Ascended rings, asscesoires and amulets are basically free (login rewards), so the total change in armor stats isnt even 10%, more like 5. And that is in armor stats only, so the total amount of stat increase really feels insignificant to me. Grinding for an awesome reward is one thing, grinding for armor of wich you wont even notice its use is something entirely different.
ascended trinkets, aside from rings are just as annoying, and weapon requires you to craft.
Now tell me, do you think someone who loves action packed intense moment to moment fights. Who loves going toe to toe with powerful opponents and facing death when they mess up. loves working with others and coming up with strategies to overcome adversity
wants to log in then log off for 28 days
and once a week to do jump puzzles and map hunts for 4 weeks?
how about following a list from a crafting guide, buying tons of crap and making crap they dont want or need so they can get to max level crafting to get each of their weapons.
Do you really not know anyone who hated obtaining ascended? who lost interest or stop playing before completing the majority of it? Who basically had to ignore it or lose their desire to play? I know many.
wasnt this expansion supposed to bring back, and retain those guys?
I feel anet has forgotten WHY dungeons got their gold reward hiked up.
World bosses I typically get 2-3 rares every 15 minutes..
I can also go gathering materials during pres.teq for example i can go mine 50-100 platinum, and 50+ hard wood logs while waiting.
I just finished Karka queen, got 4 rares, 4 champ bags, 6 karka shells.All this requires is me to run around, and press f & 1.
If we assume the dungeon rewards are being nerfed to 26 silver + 60 tokens once/day (seems like a fair assumption from what i’ve read).60 tokens = TWO rares, for 5-30 mins work ( with a metazerk team).
As much as 15-60 mins with an average team.Now lets also remember anet NERFED the drop rate of ectos from those dungeon token rares, to HALF the regular rares a couple of years ago.
some stats that afaik still hold true:
Dungeon token rare: 0.45 ecto/rare
All other rares: 0.9 ecto/rare.So dungeon rares are worth 1/2 a rare. So 1 path is 1 rare.
This was because ecto prices plummeted after the rares were added to world bosses and due to converting of tokens -> rares -> ectos.
For often more time, always more effort, I get less loot.
to compare:
15-20 (up to 30 for teq) mins of world boss:
lots of gathered materials (anything up to a stack)
2-3 rares (as many as 10 for teq, and 5 for karka).
Karma from events.Dungeons:
5-30 ( meta zerk) or 15-60 (typical pug run)
1 (Effective) rare.
26 silver.TL;DR
I feel world boss rewards significantly are too high.
Too many rares and too many ectos.
They aren’t/won’t be scarce, despite being called “rare”.
the flaw is, these are descions they made for design purposes, and work the rest of the game around them.
They want world bosses to be something people want to do, even if the bosses themeselves arent that great.
therefore they pay people to do them
They used to want people to dungeons, so they paid them. They no longer particularly want people to do dungeons, so they dont want to pay them
they are willing to design and shift things to compensate for world bosses, not so for dungeons anymore.
However based on their dungeon reasoning, i wouldnt be surprised if they take world bosses out of the daily bonuses eventually, and shift them to new world bosses they want people to do.
in fact i think its highly likely if they can come up with a UI that tells you what events will give you a daily rare throughout the world on a daily basis.
They stated VERY clearly that the first wing won’t require ascended, and that in fact, NONE of it requires ascended, it’s just tuned for ascended. An even better more coordinated group could do it all without. The first wing isn’t even going to come out with the xpac, it’ll be a few weeks later (enough to earn ascended with the new more engaging map rewards system, which makes the grind you complain about more of a legitimate achievement), then they’ll do the first wing and you won’t even need the ascended gear, and may not even need it in the next wing. They also said that raids drop ascended gear, and have better rewards than average, and as it’s on a week raid lock, ascended drops could easily be super common, and thus you can earn the gear you need by doing the raid.
map completion is not challenging content. I had to do it eventually to get more gifts of exploration for a second time. Its incredibly tedious.
Telling people to be bored for 4 weeks in a game isnt really the best option.
The only thing i will say is, IF people actually party with exotic users fairly regularly and dont do gear checks for raids, AND getting ascended isnt locked out with like a 20% chance per week, the last solution you suggest may work.
but based on the previous tuning, most people will enforce and believe that you should only be attempting raids if you have at the very least all accessories and weapons.
And there we already are with different opinions and perceptions.
I think for example SPvP is boring and puts me better to sleep than a sleeping pill could and people should be paid for playing it. And even with that in mind, I would still vastly prefer if over raids bcause I can exit a PvP match after one round and get something for my effort. So it is not fun for me. On the other hand, going over the old maps to collect something does not bore me. It doesn´t particulary excite me of course, but I can spend hours with it if there is nothing better to do or if I want the mats.
your right here, but thats why the progression to get into raids, should be different because your personaility type as you said doesnt like raids.
Ascended aquisition is designed to be a reward for playing consistently over a long period of time and doing a bunch of fairly easy repetive things over the course of months.
Which is the worst type of progression for people who specifically seek challenge and intense situations.
What Nike said, but here’s how hard a piece of ascended is.
Go in Silverwastes for three hours. Craft vision crystal. Buy everything else.
Ascended done.
farm up 150 gold to level crafting
farm up 60-150 gold per peicex6
spend 40+ hours doing the most monotonous activities in game, shoot self in head.
easy
Raiding is about coming prepared. It’s about gathering people who want to win and are willing to work at it.
The threshold of difficulty for amassing a set of Ascended gear is trivial. It takes some time. It’ takes some mats. If you can’t be bothered to do that, you’re not the ‘willing to work at it’ type and if we get genuinely hard raids that take a while to master, I want people in my group accustomed to undertakings that take more than a week.
challenging content is about using skill, practice, and strategy to overcome adversity. Its Intense and focused.
Personality types who seek challenge, are generally easily bored by easy repetitive tasks (thats the opposite of challenge)
Its not the amount of work or non work thats the problem with ascended being part of raid progression, its the type of work. Easy time spaced based rewards and easy repetetive gold farming is the worst way to appeal to the challenge loving type(of course this is not absolute, merely a archetype)
Heres the thing, many challenging types will make it through the ascended aquisition style, but they will hate it, the goal may get them through it, but they will not enjoy it. This is why almost every raid system has a raid progression, whether it be event based or gear based.
When i hit max level in FFXIV i only needed to get to ilevel 80 to begin attempting bahamut coil, which took less than a week for me as a noob, and if i was already established, i would probably either have the gear ready, or could buy the gear.
I never played wow, but from what i hear, you can begin teired difficult content, and be raiding within a week or less from hitting max, that clearly prepares you for the next difficulty. High skill level people can skip many teirs.
Point is, its not the work or dedication thats the problem with ascended aquisition, its the playstyle. The worst is time gated things. For a challenge loving type thats the worst. No matter how hard you work, or how good you are at the game, you have to wait. Do this trivial task everyday and come back to me in a month. Challenge types can see getting gold faster as a form of challenge, but time gates? nothing you can do about that
but wait.
hopefully anet has already considered and have a plan for these types. Because the current ascended aquisition doesnt really fit their psychology.
With a static island per level they essentially made it almost impossible to add new maps without also changing the entire rotation.
no they didnt. all they have to do is make a new map, give us 10 instabilities to chew on (maybe even recycled!), and call that levels 101-110. the actual difficulty prolly wont scale much from 51-100, thats prolly why that daily tier will encompass so much… cuz the difficulty of fractals is actually in a pretty good place — its already difficult enough in the current state that kitten y builds kitten over the group and someone needs to explain to newbs how to not be in the way (at a minimum) so they dont cause wipes. were just getting variety out of the daily since itll take 50 days before we see repeats, assuming anet constructs the daily schedule such that all fractal levels get hit.
its possible that they do this, but would represent a pretty strong paradigm shift, putting new content 100 levels deep into fractals. (unavailable for all but the top players with a large previous investment.
