23 replies to this topic

[Trei]

... that they do not need to give rewards better than what is existing to entice players to participate in new content?

As long as they are FUN, people will play and people will keep playing them, even if they might be getting more gold per hour etc elsewhere.

Making specific content rewards better than anywhere else in the game is not a sustainable model.

Please have more confidence in your own content, Anet.

[Bloggi]

A lot of us would have played games that in effect, have no vertical progression, and yet they're fun enough for us to play even the same instances repeatedly, except usually with (or against) other players.

On the other hand, some people need rewards and vertical progression to feed their interests.

[Shroomhead Fred]

You're absolutely correct.

They really screwed up with FotM.

Sadly I've lost all confidence in their decision making.

[TGIFrisbie]

Trei, on 14 December 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

... that they do not need to give rewards better than what is existing to entice players to participate in new content?

They learned it in GW1.  However, I have come to conclude not a single developer, producer or designer from the original GW1 is still at Anet.  That is the issue, sadly.

[Runkleford]

Trei, on 14 December 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

... that they do not need to give rewards better than what is existing to entice players to participate in new content?

As long as they are FUN, people will play and people will keep playing them, even if they might be getting more gold per hour etc elsewhere.

Making specific content rewards better than anywhere else in the game is not a sustainable model.

Please have more confidence in your own content, Anet.

It's especially baffling when ANET specifically designed it so that high level players are down scaled in level when in low level areas so that no content is ever outdated and out-leveled to encourage players to spread out across the game world yet they implement content like Fractals, a 5 man instance as the "endgame".

Edited by Runkleford, 14 December 2012 - 03:19 AM.

[ayoblame]

It's a totally sustainable model and has worked in many games in the past. Lets not act as though because you or I don't like something  it's terrible. Will it work for GW2? Only time will tell.

[AKGeo]

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 03:07 AM, said:

They learned it in GW1.  However, I have come to conclude not a single developer, producer or designer from the original GW1 is still at Anet.  That is the issue, sadly.

Um...what part of GW1 was introduced without new, better rewards than what existed currently? Factions had new skins, Nightfall had new skins and inscriptions, hell even back when Sorrow's Furnace was released it was named green items. EotN had dungeons with...yup, you guessed it...new shiny skins. It's all new rewards because they realize that the community doesn't care about the new content unless that new content included shiny stuff to show off to other players.

[Trei]

Of course new content should have new rewards.

But are skins objectively better if you simply don't find them to your preference?

Edited by Trei, 14 December 2012 - 06:27 AM.

[AKGeo]

Trei, on 14 December 2012 - 06:24 AM, said:

Are skins objectively better if you simply don't find them to your preference?

Are outliers a determinant of statistical fact?

Invariably, older weapon skins dropped sharply in price when new skins came available in new chapters, expansions and the free updates. The only weapons that endured were those that had consistently low drop rates, lower than typical requirements, or were uninscribed with "perfect" stats, simply due to rarity. Bone Dragon Staves were ugly. They were also the most valuable EotN dungeon drop. And very few skins outside of EotN came close to that, the Eaglecrest Axe, or the Emerald sword. Even the Obsidian Edge and Eternal blade were late additions, and were rare rewards from chests that had consistently reliable, fast farms. And the Zaishen chest, which only required a goodly sum of coin.

These statistical figures more than support my claim that new skins = "better", at least in the eyes of the majority of the playerbase. There will always be those few who prefer the older skins.

Edited by AKGeo, 14 December 2012 - 06:31 AM.

[Trei]

Hmm... valid point.

But that would only be countering the statement about anet having done so before.

Should the incentive for playing new content be focused on creating rewards players can't refuse?

Would it not be enough for us to play content simply because it is fun, and not because the material gains are just so good that we would be stupid to literally waste time on other content, existing or otherwise?

Now I'm not saying that there should not be good rewards to go with good fun content.
My emphasis is more on rewards or gains that are, in a way, disproportionately higher compared to other areas of the game.

Are we playing the content for the content or solely for the rewards?

