Guild Wars 2

Zaxares.5419:

^ Exactly so.

However, the flip side of the equation is if cosmetics are by and large meant to be GW2’s “endgame”, at what point does the difficulty of obtaining those cosmetics begin to get large enough that it starts to turn away prospective players? (Or those who play for a bit, think it’s too hard to get those cool shinies, and stop playing as a result.)

Of course, on the hypothetical third hand, if skins were made easier to get, how many of those players would simply quit the game once they’d reached their goal, as opposed to striving for more skins to collect?

and this is one of the keys, the reality is, these items are meant to be things people want to pursue, it keeps them playing and gives them goals. Anyhow whatever is clever, at the end of the day we will be able to look back and see how well it worked or didnt work. The game is still standing for now, so maybe its fine. If the game collapses, maybe it was a factor.

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

eithinan.9841:

People here seem to have an issue differentiating between inflation in an economy and the natural effects of supply/demand on specific items.

doesnt really matter what the word for it is, The point is, items people want keep rising at a higher rate than thier earnings. If it was real inflation, only people who mostly save would be upset.

I mean it helps to be using the same terms in a discussion, but the heart of communication is figuring out what the person intends to say, or feels.

How can one properly communicate if the words don’t matter? I have no responsibility in trying to decipher what someone else is trying to say when they wont even put forth the effort to say it correctly.

I would argue that the “heart of communication” is properly phrasing your statements so all can understand what you are saying. If one does not have the knowledge or background on the subject material then they should refrain from sharing their uneducated opinions on said subject.

Communication is a two way street, they may be wrong for using the wrong words, but you arent helping by not looking for what they are trying to say. So while its valid to correct them, its not productive to stop your desire to understand at that moment. How in the world would any one communicate in such a rigid system? Word use and ideas differ from subculture to subculture, proffession to profession, language to language. worlds also evolve and change with time, and with changes in the field of study.
This is why people tend to use more than just a few words to communicate an idea, because it makes it less likely that using one word the party doesnt understand, or misunderstands, does obscure the meaning completely.

Lastly, its a false premise that somene who doesnt share the same vocabulary as you knows less or has less understanding of an issue than you, or cant make valid observations. Its a classic mistake for academics to think this way.

So, Im going to address the claim that I am an Acedemic with a hearty BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

In response to “you arent helping by not looking for what they are trying to say.” I will leave my first post here.

eithinan.9841:

People here seem to have an issue differentiating between inflation in an economy and the natural effects of supply/demand on specific items.

I think that post was much more helpful than you telling everyone that

phys.7689:

doesnt really matter what the word for it is

You see I was trying to educate people who kept making WRONG statements over and over again. I never stopped trying to understand what was being said. I can sum up my opinion on what people are saying in this thread with the following,

if there is an issue to be addressed with the price of certain items on the TP then they will be addressed by Anet with loot table adjustment or some farm event. But no matter what, high demand/ low supply items will always be expensive. This is what I keep reading people complaining about. But it is not INFLATION. It never has been and never will be. ever.

Inflation: a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.

There has been and will be inflation in GW2. Always and forever because there is always going to be players playing the game and infusing new gold(rewards) into the economy. To this end the hoarders who have the 50k stockpiles of gold in their banks and such are actually responsible for slowing down the rate of inflation in GW2 by removing that active capital from the economy.

I got no problem with trying to get people to make what words the use mean more clear, that can promote understanding, but you clearly said if people dont know what the right words are they should not speak, i disagree with that statement.

As far as the issue, it is as some people have said, its that the things they want seem to be getting further and further away.

Its like when housing begins to cost more, and people in that area are making less and less, then you get a lot of people who become disatisfied with the economy. Now you could tell them to shut up, but its not something people like to see irl, why would they want to see it ingame?

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

If skill has a bigger contribution than gear, then improving player skill would mean closing the gap in performance. Your analysis is a bit flawed, though, since pretty much everything that a class has is designed around PVP. It is interesting, because in PVP (both WvW and sPVP, as well as dueling), we actually see and feel the diversity in how classes play, and more than just one type of gear is useful. In that perspective, not much of what you listed is a compromise at all.

Wait… you paraphrase my last bullet point, then claim that this counters the other points? So, because professions are designed with PvP in mind:

• GW2 is suddenly not a hybrid or compromise between twitch and standard MMO play?
• GW2 professions are not a compromise between everyone can do everything and professions are different?
• ANet did not hype a “GW2 trinity,” presenting players with the idea that classic dedicated roles would be desirable, while designing a PvE game where such roles are — at best — not dedicated and not tied to gear?
• Content being designed for lower-tier gear does not impact difficulty and challenge when players are geared with exotics or Ascended?
• There aren’t a huge number of gear prefixes?

If you’re saying the other issues are not factors in the way the game plays, you’re going to have to be more convincing.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

If you run the numbers, particularly sustained damage through greater survival vs. greater survival via faster kill times, GC gear and defensive gear are nearly identical in performance. Or they were, before the ferocity nerf. No, the biggest flaw I can find about PVE is that they didn’t design the enemies for the game they made.

Ergo gear diversity is not the major problem. I agree.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I would call the beta difficulty nerf a compromise, though. I remember back in beta (I was a bit late to the game, though) there were a whole bunch of “range is OP, melee is useless!” complaints, talking about how all the mobs were too hard to melee, so range was the only thing you could do without being killed instantly. These were exaggerations drawn from massively scaled champions, but a large portion of the playerbase found things way too difficult, so Anet severely nerfed enemy damage to the point that players could mindlessly facetank everything in greens.

I played BWE1 from the start. The game was more difficult, and even normal mobs hit significantly harder. Moving and using what the game gave you was much more important to survival and victory.

The mob nerf was also a compromise between appealing to fans of action games and fans of traditional MMO’s. People were/are face tanking because that’s what they did when solo in most other MMO’s — absent things like kiting on a DoT-applying class. That predilection is something that might have been ameliorated by an upfront tutorial saying that movement and active defense are meant to be used. ANet let people discover that for themselves.

As with every instance of greater difficulty in GW2, instead or adapting or learning, players rage or quit. I’d have been happier with the game if ANet had said, “This is how you’re supposed to deal with difficulty. If you’re not willing, then perhaps this game is not for you.” I guess we’ll see how that works out for Carbine.

carbine spent a lot of resources making general game play rules clearer, They also gradually increase difficulty, in the beginning enemies use less skills with tells, with longer wind ups, and less CC, by the time you are about midlevel, there is less time between warning and execution, more variation in tells, and enemies start using specifc skill chains where dodging one may be more important than others.

point is its not just about being hard, its about making whats going on clearer to the player, as well as having difficulty increase as you play.

Its probably too late for GW2, to do this, i dont think its even in the game design possibilities right now, i think a wolf type is a wolf type, and has the same basic routines no matter what level it is.
Sooo probably the best way they can deal with this is to have content that may be described as harder content at max level, then create a series of missions/quests/or maybe events that better scales the mob difficulty/patterns so that as people play they get better instead of hitting a wall.

Short version carbine has probably already succeeded at raising the level of the average player. A cursory glance has very few complaints of difficulty, whereas GW2 had many back in beta days.
Then again maybe thats because GW2 there is no one to blame but yourself. eh well whatevs

Obtena.7952:

Lothirieth.3408:

John Smith.4610:

Short and sweet:
If you think inflation is a major issue in Guild Wars 2, you should do more research on MMO economies and general economics.

And here is one of the largest problems: do you really think the majority of the GW2 population actually has an interest in economics and would find this fun?

I’d think (and of course I could be wrong) most people in the game want a fun game to play and earn items through playing content (better, shinier items through challenging content), not this random money grind that’s been set up.

No but then again, GW2 makes it simple enough that players don’t NEED to have a interest in Economics to play it successfully.

I would think that after 2 years, people at some point would come around to realize that if they want their items as direct rewards from content, GW2 just ISN’T that kind of game and I doubt it will be for two reasons:

1. The amount of work it would take to make it that kind of game.
2. Maybe I’m jaded by years of gaming but earning loot directly though content just sucks because if I’m after specific and awesome loot, the only way to make it hard to get is to make people play REPEATED, hard content; not a few times … a few dozen maybe, perhaps hundreds. GW2 throws that tired garbage out the window. Now I can do What I want, When I want, How I want with Who I want and get anything I want … and people are complaining about this? Honestly, go back to WoW.

now you can do repeated easy content while you are watching netflix, and get more rewards than doing a lot more paying attention and work. Well, makes sense from an effeciency and attention required per reward sense. But doesnt really make sense from a game design perspective.