The advantage for them is it would definately be hot only by that point since masteries would pobably be needed
Ill be honest even that way thats pretty ungainly. You literally have the same level for 10 in a row? I think they arent planning on adding fractals till they do another whole restructuring of the system. which is probably a long ways out, if they intend to do it all, and not just remix levels with new instabilities and mastery reqs
Here’s another problem I have with dungeons instead of fractals:
Yesterday I was teaching a RL friend who came back into the game some instanced content. I can easily take him into any dungeon and know exactly what path I’m doing, as well as having no AR or gear requirements. Can’t say the same for fractals as I’m limited to low level ones and also don’t know what fractals im getting other than swamp. I could bring him into a high level one and 4 man it, but that obviously wouldn’t be very fun for either of us.
Time to learn new content, I guess.
Why are you telling me that? My point is that Fractals and Raids have a high barrier to entry for new and returning players to the game. Fractals have gear requirement (and raids too, to an extent) and Raids are obviously not meant for new players and have full ascended gear as a recommendation. Dungeons filled that void of 5 man content for players that cannot commit to a raid team or do not have the gear for fractals. I can’t bring my casual friends into progression raiding or lvl 50+ fractals.
Absolutely.
Dungeons are your intro to group play, from there you get better and enter the more intricate dungeons (arah/aether), and then from there fractals are within your grasp to start and as you get into the game and get geared higher level fractals. All culminating in the highest challenge, Raids.
There has to be a starting point and that is dungeons.
Dungeons are hardly a prerequisite for fractals. New players will go directly to fractals because everyone will tell them dungeons aren’t worth the reward.
So a big chunk of the endgame will be lost (let’s not fool ourselves into thinking Anet will replace that dungeon content with new fractals and raids).
In the end players will get bored more quickly and thus move on to other games more quickly.
Exactly, Dungeons will get skipped in favor of low level fractals that are far more complicated (unblockable attacks, undodgeable attacks, jumping and all sorts of shenanigans). So people will now skip dungeons because people won’t be doing them and move on to a more complicated system and simply learn the game slower or not at all.
Still the only way to get tokens for skins and legendary gifts (barring pvp, which supplies skins but is TERRIBLE for tokens).
The people impacted by this change are those that farm dungeons for gold.
The reason people prefer dungeons is that it’s a bite-sized mindless farm. Fractals take a lot more reaction, SW is more lucrative in the longrun but takes more of a time commitment.
People running for tokens (as the original intent one might add) will not be terribly impacted just the gold farmers.
just going to point out here, when dungeons started they were the best source for direct gold. back then you had no champion bags etc.
Some devs even specifically said they want dungeons to be where you go for gold.
they altered it to focus on once per day, but they were already best gold before that.
Now of course they have changed their paradigm, but yea, dungeons were supposed to be golded up.
Its not like ascended is that hard to get… Without farming anything I had enough bloodstone, dragonite, and fragments for a full set after just playing the game. People need to calm down. If there was content that required legendary gear I would understand, but its just ascended. You can always mix/match ascended and exotic too.
your perspective is based on what you were able to do by accident after many months of playing.
Ascended is ok as a long term goal you arent directly aiming for, that is how its aquisition was designed, except for fractals.
But that has changed. Now people need it in the short term to participate with their friends/groups/new shiny content.note that you could do fractals with zero ascended, and as you got better, and repeated content you got more of what you needed to progress.
point is, dont think of how you accidently got ascended over the last 8 months, think about what you would have to do if you needed a new set in order to play with your friends, with no built up resources.
New players, returning players, people who ignored ascended are all in that boat now.Is it cool to sit out of your friends new exciting adventures for a month, because you would hold em back?
If you would be noticably holding them back its not going to be because of gear, do your friends really not trust you over a pug with Ascended? Also if you had played with your friends who did Fractals over the last 2 years you wouldn’t be in this situation. Or if you just played over the last 3 years you would be reasonably comaprable to Ascended.
Stop making up problems that don’t exist.
do you really think everyone who they want to play this game has already been playing the game for years?
part of the reason they release and expansion is to get RETURNING PLAYERS and remarket to NEW PLAYERS and the player base specifically told many players DONT GET ASCENDED IF YOU DONT WANT TO DO FRACTALS.you keep on myopically looking at everything from your own perspective as a guy who has been playing some what consistently for a long time, that is not everyone who they hope to market this to.
They want new players who like raids
they want old players to come back to try raids
they want people who havent tried stuff before to try it nowascended aquisition is a large impediment to that.
And your assumption that people like to be the kitten guy in the difficult content is false. i have known many friends who quit doing something until they get the gear or level up, if they feel they are holding people back. You can tell them nah dont worry about it, but they dont feel comfortable being the gimpy guy.
lets make something clear, you will ALWAYS be more useful to your team in better gear.
Also, many of these guys arent just competing with pugs, they are competing with GUILDIES, there may be 20 other guys who want to do it, why should they put you in the group when you dont have the gear?
for real, start looking at things how they are, rather than perfect scenarios. Good design considers all the ways a system interacts with its users.
This is not about being for or against anet, this about objectively looking how the systems interact with each other and with players.
go tell your friend oh, you should have been playing the last 2 years when they are sitting out. Real ace move
You say I speak for myself but then choose to speak for Anet…
They made Raids for people that like Raids – they made endgame PvE not ‘just hit 80 stuff’ and they made it deliberately.
I was in a few Raid guilds in WoW, we were server 1st-3rd for 10man throughout Uld, ToC, ICC and all of Cata we NEVER asked a friend to sit out because of gear because we knew it was the skill of the player that mattered the most and we knew they would put the effort in to catch up (be that switching to an alt or coming back after a break). So don’t tell me about asking friends sit out… We had great success and did it with all our friends. You just don’t understand what Raids are or the people who like them – which is fine but don’t try and warp things based around YOUR insufficient experience and drive to Raid.
Once again you are only looking at how you experience things, or how you think people should use it, rather than how people can and will use things.
That type of thinking is what leads to exploits and unintended consequences.
Think how ALL players may interact with the systems
Some systems aren’t for all players, this will be one of them.
Think about all the players who do interact with it, will interact with it.
The only time designers can ignore how people interact is if they are sure they cant interact with it.
Thats why toys are labeled with age reqs, games with minimum requirements, etc.
If you let people interact, you have to consider how it works.
Raids are being actively promoted to the types i mentioned.
The ascended aquisition style is not currently working well with the objectives of raids, at appealing to those groups they are promoting raids to.
Anyhow believe what you want. I hope the devs think deeper than you.
Hey, John Smith. I have some questions.
1. Why do you hate PvE so much?
2. Why does Anet have to make so many bad decisions?
3. Why are you trying to force Fractals? They’re not fun.
4. Why don’t you add real dungeons and just remove Fractals from existence.
5. Why is your response to #4 a bullkitten answer? :^)Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a brilliant example of how not to get questions answered. Stellar peevishness slathered with smarmy entitlement. Really first rate.
Yeah, because these garbage changes warrant anything else. Not.
“Not”? Did you just watch Wayne’s World?
Anyway, none of the specific changes have been announced. It’s the usual, “sky is falling” attitude of this forum, or perhaps some gamers in general, feeding into the doom and gloom. As was mentioned, dungeons are a broken gold faucet that have long needed to be and are being nerfed. The qq is being justified by lofty notions of dedication to content, but the heart of the matter is that mommy took the teat away and now the broken farm can’t be exploited any longer.
Have you been in a dungeon… ever? If you had, you’d realize putting up with these buggy messes of what passes for pve content should reward us at least enough to be worth the time.
If you really care about broken gold sinks, ask for a sw nerf. SW is 10% (or less) of the work as a dungeon for 5x, (now probably 10x) the reward just for running around and tagging kitten.
SW chest farm doesn’t really add gold into the game. Of course the SW chest farm fails as a gold sink. It’s not meant to be one.
SW adds gear>>>>Gear gilves silk>>>>> people make level 53’s and get Linen. it SW was a bad idea for gold. SW is a gold faucet.
SW chest farm doesn’t ADD gold (other than small incidental amount if that) into the game.
