Guild Wars 2

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

You are in the wrong office. This is abuse. Arguments is next door.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

I think I love you.

I’d rather run with a well-geared player trying to learn how to play the meta well than people in Clerics that swear they’re keeping the group alive with their heals, and won’t hear otherwise.

Ropechef.6192:

I also PuG alot simply because well…. 3 am fractals are difficult to come by.

Amen to that. I’ll see you there.

Man, it is hit and miss. I pug quite a bit (often with a warrior buddy), and we take the good with the bad. I will agree that I rarely get off my Guard, because when I do, I’m at the mercy of staff/scepter guys that think WoR is either cheese or don’t understand how it works. There’s often one guy that has some anti-meta build (probably not on purpose, just ignorant of it), like a ranger that camps longbow (even in melee) or thieves camping shortbow (even in melee). But, as everyone knows, it doesn’t really matter, because four spastics with safety helmets and sippy cups can finish CoFp1 in 10 minutes.

But here’s the point. There are opportunities in pugging, if you look for them. I love the starry-eyed, fresh faced kid with 800ap, that says this is his first dungeon. Or that tells us he tried AC once, but the Queen just ate them alive until bed time. And then he says, and this is the important bit, “It’s all confusing. I just need someone to show me how it works”. I’ll run every kitten path with that guy, all night long. I’ll even drag him into fractals, just cause. I’m a sucker for someone who wants to learn.

Then sometimes, every now and again, the stars align and it all comes together. You get 5 guys that know the path, that are running the good gear, that bothered to pop consumables, that don’t even talk in chat, because they’re too busy playing and there’s no need anyway, and things just evaporate under the glare of our dps. That’s so fun, especially in light of the previous pug I just did with a staff necro and a rifle warrior and one guy that never made it out of LA but we didn’t bother to kick…

But what really spins my top is when I get a pro in a pug. Like a guy that just has us along to laugh at his jokes, because he’s totally comfortable soloing the thing anyway. Why is it great? It makes me play better. I try to rise to the occasion, I want things to go smoothly, I don’t want to waste an opportunity to play with someone on the next level from where I’m at, and I want to maybe learn a trick to two. Those nights, the paths just go by too quickly.

So yeah, it is hit and miss, you take the good with the bad, and when life hands you lemons, you make lemon-scented naplam. Such is the life of a pugger.

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, and props to SC for the win. You guys made a crappy, boring day at work bearable.

Tyops.5894:

How about you respect the contributions of the thousands of players who have spent thousands of hours posting to the class forums, do your home work, and read your own forums. Everything you want is there ten times over.

This approach (along with the CDI) may appear inclusive but in fact it disregards all the information that has been shared with you by players who have quit or temporarily left the game. One might think that their insights would be valuable.

Quoting for absolute truth. You want to know the state of play for each profession? It’s right there. Over and over. The player community have picked apart, analyzed, and crunched numbers over tens of thousands of man hours of gameplay and given feedback. It’s a view from the trenches, coming from people that have spent massive amounts of time actually playing what you created. Listen to them.

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Am I a minority? I really doubt it. Who honestly doesn’t agree that the encounter design should simulate a fantasy combat? Who honestly doesn’t agree that encouraging stacking gets away from this ideal?

I guess the issue that people have with stacking is the trivialization of the encounter. With a good group firing on all cylinders, bosses melt so fast that they might as well have not been there at all. Again, this is Anet’s fault, if anyone’s. There’s no exploit, there’s no magic, it’s just using the system to its fullest extent. All the bells and whistles, so to speak. It should also be pointed out that stacking only works because people know what to do – fury, might, good dps rotations, timed dodges, etc. That’s what makes stacking work, and it’s not always a given that everything’s going to happen right.

If you don’t find the encounter challenging, why not take steps to make it? Solo it. Duo it. Range it. Do it naked. Use a sub-optimal build that you enjoy playing. I agree in a perfect world, Anet would have made the encounters more dynamic and more engaging. That’s not to say melee shouldn’t be a part of it, but there’s lots of ways to split things up where not everyone needs to stack up and burst. WoW, for all its faults, did bosses pretty well – they were often an intricate dance of environmental effects coupled with changing boss abilities. We see very little of that in GW2, and coupled with increased melee damage and combo fields, stacking up and meleeing rules the day.

