 100 day limit (what is already a compromise to what I suggested, but to make it work in your scope) but I will drop the eco’s.. I mean, the whole idea of what I say is working directly towards your item, not with some currency between it.
What you then could do is making a drop-change of 0,5% (This is not exact math, not going to do the exact math now but it’s good enough for the example) for the weapon itself, that means on average it will drop once every 100 runs. Then to hold on to the 100 day time-gate you let the dungeon only give the reward once a day.
So now the average number of runs would be 100 instead of 300 or 600 in your example, while keeping onto the 100 day time-gate.. on average that is.
I know that the 100 day limit makes it impossible to reduce the 100 run limit but as you know its necessary. Its the one thing that is probably immutable in the design and any solution / suggestion we come up with will need to respect that if we are to have any chance for it to be adopted by the devs. Thats why I stress on it.
Well yeah strictly speaking ecto is a currenct, if you change to that to a single rare drop, that rare drop would be currency itself but wouldnt it feel a ton more grindy if you’re trying to get something that will drop once in an average of 100 days then it is trying to get something that drops an average of 3 per day? technically its exactly the same but the fact you’re doing a little progress each and every day tricks us into thinking its less grindy.
I can see a number of issues with your final plan.
1. 100 runs instead of 600 is definitely a lot better but 100 runs of doing something you dont enjoy is still much worst then doing something else you enjoy and will still feel more grindy (being you dont enjoy it)
2. time gating. based on past experience people hate being forced to limit their effort to just 30 minutes a day out of their game session working towards the goal they want.
3. for an average of 100 runs you will get nothing of value towards your goal, there will be no small gratification to offset that grindy feel which i do believe will make the feeling worst
4. some people just like to play solo and hate grouping and hate dungeons, are they cut out from all rewards that require this particular drop? because while they may be open to do a dungeon once or twice, 100 times seems a bit far fetched for these kind of players
now though I am pointing out the negative, dont get me wrong I also see advantages on what you propose.
1. Incentives people to run more dungeons
2. force people to not burn out (if you dont enjoy it at least you only have to do it for 30 mins a day max)
3. potentially help pugs find more teams to play with due to larger dungeon demand
4. make the reward feel more meaningful since you had to do specific work rather then just “goof” around for 100 days.Do you agree with the adv / disadv i came up with and if so do you think the adv are bigger then the disadv?
artificial time gates are stupid.
Its a bad mechanic. Especially ones like 100 day things. Keep people logging in by making a good game, not by limiting progress.
It doesnt really matter if someone does something that takes 24 hours, in 24 hours, a week or a month.
the same time was invested.
the type of mechanical, simulation inspired changes you are talking about, are part of why the game feels grindy.
the average person/group taking a week to master a fight is not the same as making someone wait a week to do something.
They said that if the new weapon is an offhand, you would be “compensated” with new utility skills to make up for it.
Not as far as I know. I remember them saying that if the new weapon is not a 2-handed weapon, the specialization would indead get compensated but they didn’t elaborate how.
well the only compensation that could make sense, is to have a class mechanic that adds extra skills.
But im guessing thats not their plan
They said that if the new weapon is an offhand, you would be “compensated” with new utility skills to make up for it.
that sounds crappy, i thought everyone was getting utilities, so i suppose you get 3 more utility options?
so essentially other charachters get whole new bar of abilities, and mesmer gets 7/9
bleh looks like mesmer got screwed, oh well.
Im not really part of this world, but i would reccomend with major version alterations you save the records and give them post.
Wall of records PRE 3/17/2015 (a cooler title might be better)
so peoples records under the old mechanics would be there forever.
at the same time you inspire people to create new records with a clean slate.
that said, this patch was pretty buggy, have these changes been confirmed as working as intended?
All other classes get cool weapons like engi hammer, druid staff, probably thief rifle, we get a lame off-hand shield that are completely out of context for mesmers. from all the weapons that could easily fit the mesmers like dagger, axe and even main hand pistol we get the shields, i dont know i hope there are some mage like skins for shield with HoT to fit my mesmer style at least, otherwise that wasnt a good choice tbh.
I’ll take “Not listening to anything the devs have been saying for the past 2 months for 800”.
I’ll take “The Devs not listening to anything the mesmer playerbase has been saying for the past 2 1/2 years for 800.”
Your point adds absolutely nothing to the conversation. The shield is not for mesmers; the shield is for the Mesmer specialization.
My point is, we literally have 0 idea of what the Mesmer specialization can do with the shield. A regular Mesmer cannot use a shield, so why this is an issue is beyond me. When they release more information about the specializations (and how they are very likely NOT just extra weapon skills tacked onto the profession), then we will know why they chose a shield.
Neither does yours. The mesmer playerbase has been asking for more main-hand weapons (Pistol main-hand mostly) since launch, so they give us….-drum roll please- an off-hand, and a shield even…yay? >_>
But it will be giving you five new skills so what the kitten is the difference?
did they say somewhere that mesmer would get 5 new skills?
out of context for mesmers. Interesting. How many real life mesmers do you have in your social circles to come to that conclusion? And are shields “in context” for engineers? And hammers are a “cool” weapon for people designing technomage wonders and using flamethrowers? I see…
actually hammer is a tool, engineers use tools,of it makes a ton of sense. pretty hard to build technology without a tool
Don’t know if it’s been asked or not, but I see the topic come up every so often.