Im not saying everything should be in raids (i dont raid) but the best rewards should come from playing the game well. preferably in ways that highlight well designed content.
in various modes of play.

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

eithinan.9841:

People here seem to have an issue differentiating between inflation in an economy and the natural effects of supply/demand on specific items.

doesnt really matter what the word for it is, The point is, items people want keep rising at a higher rate than thier earnings. If it was real inflation, only people who mostly save would be upset.

I mean it helps to be using the same terms in a discussion, but the heart of communication is figuring out what the person intends to say, or feels.

How can one properly communicate if the words don’t matter? I have no responsibility in trying to decipher what someone else is trying to say when they wont even put forth the effort to say it correctly.

I would argue that the “heart of communication” is properly phrasing your statements so all can understand what you are saying. If one does not have the knowledge or background on the subject material then they should refrain from sharing their uneducated opinions on said subject.

Communication is a two way street, they may be wrong for using the wrong words, but you arent helping by not looking for what they are trying to say. So while its valid to correct them, its not productive to stop your desire to understand at that moment. How in the world would any one communicate in such a rigid system? Word use and ideas differ from subculture to subculture, proffession to profession, language to language. worlds also evolve and change with time, and with changes in the field of study.
This is why people tend to use more than just a few words to communicate an idea, because it makes it less likely that using one word the party doesnt understand, or misunderstands, does obscure the meaning completely.

Lastly, its a false premise that somene who doesnt share the same vocabulary as you knows less or has less understanding of an issue than you, or cant make valid observations. Its a classic mistake for academics to think this way.

eithinan.9841:

People here seem to have an issue differentiating between inflation in an economy and the natural effects of supply/demand on specific items.

doesnt really matter what the word for it is, The point is, items people want keep rising at a higher rate than thier earnings. If it was real inflation, only people who mostly save would be upset.

I mean it helps to be using the same terms in a discussion, but the heart of communication is figuring out what the person intends to say, or feels.

well the best source of ectos is probably the world boss train. Impossible for me to know, but my guess is that the World boss fighting doesnt appeal to as many players any more. Essentially more people were probably killing more bosses overall before.
Why? well they limited the people who were good at it to about 1 every 15 minutes, and plenty of people who would do it randomly dont anymore. Before the chance of you running into a random WB while doing something else in a zone was much higher,

Then you have the annoyance factor of a huge zerg, and not getting credit.

also, my theory is less mid/high time playing players are playing right now, due to new MMOs, no major content, and summer. A lot of these people dont use up the ectos, but they do sell them, and they arent around.

Ensign.2189:

Behellagh.1468:

what some are calling inflation are seeing a bidding war among the wealthy while the rest of us sit on the sidelines sighing at the price rise.

What people are usually complaining about when they talk about inflation is precursor prices. Precursor prices, at least for high demand precursors, are more or less indexed to the price of T5 materials – mithril ore, elder wood, and the fine mats. My experience is that the bulk of my income, regardless of what I’m doing in game, comes from T5 mats, T6 mats, and globs of ectoplasm, all of which have risen in price as well.

I get that if you were, say, a Queensdale champ train farmer that your income has gotten punched, because that was specifically nerfed. If you do nothing but run dungeons and collect the raw gold rewards, sure, a price surge has eaten away at that value. Anything you do that rewards mats and ectos should have seen its income surge 25% or so in the past couple months, though, more or less in line with the surges in precursor prices.

This is a market telling people to stop farming dungeons and to go farm more mats.

What am I missing?

Not much, except that the best way to get mats would probably be, run in circles doing 3-4 dynamic events in groups of 20+ over and over. Which is the issue, the game is just about get as much gold as fast as you can, rather than getting good at different types of well designed content.

the other factor is the vast majority of items you are talking about, are not the items you get.
so when these things inflate, perhaps 1/5th your drops inflate well, the rest dont, silk, wood, mithril, yellow sigils/runes, blues/greens, junk items, which means overall you are probably behind the inflation of high end stuff like gems, precursors, mats for special weapons, and new items that can be bought that they add in the future.

DiazKincade.2891:

You don’t see non zerkers booting people out of dungeons cus they don’t link zerker gear. These are elitists. This happens ONLY with zerker speed farmers. Also if you bring zerker to Teq or any other “Object” boss you are only hurting yourself. PVT is better there because you can’t crit on objects.

I run full zojja’s/zerker on my mesmer. Why? because I ran CoF p1 back when it was the thing to do for farming and I learned how to survive as a zerker there. The fast paced fights with zerker is what I’ve come to like. As it stands Zerker is the meta in most instances. (aside from the previously stated exception and potentially wvw/pvp) This is wrong on so many levels. You can’t possibly think that having only one stat type at the meta is "balanced’ when the game offers up so many alternatives to this. I’m not asking for a nerf to zerker gear. I’m asking for a buff to everything else to put it on par with zerker gear. But that brings up a whole host of balance issues. As to the “heal spec being no good” that is because healing power is broken. It scales so horribly with most skills its crazy, but again balancing that is a very slippery slope.

This is also not the main topic here. The main point is trying to get new players to understand the systems in the game they are playing. So please try to stay on topic and not try to derail the thread with petty bickering about known facts.

solution is to change the healing stat to a support stat, and have it somehow make them better with boons as well. This would actually make high end players possibly want support statted players.
for increased stats, and utility.

I might make it a lingering effect on certain types of support effects. For example new rule, any time, you give boons, heal or remove conditions, you get this effect which enhances boon effects that scales based on your support stat for a limited time (differs with whether its a heal/boon/or condition removed)

just as an example
aegis: a certain % of the next dmg is ignored
might: increased power from might
fury: increased crit dmg
protection: increased condition mitigation
regeneration: reduces condition duration
Stability: scaling quickness
swiftness: chance of glancing blows
vigor: reduces evasion costs

see the key here is that the healing stat isnt helping people support that well because healing is not meant to be a heavy means of support. Healing is generally not what most support builds are about. By having a support stat, and system which, when timed well, and managed improves every one in the parties ability to make use of their boons, you then make the support role/stat more interesting, and more desired, though not totally OP. After all while he is boosting your boons, they have to have boons, and its for limited time after they actively do some support action, not to mention they are generally having to give up some stats that are also extremely useful.

a bit off topic, but just had to throw it out there

DiazKincade.2891:

phys.7689:

HugoCosta.6735:

I like the way the game is now, in this game you die a lot, mega events like temple events or Tequalt you can see a lot of people dying everywhere, I wouldn’t like to spend all my hard earned money to repair armor.

They should try to make fights where massive death is the main method of success. The fact that some events play out this way is a pretty bad thing

That would be funny but highly impractical. Death only makes those alive have to fight that much harder. The fact that people don’t do more to fix this (as in not throwing their lives away needlessly thus making the fight lose that bit of dps but none of the added difficulty) is the problem. Continuously dieing to the same boss the same way just proves that people don’t feel the need to change tactics.

my fault, typoed, meant to say isn’t heh

HugoCosta.6735:

I like the way the game is now, in this game you die a lot, mega events like temple events or Tequalt you can see a lot of people dying everywhere, I wouldn’t like to spend all my hard earned money to repair armor.

They should try to make fights where massive death isnt the main method of success. The fact that some events play out this way is a pretty bad thing

Behellagh.1468:

I’m not laying the blame on the devs. I’m replying to those that are asking the devs to make content that only zergs or whatever min/max flavor of the month can defeat to force players to “learn 2 play”. What the devs are doing is the correct course, by making the game more accessible to all types of build and not picking build winners.

I’m sorry that wasn’t clear.

Actually this thread is not about meta builds, its about the design showing people the rules of the game. Transparency in what is happening and transparency in what can happen.

Point the game doesn’t train people very well or show them the rules/what’s happening very well, which leads them to having to make fairly simple fights

Ensign.2189:

Seraphina.6859:

I am sorry to say this but “Short and sweet: If you think inflation is a major issue in Guild Wars 2, you should do more research on MMO economies and general economics.” is more like an insult rather than an actual attempt to explain his opinion on the matter.

That’s because it is more of a dismissal than an actual attempt to explain the matter. To most people versed in economics, non-specific complaints about inflation read something like ‘I have no idea what I’m talking about but I am unhappy about outcomes and have been conditioned to blame inflation, blargh!’ It’s code for being deeply unserious.

Inflation is really not an issue in this game; and yes, “being an issue” means different things in a game economy than it does in a national economy, but it’s still not an issue.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t other issues; the reward system of this game is not good, to put it kindly. Their item system and drops were slapped together over a weekend. It’s not the way you’d want to design a reward system, at all.

