draxynnic

Dasviidonja, on 14 May 2013 - 12:53 AM, said:

The only problem is that you chose the wrong game.

Anet never intended for GW2 to focus on the gear threadmill. How you even missed that is beyond me.

If you think WoW's popularity is attributed to bumping of a few bytes of data in the data file of a virtual item, you need to play more MMOs. The last few major MMO releases were all standard gear threadmills with vertical progression. Did you get the memo about what happened to them?

Dasviidonja, on 14 May 2013 - 12:53 AM, said:

The whole point behind GW1 was horizontal progression. If GW2 also goes this route, it is a perfectly viable alternative (or supplement).

But in order to do so, there must be some emphasis given to balance between classes. Which is why it does matter how the different classes/roles/playstyles rank against each other.

When GW2 feels grindy to me, it's because there are limited ways to get the things I need.

For example, when I'm leveling a toon, the game doesn't feel grindy at all.  Pretty much anything I do will dump XP on my head, from WvW to completing zones, to gathering, to crafting.  I can play whatever I'm in the mood for on any given day, and I will advance my character.

Examples in the other direction are numerous.

If I'm currently trying to get enough gold together to buy something off the trading post, I need to either farm dragon events, run dungeons, or run around in Orr.  If I choose to WvW I will make a tiny trickle of money or break even depending on how well my server is doing.  If I run around a zone that is rated for less than level 70, I won't make significant money.

If I'm currently trying to finish out my gear with BiS trinkets, I can do my daily, run fractals, or do my guild missions for the week.  Anything else will not get me closer to that goal.

This is when it starts to feel like grind.  When I choose what to do with my play time based on the reward it will give me rather than on what seems to be the most fun, that is grind.

El Duderino, on 10 May 2013 - 04:15 PM, said:

It kind of burns to admit it, but early WoW had many fights that met this criterion. movement and placement (not huddling in a corner) were critical. Observation of the boss' state was critical. We really need fights that make us think, make us move, make us plan our use of skills - what we don't need is an escalated to-the-roof DPS battle between players and bosses, where the only other mechanic that matters is dodging. And, not that my opinion matters, but one-hitting is very lame. If I'm fighting poorly and losing, let me feel it. "oops I'm dead" is flat, emotionally. Make me suffer a bit if I'm being beaten by a boss...make me feel the pain. I'd rather lose sometimes to a superior opponent; losing to a nuclear blast is not a contest.

A 1st year birthday present that isn't linked to the gem store.

Your statement that this is why Guild Wars 2 feels more grindy is... not entirely correct.

First, realize that the skinnerbox theory works with almost all RPGs and stuff beyond, including (if we are to believe the video, Solitaire) However, we're playing an (MMO)RPG, so we should discuss it relative to other MMORPGs.

Now, compare GW2 to WoW, when I played WoW I felt the compulsion to continue way after it's fun. The game is positively built around behaviorism theories. Arenanet consciously went away from these theories and made a more honest game. That's why it's a lot easier to stop content in GW 2 after it's stopped being fun. Me and my friend have had breaks, sometimes days, sometimes weeks sometimes months. We hop from one kind of content to another depending on what we find most fun at the time.

Since we're talking relative to MMOs and WoW is much grindier then GW 2, we must conclude that Skinner Box cannot be a satisfying answer. I would give an alternative one, I would suggest that GW 2 suffers from a similar problem as Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. The monsters HP are simply bloated. I encountered this both as a player and as a GM. I solved it by mentally decreasing the monsters HP by a certain percentage and increasing their damage by another. The players were ecstatic, they didn't understand why but they found the combat to be not just faster, but also fun exciting and challenging.

Now, when 5 people who are playing Heroes (and yes, all our characters are supposedly heroes) spend a full five min pounding on a lieutenant of a gang (not their leader, no, a mere lieutenant) it can feel a bit grindy. When you mindlessly go around, without any real challenge and start discussing dinner plans next Saturday while pounding a boss, it can feel a bit grindy.

I wanted to do dungeons for fun. Yeah. I remember doing stuff for fun in Guild Wars. But that was when I was decked with everything my heart desired and could focus on the things I enjoyed, and do everything there was to be done (often with stupid handicaps, like, using balanced teams or protection monks).

But now? I have to constantly be counting money, count my laurels like they were pennys to save them for gear I don't even need but should. Or working painstakingly for cosmetics that have insane requisites beyone my meager ability to gather currency. Would I really stop playing if I got my Foefire weapon a month ago? Or did I really had to do Arah twenty six times to deck myself in the coolest armor ever, when I could do it in six and continue running for the heck of it, like I'm doing right now? And do Ectos all have to come from stupid items that sometimes refuse to drop?

Wha happened to Anet I loved and cared for? Where did they go? And who are those imposters that took their place...

Sandpit, on 20 March 2013 - 10:18 PM, said:

Well I for one love the engineer and am glad they put them in.