The bottom line is that Anet did this to themselves, and to us. You can fault the design all you want, but don’t fault the players for optimizing themselves for the encounter. I’d expect that when an expansion drops, there’ll be new dungeons, and that Anet will have learned a bit about encounter design under their system. I really doubt new dungeons will be more of the same. By the same token, they’ve got a lot of irons in the fire, and no dedicated dungeon team revisiting current content, so I wouldn’t expect a change in how things are any time soon.

One word: Mechanics.

Faux pegged it with his list. Stacking happens because the game mechanics reward it. All the buttons we mash while playing are enhanced by players being in close proximity to each other. Melee does more damage than ranged. Combo field effects happen because people are on each other. That’s the way the game was designed. If you take issue with that, it’s Anet’s fault and up to Anet to change it.

If you want to build a house with nothing but a hammer and a handsaw, you can do it. It’ll be long, hard and tedious, but it’ll get done with enough effort. These days, most of us would like to use power tools and air nailers to cut down the time and effort, either so we can build more houses or so we can sit on the porch we built and drink lemonade.

I’d love to see the option for a White list for whispers, be it your Friends list or a separate list, with the option to switch between the current system. For me, that’d be a happy medium between how it is now and a complete blackout option. There are times when people want to be social, and times when they want some quiet time to themselves. I think a White list would facilitate that.

I also find it interesting that ArenaNet obviously wants to promote this style of play over the big ‘press 1’ mobbing zerg, but hasn’t given us any tools to do so. Coordination is this game is terribly hard to do, with a lackluster chat system, small party system and rudimentary visual tools. While I agree that the idea is correct, the implementation is very, very wrong. It’s like asking us to dig a lake, then handing us shovels instead of heavy equipment.

If they’re not going to give us the tools to communicate and organize amongst ourselves, they need to find ways on their side to promote that gameplay, whether it’s corralling us into pens a la Marionette, or a buff system like what was implemented with the ButtKnights. Hell, even instancing small content like the Pavilion zones would work. You could bring a party of guildies, or just the first 5/10/15 through the gate. Regardless, one or the other, our side or theirs, needs to have the organization to support the gameplay, and it just doesn’t right now.

CC Danicia.1394:

Hey all, just a quick note. Earning higher tiers of reward in the Boss Blitz in the Queen’s Pavilion is a great way to earn Festival Tokens, and Queen’s Gauntlet tickets – the rewards that the other activities within the festival give as well. If you check your inventory, you should see the tokens & tickets you have received.

That is not at all what we’re talking about.

Romo.3709:

The only problem is that you never told us 1) That we’re getting any potato related material 2) That you’re even in the kitchen.
We came to this lack of understanding at this point is because we were expecting potato, even raw one at that, but as we ask you about it, you can’t answer because you’re out in Chinese Restaurant.
Before you went out you fixed up a dish. It needed some salt and pepper, maybe some other spices, but they’re nowhere to be found.
So as we eat this under-prepared meal, we are waiting for that potato to come along.

#wheresmysaltandpepper

This hit the nail on the head. In perfect analogy as well. Have a potato, sir.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I just wanted to take the time to make it clear that we are indeed reading all the feedback, not just about Megasverver but in many areas of this forum, others and in game.

As Colin has mentioned in the past Megaserver technology is a multi phase release and we are monitoring\discussing it every day.

We are very focused on a multitude of areas of GW2 including China and excited for our new global community and what lies ahead.

I wanted to say that I agree with the concerns around the post on twitter. I have a very small number of followers and rarely catch up on my account and following a very late night earlier this week caught up on my notifications and replied. I am a strong believer in exposition to all and will be more careful about this moving forward.

Regarding Dev communication on the forums currently, as I said we are very focused on a number of areas currently and are looking forward to being able to turn our attention to healthy discussions with you all soon.

This post is not designed to appease, it is designed to inform so please take it in the spirit in which it was intended.

Chris

Thank you for taking the time to post. I think this is exactly what we needed to hear. You obviously can’t please all the people all the time, or address everyone’s concerns individually, but small communications here and there to know you’re at least looking at our feedback helps.

Good luck with the China release. Launches are madness; try to keep up on your sleep.