They’re also mostly stuck with it, because the game is popular, and it would be ridiculously disruptive to actually overhaul it and put something good in place. So instead we get some spackle in the biggest holes and a lot of duct tape.

If someone wants to complain about that, I’m sure he’d be happy to engage you, to the extent that he can given NDAs and proprietary information and all that.

But failing to mention that at all and just complaining about inflation? There’s nothing there. Either ask to get educated or go figure out something intelligible before trying again.

once again looking at it from a far distance, and comparing it to other popular MMOs, inflation isnt an issue, comparitively. However, when you actually play in the system, its pretty bad. See the things people want keep going up in value at a faster rate than the thier earnings. While in general materials maintain their value better, its only certain specific items that do well with inflation.

The major difference between this game and other games, the primary means of obtaining any item was through some form a focused play. Money is just a means of exchange. So even though the prices may have been off putting, the game itself wasnt.
You want best in slot? play this content. You want the best crafted armor? go to these places and hit these nodes/kill these enemies, then put it together. So this system tends to feel unsatisfactory because you HAVE to farm money to get anything, or else spend way more time trying to obtain it.

this system makes gold earning an end in itself rather than a means of exchange between value/playtypes/what you are good at/enjoy.

and gold earning isnt well designed to accentuate the best content of the game to boot

Lothirieth.3408:

John Smith.4610:

Short and sweet:
If you think inflation is a major issue in Guild Wars 2, you should do more research on MMO economies and general economics.

And here is one of the largest problems: do you really think the majority of the GW2 population actually has an interest in economics and would find this fun?

I’d think (and of course I could be wrong) most people in the game want a fun game to play and earn items through playing content (better, shinier items through challenging content), not this random money grind that’s been set up.

I do think that sometimes looking at things on a macro and systemic level, makes you miss the general reality. Mathematically, every reward can be broken down to money, or value equivalents, then they can more easily balance them. Also specific items uses should balance their creation, etc.

But at the end of the day, that can lead to some well regulated but unsatisfying systems.

Fenrir.3609:

The game is for the main part really rather easy and is predominantly aimed at a hypercasual playerbase (now I am not saying that is a bad thing, not every game should be a twitch full loot FFA game, a massively strategic strategy or something insanely deep and complex like EVE or UO). But it should come as no surprise that there are skill/knowledge issues.

99% of the time you don’t need to think or do anything other than autocleave and half the playerbase seemingly cba to engage their brain or research (warning totally made up statistics alert!).

If only the “top 5% min/maxers” are able to work out how how to effectively blast fields or when and why stacks fails etc, then that reflects worse on the players than on the game really, given those kinds of things are hardly deep/complex issues to work out.

Just look at how often people use knockbacks at ridiculous moments when a melee train is trying to nail a mob. It’s common sense not to do that, it shouldn’t need a long old tutorial to realise that is for the main part an idiotic thing to do, and yet it happens time after time after time again.

Whilst I think that being able to dramatically tone down particle effects and the like would be great, I don’t feel that dumbing down the encounters even more by having oversized mobs and massively telegraphed attacks is a good idea.

For all that, it is hard to argue against putting more accessible and clear information up in the form of a manual. It is also hard to argue against adding in more early level content which attempts to guide the player through a process of looking at their skills, synergies, gear and stuff like combo fields. I just don’t think it will make any difference at all…. Unless the majority of the content starts demanding the player has a reasonable level of skill/knowledge, then the situation will not improve and there will always be a large gap between the faceroll content and the non faceroll content.

telegraphs are not really about a huge wind up all the time, its sometimes just about here is where my attack is hitting. There is a lot of enemies who hit you invisibly, with no visual indication that an attack should be in that range, like ogres.

Its basically like this, does the game accurately show you whats happening? many times the answer is no

Figgy.3856:

How about more rewards when you live, not punishment when you die.
Why do you need to pay silver to feel bad for dying?

I haven’t changed my playstyle since then. Waypointing still costs silver and in instanced areas you don’t wanna be the person that gets carried (and maybe your group doesn’t want you to be, either).

It’s good that they want to give you the opportunity to take risks – now all we need is new content x)

this is also an option, though its really just perception. psychologically it may make sense.

Taygus.4571:

Tachenon.5270:

Some things I don’t look for in a game are situations in which some sanity-challenged NPC uses a catapult to fling cows willy nilly about the landscape (and the associated quest isn’t about putting a stop to it, but instead saying ‘Me next plz!’), frequent raisings of the level cap, and Death Penalties.

That heart definitely should have had a “choice” option. “kill npc to stop him” or “help him”. My asura was just fine helping him, my sylvari on the other hand, disgusted.

got to realize charr are mostly carnivores, to him he was just playing with food. Your charachter maybe has no reason

ofLegends.9853:

Well, this topic is going nowhere.
Just the same people arguing for greater death penalty and completely ignoring the best arguments against it.

heres a question, what is it you look for in a game? What makes you keep playing. Story? adventure, progress? im just curious to see what drives players, it may give me some perspective.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Andred.1087:

Man I dunno who you wrote all that for.

Maybe if ANet advertised the wiki as much as the gem store, we wouldn’t have this problem. Hah! :P

Long story short, I write this stuff for me. Long story slightly less short, I have a crazy brain that latches on to these subjects and runs like a freight train, and if I don’t pull that train into the station it’ll just derail into chaos. So, I write a small essay worth of information on the subject and throw in a couple of jokes for astute readers to catch (which is hard, since I’m only so-so funny).

---

Anyway, Emotes is now in the manual list. It isn’t combat pertinent, but it is something to know.

While I was away, I remembered something: There is actually an enemy in the game that uses a combo field effectively! You all remember the risen pirates in orr? They throw down a fire field, then leap through it to get the fire shield.

I mentioned in game tutorials, but I never actually described how to do that. There’s quite a few limitations to them, and because of these limitations I didn’t actually know how to do in-game tutorials:

#1: Not every class has access to all the different mechanics.
#2: Not every player will have purchased the same skills, if any skills at all.
#3: Not every player will have their particular required weapons.
#4: Not every player will have the prerequisite traits for combos.

The solutions to these would open up more problems. #4 would require reorganizing trait unlocks, which would tick off a lot of people. #3 could be solved by instanced lock environmental weapons, but this would cause a disconnect between actual player experiences. #2 would be a real lockdown, since it could be solved by temp weapons to make fields, but no overlap with solution #3. #1 is the biggest problem, since each class would have to get their own instance mission, and thus this would become a large load of programming and information.

But… one way to do this would be to have enemies that would blatantly use combo field interactions in their attacks. The risen pirate is a good example, but he’s a late game mob. Ideally, you’d have something that used combo fields at around level 25 to 30. A few of the more blatant ones, like fire fields, ice fields, ethereal fields, or smoke fields.

Also, having NPCs use techniques on duels and training dummies. In the original queens pavilion, there was an exhibition match between Logan and various watchknight holograms, and in this scripted battle, Logan used several attacks to counter their moves.

I’m thinking of something that was in Twilight Princess, where you’d enter into an area where that gold wolf/ancient knight would demonstrate a technique to teach you. I figure that, if you had an NPC that merely showed you some tricks (and likewise, explained them in a voice acted manner), then it wouldn’t be absolutely necessary for players to do them personally.

Hmm it actually wouldnt be that hard to come up with an algorithm. that gave you different instructions based on your level/proffesion/unlocks.
The npc could even tell you to come back when you get X, Y or Z ability.
lets say…
The npc tainer could act as an alternate means for low level unlocks.

Or they could just give you gold/skillpoints so you could theoretically unlock traits yourself.

it would even make sense.

Also the npcs could provide the fields, or even the finishers, remember many combos are between players, not self oriented.

Silalus.8760:

laokoko.7403:

The same reason, it is hard to be over critical of GW2, since I can’t say it is actually doing bad compare to other mmorpg on the market.

This.

The economic design and stability of GW2 are way better than most MMO’s in my experience.

I have some pet peeves too, of course. I’m not a fan of how crafting feels more like a path to endgame token redemption then an economic activity, for example. I also feel like there aren’t nearly enough options for characters or players to specialize in being good at one economic activity versus another.

But those are probably more overall game design issues than things that could be solved economically. And taken as a whole the GW2 economy seems to be a lot better designed and is definitely more simple-yet-satisfying than the other MMO’s I’ve played.