If content A is super fun and exciting but rewards no gold, and content B that's nowhere as fun but gives a lot of gold, which would I choose?

Or is super fun and gold rich content C the answer?

Does super rewards automatically make a set of content "fun"?

Edited by Trei, 14 December 2012 - 07:51 AM.

[Trei]

ayoblame, on 14 December 2012 - 03:28 AM, said:

It's a totally sustainable model and has worked in many games in the past. Lets not act as though because you or I don't like something  it's terrible. Will it work for GW2? Only time will tell.

Perhaps "sustainable" is not the appropriate word for this, my bad.

What I mean is that by adding such high material gains and confining it to a small portion of the game, it inevitably leads to a funneling of players.

That's not adding content, its virtually removing content.

[Gecko]

inb4 this has been debated to death and therefore this thread is locked.

[zabiku]

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 03:07 AM, said:

They learned it in GW1.  However, I have come to conclude not a single developer, producer or designer from the original GW1 is still at Anet.  That is the issue, sadly.

This is actually very true. A lot of people forget that a good portion of the development team did in fact leave Anet to work on other projects and in one case start their own studio (Undead Labs). A good portion of ArenaNet is now split between Undead Labs and Riot Games, and a few developers have come out and said that they were not pleased with the decisions the team was making as a whole and wanted no part of the development of the game.

I'm not trying to knock what remains of the originals (albeit there are still a few left working) its just there has been a loss of sight in what Guild Wars as a genre actually stood for. I mean when GW1 was in development people critized them heavily for trying to be different that the omega beast that was to be known as WoW. And the team flat out said "we are not trying to compete with games like WoW and Everquest but offer an alternative to such) because trying to compete and keep both sides of the realm happy is unrealistic. I love GW1 and I love GW2 but the direction to break what was perfectly fine and shove it into GW2 was honestly an insult to dedicated fans that have stuck by Anet for years. Plus I still don't get how GW2 can be called Guild Wars, if their excuse for "guild" pvp is to take to the fields of WvW and have guild's duke it out there. What's the point of calling your game "Guild Wars" if it doesn't even provide it. But I digress.

[Var]

zabiku, on 14 December 2012 - 08:21 AM, said:

Said that they were not pleased with the decisions the team was making as a whole and wanted no part of the development of the game.

I'd like a sourced quote on that.

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 03:07 AM, said:

They learned it in GW1.  However, I have come to conclude not a single developer, producer or designer from the original GW1 is still at Anet.  That is the issue, sadly.

Except you don't seem to remember GW1 at all.
Let me spell it out in nine letters and a space: PvE skills.
And another ten letters and space: power creep.
And just a bit more: heroes.
And even more: consets.

Edited by Var, 14 December 2012 - 08:26 AM.

[TGIFrisbie]

Var, on 14 December 2012 - 08:25 AM, said:

I'd like a sourced quote on that.



Except you don't seem to remember GW1 at all.
Let me spell it out in nine letters and a space: PvE skills.
And another ten letters and space: power creep.
And just a bit more: heroes.
And even more: consets.

You are so deluded.  Let me spell it out for you:  there was NO gear tread mill in GW1.  That is power creep, dude.  Get back to me when you understand what power creep is.

GW1 was a PvP game, heros/henchmen were there to get you through the PvE portion solo if you chose that route.

What is this PvE skills?  You are completely unclear on what you are referencing as something similar to GW2.

I played the first 2 years of GW1.  You, and a previous poster who try to refute what I previously stated are off in the weeds.  Your response doesn't even compute.

There was no verticle progression in GW1, period.  The gear you got in Droknar's Forge was the best stats for the rest of the game, across expansions.

Now to further emphasize, if later they added new junk or made changes AFTER EotN, that is beyond my scope.  The game had gotten boring and the PvE factor worse after Nightfall was released.  Anet decided death was a part of the game to relish in, and they wanted you to experience it at every opportunity.  This is the point I believe the original developers had began to leave the company.  Prior to this the responsiveness of the dev team to community concerns and requests were simply AMAZING.  The entire UI scaling/altering was AMAZING.