What was the main reason for WvW gear being unsalvagable? What it for an economic reason? Or mechanical?As it is its fairly easy to get, so I could see having a large influx of ecto because of it. Also having to rebuy runes could be part of the reason. But otherwise it doesn’t make much sense. Instead of being able to salvage directly, what about being able to be forged?
A lot of different factors go into decisions like that one, but economic effects were part of the decision process for sure.
it’s really scummy there is no indication you can’t salvage them, I have a bunch of junk armor with nice runes I can’t get out now
yep, the messaging on this is really bad.
Waiting too much kills joy. Patience is nice, but like everything, its best in moderation.
This I agree with.
This is the definition of being Entitled.
/Thread, Have fun in your circle J
No, it really isnt, waiting for things has nothing to do with entitlement
believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.
now, if someone thought, they specifically should not have to wait, and everyone else should, that would be entitled.
Point of the statement is, waiting for things is not inherently good.
Mesmer uses swords: “Shield is so out of place!!!111”
Come on, you don’t even know yet how the shield and the specialisations are going to work. Why not save your breath to complain about stuff when you actually know you won’t like it?
problem is, offhand weapons are already lackluster
2 skills
and shield almost always sucks
sword sword already gives you a block and counter.
now perhaps the overall specialisation and things we havent heard about make it work. But i have zero excitement for the new gameplay oppurtunities created by having an offhand shield, because 2 skills, that are defensive are nothing new.
ok i ll take back my word if the shield is an illusion and you get a hand to hand fighting style while having it equipped.
What’s funny to me about this is that this is the only game I’ve ever actually enjoyed and participated in the crafting. (I’ve played maybe 30 mmo’s.)
you do ascended crafting?
So this thread is still all about arguing what is grind and what is not, arguing if GW2 is a grindy game or not and nothing about discussing changes to any of the game systems.
If you continue to debate what grind is, even though you know what the developers themselves feel about it, this one should get a lock soon. 3 pages and still no proposals for changes
I did see many proposals. Mine was putting items behind content.
So instead of allowing players to get whatever they want by doing whatever they want (play how you want?) you want to lock content behind specific content and have an impossible grind behind that content?
Yes, that’s pretty much it … the traditional MMO approach to getting loot. WE’ve already went over this in that LAST thread. The proposals I’ve seen so far simply reduce player’s ability to choose content; they don’t reduce grind at all.
How does is reduce player’s ability to choose content if all it does is ADD one new option? Working towards is directly. Again, as long as they are not account-bound you can still grind gold for it if that is what you like.
It would only be true for the items that are account-bound. But thats already the case with some items.
But the player IS working towards the item. By playing whatever they want, they are earning gold, the currency towards the item. Why does a brand new currency need to be implemented that would only come from one other specific source? How does even ADDING a new currency reduce grind? It DOESN’T. You are just shifting the grind to something else. And if you believe anet would make the token method faster, they are going to try and make it equal to other methods. In other words, the same amount of time. So that makes adding a new currency pointless once again.
You aren’t talking about reducing grind, all you have been doing is trying to actual make the grind either more annoying, or restricted.
It’s completely different when you do content for an item (so the item belongs to the content) or if you do ‘whatever’ to earn gold and then buy it, and then again, and again. Not to mention that this approach also means you are basically punishing yourself by not doing the content that rewards the most gold and it reduces the value of any item (that you can’t directly work for) to whatever is the easiest way to earn gold.
“Why does a brand new currency need to be implemented” Uhhm it does not.. No new currency, way to many currencies already in this game. Currency’s are more part of the problem then the solution.
“How does even ADDING a new currency reduce grind?” Where did you see my suggesting to put in a new currency. It would not be a currency coming from one place but the item you want. " It DOESN’T." That is why I did NOT suggest it.
Well your complete comment it based on something I did not suggest so there is not much more to say about it.
Also once again (how many times have I already repeated that in the last few comments? Just with other words) For any item that is not account-bound it is not more restricted, in fact it adds a new option, not take any away.
What people are really punishing themselves for is impatience.
To me you punish yourself by playing a game to get something you absolutely don’t need but want to have. What’s the difference if you get that thing now or in a month, or in two months?
If you’re going to ruin your game experience by farming efficiently the fault is yours. It’s okay to have long term goals. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Because you dont get to use the thing while your are seeking it.
Waiting too much kills joy. Patience is nice, but like everything, its best in moderation.
- snip -
“ANet has to please all of these people”. So try and please the groups you mention here? Put all those items behind specific content, don’t make them account-bound. There you go.
Personally I think some items should be account-bound but just to solve your problem.
While the thought in your former paragraph would cater to you and those who think like you, it would do nothing for those who like farming gold to buy what they want, and who don’t want rewards tied to specific content.