But this isnt that relevant disincentivizing is actually the main goal. I asked specifically if the issue was based on lower gold earning or shifting it.
If it wasnt about disincentivizing it they would have given it valuable material reward selection instead. Like map rewards.
He was very clear that the primary focus was that they feel dungeon type players who want to earn should be doing fractals.
Which was my next question he answered.
Why are people assuming things, he answered very clearly.
They dont want dungeons to be a sanctioned/well rewarded activity anymore.
The main goal of doing dungeons now will be tokens.
Now you can say whether you think thats a good or nad idea, but dont bring up faucets or whatever, theres solutions that could solve that without disincentivizing dungeons
My post has nothing to do with what you were posting about nor was directed at you. Did you mean to reply to another post instead?
Wether sw farm is a gold faucet or not is not relevant to the discussion of dungeon/salvaging nerfs.
They didnt nerf dungeons because they were a gold faucet.
Hey, John Smith. I have some questions.
1. Why do you hate PvE so much?
2. Why does Anet have to make so many bad decisions?
3. Why are you trying to force Fractals? They’re not fun.
4. Why don’t you add real dungeons and just remove Fractals from existence.
5. Why is your response to #4 a bullkitten answer? :^)Here, ladies and gentlemen, is a brilliant example of how not to get questions answered. Stellar peevishness slathered with smarmy entitlement. Really first rate.
Yeah, because these garbage changes warrant anything else. Not.
“Not”? Did you just watch Wayne’s World?
Anyway, none of the specific changes have been announced. It’s the usual, “sky is falling” attitude of this forum, or perhaps some gamers in general, feeding into the doom and gloom. As was mentioned, dungeons are a broken gold faucet that have long needed to be and are being nerfed. The qq is being justified by lofty notions of dedication to content, but the heart of the matter is that mommy took the teat away and now the broken farm can’t be exploited any longer.
Have you been in a dungeon… ever? If you had, you’d realize putting up with these buggy messes of what passes for pve content should reward us at least enough to be worth the time.
If you really care about broken gold sinks, ask for a sw nerf. SW is 10% (or less) of the work as a dungeon for 5x, (now probably 10x) the reward just for running around and tagging kitten.
SW chest farm doesn’t really add gold into the game. Of course the SW chest farm fails as a gold sink. It’s not meant to be one.
SW adds gear>>>>Gear gilves silk>>>>> people make level 53’s and get Linen. it SW was a bad idea for gold. SW is a gold faucet.
SW chest farm doesn’t ADD gold (other than small incidental amount if that) into the game.
But this isnt that relevant disincentivizing is actually the main goal. I asked specifically if the issue was based on lower gold earning or shifting it.
If it wasnt about disincentivizing it they would have given it valuable material reward selection instead. Like map rewards.
He was very clear that the primary focus was that they feel dungeon type players who want to earn should be doing fractals.
Which was my next question he answered.
Why are people assuming things, he answered very clearly.
They dont want dungeons to be a sanctioned/well rewarded activity anymore.
The main goal of doing dungeons now will be tokens.
Now you can say whether you think thats a good or nad idea, but dont bring up faucets or whatever, theres solutions that could solve that without disincentivizing dungeons
Its not like ascended is that hard to get… Without farming anything I had enough bloodstone, dragonite, and fragments for a full set after just playing the game. People need to calm down. If there was content that required legendary gear I would understand, but its just ascended. You can always mix/match ascended and exotic too.
your perspective is based on what you were able to do by accident after many months of playing.
Ascended is ok as a long term goal you arent directly aiming for, that is how its aquisition was designed, except for fractals.
But that has changed. Now people need it in the short term to participate with their friends/groups/new shiny content.note that you could do fractals with zero ascended, and as you got better, and repeated content you got more of what you needed to progress.
point is, dont think of how you accidently got ascended over the last 8 months, think about what you would have to do if you needed a new set in order to play with your friends, with no built up resources.
New players, returning players, people who ignored ascended are all in that boat now.Is it cool to sit out of your friends new exciting adventures for a month, because you would hold em back?
If you would be noticably holding them back its not going to be because of gear, do your friends really not trust you over a pug with Ascended? Also if you had played with your friends who did Fractals over the last 2 years you wouldn’t be in this situation. Or if you just played over the last 3 years you would be reasonably comaprable to Ascended.
Stop making up problems that don’t exist.
do you really think everyone who they want to play this game has already been playing the game for years?
part of the reason they release and expansion is to get RETURNING PLAYERS and remarket to NEW PLAYERS and the player base specifically told many players DONT GET ASCENDED IF YOU DONT WANT TO DO FRACTALS.you keep on myopically looking at everything from your own perspective as a guy who has been playing some what consistently for a long time, that is not everyone who they hope to market this to.
They want new players who like raids
they want old players to come back to try raids
they want people who havent tried stuff before to try it nowascended aquisition is a large impediment to that.
And your assumption that people like to be the kitten guy in the difficult content is false. i have known many friends who quit doing something until they get the gear or level up, if they feel they are holding people back. You can tell them nah dont worry about it, but they dont feel comfortable being the gimpy guy.
lets make something clear, you will ALWAYS be more useful to your team in better gear.
Also, many of these guys arent just competing with pugs, they are competing with GUILDIES, there may be 20 other guys who want to do it, why should they put you in the group when you dont have the gear?
for real, start looking at things how they are, rather than perfect scenarios. Good design considers all the ways a system interacts with its users.
This is not about being for or against anet, this about objectively looking how the systems interact with each other and with players.
go tell your friend oh, you should have been playing the last 2 years when they are sitting out. Real ace move
You say I speak for myself but then choose to speak for Anet…
They made Raids for people that like Raids – they made endgame PvE not ‘just hit 80 stuff’ and they made it deliberately.
I was in a few Raid guilds in WoW, we were server 1st-3rd for 10man throughout Uld, ToC, ICC and all of Cata we NEVER asked a friend to sit out because of gear because we knew it was the skill of the player that mattered the most and we knew they would put the effort in to catch up (be that switching to an alt or coming back after a break). So don’t tell me about asking friends sit out… We had great success and did it with all our friends. You just don’t understand what Raids are or the people who like them – which is fine but don’t try and warp things based around YOUR insufficient experience and drive to Raid.
Once again you are only looking at how you experience things, or how you think people should use it, rather than how people can and will use things.
That type of thinking is what leads to exploits and unintended consequences.
Think how ALL players may interact with the systems
So many tinfoil hats.
“They’re devaluing the base game to increase sales of HoT”
If that were truly the case…. why would they have bothered with the map rewards system?
Why would they have bumped up fractals as the dungeon alternative, which is core, not HoT, content?
It seems that they’re moving farming out of dungeons, and for the most part that farming is being left right there in the core game.
This theory doesn’t really fly, but it’s a convenient way to say “me too, I hate arenanet like all the other cool kids!”
You guys are so edgy.
fractal masteries will be used for higher level fractals. Its not purely core anymore. Map rewards isnt really about gold. but as i understand it its different for every map, so no one knows how that will play out.
i will say they arent devaluing dungeons because they want to sell hot, but dungeons was left out of HOT based improvements and progression, because they dont plan on supportying dungeons any more at this juncture
Its not like ascended is that hard to get… Without farming anything I had enough bloodstone, dragonite, and fragments for a full set after just playing the game. People need to calm down. If there was content that required legendary gear I would understand, but its just ascended. You can always mix/match ascended and exotic too.
your perspective is based on what you were able to do by accident after many months of playing.
Ascended is ok as a long term goal you arent directly aiming for, that is how its aquisition was designed, except for fractals.
But that has changed. Now people need it in the short term to participate with their friends/groups/new shiny content.note that you could do fractals with zero ascended, and as you got better, and repeated content you got more of what you needed to progress.
point is, dont think of how you accidently got ascended over the last 8 months, think about what you would have to do if you needed a new set in order to play with your friends, with no built up resources.
New players, returning players, people who ignored ascended are all in that boat now.Is it cool to sit out of your friends new exciting adventures for a month, because you would hold em back?