I’ve been playing less since the April 15th patch. It isn’t a conscious decision; I just haven’t felt the draw to sit down and play like I did prior. So many things about the community have lost their luster for me with the megaserver. Not only has it screwed up being able to hang out on the same map with guild members, it’s also hard to just find some quiet time to run around and do stuff by myself or with a few friends. Every event is a hoard of people. And then there’s the world bosses. And temples. And trying to solo champs. And all the other fun stuff that’s filled my time in Tyria.

Now that the megaserver is live on all maps, I’d guess that I’ll find myself playing even less. Maybe if they finally figure out that they’ve screwed their game up, I’ll feel the urge to come back and see if they can manage to fix it. Oh well. Nothing good lasts forever.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to – where is the harm in having more Daily options? The broad truth is that this change may indeed bring more people to other play modes, but very few are going to be willing participants. I know that on paper it looks better (for investors, NCSoft, managers, whoever) to say ‘we have x more people playing this part’, but if those people are coerced, would rather be somewhere else, and are finding the easiest route to finish the daily and leaving, where is the long term benefit?

Two idioms come to mind here. ‘You catch more flies with honey than vinegar’, and ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink’. This isn’t a productive way to get what you want. You need to savvy up to the fact that of all the thousands of people playing Guild Wars 2, not all of them are going to like all of it. All you’re doing by limited choices is making your player base upset, with very little upside to you in the long run.

Completely disappointed in this change. To move to less options for players and call it a feature is backwards thinking. Honestly, if Anet wants to motivate people to try new game modes, they need to incentivize those modes with overall rewards – which they did do to some extent with this patch. They’ll get players that hadn’t tried those modes in there, and some of them will stay. Mission accomplished.

But taking what is supposedly an activity that everyone, everywhere can enjoy and try for, and then shoving players into modes they don’t care for to try to complete a basic activity that supposed should appeal to everyone is terrible.

This isn’t jut about only having 5 options per mode. There are some people that loath jumping puzzles and will never do them. There are some people who will never participate in the Daily Activities. Some people will enjoy and do all those things, but by taking away options, you’re reducing the overall ability of people to work towards and enjoy what has become a basic function in the game, and a reason for many people to log in.

Please revisit this Anet. It’s a bad decision.

And here we are. Almost a week after the announcement and 20 pages later, we’ve had one weak response from a developer regarding our concerns.

I won’t go the “I’m quitting, you can have my stuff” route, but I’m definitely going to be spending more of my time (and money) elsewhere for a while. I’ve always supported Anet and their business model, but if the sad marketing machine that they’ve become can’t address 20 pages of players concerns in a direct and forward manner, I don’t feel the need to spend any more money with them. Quid pro quo.

MRA.4758:

First of all, I am not asking about politics here, so the socialism analogy is inaccurate. I am asking about an in-game mechanic. And as far as I understand, especially a multi-player game like GW2 should aim for “fun for everyone”, or “fun socialism”, if you find this term more fitting.

Socialism is first and foremost an economic model. The politics come into play when a government uses Socialism as an economic model. For example, the US isn’t a Capitalist state (I know, I know Let’s not argue about it), it’s a representative democracy that uses capitalism as its basic economic model. In that regard, the socialism statement is completely correct.

My understanding is that the prices of these items are so high because there are many financially potent buyers willing and able to pay that price.

Your understanding is indeed incorrect. The prices are high because of basic supply and demand. Things like Sigils and Runes are based on RNG drops. There’s a very finite amount, and everyone wants Bloodlust and Force and Night and Scholars and what have you. High end food and many other high demand items are made from rare items that only drop in a few locations. Omnoms, Ori, Lodestones – they all are expensive because everyone would like them and the things made from them, but there aren’t enough to go around.

The result of this is that in a free market model like GW2 (or most of the real world), prices are matched to what the market will bare. This is, I think, what you’re getting at. If I get a Charged Lodestone drop, which currently goes for around 2.5g, I’d be foolish to list it at 10g and expect someone to actually buy it. I can do it, but it ain’t gonna work. On the other end, if I list it for 50s, someone’s going to snatch it up fast, but I’ve shorted myself around 2g on the deal. These prices aren’t the result of a few people with a lot of money. It’s the result of aggregate market forces pushing and pulling the price until it finds a happy medium.