As to your latter sentence, what does account-bound have to do with anything? Account bound is a way to force people to do the content where drops happen, craft junk themselves, etc. Account bound is the anti-gold method.
actually though i dont agree with devatas idea that it isnt grindy if its a direct drop, he has always said its fine to make it buyable by gold.
so people who like getting things with gold would still be able to buy things in his system. The main difference is there would be fewer drops that you cannot obtain directly
Unlike many of you I don’t have much experience with MMOs. Other than GW1 and GW2 my only previous MMO was Ultima Online, and I stopped playing that almost 15 years ago.
Just recently however I started playing one other and although it’s a good game and I’m really enjoying it the difference has made me really appreciate some features of GW2, things I had never really though about before or thought were now standard in MMOs.
(BTW I realise some/all of these may not be unique to GW2, but this is my list based on my experiences. Hopefully other people will add to and amend it.)
Guaranteed crafting success
- This one really surprised me. People often complain about crafting in GW2 being too expensive or time-consuming, but at least we never have to worry about putting in that time and money and getting nothing back. Imagine if you not only had to save up for materials to make an exotic or ascended item, but had to decide whether to pay 2 or 3 times more (at least) for guaranteed success or gamble with a lower chance and risk losing everything you put in. Imagine if there was no way to make it 100% sure at higher levels. Honestly I’ll take ascended time-gating over that any day.
Crafting material storage
- And the Deposit all materials option
- It makes inventory management so much easier. Even just the fact that there’s a whole class of items I don’t have to think about (with odd exceptions, if I want to sell a material rather than deposit it). But also the fact that it leaves my bank and inventory space free for items I actually want or I’m saving for a particular purpose rather than filling it with things I may need to use one day. Especially when I was new and didn’t really understand the crafting system, so I didn’t know what I should keep and what I could sell. I could save things until I knew without being unable to play because my inventory was full of materials.
Transmutation
- This other game is (IMO) beautiful and it has a lot of interesting armour sets, and possibilities for mix-and-match sets. Unfortunately none of that matters to me because I have to use the armour that gives the stats I need. There are limited possibilities for customisation through crafting, but nothing like I’ve gotten used to in GW2. I didn’t realise until it wasn’t an option how much I’ve come to like getting to choose my characters appearance.
No regular server down-time
- Saving the best two for last here. Admittedly I don’t know much about operating servers but this is the most impressive point on this list, IMO. I think I remember 3 or 4 occasions when GW1 was off-line for maintenance, and once in GW2. My new game is taken down for several hours once a week, more if there’s problems. I guess I just assumed whatever tech or server wizardry Anet uses was available to everyone else as well, but apparently not.
- And it does make a big difference. Here there may be mixed feelings on patch day, but at least everyone can look forward to trying the new content and having their hopes or fears confirmed or denied. There patch day is met with a sort of resignation that you’ll be doing something else that day because the game is unavailable, followed by the reactions to the actual content.
Hot fixes
- I know what you’re thinking. It’s some combination of “What? I can name at least 3 bugs from launch that have never been fixed!” and “What? I hate it when I’ve just updated the game, logged in and I get told I’m going to be kicked because there’s a launch-day patch!” But imagine if instead you were told they know there’s a bug, or several bugs, and they have managed to fix them, but you have to wait 5 days for the fix to be implemented because it’s Wednesday, maintenance happens on a Monday and they don’t consider these bugs serious enough to take the game offline for an additional 4 hours.
what game?
Patience is a virtue my friend.
Lack of patience is a good source of income for those of us with patience though.
its actually really crappy income, if you are talking about damask.
its 51 silver profit, once per day. 11 gold in materials
so your talking about 4% profit, once per day.thats not really too great. Even a crappy 3% profit, twice in a day would make you more money.
better off flipping.You use your own mats instead of buying them, and it is 100% profit, so ~ 12 gold profit when using your own mats, not the 51 silver when buying the mats.
using your own materials is not more profits, because you could have sold the materials for less effort, and generally faster turn around.
Sure you could have sold those items, but you would end up with less money then if you would have created the ascended item in the first place.
Using your own mats to make something to sell does equal more profit, and a whole lot more then the 51 silver, considering you get ~12 gold for selling the item in the first place. It would only be ~51 silver profit if you actually bought the materials on the TP, if you already had the items, you didn’t spend the gold on it.
yeah i suppose its true, when you buy the materials and make it, you are paying the tax twice.
Patience is a virtue my friend.