And let’s face it, you see basically this same thread on every MMO forum pretty often. To me that says that as obvious as “solutions” might seem intuitively, designing and managing an artificial economy that doesn’t include the same frustrations as the real economy is actually hilariously difficult. I have yet to see one that everyone points to as the gold standard to be imitated. (And I’d actually personally suggest that the interplay between RMT and gold in GW2 is the gold standard to be imitated for that aspect- and frankly getting even that one thing right is pretty darn impressive.)

Id say the economic engine, (the TP) is fairly well designed, and the economy isnt that unstable(as far as MMOs go). But i think the game design itself is too based around the gold economy. And doesnt feel too good at a high level. That said many MMO economies kind of suck, but then again their game isnt really revolving around gold as much.

Merus.9475:

I think you’re largely right about the perception of the economy as being unfair and out of control, but I think you’re misdiagnosing the problem. John is correct in that the economy is largely fine; gold is easier to get than it used to be but we’ve had no real inflation shocks on a Stone of Jordan kind of level, despite much wilder fluctuations in the availability of resources. It looks like the worse it got was the first Crown Pavillion, but it feels like things are more stable this year. While I question why silk and charged lodestones seem to get over-utilised in crafting and why T2-4 mats aren’t more widely available, these things are easily fixed and we’ve seen temporary resource drains correct these kinds of problems with great success.

The perception is real, but I think it stems from a rewards problem, not an economy problem, and John is not part of the rewards team. At the moment almost everything that players want drops rarely and unpredictably, from T6 mats, to lodestones, to attractive crafting blueprints, to precursors. The rest drops at a slow trickle, requiring large amounts of repetition of content that’s not particularly challenging or variable. The guiding principle of the rewards system is that players should be able to do what they want, and gold will fill in the gaps, but what actually happens is that just grinding gold and buying everything you want is far more effective, and the TP is not as exciting to buy from as an NPC vendor with predictable pricing is.

TP prices move around, because it is an economy and not an NPC vendor. Saving up for a thing you want becomes far less satisfying if the price is constantly moving because you keep noticing it when it spikes, even though it will come back down again. This is a fine model for some things (having rich players fight over who can drain the most gold out of the economy , as they did for the Lyssa backpiece, does wonders for inflation), but if players have to do it for even simple things, they come to the conclusion that it’s the market that’s making things hard.

I think john is either on the rewards team or works closely with them, i remember multiple developers talking about having to run reward ideas by john to tell if would break the game.

Hey john, does your role as head of game economics get you involved with rewards? I would assume so since one of the basics of economics is managing goods and services, which in this game is basically rewards.

Jahroots.6791:

I think good players are internally motivated. In dungeons, we try our best to avoid even getting downed so we don’t slow the group down. In large scale battles we’d rather not inconvenience others who’d have to revive us, or have to run all the way back from a WP.

You do make some very good suggestions, particularly the buff for surviving, but they seem like they’d be far too much trouble for the devs to implement at this stage in the game’s life cycle than they’re worth (monetizing anything related to a death penalty would be too ‘pay 2 win’ and cause quite the uproar).

I wouldnt monetize anything related to life bonuses or death penalties, and while it might cost resources, i think its important the game gets more depth. They dont have to do it through death penalty, but they will probably have to do it or lose some customers (keep in mind the game said it would have some challenging content through dungeons on release, so some bought it with that in mind) And, that will cost money.

Harper.4173:

I could have sworn I posted this before. Something must have gone wrong.

OP – what I believe is that you can’t really fix bad players because they won’t put in the time and effort to get good.
How do you fix the " it’s just a game man, doesn’t matter if I’m good or not, I play it for the lulz" mentality?

You are far underestimating the human ability. The key to what he is saying here, is many people just have no idea at all whats going on.
Is a combo feild really hard? no its not, however learning about a combo field, isnt something that would easily happen in game.
most finishers are hidden information, or have no tells
some fields have poor tells
much of what they do isnt clearly represented.

point is, you are right many people arent going to go out of their way to learn, thats why you teach them without making them go out of their way. Or you make it so that they must learn in order to succeed.
FFXI had like 2 million players? something like that, you couldnt get past like level 20 without learning how to play at a level that is higher than is required to play GW2 level 70 content. I will say that FFXI would probably now be placed in the hardcore game category, but i didnt think so at the time.

point is,
people would play at least somewhat better if the game was A) clearer oractually taught them game mechanics through play. Wildstar does a very good job of both. My guess is the same exact player will be much better at playing wildstar at cap than a GW2 player at cap.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

hannah mee.7925:

I stopped reading right here and I will not read further because this sentence alone makes me think the rest of the OP is going to be bad.

Amended statement:
Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to be as skilled as the top 5% of us.

This is going to blow…your…freakin…mind…

But the game’s easy. People don’t need to be “Top Ten” and theorycrafters to do the content because the content is that menial. Much like other games, the challenge comes from self-deprivation and personal goal setting. I’ve played a gratuitous amount of games (granted I’ve only touched three MMOs in my entire life, but I digress) and in every single game I can tell you there’s a challenge that emerges from personal handicaps.

What you think is “people knowing how to play the game” is, in fact, an outline of the learning curve – a phenomenon that exists far outside of just Guild Wars 2. As far as most of those examples go, they seem to just be shy of not understanding a certain boon or mechanic, which happens a lot when people are new or they are visually limited by stacking and having a narrow field of vision.

A classic example I’ve always used is the game of BioShock 2. I ran around in Free-for-All multiplayer mode with Slugger and often went 20:0. That didn’t mean I knew any more about the game than other players, it just meant I was better at Sluggering than them and I went further up the learning curve.

Against what some people like to believe, some people really can’t progress up the learning curve because they are incapable. It only seems to echo loudly throughout GW2 though…I guess because the forums on the website allow people to be a bit more vocal.

The biggest problem with your assertion is that Anet has already said that this is a problem. They’re already working on it by idiot-proofing various aspects of the game (sigil rework, and trait rework). They have also said that they are making new content harder, with the hopes that the increased difficulty will encourage players to explore more tactics and options within their own class.

Anyway, there is something I mention in the thread, and I didn’t talk about it much since it delves deeply into balance issues, but it is difficulty dissonance. That is, the drastic change in difficulty between different forms of content. The wider this gap is, the more “difficulty shock” a player gets when exploring different content. This… presents an issue from a designer perspective, because it is hard to design content that is both faceroll and face smashing at the same time. So, the designer either has to cater to a crowd, or they have to try and compromise and disappoint everyone.

yup, this is another big issue. GW2 generally goes from auto pilot to master flyer. You can get from level 1-80 learning very little about the game mechanics.
Then you go to a dungeon and evryones dead.

Adjusting numbers was their last solution, but its a bad solution, because it actually lowers the players need to learn how to play.

hannah mee.7925:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to know squat about how to play the game.

I stopped reading right here and I will not read further because this sentence alone makes me think the rest of the OP is going to be bad.

Amended statement:
Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to be as skilled as the top 5% of us.

This is going to blow…your…freakin…mind…

But the game’s easy. People don’t need to be “Top Ten” and theorycrafters to do the content because the content is that menial. Much like other games, the challenge comes from self-deprivation and personal goal setting. I’ve played a gratuitous amount of games (granted I’ve only touched three MMOs in my entire life, but I digress) and in every single game I can tell you there’s a challenge that emerges from personal handicaps.

What you think is “people knowing how to play the game” is, in fact, an outline of the learning curve – a phenomenon that exists far outside of just Guild Wars 2. As far as most of those examples go, they seem to just be shy of not understanding a certain boon or mechanic, which happens a lot when people are new or they are visually limited by stacking and having a narrow field of vision.

A classic example I’ve always used is the game of BioShock 2. I ran around in Free-for-All multiplayer mode with Slugger and often went 20:0. That didn’t mean I knew any more about the game than other players, it just meant I was better at Sluggering than them and I went further up the learning curve.

Against what some people like to believe, some people really can’t progress up the learning curve because they are incapable. It only seems to echo loudly throughout GW2 though…I guess because the forums on the website allow people to be a bit more vocal.

you should have read the rest, although it was long, i think it wasnt super boring.

Basically a lot of what he is saying is accurate.
yes the game is easy, and they had to set it this way because they didnt teach people how to play the game. Better they cruise through everything than they die repeatedly. But if they trained people how to play better, they would play better.

And its not all sluggering, there are somethings that are just knowledge based. Like how to do blast finishers.

Gw2 really suffers from lack of clarity, and a lot of this came after the game came out, they have messed with a great amount of numbers/aoes special properties, without adding any tells.

Basically everything he says is right, however correcting it would probably take them forever.