If you would be noticably holding them back its not going to be because of gear, do your friends really not trust you over a pug with Ascended? Also if you had played with your friends who did Fractals over the last 2 years you wouldn’t be in this situation. Or if you just played over the last 3 years you would be reasonably comaprable to Ascended.
Stop making up problems that don’t exist.
do you really think everyone who they want to play this game has already been playing the game for years?
part of the reason they release and expansion is to get RETURNING PLAYERS and remarket to NEW PLAYERS and the player base specifically told many players DONT GET ASCENDED IF YOU DONT WANT TO DO FRACTALS.
you keep on myopically looking at everything from your own perspective as a guy who has been playing some what consistently for a long time, that is not everyone who they hope to market this to.
They want new players who like raids
they want old players to come back to try raids
they want people who havent tried stuff before to try it now
ascended aquisition is a large impediment to that.
And your assumption that people like to be the kitten guy in the difficult content is false. i have known many friends who quit doing something until they get the gear or level up, if they feel they are holding people back. You can tell them nah dont worry about it, but they dont feel comfortable being the gimpy guy.
lets make something clear, you will ALWAYS be more useful to your team in better gear.
Also, many of these guys arent just competing with pugs, they are competing with GUILDIES, there may be 20 other guys who want to do it, why should they put you in the group when you dont have the gear?
for real, start looking at things how they are, rather than perfect scenarios. Good design considers all the ways a system interacts with its users.
This is not about being for or against anet, this about objectively looking how the systems interact with each other and with players.
go tell your friend oh, you should have been playing the last 2 years when they are sitting out. Real ace move
On Topic – The aggrieved parties about this nerf do not have sound logic. You all use the defense that dungeons “are not the most lucrative” and “sw afk farm is better” as a defense to stop the nerf of gold rewards in dungeons. AT THE SAME TIME you all say that dungeon content is “core to the game” and “ANET hates their players for ruining this excellent content”, yet you now declare them dead from a nerf to their GOLD amount. Not a nerf to unique rewards or moving those rewards somewhere else, just a reduction of gold rewarded.
So which is it? Either dungeons are good core content which is fun in and of themselves OR You admittedly run them because they really are the best pure gold source and are super duper easy to farm.
The real problem is most of you cant admit to yourselves that you just want easy gold and dungeons are your current place to get it.Its fun content but even if it was the best dungeon in all MMO from all time if it has 0 reward after running the same dungeon 100 times you would not want to run it again even if that is really fun. Content need to be fun AND have a reasonable reward, dont say otherwise, 0 content can live long only by being fun.
Again, this all comes down to the EASE of getting this pure gold source from these dungeons, not the content, not the unique rewards/skins. Its the pure and easy gold source that is getting people worked up.
Will none of the defenders own up and admit that you just WANT this easy and mindless gold farm in the game because you like the simplicity of it? Why pretend its about the “content” or “ANet devaluing the players” Just say you want EZ AFK farming, hell, if more people had been honest that’s what they wanted from this game then ANet would be catering to you in the XPack and not moving away from the EZ AFK farm’s of yore.
dungeons arent an afk farm. have you ever done a dungeon? or are you talking about something else.
fractals are not different from dungeons untill you hit like level 27 or so. and they are going to rebalance difficulty to make it easier in beginning, so that will probably be like 35-37. point is there is no great reason that dungeons are getting disincentivized, other than the very simple. they no longer want to support that software. like when they stop supporting win xp. sure you can use it, but we aint going to encourage you to do so.
Ok, I see a lot of fans who dont like the way it feels trying to reintepret the meaning of what he said.
Eliminate the editorial and you have the truth.
there is no hidden meaning to the word disincentivize.
it means to take away an incentive so as to make something less desirable to do.
they do want people to stop doing dungeons as part of regular play.
This is key to understanding this change. Why? because it changes the type of feedback you should give.
1) they are not going to rebalance the rewards, because the goal is not to make dungeons a balanced source of earning in the top teir
2) they are not going to choose non liquid rewards because the goal is to not have dungeons be done as much.
They want to encourage people to play elsewhere, they are no longer going to tell people, via gold that dungeons is one of the main ways you should play this game.
will this likely drastically decrease the amount of people who do dungeons? definately. MMOS are very reward focused, even if you enjoy content, if its not a worthwhile use of time, many people wont do it very often.
Its not like ascended is that hard to get… Without farming anything I had enough bloodstone, dragonite, and fragments for a full set after just playing the game. People need to calm down. If there was content that required legendary gear I would understand, but its just ascended. You can always mix/match ascended and exotic too.
your perspective is based on what you were able to do by accident after many months of playing.
Ascended is ok as a long term goal you arent directly aiming for, that is how its aquisition was designed, except for fractals.
But that has changed. Now people need it in the short term to participate with their friends/groups/new shiny content.
note that you could do fractals with zero ascended, and as you got better, and repeated content you got more of what you needed to progress.
point is, dont think of how you accidently got ascended over the last 8 months, think about what you would have to do if you needed a new set in order to play with your friends, with no built up resources.
New players, returning players, people who ignored ascended are all in that boat now.
Is it cool to sit out of your friends new exciting adventures for a month, because you would hold em back?
If you’re going to announce a reward nerf, include the details of the new rewards. Your playerbase is prone to overreaction, and when you say “lower rewards”, we will hear “NO MORE REWARDS EVER!”
What are the new rewards going to be? Is it a trivial reduction? Reduction by half? Or worse, something like 1 uninfused ascended shaman’s ring per run?
It’s like you’re trying to tease it, lol. You can’t hype bad news…you know? Just give the details instead of a tease.
actually its pretty clear it will be signifigant.
i woulldnt mind more info, but he was pretty clear.
the goal is to stop giving people reason to do dungeons on a regular basis
“Dungeons will still drop things as well as they will still have some gold, they will just have much less gold.”
much less. not adjusted, or less competitive,
My guess is no daily gold bonus.
probably back to the 28 silver per run thing?
regardless, the point is, we wont pay you to do this anymore. Because we dont really want to encourage people to do this content.
I have got to give this guy some credit.
However you may feel about the change itself, this is actually pretty solid community interaction.But it’s not a solid answer. The question is WHY do this? If Dungeons were infact, very popular, why try to force players to other parts of the game? Whn not actually put resources into new dungeons. So much for “play your way”.
The “community interaction” you speak of is basically:
We are doing this, just cos…..
The answer to the why question might be this.
Anet is trying to keep a balanced economy – which means you have to balance the gold in with the gold out. Currently we have a good amount of sinks in the game that balance gold generation – and let’s remember that dungeons do generate gold out of thin air – at the end of a run gold that previously did not exist is generated into the game .
With HoT they plan to add new activities to develop such as Raids and HoT – and in order for them to be well received they must come with good monetary rewards – so you have to attach some gold generation to them as well.
The problem with this is that you’re adding in more things that generate gold but not a lot of things that take it out. If you did add more sinks you could possibly end up interfering and “overtaxing” (through the sinks) with players that don’t really generate gold because they don’t do that sort of content – so they went the opposite way – they decided to reduce part of the gold generation from the old content in order to make room for newer content to be the main gold generator.
This is both to incentivize people to switch over to the new content ( which they want to grow and develop) but also to maintain a balanced economy.
This is how I think they thought things through ( if they did) – there’s always the case they just have no idea what’s going on or have just thought of a bad idea – it wouldn’t be the first time.
I don’t necessarily agree with this – but I can see why they would do it if indeed my above logic is similar to theirs.
having multiple sources of income is not really relevant, because people can only do one thing.
If task A = 10 dollars an hour
task B = 10 dollars an hour
and they both= the same thing. I asked specifically in the next question if the goal was to remove liquid generation from the game, to which he said not really. The for the most part want to put it elsewhere.
I suppose the difference could be they want to have something else give 40 gold a day for an hours work, and are afraid of someone doing both, but not sure why they d do that.
regardless the point is to disincentivize dungeons, because if it wasnt they could offer other non liquid rewards to dungeons, but he made it clear, they dont want to do that. The goal is to take dungeons out of focus for normal consistent play. Thats the most important trait of the change.