Lack of patience is a good source of income for those of us with patience though.
its actually really crappy income, if you are talking about damask.
its 51 silver profit, once per day. 11 gold in materials
so your talking about 4% profit, once per day.thats not really too great. Even a crappy 3% profit, twice in a day would make you more money.
better off flipping.You use your own mats instead of buying them, and it is 100% profit, so ~ 12 gold profit when using your own mats, not the 51 silver when buying the mats.
using your own materials is not more profits, because you could have sold the materials for less effort, and generally faster turn around.
analogies and hypotheticals are used to test and evaluate conceptual models, but if you dont like them, i will avoid using them when talking to you specifically(if i remember).
anyhow
Accurate analogies yes, 99.9% of them on this forum misrepresent the subjects. The only one that I have seen in 2+ years here that was remotely accurate was the one about 50$ on the ground and the TP. Thanks for that but it doesn’t really matter because ill just [snip] itdungeon tokens meets anets definition of grind, but actually their definition is pretty poor, it doesnt consider the magnitude of repetitions, and it would mean that as long as you have two methods of doing something, it can never be a grind.
Actually they don’t meet the Anet definition because the lack of those tokens does not prevent you from participating in any content available, not…That said, anet still has a way out in this case, as you can buy dungeon runs with gold. So i guess even dungeon tokens wouldnt be considered grind by anet, as it has at least two methods of aquisition.
…because of this.But yeah, as i said, Anet says they want the game to be about the journey, and i think rewarding the journey is probably the best way to highlight that.
I agree and so does anet that for long term goals there should be a tangible progression to the end reward. But there is a difference between that observable tangible progression and getting rewarded for progressing towards a reward.
what i am suggesting is not getting rewarded for progressing towards a reward, what i am saying is make progressing rewarding itself, and less about the reward at the end.
the reward at the end, should be a culmination of the rewards before it.
Like within the leveling system, you see this type of progression. Its not like you hit 80 and become a god. In fact hitting 80 is just a small increase in power.
Basically the reason things feel grindy, is generally when progressing feels unrewarding. Then everything is about reaching the end.
So what causes something to feel unrewarding?
a lack of desirable reward for the activity
too long of a time between start and reward
thing required for progress has low entertainment.
now of course you arent going to get rid of all of this at once, some of it is a matter of degrees, and some of it will never hit the sweet spot for all people. But you can take it into consideration when designing rewards.
Devata, essentially your entire post is boiling down to you don’t like how Anet made their game. You want them to change it to suit your needs, because you don’t like a specific aspect. You consider it to be ‘grind.’ Anet has defined what they meant by ‘no grind’ and that’s really the end of the discussion. You don’t have to like it, you don’t necessarily have to agree, but that’s their approach.
Of course you could say that about any complain.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think they are 100% on the money with everything, but for the most part, they do pretty well.
However the question at hand (in this thread) is not if they are or are not ‘on the money’. The question is how the current design effects the game, how people experience grind in this game and how they would prefer it instead.
Those are just academic discussions though. I don’t see them actually leading to changes that Anet would be compelled to make because each person is going to have a different opinion of what the answers to those questions are.
discussions about ideas /perceptions are probably the most useful. Ultra specific ideas, usually wont work with whatever hidden limitations, specifications, and interactions we dont know about.
Devs however can take how people percieve something and general ideas, and work into their framework.
Interesting ideas.
The drawback I see is that with the introduction of precursor hunt (depending on implementation) the demand for metal to throw into the forge may well drop like a stone (just saw the pun, was not intentional). You then have metal at the same place that leather is now.Yes but in order to have a proper discussion, we cant take speculative assumptions about future updates into consideration.
Beside that, mithril only accounts for ~50s of the 4g price tag of deldrimor atm. If it should fall to vendor value of 10c, deldrimor would only lose 40s in value and would still be a long way from the 2g price tag of elonian.Thats because iron and platinum cost more than their leather equivalents.
Funny, if you consider that iron and mithril is both farmable directly from nodes and leather is not.leather uses are far out of balance with their supply.
But how do you explain that platinum ore costs nearly the same as silk (2s), even though it has nodes?
Why dont people farm platinum to bring its price down but its common belief that once you introduce direct farming nodes for silk, people will farm it until its price is down?nodes dont bring the supply up much unless people find it worth their time to get the nodes and sell them. Nodes also only reduce demand from people who would go do it themselves, as the price drops, the amount of people who would do it themselves drops.
Basically what nodes offers, is a more elastic supply, and direct means of obtaining an item.
the only reduction in costs nodes would cause for silk, is lessen the people who feel forced to buy it. It probably wouldnt go down that much, most people would pay people not to have to gather it themselves.
people however would be more satisfied with the silk price if they had an option. even if they dont choose to use it.
But i think more elastic supply also leads to a more volatile price, which isnt really desirable because it favours trading speculators. If you check the graphs about mithril and silk i attached a couple of posts back, you will see a huge price spike in mithril during wintersday, more than 100%. It also went back down again as fast as it went up.
Silk was way more stable in the last year.Edit: I think silk nodes would bring down the price of silk way more than platinum nodes do right now because they usually arent located in end game maps (except EB, which has plenty of platinum nodes). Naturally, i would think that silk nodes would be placed in high level maps becasue they are t5.
If silk nodes would be implemented and only be available in low and mid tier maps, I wouldnt neccessarily oppose their implemention anymore.
i wouldnt place silk nodes or whatever direct silk mechanism in high traffic areas. The idea would be to have to go out looking for it intentionally.