You have to remember, these things aren’t stocks. They’re not just swapped back and forth by the rich and powerful to make a bit off each transaction. They’re consumed and leave the economy through crafting and use. That keeps demand high and supply low. If Anet changed CoE armor to all have Superior Scholar Runes instead of Golemancer, you’d see the price of Scholar Runes drop from 4g to nothing over night. High supply = low prices, and there’s nothing that any of the people with thousands of gold could do about it. There’s also lesser, and almost equivalent, items that are available for much, much less, so unless you’re into min/maxing, you’re really not missing out on anything.

For all these players, not having much in-game currency means that there are items and parts of the game that are very hard or nigh impossible to access (crafting the recent ascended backpiece item is a good example for such a very hard to reach content). Now, you can of course say “suck it bro, your problem, you should have farmed CoF like me, haha!”. Or, you could ask yourself whether an in-game mechanic is conceivable that allows all players a somewhat similar — but by no means “completely equal” — access to the different parts of the game, and without forcing one half of the player base to adopt the play style of the other half.

Outside of high level Fractals, I can’t think of anything that’s actually off limits to players because of money. Obviously the Fractal situation is one, because you need enough AR to survive, and that costs money (though the first tier is completely doable by people in normal dungeon running gear). Other than that, I’ve run dungeons just fine in Rares, and Exotics aren’t hard to come by, either through drops or dungeon tokens.

What you have to remember and appreciate is Anet’s position in this. They made a game for people to play, and the people playing need things to do. Part of that is having long term goals, and they need players to stick around for awhile trying to reach them. Time sinks are just part of MMOs. If everyone gets what they want quickly, companies have to produce more large content for people to consume, which is an expensive and time-consuming endevour. I think Anet’s actually done a pretty admirable job keeping the playing field level. You hit 80, you generally have enough cash/tokens/badges etc to get into the end game and WvW or run dungeons or what have you, then the rewards slowly trickle in. You decide you want an ascended weapon, so you slowly accumulate materials and craft your way to 500 and make it. It’s a long term thing, not something meant to be done in a few days. After gear, everything is really cosmetic, so you’re still on a level playing field with those that can afford the big ticket items. While you might not have everything you want in game, not having a lot of gold doesn’t put people at any real disadvantage mechanically.

DiogoSilva.7089:

eleshazar.6902:

If my whole guild can’t get into a map and keeps getting split because you can’t shove out randoms… gg.

Like how it already happens in the current system?

EDIT: At least as the path of some slight compromise can you leave cities alone so that we still have one place where I server community isn’t destroyed?

I’ve been playing GW2 since beta, and so far, this concept of “Server community” has been nothing but a myth. What server community? Where is it? I’ve never seen such a thing in almost two years of playing this game, and the only people I occasionally meet often are guild members and friends… which is not always easy to do because of the existence of servers in the first place.

And the whole RP issue can be fixed by Anet dedicated an server to RP for each region. Which I hope they do.

It’s absolutely not a myth. If you haven’t encountered it, I’m sorry. I’d guess it has something to do with where you play and your personal modes of interaction.

In-game relationships can be broken down into two general categories – those you seek out, and those you happen upon. What you’re talking about (friends and guild members) are in the first category. The second is what he’s talking about. People you meet during farming, or leveling, or the Boss trains, or Temple events. Because of the generally closed nature of a server, you tend to see the same people over and over again, and if you positively interact with them over a long enough period of time, you get to know them. At that point, maybe they move into the first category – you friend list them, you actively seek to do things with them. Or maybe not. Maybe you just say ‘hey’ when you see them in a city, or in WvW. Maybe you only see them when running a train. But it doesn’t diminish the fact that the closed system has bred friendship by proximity for a lot of people. That’s something that’ll be completely upended under the Megaserver. Not to say that you’ll never see the same people, or that you won’t make new friends, but it does lessen the sense of identity tied to server population for many people.

AcidicVision.5498:

Also, it breaks the #$#$%%#%$##%ing map. Hello out there, do any of you not see that as an issue? Implementing a thing that breaks half a dozen other things and just put a bow on it and call it a feature…seem a bit weird? To anyone else?