“As a part of that process, we’ll shift some rewards away from dungeons and into other pieces of content. "
That doesn’t just mean moving it to fractals. As a matter of fact he goes one to describe the other pieces of content right after he said this.
“The major concern that we’re sure to face is the specific intent of dungeons as a gold-generating activity. To that effect, let’s talk about map rewards.”
Except that the map rewards portion of that article doesn’t cover the concept of increased rewards. It covers the exact opposite. It covers how the new map rewards system will devalue high priced mats and give buyers more power by allowing them to circumvent the market and sellers will have to respond accordingly. The inference here is that sellers will need to price accordingly because they will need to factor in that people can just farm for mats and that flipping, hoarding and price gouging won’t be an option due to the constant stream of new mats into the market.
Further, if you look at the line that you conveniently didn’t mention, the article states, “The shift in rewards is a direct representation of our focus on raids and fractals and our commitment to make them the best they can be.” How is the devaluation of mats via map rewards a “direct representation of our focus on raids and fractals?” Spoiler warning: It’s not.
And one reason we need gold is because some mats are so expensive, so by making them less expensive, you reduce the need for as much gold.
The shift in rewards to raids and fractals is because that is where they want to spend their development time, not trying to “fix” dungeons. So that’s why they are removing the “liquid” rewards from dungeons and providing a means to reduce the cost of high price mats. Making something cheaper that’s in high demand is the same as providing the gold you will spend on them.
Think of it this way. You want a cookie. It costs a dollar but you only have 50 cents. So giving you 50 cents gives you the same result as cutting the price of the cookie to 50 cents. So they are looking at cutting the cost of the cookie while not giving you that extra 50 cents as the results is the same, you can get the cookie.
no, overall they are going to try to balance things in other ways, which he admits will probably fail, and need adjustment.
he said for the most part they want people to get liquid gold, just from other sources. So its not really about deflating, its about changing where you earn it.
The materials thing they think they will balance via reducing salvage and drop rates, as well as more sinks.
his ultimate hope is that things settle around where they have been, with a few corrections.
It clearly shows that they are unhappy with the 8 initial dungeons. They were bad design, you can stack in a corner and finish it. Even with the first new instanced content – fractals – you notice this is not possible anymore – well at least not in 95% of all possible situations.
Oh something I want to highlight: Mr. Smith doesn’t say he want’s to discourage players to play dungeons, he answers to the question to de-incentivize dungeon running. This just means he agrees to lessen the appeal/carrot on a stick to run dungeons for monetary reasons only like it’s done these days. Don’t turn words.
They tried then something new with aetherpath which was super gimmicky and long, rewards weren’t that good for such a path. I never understood why they didn’t do it like in WoW – accessible, no gimmicky skill jumping/puzzling parts, just straight forward with an universal currency to buy exotic/ascended stuff.
They went from the one extreme to the other extreme. There is a lot of middle ground and somehow most other MMOs I played can do that and Anet is hell of a talented team.
Anyway, the grudge is softened by the fact we soon get raids.
im not turning words thats what disincentivize means
disincentivize basically is to discourage
dis·in·cen·tiv·ize
?disin?sen(t)iv?z/
verb
verb: disincentivize;discourage (a person or course of action) by removing an incentive.
there is nothing innate to dungeon design that makes it inferior to fractals, there is nothing that it would be impossible to fix. They just dont want to do it. I’m not even saying they should fix em, at this point it would be waste of resources. Even if they were fixed they would still be old content.
However they didnt really need to stop making it worth doing. Whats the point of killing content? it would have been something some players like to do to get gold, why is less competing methods of gaining gold better?
do they really think the gold running dungeon people wont do raid or fractals if dungeons exist? wouldnt that mean that dungeons offer something unique a sizable portion of players want from the game?
fractals have, and had tons of exploits.
phys;
Coulter’s and My thesis is that the design limitation is, at best, exaggerated.
You seem to both believe it’s going to be a serious barrier and to be mad about it. It ends up feeling like borrowing offense.
Coulter doesnt seem to be responding to what i say but what he thinks i mean. Or what he believes my agenda is.
I have known many players who specifically avoided getting ascended because it drained the fun out of the game for them.
In the past at least i could tell them, well you only need it to repeat high end fractals.
This no longer applies.
The fact that its doable is less relevant than what is expected. Many players including those that do raids will first seek to maximize their mechanical advantage when confronted with challenge.
Problem is ascended aquisition is bad. It only functioned as a long term prestige dont worry about it goal. When you actually are expected to have it, it will be incredibly frustrating for a lot of players.
Like i said i knew many many players who hated ascended crafting, didnt want to join large premade guilds, and were annoyed by having to clock in for dailies or fall behind.
Well I already spent a long time telling you WHY Ascended Armour (the main cost of Ascended) is not going to influence outcomes. As for those people who “don’t like Ascended crafting and don’t join guilds” I can only say – Raids were deliberately design without those people in mind and quite right too.
raids had to be designed with ascended no matter what, the aquisition of ascended however was not designed with raids in mind.
Succesful raid based games always have a quick gear requirement to start raids, and have a raid progression that has short attainable goals people can work towards. Having a big time/effort gap before people can play a game mode they are interested in, at all, with no interesting goals a long the way is a recipe for failure.
Hopefully the designers have considered this more than you have, and they already have some more goal oriented ways of obtaining ascended with less time gates or repetitive grind.
Otherwise people will either quit or begin mass complaints about ascended aquisition/or player gear requirements for raids.
this is basically the future based on the current situations if they dont have a plan in place.
Its pretty easy to see how things will play out. Would you like to bet against me? im willing to bet gold if you are.
I have got to give this guy some credit.
He’s got a clear idea of what he’s after.
He announced it, immediately followed it up with a Q&A, and has so far answered questions in a straightforward way. However you may feel about the change itself, this is actually pretty solid community interaction.Glad he’s talking, but I’m still very curious as to why they’re doing it. There are things in this game that allow you to get money far easier than just playing whatever you have fun doing. I can understand if they want to get rid of that stuff and balance out the income to make every element of the game balance out, and with how an economy works it’d be all good even if it meant we made less per time.
But, that’d mean things like SW Chest farm would have to disappear. I guess I just don’t get why they would target dungeons but leave braindead run in circles play around.
I’ve read his reports and I’m still sitting here scratching my head. All he’s really done is confirmed that they’re doing this because they want to disincentivize dungeons, which I think we all figured out already, the question is why?
because they want to have all the people who want to do 5 man content doing fractals and raids, they no longer feel dungeons should be daily activity. Basically they want people to stop doing dungeons and do things like raids/fractals/adventures/map goals, all of which have ties to HoT purchases.
basically they feel dungeons are on life support with rewards, and they can let them die by taking them off life support.
John, a few questions. Can you explain to me how the change to dungeon rewards is positive for the community? With all the new players, don’t you think they will find it harder to run them without some sort of incentive. Do you think that tokens and drops will be sufficient to maintain the current frequency of dungeon runs or do you expect them to “fade into black”? If so, what is even the purpose of keeping this content in game, especially considering all the skips, exploits, and brokenness since launch? I understand that you are just the economics guy, but I would hope that at some point this was discussed.
I feel sorry for all of the new players who have yet to complete dungeons after this change, I expect to see many unanswered lfg, do you really think that’s positive for our community?
because a slow fade is less jarring than an explosion, though i wouldnt be surprised if scarlett came back to life and blew up all the dungeons.
(edited by phys.7689)
Just curious, did John Smith give a reasoning for his one word ‘Yes’ answer or just leave it at that, because I would really like to know why if it wasn’t answered yet.
the answer was in my next question:
essentially they expect people who used to do dungeons for marketable goods/gold to do fractals. They want dungeons to be side shows, not part of the main things people do each day.