My intial feeling would be to place its aquisition in towns, cities or outposts. You gotta get silk from people generally.
my intial thought was somewhere in the cities
Patience is a virtue my friend.
Lack of patience is a good source of income for those of us with patience though.
its actually really crappy income, if you are talking about damask.
its 51 silver profit, once per day. 11 gold in materials
so your talking about 4% profit, once per day.
thats not really too great. Even a crappy 3% profit, twice in a day would make you more money.
better off flipping.
It took me about 2 months to craft the light armor set. Timegating was not even a hindrance. Silk and linen were the real culprits. The other two were faster, but even they took a month. I guess I just don’t get the hurry: the game will be there for years.
different people have different paces of whats comfortable, and time gating works against that
Interesting ideas.
The drawback I see is that with the introduction of precursor hunt (depending on implementation) the demand for metal to throw into the forge may well drop like a stone (just saw the pun, was not intentional). You then have metal at the same place that leather is now.Yes but in order to have a proper discussion, we cant take speculative assumptions about future updates into consideration.
Beside that, mithril only accounts for ~50s of the 4g price tag of deldrimor atm. If it should fall to vendor value of 10c, deldrimor would only lose 40s in value and would still be a long way from the 2g price tag of elonian.Thats because iron and platinum cost more than their leather equivalents.
Funny, if you consider that iron and mithril is both farmable directly from nodes and leather is not.leather uses are far out of balance with their supply.
But how do you explain that platinum ore costs nearly the same as silk (2s), even though it has nodes?
Why dont people farm platinum to bring its price down but its common belief that once you introduce direct farming nodes for silk, people will farm it until its price is down?
nodes dont bring the supply up much unless people find it worth their time to get the nodes and sell them. Nodes also only reduce demand from people who would go do it themselves, as the price drops, the amount of people who would do it themselves drops.
Basically what nodes offers, is a more elastic supply, and direct means of obtaining an item.
the only reduction in costs nodes would cause for silk, is lessen the people who feel forced to buy it. It probably wouldnt go down that much, most people would pay people not to have to gather it themselves.
people however would be more satisfied with the silk price if they had an option. even if they dont choose to use it.
Interesting ideas.
The drawback I see is that with the introduction of precursor hunt (depending on implementation) the demand for metal to throw into the forge may well drop like a stone (just saw the pun, was not intentional). You then have metal at the same place that leather is now.Yes but in order to have a proper discussion, we cant take speculative assumptions about future updates into consideration.
Beside that, mithril only accounts for ~50s of the 4g price tag of deldrimor atm. If it should fall to vendor value of 10c, deldrimor would only lose 40s in value and would still be a long way from the 2g price tag of elonian.Thats because iron and platinum cost more than their leather equivalents.
Funny, if you consider that iron and mithril is both farmable directly from nodes and leather is not.
leather uses are far out of balance with their supply.
I find it unfortunate that people beleive their is an unecessary amout of time to be devoted to finding materials an crafting .I spent 6 years playing GW1 and still haven’t totally “finished”.But thats what I like about this game is its not something you can do in a weekend.This is a game you need to spend months or even years playing to get your characters where you want then.I’ve played GW2 from the begining and still haven’t had a precursor drop but I keep trying .For the folks that find it to dificult or boring because of the lack of instant gratification, you can allways play Tic-Ta-Toe.
Interesting, but why is playing tic tac toe for 2 years any better?
what if you are only allowed to play one tic tac toe game a day?
does this make tic tac toe more fun?
Its not the perfect example, because ideally i would tie it more to doing things in the world rather than just items, but its just an example
Honestly, there are two problems with how Ascended was designed.
First, creating it renders your Exotic gear you formerly had obsolete. It’s my opinion it should not be its own creation but instead a growth of the lower-tier gear into something more powerful. It should feel like it was not a result of crafting it, but a result of living it. Infusion in Guild Wars 1 may have been a little lackluster but it absolutely did not render your gear obsolete. It was an extra quality which was added, in a sense of how it felt. (And technologically it was just a flag which could be triggered on your armor, to prevent Spectral Agony from eating you alive.)
So really, it should have been something else to acquire armor and weapons. The trinkets? Those were mostly fine – they represented icons from the past of the world which had transcended commonality into fable. The weapons and armor? They bear names, but it’s just not the same as knowing that Ancient Mursaat Token is a link to the distant past.
There’s the first mistake. It feels . . . lackluster, it doesn’t feel like you earn it. (Mawdrey, mostly, feels earned. The Tempered Spinal Blades feels earned. Ascended armor feels like a chore of steadily refining materials until you reach the breakthrough.)
Second mistake, and this one is much more grievous in my opinionated stance. Ascended gear should never have given higher stats than Exotic, or at least in the open world. They were intended to make it possible to dive higher into Fractals where things get tougher, but really that’s the only place they are needed. And only if infused for Agony Resistance. So what should have been done is more elegant a solution – Ascended Gear gets a bonus % to your stats while your are in the Fractals of the Mists, relative to what level of Fractals you have completed and limited by what level you are attempting.