This is the real point that people should be taking away from all this. Forget my complete displeasure with the whole Boss Event schedule. Skip the disruption to communities that have been built up over a year and a half of play. Ignore the game breaking for RPers. The Megaserver is going to make it so you have to waypoint twice and spend twice as much in WP fees, spend more time running, endure multiple loading screens, create lag, have no good route to popular dungeons – this affects everyone, not some small, “elite” set of players. That should be enough to show the player base and Anet that something is severely wrong with this implementation. There has to be a better way to get the results they want.

JackDaniels.1697:

Bosses like Teq spawning frequently makes the event lose it’s luster. That’s why I for one like the change that Anet is doing with this.

And it really boggles my mind why people jump on the hate bangwagon so fast when they haven’t even tried the patch yet, and also the overflow system we have now is horrible for a lot of people trying to participate in these world bosses events.

So just like we figured out how to get around the overflow system, we will figure this one out too. So patience young ones.

And people need to stop panicking, Anet did say they will make adjustments to this new system before it goes out live to all maps.

So give it a chance, than you can give your feedback/constructive criticism to Anet. Because right now you all sound like spoiled brats.

I’m sorry you feel like we’re spoiled brats. We’re just trying to make our opinions on the matter heard. You’re obviously welcome to have a different opinion.

We’re basing our criticisms off the information they’ve given us. If they’d like different criticism, they should give us more or different information. We’re making judgement based off the facts on the ground. There’s no ‘trying it’ – we know how it’s going to work, because they told us. The boss schedule, the waypoints and the dungeons, which are the three major points of contention, are fairly straightforward bits of information. And we don’t like some of the the changes. The issue is that by the time it goes live, it’s harder to change (because you’re making changes to a live server vs a test server). So we’re talking about it now.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

Are there really that many people who enjoy organizing small parties to take on a world boss that just happens to be up right now and isn’t being fought by a large group?

In my experience, yes, there are. I certainly can’t speak for everyone, or across all servers, but I certainly enjoy doing it, and know plenty of other people that do as well. Generally all it takes it working the pres to the point where the boss is about up (if necessary), then announcing it in a major hub and in /map. I’ve also commonly seen a few members of a guild taking down a world boss if there’s not a train up, and have never had an issue joining in.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

synk.8762:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:…

You’re either missing or not addressing what people are saying: that we don’t want to play on a schedule, regardless of what that schedule is. While the current setup may not be optimal in a lot of ways, it’s better than the train schedule that you’ve proposed. This isn’t about “I’m going to miss this or that”, it’s about being constrained to a very artificial limitation you’re implementing. This does have ramifications about missing things, but that’s not really the point.

At the end of the day, a strict schedule makes the game less fun for a lot of players.

On the other hand, a lot of players prefer having a schedule to plan around, and this may help eliminate the current situation where the world boss zerg takes out bosses for a couple hours after reset, and everyone who misses the train is out of luck because no one is taking on events for the remaining 20 hours.

But there’s nothing preventing people from getting a group together and doing those bosses under the current system. Yes, the Boss train is the most efficient way of doing those events (arguably not the most fun), but under the current system, most of the bosses or the pre-events are up a lot more than they will be after the proposed system. Two nights ago I helped kill Shatterer at about 1am server time. There were about 15-20 people there (several leaked in after we started). It was an epic, fun fight, down to the wire. Just because you miss the train doesn’t mean you missed the boss under the current system.

Also, world bosses scale quite well to smaller parties. Golem and several others are actually soloable if you have a bit of experience with them, and outside of Temples, most are doable by 5 or 10 people. In short, the proposed schedule is a huge step backwards to scheduling, by removing many chances to organize a group to go kill bosses. As it stands, once the system goes into effect, if you’re not on for an attempt, you’ve missed it. Under the current system, you can go back in an hour or so and give it another go.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:…

You’re either missing or not addressing what people are saying: that we don’t want to play on a schedule, regardless of what that schedule is. While the current setup may not be optimal in a lot of ways, it’s better than the train schedule that you’ve proposed. This isn’t about “I’m going to miss this or that”, it’s about being constrained to a very artificial limitation you’re implementing. This does have ramifications about missing things, but that’s not really the point.