I would say the priority would be to create clear tells for whats going on.
They also (its too late now) should have probably used the low level trait system as a teaching tool.

oh wells.

jokke.6239:

I see no reason to why we couldn’t have all UW weapons have skills on land.
It’s a game, a fantasy game.
We already have greatswords shooting projectiles

they could, but there is really no advantage to spear gun and Trident.
Who should get access to spear gun, why wouldnt they be using rifle? What would spear gun offer?

Trident, would either have a style similar to a spear, or it would be similar to a staff. put most tridents on land, and they would just look like a staff in most cases as well.

the only real advantage to bringing those two to land would be they have already designed weapons for them.

we actually have a lot of the weapon types.

what we are missing
polearms (staff used for fighting, spears, halbeards fit into this)
hand to hand types
throwing weapons (maybe dagger has a slight bit of this)
great axe
crossbows
gunblades (yeah this is real apparently, though was poorly executed)
whip type
sectional(nunchucks 3 part pole, 2 part pole etc)
and chain type

that basically would cover every weapon type possible, out of those options,

id probably want
hand to hand (preferably with a martial artist class)
polearms
great axe
chain type weapons could be pretty interesting

spears yes.
Spearguns? that really only is an underwater weapon
tridents? basically different staff skins.

I think making land spears would be pretty good, and have pretty good playstyke in combat though

The Talcmaster.7391:

always remember that if one of your players is angry with you, it is because he really cares about the game, and that’s much healthier for you than apathy

That’s a line from Jeff Strain (one of the founders of Arenanet) in a speech he gave soon after GW2 was announced. Keep that in mind before you say anything about people complaining on forums.

I can firmly say that I quit last summer, as I last logged into the game to make sure that my account wasn’t stolen. I still check into the game’s updates and read the forums from time to time, because you could say I invested quite heavily into the game, what with the waiting and anticipating for half a decade (big GW1 fan). I really like the many changes that happened in the feature pack (even if stuff like megaservers left the API a pile of smoking rubble, but sacrifices have to be made sometimes), and the announcement of season 2 living story being more of a permanent nature is almost enough to make me come back. But as much as my stopping was in protest of those sorts of practices (activity level speak louder than forum posts), I remember what I spent most of my time in game doing each day: A checklist of repetitive chores that leave me not wanting to play at all once they were done.

It’s normal to get tired of a game after a while, and I got tired of GW1 regularly. But the thing is that I left the game still liking it, just wanting to do something else. So I kept coming back to it. I think about GW2 and I don’t want to get mired in it again. Part of that has to do with the timegating making it feel like I am being punished for not putting time in every day. Punished for being busy, essentially. I am not going to play something that does that. If that changes, maybe I will come back for a bit.

yeah the style of timegating they chose, is very play every day or dont play all. They at somepoint got better with the dailies being less of a checklist, and more of a do anything, but then they cut down the options last update.

The ascended crafting is very daily oriented in a bad way as well.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Nerelith.7360:

[…]

Tera was a grindfest, after about level 20, it slowed down severely, like all grindfests. Maybe not as much as the grindiest grindfests, but still grindfest nonetheless.

That other game which name you don’t say is also probably another grindfest in which you mostly kill boars all the time.

GW2 has many flaws, but when players go to other games, that’s when they’ll see all the small things that were not flaws but greatly improved the experience.

They try and move when activating skills… and they can’t or get skills canceled…
Try to travel to places… and there’s no waypoints and they have to walk all the way there…
Try to help some newbie… and they get dissed for “stealing kills”…
Try to get some cheap gear, and they take ages just to get a single piece…
And on, and on…

It’s the “You don’t know what you have until you miss it” effect.

That’s when you get “GW ruined other MMOs for me” posts. You don’t get that nearly as often with any other game.

It’s not arrogance when it’s true.

And Bulls are dichromat colorblind. They do not chase the muleta for being red, as they don’t see that color. They chase it for how it moves. They are being tortured and stressed, and they will charge to the first thing that flutters in front of them. A bull would usually ignore a thing like that unless they feel danger.
I know it’s just an expression, but I will never see any need in keep an expression as it is if it’s wrong.

Used to be the case, but people are catching on, the game im currently playing;
you can move freely in combat;
has fast travel/warps/teleports, though not exactly same as WP
no kill stealing
fairly cheap mid range gear.
a balance of quests in the field that autocomplete and traditional quests.

And yeah GW2 did a lot right, but with this latest MMO, i started out like kitten GW2 did this so much better, and the more i play it now, im like, man but it did XYZ so much better, and XYZ is things that will probably matter more when it comes to long term enjoyment.

And another big MMO looks like it too will adopt a lot of teh strengths of GW2. They did achieve the goal of altering the genre a bit, the key for them now, is will they be able to be the front runner in its style, or will they be the old model that didnt quite get it right.

I still believe they could be the front runner, but they have to step up the depth of the content, It needs to encourage mastery more. It needs to have deeper more involved stories/lore that you can pursue, It needs to tie more rewards to designed content. Most of all it needs to grow, new weapons/skills proffesions, zones, stories.

Obtena.7952:

A R W E N.6895:

But its crazy how every other mmo, and even Gw1 had challenging and rewarding end game content. And yet, Gw2 fails miserably at pouring out such content.

The only thing ‘crazy’ about that is people can’t break away from rehashed routines that make that challenging and rewarding end game content of all those other MMO’s boring tired after doing it again and again. GW2 approach to end game is a breathe of fresh air.

So we got the same boring and rehashed content, but none of the challenge. What is the breath of fresh air?
Dont think of raids, because people arent asking for raids
what is the nice cool part about GW2 not having content that has a deep level of challenge, and not having progress (doesnt even need to be better stats)of some sort attached to meeting that challenge

Jahroots.6791:

NewTrain.7549:

All that being said; I have a nagging suspicion the majority of the GW2 community doesn’t actually want difficult content.

Essentially. Most players are primarily interested in rewards; titles, gold, tokens, skins, useful gear and so on. Everything else comes in second at best.

There have been attempts to create challenging content, but most of it was lacking in proper rewards and as such, was/is largely ignored.

Which is why I’m always surprised to see topics like these. The posters never seem to see beyond their own desires, or whatever lofty ideals they hold to. The bottom line, imho, is always will this add value to our game experience?

An increased death penalty simply won’t.

Dont get wrapped up in the idea of a harsh penalty, it could be light, but it should make you not want to die. Some suggested things as light as a rare drop rate penalty. Maybe it could even be, purely cosmetic. Lets say it worked similar to GW1 where it was worked off through gaining experience, as it increases from repeated deaths in a short period it advances.
your armor loses its color and begins too lo look old/worn/rusty. A ghostly image follows you and gets more corporeal the more you die. when you reach max penalty it points and literally laughs periodically and your death count appears over your head as a ghostly number.

just an idea.

Being alive longer gives you a scaling dmg buff up to say 180power depending on experience gained through kills.

point is make people want to live/not die repeatedly.

Fafnir.5124:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Fafnir.5124:

Ultimately I feel death should be felt and avoided through game mechanics somehow.

by the way, you are free to role play that kind of feelings when your in game characters died. you do not need in game mechanics to force those feelings onto yourself.

and i think you are in the minority here in this case. i am very sure that there are lot of people who are very happy with the current “death penalty” system of guild wars 2.

Really if I’m the voice of a minority i guess i should start speaking louder. To say there is a system in place is a joke I hope cause there is none. There are thousands of ways dp can be implemented some of which i find really interesting and wanted to discuss here. Although i should thank everyone who keep asking for no change for bumping the thread up. I just thought that having dp individualistic to each event in open world would be prity interesting on how they could be implemented. Dragon minions rising from your corpse and such. How you play and play style you use is directly correlate with consequences of your actions. Do you deny how game would be fundamentally different if a DP was in place? Then all we are arguing about right now is just degrees which ultimately we have no say over anyway.

I wonder if a placebo DP will have same effect as real one >.>

what if when there is excessive death at an event, the big powerful enemies leave or step back and send some weaker enemies with less good drops.

essentially the enemy jumps back and says, another dead cow, walks away and the B team comes in and fight. In dungeons you could have certain events/enemies that only trigger based on how well you did.

They could also have more champions and varied enemies sent to places where they succeed a lot, maybe some uniques. Thats one problem with orr it gets less interesting with more success.

It could really be more dynamic this way, if players performance effected content in zones. Of course it might be too impersonal, some people will just figure they arent losing anything ad play crappily

Fenrina.2954:

phys.7689:

but part of the training means people have to actively avoid dying, right now its officially a good strat to zombie as fast as possible.