(So just pulling numbers out of my rectal cavity, but you could have +15% at Level 30 Fractals, but if you went to a Level 5 run it’d scale down to where it wouldn’t be as powerful. And if you got in on a Level 40 Fractal, it’d still only be +15% maximum since 30 is as high as you went. Heck, tie Agony Resistance to how many pieces of gear you’re wearing relative to the highest Level you’ve run – no need to invent Infusions as an upgrade at all.)
So, in Fractals they’d be important . . . but in WvW? In general PvE? It’d be the same power as Exotics. Sidestepping the whole problem with them having a higher power level, so they’re only fully useful in one place . . . and players don’t feel the need to chase them as Best-in-Slot, they can chase them for the skins.
. . . and once more, for the heck of it? Render them dyeable. Not via dyes, use the limited palette of colors we have now and let it be through throwing the dye ingredients (off the Cook list) into the Forge with the weapon. Want to get a neat white greatsword? Throw in the Ascended Greatsword, some Crystals, Snow Truffles, and something else. No need to craft up more Deldrimor Steel Ingots and another Inscription.
Well i think ascended wasnt really a great execution. The best thing it did was create a strong sink for a tremendous oversupply of item, And while it does add a nice goal, the overall execution, as far as i can see turns a lot of people off in various ways.
like you said, ascended should have been probably made to work with exotics, rather than replace them.
It probably shouldnt have been an item progression, but rather charachter progression. They are kind of doing this now with masteries.
Anyhow, back to the topic of grind, ascendeds current design is a very unappealing form of a long term goal imo. And, i think many players view it as unpleasurable due to feeling very repetitive, time gated, etc.
So this thread is still all about arguing what is grind and what is not, arguing if GW2 is a grindy game or not and nothing about discussing changes to any of the game systems.
If you continue to debate what grind is, even though you know what the developers themselves feel about it, this one should get a lock soon. 3 pages and still no proposals for changes
My suggestion is to stop end loading rewards, and have less rewards that provide nothing in and of themselves.
Have less things like get 1000 of this and 1000 of that X10, more rewards like do this few times and get something tangible.
The long term stuff should be things that fit in with the idea of doing a lot of smaller things That have value on their own.
for example, lets say for ascended you could unlock new stat spreads with 3 gossamer insignia of the right type, one of the mats (damask deldrimor or elonian) and a lesser vision crystal.
While it would take forever to unlock every stat combination, and a ton of resources, each time you made a step you would feel rewarded, each goal could be accomplished in a shorter time frame
So you get a big long goal, but you get people enjoying the road to getting there more, than if they had to do it all up front.
Its not the perfect example, because ideally i would tie it more to doing things in the world rather than just items, but its just an example
as to the last part, i dont know why that would make you hate analogies,
Dont think for 1 second you can impact my life in any way, that didn’t make me hate analogies, it simply illustrated why I hate them on forums
i made an error in the description, it would be 2 levels(but only 1 level able to be gained), but the point really is just that when all of your progress points and growth is back loaded, you are almost guanteeing that the path will begin to feel grindy.80 levels may feel fine, but spread the same 80 levels into fewer points of change/growth/reward and the process feels grindy.
Because it goes into some tangential discussion about a hypothetical situation no one cares about
just as an excerise, how i would design mjolinir?
id make you need
1 gift of ascalon
[Snip]There is nothing in this game that meets the definition of grind better than the gifts from dungeons.
As to the rest of your thought experiment, interesting idea but there is something that doesn’t sit right with me.
analogies and hypotheticals are used to test and evaluate conceptual models, but if you dont like them, i will avoid using them when talking to you specifically(if i remember).
anyhow
dungeon tokens meets anets definition of grind, but actually their definition is pretty poor, it doesnt consider the magnitude of repetitions, and it would mean that as long as you have two methods of doing something, it can never be a grind.
That said, anet still has a way out in this case, as you can buy dungeon runs with gold. So i guess even dungeon tokens wouldnt be considered grind by anet, as it has at least two methods of aquisition.
But yeah, as i said, Anet says they want the game to be about the journey, and i think rewarding the journey is probably the best way to highlight that.
I’ve they said publicly is that they realize the current system is bad and they are significantly simplifying it.
People are people, some will give the devs the benefit of the doubt and assume it will be better than what we have. Some will assume the worse because they feel that they aren’t getting any feedback on what they planned, at least OUR, those who are assuming the worse, feedback. How dare they not include every single cook when preparing this meal.
You can’t do that in real life. They have a vision on how this new system will fit along side the expansions mastery system. They’ve made it clear that they are getting rid of the accumulation of SPs after 80 from leveling. So SPs will be a limited commodity on a per character basis so you won’t have the spare SPs to buy your traits, at least all of them. Maybe they will be account wide unlocks so after the first character like mastery will be. Who knows.
I’m not saying they are taking the money and running, just limiting any negative feelings to just before the release. Now if they don’t tell us some crippling limitation until it shipped, then that’s take the money and run.
see the thing with the cook analogy, almost no one walks into a restaraunt and says bring me whatever you want.