At the end of the day, a strict schedule makes the game less fun for a lot of players.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Furthermore, if we have a single boss at a time, we’ll always have to fight with the full zerg, and I think I don’t have to tell developers that killing Frozen Maw or Inquest Golem with 5 people is a lot faster and more fun than a 10-minute auto-attack on a gigantic HP bag upscaled by a large zerg who had no other bosses to do anyway. This is a design decision which will make the game less comfortable with the new system.

I was just about to post something to this effect. The new system means that people won’t stumble across a few folks working an encounter. It means that you and a couple buddies can’t go have an epic battle against Boss X. Scheduling World Bosses means that people either join the zerg or don’t. Scheduling these things takes so much of the spontaneity and fun out of it.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I really like to know, why are some people so against joining big and organised guilds?

There are so many benefits, from my perspective anyway. Why I like being in a large guild:
-Biweekly guild missions, very high success rate (except when a GM is bugged).
-Many other events we organise (such as guild quiz and guild lottery)
-Doing many things with your guildies, in an organised way (like wvw or dungeons)
-Access to a guild forum, facebook group and voice chat (in this case mumble).
-It’s very social, met many people there whom I now consider my friends
-Guild passive bonusses
-Now world events are added to the list

Why are people so resistant to having this?
This is a serious question btw, I’m really curious about this.

For a lot of reasons. For me, it’s mainly about not getting lost in the crowd and the smaller cliques that naturally arise from have a lot of people in one larger group. Some people prefer the familiarity and closeness of a small, tight-knit group.

Also, everything you listed above is available in smaller 10-20 man guilds. It certainly is in my smaller guild, and I’m sure it’s true of many others.

To the point of the thread, prior to the announced changes, you could have both – be in a small guild and still participate in larger world events. It would seem that’s mostly changing.

Logged in just to echo the ‘this is bad’ sentiment you’re seeing over and over. Yesterday’s announcement was well received, until you dropped the fine print on us. In short, the benefits don’t outweigh the costs here. The obvious issues of making several popular dungeons hard to get to, as well as waypoint visibility adds up to major headache for your gamers.

GW2 is now a year and a half old. Other than some episodic content (ie LS) that for the most part hasn’t stuck around, there’s very little new to do in game. People that have stuck around make use of quick dungeon runs and the world boss train to fill in the gaps of something to do. You’ve completely turned that on its ear, and not for the better.

As others have mentioned, the increases time spent waypointing around the map is a hassle, but the real issue with the new waypoint/dungeon visibility is loading times. Not everyone has a high end system, and spending an extra 30+ seconds every time you try to get somewhere isn’t ok.

As to the World Bosses, what you’ve suggested is going to dismantle a fun and vibrant community that transends guilds and worlds. Whoever built the schedule of bosses did very little to take into account work and sleep schedules of people in different timezones. The lack of any sort of overlap or choice structure is also a big letdown. While I’m sure the new scheduling won’t completely ruin what’s because several enjoyable hours in a large group (can you say that of any other content in the game right now?), I’m sure it will have an adverse effect. Please revisit your overhaul of this.

While I agree that better populated zones are a nice idea, you risk alienating a large chunk of your player base with the downside to these changes. Go back to the drawing board, put your thinking caps back on, and come up with better solutions that don’t hurt a majority of your player base.

That looks like a good summary. Thanks again Chris for your input, visibility, and patience around this CDI. I’m definitely looking forward to see what comes of it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi,

I don’t think you are being contentious at all and you put forward a compelling argument. However we try where possible to seed core gameplay rewards across the game. It seems like we have a few inconsistencies in the live environment so I will discuss this paradigm with the rewards team.

This said Ranger pets have abilities and putting a unique pet in the fractals with say unique abilities could be a huge barrier to entry for some players and that is where my concern comes from. The fact is fractal skins do no change the way a player uses his character whereas a pet with unique abilities does.

I hope this provides some more insight.

Chris

Will you elaborate on how you feel about his idea to make the pets just be new skins, without any unique abilities?

Personally I like that idea.

Chris

Right, that’s more along the lines of what I was thinking — sorry I wasn’t more clear. I agree that placing abilities behind a wall, be it Fractals, or dungeons, or WvW, isn’t a great idea. I do believe having something of a trophy item that says “hey, look what I did” is a great lure for people to explore content. It also has a lot of precedent from GW1. Seeing a person in full Obsidian armor meant something, at least for the first couple years. They’d been through some of the hardest content in the game and brought something back, regardless of whether it benefited then mechanically. That certainly has an allure to a part of the player base. Reskinning pets with the same abilities would be a nice way to show off what you did, without a mechanical advantage.