Now in case your PvE skills is meant to refer to you had to go around capping elites and whatnot, in PvP you unlocked them by .... PvPing...wow.  Later they introduced the ability to buy Unlocks for PvP, you didn't even have to earn them...kinda cheesy but it gave the ever more casuals more choices.

GW1 was HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION.  PERIOD.  Welcome back to reality.

[raspberry jam]

Trei, on 14 December 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

... that they do not need to give rewards better than what is existing to entice players to participate in new content?

As long as they are FUN, people will play and people will keep playing them, even if they might be getting more gold per hour etc elsewhere.

Making specific content rewards better than anywhere else in the game is not a sustainable model.

Please have more confidence in your own content, Anet.

You are right... Unfortunately GW2 isn't that kind of game. Early on, everything gives rewards, thus you get used to getting rewards. When rewards run out (max level etc.), you don't stop being used to rewards.

Var, on 14 December 2012 - 08:25 AM, said:

power creep.

Power creep isn't vertical progression... It changes the rules of the game, introducing new rules, not progressing your character.

[B3aT]

They screwed with fractals, but not in the new content, based on some post here the new content should be only new areas with trees and 3 mobs ? New content means new entries in items database too (not talking about ascended sh*t).

And still is not so much better reward, I still get tons of rares from Orr farming for ex, sometimes better then fractals.
The new 20 bags for example is new content with fractals, but is related to a 80 dungeon, and for 1 piece it doesn't require grind too, while I played firsts levels (discovering all fractals) was enough to make enough tokens for 1 bag.

Ofc after 10-20-30 lvl of fractals the rewards are a lot bigger, because is a lot harder to complete, I think is proportional with Arah for example, a lot tougher so more fun so more rewards.

[Var]

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

GW1 was a PvP game, heros/henchmen were there to get you through the PvE portion solo if you chose that route.

It was for all of a year, as time progressed the game became ever more PvE focused and PvP became ever worse for wear.

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

What is this PvE skills?  You are completely unclear on what you are referencing as something similar to GW2.

You clearly either never played GW1 or are feigning ignorance to a startling degree. The PvE skills were tier grinds for power; pure and simply vertical progression where inherently stupid amounts of time equated to more and more power of grinding the same thing over and over. Fractals ring farms are nothing in comparison to the nonsense farming it took to reach max rank with any of the two Factions factions, the EotN groups, or the Lightbringer rank.

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

I played the first 2 years of GW1.  You, and a previous poster who try to refute what I previously stated are off in the weeds.  Your response doesn't even compute.

And ya... you've not played very much of a game that lasted far longer than 2 years.

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

There was no verticle progression in GW1, period.  The gear you got in Droknar's Forge was the best stats for the rest of the game, across expansions.

Vertical Progression: http://wiki.guildwar...wiki/PvE_skills

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

Now in case your PvE skills is meant to refer to you had to go around capping elites and whatnot, in PvP you unlocked them by .... PvPing...wow.  Later they introduced the ability to buy Unlocks for PvP, you didn't even have to earn them...kinda cheesy but it gave the ever more casuals more choices.

No, I don't mean the elites. I meant the very, very much more powerful than their equivalent: http://wiki.guildwar...wiki/PvE_skills

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

GW1 was HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION.  PERIOD.  Welcome back to reality.

Keep telling yourself that.

And again, consets: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Consets

Edited by Var, 14 December 2012 - 06:53 PM.

[Killyox]

Trei, on 14 December 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

... that they do not need to give rewards better than what is existing to entice players to participate in new content?

As long as they are FUN, people will play and people will keep playing them, even if they might be getting more gold per hour etc elsewhere.

Making specific content rewards better than anywhere else in the game is not a sustainable model.

Please have more confidence in your own content, Anet.

Unfortunately you are wrong. Not wrong due to ideals because quite frankly i agree with you but wrong because most people feel entitled to be rewarded for having fun. It's like when mother buys her kid an ice cream and the kid feels he needs to be further rewarded.