There needs to be actual interaction between the cook, and the customer, or its highly likely to be problematic.
You were saying its better to not speak so as to stop negative criticism. But thats foolish, whatever negative criticism you get is based on the product. Its going to happen regardless, you gain nothing, unless your hope is to sell your product to people who arent going to like it, if they know what it is.
You cant see how that is a really bad idea?
Grind boils down to two things, at least as people are using on these forums:
- I have to repeat content too long/much to get the reward I want
- I want reward X, but I don’t like the means necessary to get the reward
As far as #1 goes, every theme park MMO is going to have this struggle between developer and players. Developers are going to try to find a sweet spot where rewards don’t take so long to obtain that a large majority of players would give up, while some players are always going to think that they aren’t getting the rewards fast enough.
As far as #2 goes, this one too boils down to time needed to obtain. I’d bet that most of those who don’t like a “means to get X” (i.e., the content they have to do, or the way they have to do content, like farming gold as opposed to seeking Boss X’s drop) might be more willing to tolerate this situation if they only had to engage with the means once or twice.
Thing is, I don’t know what developers would be able to do with regard to #1. They need to extend the life of the game. Players demand that their MMO keep them engaged for years, and for many hours a day. Also, because their profit model (sub, store or combination) requires game longevity. We know that developers cannot produce new content at the rate that players can burn through it, so they’re going to use rewards that take time to obtain to extend the game’s life.
As far as #2 goes, since this is the OP’s presenting complaint, what could be done is for some items to be put into the game that drop from specific bosses. Well, ANet has done this. However, like every demographic, the OP and those who think like him want more rewards that are obtained as they would like. Meanwhile, other demographics like the “get gold” approach and still other demographics like the “rewards can drop anywhere” approach, specifically because they don’t want to be “forced” into specific content. ANet has to please all of these people, at least to some extent. This makes it inevitable that not every reward that gets put into the game is going to be obtained via the favored means of any one group.
its definately tricky, and definately an inexact science. There isnt going to be a universal always true method, however i think its bad to spread a few rewards across too many hours.
based on many talks/discussions around this topic, i think the problem may be designing long term rewards. rather than designing one big goal that you have to a lot of effort to achieve, Its better to build shorter term goals, and try to make rewards that feel satisfying whenever you get them.
I disagree, the effort I put in to mjolnir over the course of 6 months felt way more rewarding than any of the ascended gear I have made. I am sure that people who craft legendaries feel the same, I believe that the problem is people who feel Entitled to easy access to everything available. Without challenge then no matter how cool the reward you get is, in the end, it will mean littlelong term goals would then tend to be collection of shorter term goals. agree to a point, having a tangible progress in any endeavor is good for motivation
Lets take guild halls, theoretically.
If they make it so you have to gather 100000 wood logs, then you get a guild hall, it will probably feel grindy.
But if they design it so you build each room, while it will take a long time to complete, it will not feel as grindy.
I see what you are saying and think that is exactly the direction they are moving in with the infrastructure they have built for the future precursor crafting and recently with mawdry and star of gratitude I mentioned earlierjust like if the game only had 1 level, and it took 100 hours get enough experience to reach level 2, it would probably feel grindy to a lot of people.
Umm….yeah. So how can a game that has only 1 level have a 100 hour timegate to reach level 2? There isn’t a level 2 in your hypothetical game. This is why I hate analogies on internet forums.
id probably design mjolinir total acquistion to be more incremental, with various stages and more options to progress it.
as to the last part, i dont know why that would make you hate analogies, i made an error in the description, it would be 2 levels(but only 1 level able to be gained), but the point really is just that when all of your progress points and growth is back loaded, you are almost guanteeing that the path will begin to feel grindy.
80 levels may feel fine, but spread the same 80 levels into fewer points of change/growth/reward and the process feels grindy.
I think anet wants people to enjoy the journey, and the best way to do that is to reward the journey, rewarding only the end diminishes the journey.
Now, this doesnt mean simply breaking up the journey into miles, but placing interesting things along the journey that highlight the journey.
I do think some of their new content is closer to this design, but its still not really the prevalent design structure.
just as an excerise, how i would design mjolinir?
id make you need
1 gift of ascalon
100 orichalcum ingots
50 charged lodestones to create
sleeping mjolinir basically mjolinir with a stone based, no lightning skin
then you need to use
soul of lightning on it, which would use
200 gossamer
50 charged lodestones
this would transform it to mjolinir rising which can now be charged
charging it with charged lodestones makes it lightning up for a limited amount of time depending on how many lodestones you have charged it with already
each time you charge it, the length of its special effect lasts 15 seconds longer.
when you have charged it 250 times, its effect will always be on.
everytime you feed it a lodestone it gives 25% karma and 25% exp boost for the length of its lighting effect (up to an hour)
charging it with skill points changes the intensity of the lightning effect, at zero its barely visible, at 100 its like it is now. the next 100 charges change its hue (color) one charge at a time. so 30 more skill points might be greenish 50 might be yellow 90 might be reddish.
everytime you feed it a skill point it gains the effect of a kill streak booster
I think that type of progression would allow people to enjoy building mjolinir more, still use most of the same materials (i shaved some off, because ehh i dont think there is much gained in collecting 250 orichalcum and gossamer. Also different people would choose different hues for mjolinir which would make it a bit more unique. People would feel rewarded for each skill point, and be able to have the thrill and benefits of kill streak boosters, while they are trying to get exp for skill points.