As an aside, I think part of the issue with Fractal rewards is there’s no middle ground. You either get a glut of items (relics, rings, etc) or you’re chasing an illusive 0.05% drop (weapon skins), while tiring of the content and common rewards. Things like unique pets and armor/weapon skins could fill that void, and make players feel like they’re getting something for their accomplishments. Obviously that’s something that’s been addressed here (ad infinatum) and something you’re working on. I look forward to the results!

As someone who used to work in the art side of the industry, I know that models and textures don’t just show up on a truck at the warehouse. There’re hundreds of man-hours that go into making and testing these things, and as you say, demand is high. What about reusing what you’ve already made, and having skins appropriate to the Fractal type have a chance to drop? Aetherized skins in Aether Fractals, Fused skins in Dredge or Molten, etc etc. You could even make them account bound so as not to tank the market for BL scraps. I think something like this would keep your art and QA overhead low while providing that middle ground for people to keep coming back and looking for additional rewards.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I would worry that those Rangers that don’t do Fractals would feel left out. However i think this is a really interesting global reward idea so I will pass it on to the rewards team.

Thanks Wolfey,

Chris

Could you expound a bit on why this is an issue for you? There are pets that are available in a limited frame of areas and different level ranges, just like some weapon skins only drop in certain areas. If the difference between, say, a Jade Spider and a Cave Spider was purely cosmetic, then you’re not talking about vertical progression at all. The guy that has the Jade version has no advantage over the guy with the Cave Spider. All that’s going on here is cosmetic changes, and perhaps some bragging rights.

I honestly don’t see a difference between things like area specific Ranger pets and Fractal skins. Likewise, if players want WvW armor, they need to go to WvW. Or the massive amount of varied PvE that people need for Ascended gear. Or locking Cultural T3 behind a gold wall. They all require playing in a certain area of the game for more than a passing moment. In fact, I’d suggest that these are exactly the kinds of rewards that work for Fractals. It benefits the players that run them with a cosmetic benefit, without an imbalance. I believe that’s an excellent way to get people interested in the content without forcing them there.

I promise I’m not trying to be contentious here. I’d just like to get a firmer grasp on the how and why of rewards being matched with content.

As i ve said before, i dont think homogenizing them to be all the same in length and difficulty is a great design. the idea is to create a lot of different experiences, with different goals, and skill sets required.

For example, swamp is one of the worst fractals for newbies to get, it requires much more knowledge, experience, and coordination than many other fractals. I remember for the first few months it was one of the most hated by far.

Swamp is actually a good fractal, now imagine they put some senseless killing in the water that uses up an additional 5 minutes, does that really make a better fractal?

Not to mention, when fractals are very varied, it creates various feelings when you get a roll. relief, a feeling of luckiness, even the feeling of OH BOY we gotta do this now, is something i dont think they should try to get rid of.

That said, they should definately reward you for overcoming greater challenges

Sorry, I probably should have explained better, but I was trying to keep it brief.

I totally agree that they shouldn’t be homogenized. I was more thinking of a triangle of the three functions, with difficulty, length, and reward on each vertices. A given fractal would be somewhere within the triangle. So homogenized would be all fractals dead center, of equal values for difficulty, length and reward. What I’d like to see, and I think what you’re suggesting, is that some be skewed towards length, possibly with lower difficulty. Others might be short and difficult, with higher reward. The point being that they’re balanced with regards to all three.

What we don’t need is the possibility of a short, easy, high reward fractal and a long, hard, low reward fractal in the same tier, which leads to people trying to optimize their runs by rerolling. I guess what I’d like to see is a holistic rebalancing of difficulty, length and reward within tiers, which would keep a given fractal fun and rewarding versus the other possibilities.

I think if all Fractals are equal (for time, rewards, difficulty), rerolling becomes a non-issue. Tune the various Fractals to be similarly scaled with regards to time and effort and I believe people wouldn’t be so prone to reroll. A polish pass to bring all of them in line (especially Dredge, since it’s overly long/difficult) might mitigate a need to work on rolling.