As for mesmers, you can't have GW without mesmers. It's like a Halo game without bad story telling, not natural.

Hellspawn2323, on 18 January 2013 - 06:09 PM, said:

You should probably ask yourself, if the game you're playing does not have enough replayability (as in, content that is fun enough for you to keep playing it multiple times without tiring) to keep you entertained without a gear treadmill, is the game really worth your time and money? The mentality that you need a stat treadmill to enjoy a game is a peculiar one in my opinion. Video games are designed around being fun, something that's an entertaining experience (at least the vast majority of the time) from begging to end, not something you do just to get rewards to feel "awesome". I've actually spoken to a guildy years ago during WOTLK I believe in a raid guild I was in who told me the only reason to play WoW is to get gear. That's it. I also read a forum post on the official WoW forums some time ago where a WoW player outright said that the content is "garbage" or something along those lines, and that the gear is why he plays. He forces himself through game content that he finds unenjoyable to just to get better gear. That just boggles my mind.

My point is, video games are meant to be played because you actually enjoy the game itself, not only a reward that it gives you, but the actual freaking gameplay is enjoyable. Sure, you can play for rewards, like collectables, achievements, but shouldn't you have an enjoyable time doing it? It's like a job, something you don't really enjoy (at least not enough to do it x amount of hours per week without a paycheck) that you do only because you get rewarded for doing it, and if they stopped giving you your reward, you'd stop doing it. Why? Because you don't truly enjoy it, or else they wouldn't need to give you an incentive to do it, you'd just do it because you like doing it. Like art, I like to draw, I could have a job as an artist, and if they stopped paying me, I'd still keep drawing. Why? Because I actually like drawing, and I don't need a bloody incentive to do something I enjoy. I do it because I actually like doing it for the pure sake of doing it.


If the game itself is not enjoyable enough for you to play simply for that reason alone, and you need some meaningless incentive to keep playing the game, it's either not a good game, or you've simply burned out from it and need to give it a break (perhaps a permanent one).

My reason for "not wanting" mounts is:

Developing them needs people, time, efforts from devs

Game has already enought stuff they need to do BEFORE this total superfluous things.

I think cosmetic rewards work just fine in Guild Wars 2 even though it is more of a traditional MMO than what Guild Wars was like.  I think the biggest issue with the genre is that many people play a MMO as if that is the only game ever available and that they have to spent every available hour playing this game or else they will be left behind.  This is true when looking at almost any other MMO on the market but GW2 is a different game.  Until the fractuals, you weren't left behind if you decided to take a break from the game.  And it worked just fine, the problem comes from people playing GW2 as if it is the only game in existence at the moment.  

I think a good solution would be to introduce weapon and armor skin that drop from boss mobs in both dungeons and world events.  No more grinding for tokens, just a high chance of a boss dropping x,y, or z skins to be used.  This would send people back to do content they may have completed in the first month (Ascalonian Catacombs for example), and keep the game fresh without resorting to a carrot on a stick type of incentive.  The devs already have access to the GW1 weapon and armor skins, and theres no reason why every Prophecies campaign weapon and armor skin shouldn't be in GW2 as a skin or even an item drop from a boss.

At the end of the day though GW2 was based around not chasing after another tier of gear and instead of trying to change a game into something it wasn't founded on why not play one of the myriad of other games out that have exactly what you want.  New MMOs will always be coming out and the vast majority of them will have the WoW model of gear progression.  So hop on your favorite MMO review website and see what is up and coming if you want a new game with the same old model that we are used to.

XPhiler, on 21 January 2013 - 08:38 AM, said:

I am the hero of my story. I am the hero of Tyria. I'm the dude who stopped the Lich, I'm the dude who killed Shiro, I stopped a freaking god for crying out loud. Now I'm taking out dragons, elder dragons. When I play the hero of my story, I'm not a scrub, I'm not wearing rags, I'm wearing the best gear you can get. I'm as powerful as you can get. Is it because I need +100 awesome to defeat my opponent? No, I could slay the undead in my underwear. I wear the most powerful equipment because that's what my character is. It's powerful, not some scrub walking around in greens or yellows.

I ran through most of the game with gear 20 levels lower than me, most of us did - the TP was constantly down and unless you were grinding a lot or getting lucky with level appropriate drops, you made do with what you found. I killed Zhaitan in greens and blues. I ran my first dungeon (TA) in the same armour. I could have completed the hardest content in the game (probably Arah at the time) with the crappy underlevelled, weak tier gear I had on. Why do I still care about best in slot gear, despite being able to complete all the content in the game (aside from high level fractals) without it, despite hating gear grind? Because my character isn't just another warrior, it's not just another face in the crowd, it's a top tier hero that can up against the biggest threats and compete just as well or better than anyone else. The noticable performance difference is also important.