However, one could still just save up the mats and have a basically similar experience if they wish it.
any how just an example for illustrative purposes
not sure why some are opposed to even attempting this just to get some numbers for the records.
Knowledge is knowledge?
At least silence is a quantum state. We don’t know if the changes are generally good or bad yet. A wait and see isn’t a no while months of negativity on the forums about what got announced most certainly will be.
And since this is likely a paid expansion, it will have an impact on NCSOFT’s financials which will have an impact on their stock which means analysts who are recommending buying, holding or selling NCSOFT stock are currently rummaging through these forums trying to get a handle on how many players will be willing to buy the expansion and how quickly.
KDB Daewoo came out with a research report this week that featured the expansion prominently as a factor of how well NCSOFT will do in 2015. They are estimating total sales for GW2 for 2015 at 189,000 million KrW, which is higher than either of the last two years, 123,000 million in 2013 and 86,000 million in 2014. The majority in the 2nd half which is when they are expecting the patch to drop.
This means info on the patch needs to be released to keep the hype up as well as carefully control the overall message since any news can affect NCSOFT’s stock.
in the case you described it would have been a mistake to develop it in the dark knowing these risks.
You are also creating overall, a more likely case that your game will fail with your plan. Building expectations, and then under delivering is probably worse for long term, than giving people realistic expectations. People are generally more accepting of mediocrity than they are with dissapointment.
basically your strategy is take the money and run. A better strategy is get the people who would like/accept what your doing to buy your product.
based on many talks/discussions around this topic, i think the problem may be designing long term rewards. rather than designing one big goal that you have to a lot of effort to achieve, Its better to build shorter term goals, and try to make rewards that feel satisfying whenever you get them.
long term goals would then tend to be collection of shorter term goals.
Lets take guild halls, theoretically.
If they make it so you have to gather 100000 wood logs, then you get a guild hall, it will probably feel grindy.
But if they design it so you build each room, while it will take a long time to complete, it will not feel as grindy.
just like if the game only had 1 level, and it took 100 hours get enough experience to reach level 2, it would probably feel grindy to a lot of people.
Anets goal was to make a game that doesnt feel grindy to players, if players feel what they created as grindy that is important.
. . . eh, I’m of two minds on this. First, I rather agree it’s an issue.
Then I’m reminded of the other game I’m playing more recently, and the words “Blue is overpowered and unbeatable.”
Then I start to laugh.
im assuming you are talking about magic, but i dont think its really mtgs goal to create a game people think is balanced. Their primary goal is to create an interesting game. MTG has had tons of imbalances which constantly change. And some times, they will design imbalances just to shake things up, or be fun.
No matter what definition individual players give, it doesn’t matter. It’s how the developers define it that matters.
Yes, ultimately, that’s what it comes down to. Anet defines grind for their game, so that is the end all and be all. We all know that Anet separates grind into required grind and optional grind, but one of the discussions here is whether anything can or should be done about the optional grind because that is minimizing some players’ enjoyment of the game.
For instance, crafting recipes that are particularly difficult to complete due to items dropping rarely in the world or even being impossible to get aside from the TP or simply having really high item requirements – the numbers of items needed could be reduced, thus reducing grind to complete or discover them.
This is a horrible suggestion and I will tell you why. Similar to the new reveal that 100% map comp will not include WvW maps, lowering requirements for items ultimately disenfranchises the loyal players who have already completed it with the harder requirements. It may be “for the best”, which is still a matter of opinion, but it doesnt return the time and effort already put in by people.
This also leads to those loyal players saying to themselves whenever new content comes out, “Ill just wait 6 months or a year and they will make it easier to do” This loss of immediacy ends up making players less interested in logging in regularly because they are not concerned with what they may be missing. You can see the negative side of this at work with the gem store items, and all the issues about limited time offers. The whole black wing sale for 1 day recently is an example of how players react when they lose their sense of immediacy and don’t log in as regularly as they once did.
this is bad and crippling reasoning. People being angry that other people dont have to suffer what they suffered, only guarantees suffering.
I used to have to go to the library to do school assignments for book reports. Now people can download books. Should the world stay trapped in a less ideal situation just to make me feel happy that every one has to suffer the same thing as i did?
Just like the people complaining about that issue, with the reasoning that i had to do it, so everyone should, that is not a good enough reason.
Now people with reasons like.
Ok, but exploring everything should still have a purpose, or WvW needs more things to get people to try it out.
They are talking about real reasons and ideas to examine. Best case senario with your plan, you end up creating situations where all of the old content is crude and unevolved, and new content is superior, Which for GW2 is really bad, since they want people to enjoy old content along side the new content.