I’m amazed at the number of people who just don’t understand economics. Let me see if I can explain it. Dungeons are a gold faucet. They are the single largest gold faucet in the game. By running one AC path 1, you generate not just 1.86g for yourself, but for all your party members as well. That simple 10 minute run just generated 9.3g and put it into the economy.
On the opposite side of the scale, you have things like the silverwastes chest farm which does not generate gold, it simply generates items which have their value taken from current market value. Selling or salvaging items acquired through this farm removes gold from the economy through TP fees and salvage fees. Furthermore, when gold is easier to get, the silverwastes chest farm items are worth more gold and when gold is more difficult to get, the silverwastes farm items are worth less gold. Their value does not change, only the gold it takes to acquire them.
By reducing the available gold faucets, ANet hopes to increase the value of gold and curb inflation. You may not appreciate it, but dungeons are a giant contributor to why things are so expensive gold wise. The dungeon runners are putting much more gold into the system than sinks are able to remove.
sorry man, i asked that question, the main purpose of the nerf is not to reduce gold faucets, but primarily to disincentivize dungeons. They dont want dungeons to be competing with other content, and they dont want to encourage people to do them daily.
They plan to move liquid gains to other things, but you wouldnt have to actually remove dungeons if that was your goal. You see, if 3 things reward similar gold, for the same time requirement, people will do whichever thing they prefer. They also could have given dungeons non liquid rewards and focused on mats, or other things that sell well on the TP.
but that would defeat the purpose, the purpose of taking away the gold was to make doing dungeons not be the thing those type of players do.
You are too reward driven. Where’s the fun, the enjoyment? Nope, it’s all about the lucre.
In a MMO that’s like saying “You’re too into killing monsters.” or “You’re too into exploring.”
It’s one of the core elements. Explore…kill things…get rewards…with work together thrown in there.
Yes but some are only focusing on the reward. It’s like focusing on the destination and ignoring the journey.
Sadly that’s what MMOs have devolved into. Build the most OP character that’s currently allowed and repeatedly do the content that rewards the most lucre in the shortest amount of time. Genre isn’t important. Lore isn’t important. Profession isn’t important. It’s about getting the most lucre as fast as possible for what? Get the best of everything and then what? You win so onto the next MMO?
the best way to solve that problem is to make content rewarding and not to design goals that are best played through repetitive grind.
But thats a lot more work.
This is the first time i have seen a developer purposely sabotaging its own content to demoralize its costumers of doing it.
And this, unfortunately, is not the first time I’ve seen players use hyperbole to express their opinions. He’s being refreshingly straightforward. If he weren’t being so honest, you would complain for their lack of an explanation. These are good changes and he’s obviously being as transparent as he can be because he knows this will create a tiny schism. The fact is, dungeons are broken, dead end content hurting the game economy. Time to move on.
they arent hurting the game economy, he basically said he wants to put dungeon rewards elsewhere. He said point blank the goal is to move where you earn money, not to change money earning much.
Dungeons are not the most profitable farm. the goal is to get people to stop playing dungeons all the time. They want those people playing fractals. And they redesigned fractals to resemble dungeons, so i dunno what design failures you are talking about creatively with dungeons.
He is being straight foward though, and i applaud that because at least you can converse about things as they stand, rather than around it.
its not about dunegeons ruining the economy, its just that they want dungeons to fade to the back of things players do often.
I don’t believe we ever discussed changing the tokens from dungeons.
This is EXTREMELY concerning as someone who wants to collect all the skins eventually.
Disincentivizing dungeon play = less players running dungeons.
Less players running dungeons = more time and effort spent finding dungeon groups.
More time and effort spent finding dungeon groups = large increase in time/effort required to earn dungeon skins.
I seriously hope the team considers changing token drop rate or reducing skin prices, because killing the dungeon population means killing our chances at ever finishing dungeon skin collection. And when these skins are meant to be a reward for playing a specific type of PvE content, directing players to PvP is NOT the answer. If I wanted to earn my dungeon skins via PvP, that’s what I would have been doing this whole time since the reward track update – but I don’t enjoy PvP, so I’d rather get the dungeon skins by doing dungeons.
But again, by killing dungeon population, I’m forced to either play PvP (which I don’t enjoy) or give up on dungeon skins entirely.
they want you to pvp if you want dungeon gear, or wait for enough people to group, or beg your friends.
I don’t see how anet thinks dungeon rewards are bad, I mean most of them only give 1 gold. And the most is 3 gold from Arah, what they need is to fix lupi os so everyone can’t just go in os lupi and get 3 gold. Here I was thinking they would buff the 1 gold from some paths to 2 gold or something. Seriously dungeon rewards are already so Low.
the purpose is not to balance dungeon earning, its to remove them, in a soft way. Its meant to be legacy sideshow content now.
Oh btw, both raids and fractal progression tie into masteries, which you only can get if you buy hot! only 49.99
I am not a dungeon speedrunner.
I am not a min-maxer
I prefer full clear runs over skipping.
I enjoy dungeons for the opportunity to enjoy a bit of group content more involved than open world play that takes a little while and has a nice reward at the end.
I don’t do dungeons just for the rewards, but they are part of the overall experience. Lowering the rewards lessens the experience.More than anything else this feels, to me, like an effort to devalue the base game so as to encourage sales of the expansion. They couldn’t come right out and remove dungeons without looking very bad in the game press so they just make them less appealing. I won’t be surprised if this is just the first of multiple steps to discourage playing dungeons.
I doubt that.
What I think this is: the removal of a gold faucet, for the reasons alluded to by the Pope; and an attempt to remove the reason to speed run the dungeons. If it works, as seems likely, then whose left in the dungeon LFG’s except people who are doing them for fun? This may result in less, “COF2 Exp only, berserker only, 8K AP only.” and less (maybe none?) exclusion based on meeting fast farm requirements. Ironically, this may not mean “anything goes” players getting a run faster.
pope. no offense is an optimist, not a realist.
John smith basically said the intention has less to do with gold faucets and more to do with not having dungeons run very often. The goal is to shift all 5 man content types to fractals, and fractals, and fractals have been restructured to resemble dungeons in terms of speed running.
basically its specifically about phasing out dungeons as a valuable gamemode.
After all where, once you can select fractal paths, there will be a meta zerk speed run level X, Y , Z farms for gold.
just less of it per day, because most decent rewards likely tied to dailies, and you will be able to get all fractal dailies a lot faster.
Is the intention to deincentivize dungeons
YesWhy? It’s like deincentivizing to play the game at some level, why would developers ever do such a thing? I can understand taking the gold away for economy reasons, but give something back to keep the content alive. You should aim to have every part of your game 100% enjoyable and rewarding, this is what you wanted at release, to reward people everywhere they go, and now here you are admitting the intention of deincentivizing dungeons. It’s almost as bad as making SAB temporary.
Short version, they dont want to be developing and promoting fractals and dungeons, so they unified fractals and dungeons playstyle wise and are cutting out dungeons.
fractals will now have selectable levels
fractals will now be shorter content
Im not saying its a good idea, but basically they want to consolidate 5 man instanced content into one form, and fractals are smaller, dont require context or real world location.
I personally feel its unecessary, and that fractals and dungeons served two different types of purpose, and more content is better. But anet disagrees.
But you don’t answer the idea that the requirement is kitten.
In the end we’re still all up in arms over a dev saying something stupid that they had to 80+% retract.
The dev didnt have to say it.
You miss the point
A 10% advantage at something that is hard is a 10% advantage. A 5% is a 5%
It will always be easier to do the same content with the same players if they have better gear. If the content is actually hard this translates to more success and an easier time to do it.
It would be unreasonable of me to suggest people not ask people to put their best foot foward by having good gear. Everyone not geared well makes raids harder and longer for the other 9 guys.
Yes some people dont mind, but those are altruistic people, expecting and requiring altruism from others, while you bring less to the table is not loved by many.
Short version ascended will be player expectedb etiquette for raids so ascended aquisition should be less of a long term grindy goal than it was designed to be
Q.
why are you nerfing the income of players who prefer your old content over your new content? I for one don’t care much for raids but really enjoy dungeons..A.