The person with the wrong thinking is you, for claiming I think ascended gear is required for any content other than fractals, I said no such thing. I said regardless of whether it's required or not, best in slot is always going to be a default expectation of a gamer. It has a foundation in performance. You can do things in ascended gear you can't do in masterwork, bigger crits, higher condition ticks, take less damage from attacks, have more health. These things matter and will have a noticable impact on your performance. It could be the difference between killing the enemy players in WvW, nuking the zerg running through that doorway, surviving that thief that tried to gank, living long enough to revive a downed ally in a dungeon, pushing all your stats far enough can take on more mobs in Orr than you could before, last longer alone against that dungeon boss when the rest of your party wiped. Ascended gear helps you do all these things. When players are building their characters and decide what they want at level 80, very few of them say they want to be second rate. I like to be the best I can be, to do that I need ascended gear. I can still access all content without it, I can perform well in every dungeon, event or WvW without it, but I will perform better with it.

It's inevitable that when you raise the ceiling on gear stats, the majority of players will strive to reach that ceiling again, not because they enjoy grinding but because they enjoy being the best. They have that before you raise th ceiling, you just made them grind again (illusion of content) to get back to the same place they were at before, only now they have to use more transmutation stones and other resources.

Arquenya, on 18 January 2013 - 10:42 AM, said:

I would love a game which is only steps 2 and 3. In fact that's why I love MtG, since that is only about 2 and 3.

But I want to say something about your stage 1 there. It's all wrong. First off, games usually have way too much leveling. Take a game with really short leveling: GW1. 20 levels. If you move at a rather high pace with your first character, in Prophecies, maybe you'll do it in 24 hours in-game time. Hell wait, let's make it much shorter: your first character is in Factions, and takes 5 hours to hit max.

FIVE HOURS. Now consider that many AAA games sold nowadays have entire single-player campaigns of that length. And those games expect people to have a better-than-rudimentary grasp of the game mechanics after as little as a couple of levels, say 1-2 hours in. And most players actually think that that is slow. If you play a shooter, and hand grenades is introduced after one hour, then the reason is absolutely not that players can't deal with them earlier.

So why would we consider MMO players so retarded, stupid, completely incapable of learning anything, that they need 20, 40, 80 levels to learn game mechanics that are, let's face it, extremely simplistic to begin with? That is just wrong. The reason to have levels of that kind, and level-locked game mechanics such as GW2's traits, is to stretch content as much as possible. Not to teach players slowly.

Second, ask any psychologist: the easiest way to mess up learning is to learn a system that is continually changing but which stops changing after a while. Because first you'll learn to play at level 1, then when you level up a bit you'll learn to play that level. And then you'll realize that everything you learned is wrong because the rules, the stats, are always changing. So then you learn to play a system that changes. And then you hit max and again everything you learned is wrong because the rules aren't changing anymore. All this time you learned to use things that should actually not be used the way you learned them because the assumptions you had when you learned them are no longer valid.
The way to teach people to play is to give them the game. Yes individual skills can be handed out one by one. But as for things typically attached to levels, such as health and trait/ability points, those should be 100% (or nearly so) right from the start.

I think the thing about GW1 that made it so appealing to play was that you didn't have to worry about gearing and leveling nearly as much. Seriously if you played the nightfall campaign, you could ferry to consulate docks and buy max gear at level 2 and never have to worry constantly about buying new armor and weapons. Level 20 was easy to achieve and the price of non-cosmetic max weapons was laughable(WHICH I THINK IS A GOOD THING). This is why I found that going for cosmetic weapons and armors was acceptable. In GW2 You have to worry constantly about new armor and weapons even when you reached level 80. Not to mention how freakin long it takes to get to max level compared to the first game.

Shiren, on 16 January 2013 - 04:57 AM, said:

Personally I find GW2 FAR MORE confusing than GW. Especially all the trait stuff, with healing/crit in one line for one class, crit/condition damage in another and all the skills that may have or may not have to do with the stats that come with it. And it's different for every class.

Sometimes it doesn't make a lot of sense, for instance guardians and warriors hardly have any viable weapon setups with conditions, yet there's seperate trait lines for condition damage and duration, Are they both useless? Do I waste my points or do the skills make up for them? Or like the warrior shout build, generally accepted as one of the best warrior builds.While I actually don't want even more vitality (as warriors already have an abundance of it) but rather toughness - but shout means vitality so you have to take it.

I fail to see the logic behind it. GW was far, far more straightforward.

To quote that Anet post:

Quote

The bold part is important I think to prevent taking this out of context. If they banned everyone who made a few ectos off this then I would agree that that's harsh. However they only banned those who made significant use of the exploit and made a profit thus messing with the economy.

I wouldn't have perma-banned them though, they really need a better penalty system. First strike is a warning for those who think they're doing no harm, second strike to show they mean business and the third strike you're out.