No, “not dying” isn’t a major part of that. The game does not use death as the main indication of failure. It uses “event succeed” and “event failed” to show the players how well they did. While often times not dying and event success go hand in hand, it’s not 100% correlation.

phys.7689:

Die excessively and you lose things/have to restart
put the same exact mechanic in GW and its only effect is that its a time sink? odd logic.

You don’t see why? The contra example you provide is common among games from the nes and snes era. That system was used for two reasons. One was that many of those games are short games. It’s there to prolong them so players get their money’s worth despite being short. In other words, it is a proper time sink.

The other reason is many were ports of arcade games. Arcades used difficulty and frequent deaths to get people to put a lot of quarters into the game. In contras case, this is more likely as contra was originally an arcade game. As an aside for those that don’t know, the code mentioned is the Konami Code, and cheat codes like that were commonplace back then.

If failure is supposed to teach us that’s a problem because very few contents can be failed. In general the way the design failure conditions Occur don’t teach most of the players who participate Hpw to pkay. Often people just die and keep going and if they ignore mechanics they still succeed.

As far as contra it wasn’t about time sink, its about challenge. In an arcade you lose more money the worse you play. Quarters act as both negative reinforcement and a clear measurement of skill and progress.

You take the quarters out, and now anyone can succeed, they don’t have much reason to dodge bullets, learn patterns, etc.

I had a friend who could beat contra with no deaths with the weak starter weapon. He was much better than me. I’m not gonna even try to say what he could do was not difficult. Many people in this thread would though

Which I find totally unreasonable.

Sartharina.3542:

phys.7689:

ofLegends.9853:

Azhure.1857:

ofLegends.9853:

Because, as many others have said already, running back is annoying as **** and the worst thing to waste is TIME. Time we could be doing something else, like doing whatever it was we were trying to do before we died.

The “time sink” argument seems pointless to me. Truly. I’m really not trying to anger people on this thread, please consider that, but logging into an MMORPG is in itself a time sink.

Running back can be annoying, largely depending on distance and obstacles, but it is minor. Also there are people that could care less about waypointing because when the event is done they will be revived anyways. All they have to do is lay there, have other people do the work (at a slower pace because of the dead), and wait for revival. Rarely is there consequence for that as most times they still get event credit and loot. Why do they still get the reward? Because they recklessly threw themselves at a boss or mob without a care, put in a burst of damage, and then found themselves on their kitten.

Two examples of people not waypointing.
Temple of Grenth – Its understandable because it can be a very challenging event. However the dead pile up and STAY there because, “someone else will finish the event”. Event fails? “Doesn’t matter much. I was watching TV and hoping to get a reward on the side.”
Golem – One of the absolutely most insane spots to ‘not waypoint when dead’. It is literally right next to this particular event. Yet I still see people throw themselves into melee or mid-range without watching for attacks, dodging, etc. They die but they did a burst of dmg. The zerg will complete the event on their own.

Again, the ‘Time Sink’ argument is frustrating to me. Would it be an enjoyable game if you sat down at your computer, logged into GW2, and within 30 seconds of logging in were handed everything to you?

There is no risk in combat, there is only reward – regardless of skill. Yes, this is my opinion. I’m allowed to share it.

Many have asked on this thread why, “so many want to make the game harder?” I can only speak for myself and not the rest. But my answer would be because it isn’t hard. Stupidity is rewarded in this game. Yes, there are reasons we die that are beyond our control sometimes – but they are overshadowed by the number of deaths that are avoidable.

Why do we even have DPS, Control, and Support roles? Why do we have combat mechanics? They’re a part of this game, or they are supposed to be, yet they are not being utilized.

As I’ve stated a few times on this thread. I’m not supporting permadeath, level reversal, or the removal of items/loot from a player’s inventory. Something temporary that can be seen as a penalty, but not so harsh that it would be game breaking for those that died by unfortunate means. Something that could be removed through some other means.

Many people have already given you a much better opinion and in better words than I have.

My favorite is the one that says something to the effect of “greater death penalties don’t make the game harder, they just make it more frustrating”. Why not reply to that one?

The problem is that quote is not true. lets say you have a dungeon where if people die, they cant be revived until the dungeon is over. That penalty has made the dungeon WAY more difficult, it also changes strategies, now getting someone alive is a priority, there will be tactics and strategies for dealing with someone being downed(so they wont die).
yes, it is also frustrating, but you SHOULD be frustrated when you die, its a negative situation. It should not be the expected behavior. It makes you actually desire to play better.

This is a dungeon – if you fail the dungeon, you can just retry it. The bigger problem is that it leaves the person just sitting there until the dungeon is over.

this wasnt a serious suggestion for a game mechanic, more just illustrating how different death conditions can actually effect gameplay and difficulty a lot, since he and others a claiming that death conditions dont make anything more difficult.

Katai.6240:

That’s not even the same comparison at all. A proper analog would be

Play Contra with infinite lives and continues
Play Contra with infinite lives and continues, but you have to wait 10 minutes between deaths.

actually no, i have never suggested anything like a direct time sink or time out box after death.
look at contra;
When you die, you lose your special weapons, when you run out of lives you start at the beginning of level, when you run out of continues you have to start at the beginning of the game.

I have beat contra with 30 lives (up up down down left right left right BA select start) Its not a test of skill.

Die excessively and you lose things/have to restart
put the same exact mechanic in GW and its only effect is that its a time sink? odd logic.

Ashen.2907:

Death Penalties are essentially a form of time gate between attempts at a piece of content you cannot complete flawlessly. Humans learn through repetition. Slowing the learning process does not necessarily improve a player’s skill level. Making a player wait longer to reattempt a boss fight after he missed one dodge against the boss’ one shot kill attack does not increase the player’s skill at dodging the attack. A player that gets lucky and makes that dodge the first time will actually learn less than the player who fails and tries again.

What is needed, in my opinion, in general are not death penalties on the player but encounters that cannot be overcome with attrition. Bosses getting a “morale boost” that heals them for some small amount, or perhaps provides them with a short term invulnerability buff, when they defeat a character would incentivize not dying without directly penalizing a character.

actually death in games are not really about a time gate, its generally about showing you what you did wrong, or testing how skilled/intellegient you are. It is possible to design systems that dont use death and achieve the same thing, but in a game where you are role playing a adventurer, it make some sense.

But i suppose some people dont really play games to face challenges, thats fine, but i think some parts of the game should be designed with challenge in mind.

bob.5680:

It’s been said that a greater death penalty will make people think before they act. I seriously doubt that that will work with most folks. More likely they will simply become more risk adverse and be inclined to sit back and let others fail, or just rage quit to avoid dying.

Playing games with heavy death penalties, it does in fact make people play like they are scared, (not everybody), and it does make people rage (not everybody) but they actually tend to play at a better level, because they have to in order to succeed, The glass cannons actually play like they are glass, the people supporting work harder to keep everyone going.

People adapt to the norm, but sometimes they are highly engaged while being at the norm, and sometimes they are pretty bored. Based on what people seem to be saying here in the forums, and what i have seen in game, its less about the path, and more about getting whatever item easier/faster. And the same people often will say they find it boring, so make it shorter and easier.
That wont make it less boring, it will just give you more progress while being bored. The designers have to find ways to keep people engaged while minimizing boredom. There are ways other than battle design, but they would require world/story/etc to be good so the battle doesnt matter for entertainment.

ofLegends.9853:

Or just make people not play at all, since the whole point of this being a game is trial and error. Punishment for dying is just going to make the majority of players find another game.

hmm this explains a difference in thinking, i dont think of games being trial and error, i think of them being tests of skill/reaction/prediction.
While trial and error is a method of learning/teaching, i find trial and error type games to be missing in the depth category.

Anyhow, If the devs dont add death penalties, i wouldnt go crazy, but honestly if they dont add way more depth, i feel like many people will leave the game after about a year. Unless, they can provide really engaging stories and events. But based on LS1, i dont know if that is probable.

Taygus.4571:

phys.7689:

People are not trained to succeed in this game. The living bonus/death penalty is way too light. Only the stigma of death remains, but that will vary from player to player, the game mechanics itself dont really encourage it

Why does it bother YOU, how people play? and what people want out of a game?

A number of reasons;
its an online game, so how people play effects you

A lack of incentive to stay alive lowers the desire to play well, and the tension of will you succeed or not

death is a mechanic in a game designed to help teach you what you did wrong, but currently it is an acceptable tactic to embrace death and power through.