We don’t intend to nerf income, just shift where most players derive their income. You won’t be forced into raids in order to earn value though.Players who enjoy playing dungeons will have either lower income or will have to play content they do not enjoy as much in order to maintain their existing level of income.
The only way you can accurately claim that you did not intend to nerf their income is to state that you intended to reduce their enjoyment of the game instead.
Edit for clarification: I did not mean you personally, but rather the collective of those who made the decision.
This is called false dilemma. I think you should probably restate this.
Sir,
I disagree. My point does not fall under the false dilemma fallacy.
Hypothetically, If one’s primary interest in playing the game, that which one actually enjoys doing the most, has its income reduced then, in order to maintain the same level of income, without increasing one’s play time, one would need to reduce one’s time spent in one’s preferred content in order to play more lucrative (but less enjoyable), content.
The developer made the decisions for the dungeon income nerf either with full knowledge that some players enjoy dungeons, even to a degree that they prefer them over other content. The decision to nerf is intentional and is being made in the full knowledge of its impact on those who prefer dungeons over other content. That does not make the nerf malicious, but it is intentional.
I suppose it is theoretically possible that the individual(s) who made the decision were unaware that there are players who enjoy, prefer, GW2’s dungeons over other content. I freely admit that I did not take this possibility into consideration when making my previous point because, at the time, It did not occur to me that such an oversight was possible if the decision itself had been at all discussed or given reasonable consideration.
Essentially they want people to stop playing dungeons
For the most part. They are meant to be a sideshow now not a main event
I’m okay with reducing the gold output of dungeons, but I’m not okay with reducing the value of playing dungeons. Replace parts of the gold with T6 materials, lodestones, or something that matters to someone and can be sold to recoup some of the value. Don’t just take away the gold and give it nothing in return. A number of people play dungeons because they’re valuable even in spite of how old and unsupported they are; reducing their value will move those people elsewhere and that’s not good.
He answered that in mines, they dont want dungeons to be as desired an activity regardless
Players who enjoy playing dungeons will have either lower income or will have to play content they do not enjoy as much in order to maintain their existing level of income.
Meanwhile, players who enjoy pvp, who enjoy wvw or who enjoy simple map exploration are not as well rewarded, which will get improved upon, while dungeons are giving too much and are going to be nerfed.
Dungeon running is not the most profitable activity by far. It simply generates gold better.
Time spent in orr or silverwastes or dry top(used to be) playing the tp, in eotm, in champ trains.
Earned more money.
Also every task required time. There for having good sources of earning in other content is all that is required.
If you have 3 hours a day and there are a bunch of tasks you choose the one you like the most. Removing one task doesnt make something else reward more
Q.
why are you nerfing the income of players who prefer your old content over your new content? I for one don’t care much for raids but really enjoy dungeons..A.
We don’t intend to nerf income, just shift where most players derive their income. You won’t be forced into raids in order to earn value though.Players who enjoy playing dungeons will have either lower income or will have to play content they do not enjoy as much in order to maintain their existing level of income.
The only way you can accurately claim that you did not intend to nerf their income is to state that you intended to reduce their enjoyment of the game instead.
Edit for clarification: I did not mean you personally, but rather the collective of those who made the decision.
This is called false dilemma. I think you should probably restate this.
Is the intention to deincentivize dungeons
Is the intention to reduce targeted liquid gold earning, or are you putting that liquid somewhere else thats targetable?
What type of instanced content do you see offering marketable rewards that players can take part in on a regular basis?
do you see players seeking to earn main methods being through open world and tp trading
You mean elitist PUGs because PUGing with randoms will always be around.
I dunno about that story dungeon running was basically done until they increased rewards. I dont see many people doing dungeons at all if the gold is sufficiently nerfed.
Which ultimately is their goal they said point blank they dont want people to have any good reason to do dungeons outside of unique items (which arent unique and are easily obtsined via pvp dungeon rooms i hear)
phys;
Coulter’s and My thesis is that the design limitation is, at best, exaggerated.
You seem to both believe it’s going to be a serious barrier and to be mad about it. It ends up feeling like borrowing offense.
Coulter doesnt seem to be responding to what i say but what he thinks i mean. Or what he believes my agenda is.
I have known many players who specifically avoided getting ascended because it drained the fun out of the game for them.
In the past at least i could tell them, well you only need it to repeat high end fractals.
This no longer applies.
The fact that its doable is less relevant than what is expected. Many players including those that do raids will first seek to maximize their mechanical advantage when confronted with challenge.
Problem is ascended aquisition is bad. It only functioned as a long term prestige dont worry about it goal. When you actually are expected to have it, it will be incredibly frustrating for a lot of players.
Like i said i knew many many players who hated ascended crafting, didnt want to join large premade guilds, and were annoyed by having to clock in for dailies or fall behind.
I love how when a group can’t down a boss on their first or second try in a beta = Must have Ascended.
content designed based on ascended
+ the best groups needing 5-6 attempts ON THE FIRST MINI BOSS
+ everyone having access to any ascended gear set they want on demand
+ many groups failing after 2 hours, even with ascended ON THE FIRST MINIBOSSS= why are you dragging the team down by not coming with the best stats you can, we failed 4 times already quits team and starts new one with gear checks instituted.
mathematical need isnt really going to come into play.
requiring everyone to have ascended basically ensures better chance of success, and less mastery required to succeed, which makes it a feasible request.most people arent willing to fail 2-3 more times hoping everyone gets 10% more effecient after failing
It’s the first day of brand new content. If there were teams that were taking less than 5-6 tries on a 1 day old boss in a new game mode then the content is too easy.
irrelevant.
point is, if you take 5 to 6 times, you will likely take at least 6-7 times if you have to be better at the game to achieve the same goal
that translates to more time wasted.which translates to players not wanting to take people who arent the best they can be. People letting an exotic guy join will be the exception, not the rule. Therefore saying you can beat it in exotics is not that relevant. Most people will have to get ascended before people will seriously attempt raids with them.
which is actually what anet figured when designing them. player psychology is an important part of game design.
lets cut to the chase, lets bet, i bet that ascended will be the meta requirement for raids by and large, are you saying that it wont be the case?
If you think Raiding that involves wipes is “wasting time” you really are not interested in Raiding.
If you worry about not being let into groups asking for Ascended then 1) get Ascended 2) don’t join those groups.
Your theory about raiders liking wiping because members are not equipped is false.
And design that ignores how players will interact with it needs to be reconsidered. The answer y o undesirable design should not be deal with it.
Btw i dont know why you are making personal assumptions about me, my playing habits or how my character s are geared.
I have full ascended that doesnt mean i cant see the flaws in interaction with existing systems for those that do not.
We’ve known for 2 years that they are moving away from dungeons as content. This is just the next logical step. Dungeons are the #1 source of inflation in GW2. By toning down the rewards there they can keep a much healthier game.
inflation or lack of inflation doesnt equal a well designed game.
thats the flaw in the item design of gw2. Making the game suck, or having poor incentives does not make a better game.this is why i say nothing good comes of tying anything to the economy reward wise in gw2. Because the goal of the economy in gw2 is that it should be should basically stay the same, and players exist to serve the economy, not vice versa.
I think you are heavily underestimating the importance of the in-game economy in terms of the design of Guild Wars 2. The economy is an integral part of how we are rewarded for doing anything in the game. And it’s not just important to GW2, it’s important to any MMO with an in-game economy and cash shop especially. Decisions on what items are account bound/soul bound/not bound at all, whether they are RNG drops or tokens for content, and when and were we get drops are all tied to having and maintaining a functional economy. I would argue that both my and your enjoyment of the game is tied to having an economy that works. The presence of over-inflation is not, as I think you meant to say, the sole metric for good game design. I’m sure many agree.