TGIFrisbie, on 14 December 2012 - 02:35 PM, said:

GW1 was HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION.  PERIOD.  Welcome back to reality.

Yeaaaahhh right. That's why gear for lvl 1-5-10-15-20 has different armor values etc? That's why back in prophecies i had to make infusion runs for every piece of gear so i don't get insta gibbed by muursat's spectral agony... .

Nope. GW1 was not horizontal.

[MazingerZ]

Killyox, on 14 December 2012 - 09:34 PM, said:

Unfortunately you are wrong. Not wrong due to ideals because quite frankly i agree with you but wrong because most people feel entitled to be rewarded for having fun. It's like when mother buys her kid an ice cream and the kid feels he needs to be further rewarded.

Yeaaaahhh right. That's why gear for lvl 1-5-10-15-20 has different armor values etc? That's why back in prophecies i had to make infusion runs for every piece of gear so i don't get insta gibbed by muursat's spectral agony... .

Nope. GW1 was not horizontal.

Horrible analogy.  It's more like the child wants an ice cream cone during a day at Disney World.  And ultimately, that's not very unreasonable.

[asbasb]

Well the subject of VP was brought up in TSW forums as well, and an overwhelming majority(even more than on the official GW2 forums) were for gear progression. If you don't need the new gear to at least perform significantly better, which is the case with cosmetic rewards, then it is not deemed worthy of most player's time.

VP apparently is a very effective way to keep the sense of meaningful progression alive for a large majority of players. Improved player skill cannot be easily quantified, and titles that show ones monumental deeds have no effect on how powerful you are. A lot of dedicated players want to feel better than the unwashed masses(casuals), and the only way for them to truly feel that way is if they know they are objectively better than the rest.

Remember what happened with DoA when Ursan was introduced? Yes, that's what many many players want.
I don't claim to know whether HP purists are in the minority or outnumbered by a factor of 2,3 or more. ANet knows the numbers, and if they have the opportunity to make 10 times as much money with grinders than with skinners, the have to look at what's best for the company's future. There's also the part of the player base that is truly indifferent to either.

My guess is ANet managed to attracted way more people than they anticipated, and a lot of those unplanned customers wanted VP. If the numbers were high enough, it gave them enough confidence to execute project Ascension. They have the numbers, and they aren't stupid enough to plan things like that without knowing what the consequences would be. They even said that they anticipated an outcry, and that they made a mistake. Not the mistake of implementing VP, but not having it in the game in the first place.

VP players are on average more willing to pay real money to progress faster, if the progression is meaningful. So, yeah. If you can make VP players happy(and they are trying to do that with regular shot term content updates), they will make a hell of a lot of money, and I'm thinking that it would dwarf anything they could make from a pure HP crowd.

[Krazzar]

Trei, on 14 December 2012 - 02:36 AM, said:

... that they do not need to give rewards better than what is existing to entice players to participate in new content?

As long as they are FUN, people will play and people will keep playing them, even if they might be getting more gold per hour etc elsewhere.

Making specific content rewards better than anywhere else in the game is not a sustainable model.

Please have more confidence in your own content, Anet.

Game developers have been doing what people clearly show they want.  If people wanted to just have fun and meaningful experiences, as shown by their actions, there wouldn't be a problem for those that actually do want that. Look at the population densities, the best farm spot wins every time in GW1 and GW2.

[Ritter]

And this is the problem I have with MMORPGs gamers . For some reasons they need to have power progression to keep playing, unlike gamers from other genres who play games just because it's fun.

Edited by Ritter, 15 December 2012 - 03:29 AM.

[Trei]

asbasb, on 14 December 2012 - 10:08 PM, said:

Well the subject of VP was brought up in TSW forums as well, and an overwhelming majority(even more than on the official GW2 forums) were for gear progression. If you don't need the new gear to at least perform significantly better, which is the case with cosmetic rewards, then it is not deemed worthy of most player's time.
....

This thread is neither about vertical nor horizontal progression.

Edited by Trei, 15 December 2012 - 03:54 AM.