The fact that people arent learning how to play limits how much depth the developers can add. They have to balance for the average player, if the average player is a kamikaze with low skill in any other facet, thats what they have to design for

Every reward is balanced based on how much of it can come into the game and how much it can take out of the game. By being more difficult, they can put better rewards, by increasing the opportunity cost of dying, more leaves the game. The only way they can have anything besides time sink being the main method of achieving good things, is by having skill be a larger factor.
One of the reasons rewards suck in this game is because they have to balance every rewards with almost no losses.

I dont really like death penalties, but the deeper content seems to be suffering for its absence.

Rin.1046:

Maybe I’m alone here, but I agree with Anet’s initial phylosophy about death. To me death is the penalty itself. Because to me, if I cannot complete content without dying then I have failed. Time, gold or reduced effectiveness are merely additional penalties to me, not the main penalty itself.

We all feel differently about death penalties, but at the end of the day it is down to Anet to decide which penalty is the most fitting for their game. I’m happy with a time penalty on its own. It is still an effective a way to seperate the skilled from the learning.

people talk about the time penalty in GW like its real virtually existent in all but a few cases.
If i die fighting Balthazar i take a 30 second walkback time penalty. If i die doing a heart, its often even less. If i die next to my friend i take a 15 second time penalty. Waypoint costs are seldom even really a death cost, because i waypoint all the time anyway.

If everyone had your hatred of death it would not be an issue, but most dont. Thats why bad pugs would rather fail at stacking 2-3 times than actually fight carefully. Its why people scale up bosses ignoring tactics/mechanics and sit on the floor waiting to be ressed, because the way to beat the death penalty? sit around and wait for the winners to revive you.

People are not trained to succeed in this game. The living bonus/death penalty is way too light. Only the stigma of death remains, but that will vary from player to player, the game mechanics itself dont really encourage it

PacoXI.7690:

Why ask for an artificial penalty when there is already a real life one, time. The greatest penalty is always, time spent recovering from a death. Pretty much any death penalty on top of that just amplifies the time penalty for no real reason.

why have death at all?
no matter how you slice it death is a game mechanic that is supposed to make you avoid it.
Once you realize death serves a purpose in the game, then the question is how much time is appropriate, any loss incurred translates to a loss of time anyhow. gold is time, drop rate is time, even if you lost exp, thats time.

when you really think about it, its more a debate of how much time you lose, and how that loss is implemented.

Right now we have a really light time penalty, you actually lose more time from just not wearing highest DPS armor than you do from dying repeatedly.

who loses more time, kamikaze zerker team where everyone dies but one guy at every major battle wracking up a total of 15 team deaths, and takes 12 minutes to beat the dungeon, or survivor team, who takes zero deaths and takes 18 minutes to beat the dungeon.

which playstyle is more rewarded? who are you incentivizing.

And that is another reason why losing condition matters. Right now its actually a smarter strategy to die repeatedly than to play in ways that avoid death. Sure you would be better off not dying at all, but better to die 15 times than to play smart.

ofLegends.9853:

phys.7689:

ofLegends.9853:

Azhure.1857:

ofLegends.9853:

Because, as many others have said already, running back is annoying as **** and the worst thing to waste is TIME. Time we could be doing something else, like doing whatever it was we were trying to do before we died.

The “time sink” argument seems pointless to me. Truly. I’m really not trying to anger people on this thread, please consider that, but logging into an MMORPG is in itself a time sink.

Running back can be annoying, largely depending on distance and obstacles, but it is minor. Also there are people that could care less about waypointing because when the event is done they will be revived anyways. All they have to do is lay there, have other people do the work (at a slower pace because of the dead), and wait for revival. Rarely is there consequence for that as most times they still get event credit and loot. Why do they still get the reward? Because they recklessly threw themselves at a boss or mob without a care, put in a burst of damage, and then found themselves on their kitten.

Two examples of people not waypointing.
Temple of Grenth – Its understandable because it can be a very challenging event. However the dead pile up and STAY there because, “someone else will finish the event”. Event fails? “Doesn’t matter much. I was watching TV and hoping to get a reward on the side.”
Golem – One of the absolutely most insane spots to ‘not waypoint when dead’. It is literally right next to this particular event. Yet I still see people throw themselves into melee or mid-range without watching for attacks, dodging, etc. They die but they did a burst of dmg. The zerg will complete the event on their own.

Again, the ‘Time Sink’ argument is frustrating to me. Would it be an enjoyable game if you sat down at your computer, logged into GW2, and within 30 seconds of logging in were handed everything to you?

There is no risk in combat, there is only reward – regardless of skill. Yes, this is my opinion. I’m allowed to share it.

Many have asked on this thread why, “so many want to make the game harder?” I can only speak for myself and not the rest. But my answer would be because it isn’t hard. Stupidity is rewarded in this game. Yes, there are reasons we die that are beyond our control sometimes – but they are overshadowed by the number of deaths that are avoidable.

Why do we even have DPS, Control, and Support roles? Why do we have combat mechanics? They’re a part of this game, or they are supposed to be, yet they are not being utilized.

As I’ve stated a few times on this thread. I’m not supporting permadeath, level reversal, or the removal of items/loot from a player’s inventory. Something temporary that can be seen as a penalty, but not so harsh that it would be game breaking for those that died by unfortunate means. Something that could be removed through some other means.

Many people have already given you a much better opinion and in better words than I have.

My favorite is the one that says something to the effect of “greater death penalties don’t make the game harder, they just make it more frustrating”. Why not reply to that one?

The problem is that quote is not true. lets say you have a dungeon where if people die, they cant be revived until the dungeon is over. That penalty has made the dungeon WAY more difficult, it also changes strategies, now getting someone alive is a priority, there will be tactics and strategies for dealing with someone being downed(so they wont die).
yes, it is also frustrating, but you SHOULD be frustrated when you die, its a negative situation. It should not be the expected behavior. It makes you actually desire to play better.

No, the dungeon is NOT more difficult. Just more frustrating.
As many others have pointed out, it’s a game. We don’t want to be frustrated by death because it already sucks enough to die. If you want to make death “harder” (it’s not), then go ahead and give yourselves penalties. Nobody is stopping you. I haven’t seen anyone reply to THAT point. Guess it’s got too much logic…

Actually it is more difficult.
play Contra with 3 lives and 4 continues
play contra with 30 lives and 4 continues
tell me for real which one is more difficult
tell me for real which one is a better show of your skills at contra.

I mean hey i get you dont want it to happen, but you really need to stop pretending that it is not easier to have infinite tries/lives.

Just say, yeah its more difficult, but i dont really want things to be more difficult, life is annoying already.

Wethospu.6437:

So am I a really bad player when I died like 10 times when trying to solo Spider Queen without dodging and with melee skills only (and eventually got it done without taking ANY damage)?

Maybe my character should have been sent back to tutorial for some basic training?

it doesnt have to be a penalty like that anyhow. The Point is to negatively reinforce death, or postively reinforce living in certain circumstances.

lets say the dungeons, had challenge mode.
greater rewards, or special rewards.
conditions for success are;
cant die/limited deaths
reward scales based on time to complete
amount of unique enemies slain

Open world version might be like, a running buff to rare item drop rate, (that effects chests) that gets lower with each death, and gets worked off with experience gained. (like GW1 but with item rarity/gold bonus instead of hp/mana reduction.

the precise implementation is up for debate, but the idea is, make people want to live.

and lets be honest, you might be the man, but if you could solo the whole dungeon without dying, you would be more of the man.

Fenrina.2954:

phys.7689:

And thats what it is, essentially GW2 is on training wheels right now.

That’s because the game’s difficulty curve is non-existent in the open world. The game never throws a new mechanic at the player unless it’s a new monster, and those new monsters are rare after the first ~30 levels. A Cave Troll doesn’t change even after 50 levels. Only in maps like the Orr maps does the game try to change this in the open world. The game does not try to prepare players for harder content.

This has nothing to do with the death penalty. Games with even weaker death penalties still outdo gw2 in having a better difficulty curve.

i agree that content isnt designed with high depth in mind, but part of the training means people have to actively avoid dying, right now its officially a good strat to zombie as fast as possible.

Fenrina.2954:

phys.7689:

progression is not about infinite attempts, its about getting better. You have not got better because you were able to zombie through.

And to get better, generally two things are needed: Analysis of what’s going wrong, and practice in getting it right. Death penalties often put roadblocks in the way of at least practicing as one can’t practice if one is undoing the effects of the penalty.

It’s also worth pointing out that gw2’s death system does not allow for infinite attempts. It allows for 7 attempts. After that, armor starts breaking which creates stat penalties. Sure, one can go repair to remove those, but that really isn’t any different than undoing any other penalty listed in this thread. It’s only a matter of how much frustration gw2 wants to put on it’s playerbase.