But back to dungeons, you can’t have this argument about fractal rewards vs dungeon rewards without remembering why fractals were created. Fractals were a vehicle to offer greater challenge and obtain a higher tier gear than the vanilla dungeons/content. Better rewards in Fractals are largely gated behind Agony resistance as compared to vanilla dungeons which were not intended to be gated at all. This concept was in response to the part of the player base who was clamoring for more difficult content and that exotics were too easy to get. Not everyone mind you was asking for this but enough were for Anet to take notice. Guild Wars 2 offers different tiers of rewards for different types of content, and how they are moving forward with Fractals, I don’t believe it’s out of line given our history as a community.
nope, the other MMOs usually have much higher inflation, but they also tend to feel a lot more rewarding for players.
heres the thing every game has an economy, its more important how that economy reacts with players, than that it be stable.
I know that john smith doesnt believe this, he said early on in gw2 early release, he believes stability is the key factor for an economy. After trying his method, then going and playing some wildly imbalanced economy online games, like mtgo, ffxiv, swtor, diablo. marvel heroes etc, i realized that stability is highly overated when compared to reward design. All of those games felt more rewarding, but the economy was far from stable. In those games rewards were motivators rather than demotivators.
Sw chest farming is good for the economy. Dungeon farming is very bad for the economy.
Unless you know why this is the case you aren’t really qualified to talk about what is good and what is bad for the economy. Maybe take a few more economics classes before trying to tell everyone what is good and what is bad for the game.
+1
Cannot be said enough amongst the deluge of qq’ing dungeon farmers.
this is a false statement.
unless you define good for the economy as item inflation and money deflation, which is just a different set of problems.
oh noooo ! this company is trying to sell their product ! how dare they !
problem is they are selling it by nerfing the product they already sold you.
its like an inverse treadmill.
They just push you back instead of having you run in place.
If one group of players can be held responsible for in game inflation, its dungeon runners because they handle the biggest gold faucet in the game.
Flippers actually take gold out of the economy and bring the price spread of an item closer together.
If you think flippers are the source of all evil, there are two simple things you can do to stop them:
Only buy your stuff through buy orders and never sell your stuff to the highest bidder.
Problem solved.
Not entirely true, fractals get more gold, SW get more gold, and even Orr can get more gold per hour then dungeons. Flipping is doing nothing but increasing gold price for some items, and those people don’t even do things, those people are not even players, out there are tons of people that already use tons of applications that already self track best deal items to flip them.
This is ruining game experience and should be stopped, gold flow can be managed through anet, TP abuse cannot be, there for something has to be done!
No, SW and Orr usually reward you with alot of items and mats but not coin, like dungeons do.
You might end up earning more gold per hour in sw instead of dungeon running but thats because you sold most of your loot on the tp, which means that the gold you get for it, has already been in the economy. It is transfered to you from another player and isnt created out of thin air.
Here is an example:
The dungeon runner earns 1g for clearing a path and wants to buy item A with it, which costs 1g on the tp, 70s buy order.The farmer farms item A and sells it directly to the buy order of 70s from the trader, who relists it at 1g, which gets bought by the dungeon runner.
So the item gets sold twice, once for 1g (15s fees and taxes) and once for 70s (10.5s fees and taxes).
The farmer ends up with 59.5s, the trader with 15s, 25.5s are destroyed and the dungeoneer ends up with the items.
So while the dungeon runner only created 1g, which adds to gold inflation, the farmer and the trader didnt really create any gold in the process of buying and selling and farming, in fact, they actually destroyed gold via fees and taxes, which counters gold inflation.
but increases item inflation, and since designers design and adjust with item inflation in mind, end result is no one gets ahead but the trader.
Im not saying they should eliminate traders, but the reality is all farms have an effect.
They announced that they will go forward on Fractals and Raids.
I predict that Fractals will receive a balance pass to reflect HoT gear, Items and Profession changes.
I understand that Raids should fully reflect HoT changes, they are HoT content.
Fractals are Core content. If they receive a HoT balance pass, they become less do-able for the Core player, Core players become undesirable for groups, Core players get pushed down the food chain.
I bought GW2 with the understanding I could play it standalone. There is nothing about HoT that leads me to want to purchase it. I’ll be very annoyed If they change Core content to leverage HoT purchases, but I think it is already in the works.
oh, that already happened
there is a hot only fractal mastery track, that will likely be suggested for further fractal progression past 50.
they are also rescaling difficulty to make it easier to get into.
it will also only take 1 fractal level to progress in fractals
so your level 50, may end up being a lower difficulty level than it used to be.
now my conjecture is, to accompany the lower difficulty, and a faster path to 50, they will likely nerf the rewards for fractal 50.
moral of the story, buy hot.
they are doing very little to make the game feel rewarding or have good incentives for gameplay.
The rewards from the raid, legendary armor precursors, unique skins tied to specific raid bosses etc are all great incentives for gameplay, maybe they will expand it everywhere and we’ll finally get a rewarding game with a working reward system.
Like this game, where they often suggest that the best way to play the game is to ignore the rewards, or if you like a gametype so much, you shouldnt need rewards to play it.
That’s not what the devs are saying though, only forum members. There is still hope.
which they all mentioned as the weekly reward.
the only hope is that they create really interesting non economy based reward structures for content, but lets be honest here.
legendary precursors are only precursors, i fully expect a huge economy grind tied to the finished product.
they really arent adding much to do for people who enjoy challenge
ANet doesn’t want you to farm. ANet doesn’t want you to drone mindlessly, they want you to explore and experience their world.
I understand that for some reason some people can only be happy in a game if they’re earning resources and don’t care about anything else. That the actual activity and interaction with the game is meaningless to them, but that’s what ANet actually wants you to be enjoying.
This isn’t meant to hurt anyone, and honestly it’s not hurting anyone in this virtual world that has no significant impact on your actual lives, it’s just meant to try and shift your priorities.
they want you to drone mindlessly in the overworld.
map completion is not that entertaining
the main problem with your theory is that dungeons provide a fundamentally different paradigm (challenge, teamwork, knowledge) than open world play. For many players if they have to run around doing map completion tasks to get ahead, they would rather not play.
Its the equivalent of telling basketball players they should stop playing basketball and start doing decathalons, its a fundamentally different paradigm.
Having an economist as a game designer, awesome idea… I mean, look at how great economists do in the real world, everything is doing so great isn’kitten
How do you know that they’re not doing anything? Can you imagine how much worse things would be without them? The problem that you’re having is that you’re only seeing what impacts you rather than the grand picture.
they are doing a lot
to ensure a stable economy, and curb player earning
they are doing very little to make the game feel rewarding or have good incentives for gameplay.
essentially reward design in a game needs to be based around game design, or the rewards work at cross purposes to the content.
Like this game, where they often suggest that the best way to play the game is to ignore the rewards, or if you like a gametype so much, you shouldnt need rewards to play it.
I love how when a group can’t down a boss on their first or second try in a beta = Must have Ascended.
content designed based on ascended
+ the best groups needing 5-6 attempts ON THE FIRST MINI BOSS
+ everyone having access to any ascended gear set they want on demand
+ many groups failing after 2 hours, even with ascended ON THE FIRST MINIBOSSS= why are you dragging the team down by not coming with the best stats you can, we failed 4 times already quits team and starts new one with gear checks instituted.
mathematical need isnt really going to come into play.
requiring everyone to have ascended basically ensures better chance of success, and less mastery required to succeed, which makes it a feasible request.most people arent willing to fail 2-3 more times hoping everyone gets 10% more effecient after failing
It’s the first day of brand new content. If there were teams that were taking less than 5-6 tries on a 1 day old boss in a new game mode then the content is too easy.
irrelevant.
point is, if you take 5 to 6 times, you will likely take at least 6-7 times if you have to be better at the game to achieve the same goal
that translates to more time wasted.
which translates to players not wanting to take people who arent the best they can be. People letting an exotic guy join will be the exception, not the rule. Therefore saying you can beat it in exotics is not that relevant. Most people will have to get ascended before people will seriously attempt raids with them.
which is actually what anet figured when designing them. player psychology is an important part of game design.
lets cut to the chase, lets bet, i bet that ascended will be the meta requirement for raids by and large, are you saying that it wont be the case?