You practice to succeed, but if succeeding doesnt mean avoiding death, then death is not a mechanic that matters. Many contents you put yourself in high risk situations and die, but its ok, because death doesnt do anything negative anyhow.

Hey one guy is probably gonna die running past those 20 mobs, but hey he can just try again right?
2 people may die stack zerking this boss, but its actually the leet way to play.

Even tequatl tactics, stand here and just get hit, we ll try to get you up fast, if you die run back fast.

getting better at this game is not currently about not dying, which negates so many mechanics.

I dont want something horrible, and it shouldnt be everywhere, but there should be some stuff thats like, ok, now its time to play well, training wheels come off. Then the goal will be playing well enough not to die, at the same time doing it faster.

And thats what it is, essentially GW2 is on training wheels right now.

Bob F It.5701:

In most non-MMO games, when I lose, the progress that I made since the last save, and I have to contemplate what I should do differently to avoid that loss. There are differences out there such as roguelikes (the mistake could lie a long time before death), ironmans (where you asked for such a penelty beforehand), and competitive games (your opposition makes progress). If you place harsher penelties, players will opt for more defensive strategies and take less risks in their approach to progress (this is what created the QD train). If armour repairs applied to Queen’s Gauntlet, I certainly wouldn’t be sacrificing my time to Liadri, since I would only be making negative progress.

Now, I have played an MMO with harsh penelties (RuneScape, and I shall speak of circa 2005), and my approach to not losing all my kit to dying was either to avoid dangerous content, or to tackle it with cheap suboptimal gear, because it’s a game and it’s in my interest to balance all possible outcomes against the time I put in, in terms of both what I’m doing, and how long it took to get there.

yeah, and you then make that content more rewarding to balance the risk/required skill. Design it so that you cant succeed goin in there with crappy armor unless you are really good, now you will focus on getting really good, which is the point really

Sartharina.3542:

Tumla.7231:

Unfortunately I think the only High End game rewarding content won’t be in Gw2 but in Wildstar. That’s what NCSOFT has decided.

NCSoft has only minimum control over the content of their MMOs. It doesn’t have the authority to dictate what game focuses on what content – that is up to the discretion of the developing team. NCSoft only steps in if the change is predicted to cost them significant money (Such as rating-breaking content, or cutting out a revenue stream)

Guild Wars 2 and Wildstar don’t even compete for the same customers. One is a fantasy MMO in a dramatic painting. The other is a Sci-Fi MMO set in a cartoonish, cell-shaded world.

Ouimette.5902:

Legendary: Gold farm
Ascended Gear: Gold farm
Cultural armor: Gold farm
F****N MINI PETS:… gold farm.

Outside of the cultural armor, gear is only a “Gold Farm” if you have no desire to play the content that awards the stuff normally and more efficiently. Yes, you can buy a legendary – but it’s cheaper and less time-consuming to make it yourself. Same with Ascended Gear.

not really cheaper and less time consuming unless you arent good at making money. A farmer can probably get enough money for a legendary in 4 weeks, a TP player? depends on the tp player, but the top guys could get it pretty fast.

ofLegends.9853:

phys.7689:

TheDaiBish.9735:

phys.7689:

people who say that death not mattering doesnt make things harder are lying to themselves.

Simply put, you have to play better, and work together better when death matters. In phantasy star online, they had a mode called challenge mode, they took the same game, and gave you predetermined levels and gear, you had an item called a scape doll, that gave you a free ressurection, and a limited amount per level.

This made the very same game, WAY harder. You actually had to learn enemy patterns, work together etc.

Or…maybe we understand that you don’t need death to be punishing for content to be challenging.

The content itself should be the roadblock. If you don’t play well (learn enemy patterns, work together ect), you don’t progress. Death has no bearing on that, since when you’re dead, you aren’t actually attempting the content. All it does is make it more punishing, it doesn’t actually make the content challenging.

except, given infinite deaths, you will progress. Thats the problem you can brute force many things.

Its like you guys are saying the task of hitting 5 shots in an hour in basketball, and 5 shots in a row are the same level of difficulty. Its really not.

So what I got out of this post is that progression is a bad thing because we are given infinite attempts. That’s kind of the whole point: progression.

PS: You still have to get 5 shots in a row, but you have an hour to do it instead of 5 minutes. The amount of deaths/punishment for dying doesn’t change the objective that you’re trying to complete.

progression is not about infinite attempts, its about getting better. You have not got better because you were able to zombie through.
A 5% shooter hasnt made progress when he hits 100 shots, if he is still missing 95% of the time, hes just taking more shots.
And even in your 5 min vs 1 hour, its still easier to do in one hour. I can get 5 shots in a row in an hour of shooting, but can i hit 5 shots in a row when the game is on the line? which player is showing more skill, which task is harder, who is a more valuable player?

ofLegends.9853:

Azhure.1857:

ofLegends.9853:

Because, as many others have said already, running back is annoying as **** and the worst thing to waste is TIME. Time we could be doing something else, like doing whatever it was we were trying to do before we died.

The “time sink” argument seems pointless to me. Truly. I’m really not trying to anger people on this thread, please consider that, but logging into an MMORPG is in itself a time sink.

Running back can be annoying, largely depending on distance and obstacles, but it is minor. Also there are people that could care less about waypointing because when the event is done they will be revived anyways. All they have to do is lay there, have other people do the work (at a slower pace because of the dead), and wait for revival. Rarely is there consequence for that as most times they still get event credit and loot. Why do they still get the reward? Because they recklessly threw themselves at a boss or mob without a care, put in a burst of damage, and then found themselves on their kitten.

Two examples of people not waypointing.
Temple of Grenth – Its understandable because it can be a very challenging event. However the dead pile up and STAY there because, “someone else will finish the event”. Event fails? “Doesn’t matter much. I was watching TV and hoping to get a reward on the side.”
Golem – One of the absolutely most insane spots to ‘not waypoint when dead’. It is literally right next to this particular event. Yet I still see people throw themselves into melee or mid-range without watching for attacks, dodging, etc. They die but they did a burst of dmg. The zerg will complete the event on their own.

Again, the ‘Time Sink’ argument is frustrating to me. Would it be an enjoyable game if you sat down at your computer, logged into GW2, and within 30 seconds of logging in were handed everything to you?

There is no risk in combat, there is only reward – regardless of skill. Yes, this is my opinion. I’m allowed to share it.

Many have asked on this thread why, “so many want to make the game harder?” I can only speak for myself and not the rest. But my answer would be because it isn’t hard. Stupidity is rewarded in this game. Yes, there are reasons we die that are beyond our control sometimes – but they are overshadowed by the number of deaths that are avoidable.

Why do we even have DPS, Control, and Support roles? Why do we have combat mechanics? They’re a part of this game, or they are supposed to be, yet they are not being utilized.

As I’ve stated a few times on this thread. I’m not supporting permadeath, level reversal, or the removal of items/loot from a player’s inventory. Something temporary that can be seen as a penalty, but not so harsh that it would be game breaking for those that died by unfortunate means. Something that could be removed through some other means.

Many people have already given you a much better opinion and in better words than I have.

My favorite is the one that says something to the effect of “greater death penalties don’t make the game harder, they just make it more frustrating”. Why not reply to that one?

The problem is that quote is not true. lets say you have a dungeon where if people die, they cant be revived until the dungeon is over. That penalty has made the dungeon WAY more difficult, it also changes strategies, now getting someone alive is a priority, there will be tactics and strategies for dealing with someone being downed(so they wont die).
yes, it is also frustrating, but you SHOULD be frustrated when you die, its a negative situation. It should not be the expected behavior. It makes you actually desire to play better.

TheDaiBish.9735:

phys.7689:

people who say that death not mattering doesnt make things harder are lying to themselves.

Simply put, you have to play better, and work together better when death matters. In phantasy star online, they had a mode called challenge mode, they took the same game, and gave you predetermined levels and gear, you had an item called a scape doll, that gave you a free ressurection, and a limited amount per level.

This made the very same game, WAY harder. You actually had to learn enemy patterns, work together etc.

Or…maybe we understand that you don’t need death to be punishing for content to be challenging.

The content itself should be the roadblock. If you don’t play well (learn enemy patterns, work together ect), you don’t progress. Death has no bearing on that, since when you’re dead, you aren’t actually attempting the content. All it does is make it more punishing, it doesn’t actually make the content challenging.

except, given infinite deaths, you will progress. Thats the problem you can brute force many things.

Its like you guys are saying the task of hitting 5 shots in an hour in basketball, and 5 shots in a row are the same level of difficulty. Its really not.