Make repeat story completions more rewarding.

So we all know about how most mobs, especially in recent story releases, do not give exp and loot once destroyed. I'm guessing that is an attempt to prevent farming or abuse. But, as I run through HoT story to complete the auric and chak weapon collections, I find the rewards... lackluster. I then realized, the only reason I'm doing the story is for achievements. The same with Path of Fire, but boy would I choose that story to repeat over HoT...

PoF required 3? maybe 4 completions for all the achievements with alternative characters. But auric and chak weapons requires 16 run throughs (because each story mission in auric basin and tangled depths rewards one weapon for its respectable weapon set at completion).

16!

That is more alts than I have! Nonetheless, dont fixate on that point. It only served to make me think about motivation and rewards. I have very little reason to complete story other than actual enjoyment of the storytelling, and that ended quickly with HoT, less so with PoF, because I find that story engaging and dialogue rich.

So what's the call to action? Well, it's in the title; Make repeat story completion more rewarding. I can see the fear of creating alts solely for story completion rewards IE key farming, but I am sure there is a better balance than me completing 2 missions from the end of HoT, only to not complete it because the rewards are garbo and I'm just there for the weapon skins/Achievements.

FYI, you can craft the auric weapons and get the chak ones from the vendor using TD tokens

@Randulf.7614 said:FYI, you can craft the auric weapons and get the chak ones from the vendor using TD tokens

Thanks! but I crunched some numbers and doing the story is much faster.

@The Night Fox.6018 said:So we all know about how most mobs, especially in recent story releases, do not give exp and loot once destroyed. I'm guessing that is an attempt to prevent farming or abuse. But, as I run through HoT story to complete the auric and chak weapon collections, I find the rewards... lackluster. I then realized, the only reason I'm doing the story is for achievements. The same with Path of Fire, but boy would I choose that story to repeat over HoT...

Running through HoT takes about 1.5 hours due to how the checkpoints work and how you can basically run through most missions not having to wait on npcs and dialogue (I should know, I've done it on over 20 characters). That's not possible on PoF missions or at least not on most.

@The Night Fox.6018 said:

PoF required 3? maybe 4 completions for all the achievements with alternative characters. But auric and chak weapons requires 16 run throughs (because each story mission in auric basin and tangled depths rewards one weapon for its respectable weapon set at completion).

PoF removed the weapon achievements from the story. Those are purely outside of the story now so I'm not sure what you want to say.

That said, no you can't run the HoT story 16 times for the chack weapons. That only works for the auric weapons.

http://dulfy.net/2015/11/08/gw2-hot-weapons-armor-and-backpieces-guide/

@The Night Fox.6018 said:That is more alts than I have! Nonetheless, dont fixate on that point. It only served to make me think about motivation and rewards. I have very little reason to complete story other than actual enjoyment of the storytelling, and that ended quickly with HoT, less so with PoF, because I find that story engaging and dialogue rich.

Then don't run the story for those achievements. They are available via meta events and map rewards and the story was never designed to be solely run repeatedly for the skins (though it is possible).

@The Night Fox.6018 said:

So what's the call to action? Well, it's in the title; Make repeat story completion more rewarding. I can see the fear of creating alts solely for story completion rewards IE key farming, but I am sure there is a better balance than me completing 2 missions from the end of HoT, only to not complete it because the rewards are garbo and I'm just there for the weapon skins/Achievements.

The HoT stories main reward is the Viper or Trailblazer exotic reward box at the end of episode 15, not the skins earlier. It's a better reward than most story rewards and allows people to get easy and cheap access to these stats.

Running various HoT metas for tokens/mats was much faster & less tedious for me than repeating the story, as @Cyninja.2954 said above. If you enjoy the story (and variations depending on race or prof, as there are sometimes), then, sure, re-run story. But otherwise, it's just simpler to join the community in open world.

@Cyninja.2954

Thanks for the breakdown!... though it's what I was advising against by saying "That is more alts than I have! Nonetheless, dont fixate on that point."

Was trying to talk about motivation for repeating the story, the enticement per se. Besides that, you do make some valuable points! For example, the HoT rewards tossing out exotics, it may be because I'm a perfectionist when it comes to gear (I won't run anything in a raid that I am not 95% prepared via gear/build). Subjectively, and I know this applies to others, there is NO reason for me to continue the story past a certain point because of paltry rewards. Your point that it is rewarding to someone else doesnt improve my concern. And you do mention the alternative means to get the weapons for HoT, which furthers my frustration that the rewards of HoT story are not that great!

Again... loooooots of fixation on the means of alternative achievement of chak and auric weapons in this thread... which is what I was hoping to avoid, because I explicitly stated that I already knew of its existence.

I don't need counseling for trying to get from point A to point B which everyone here is trying to do, but I want to discuss that the journey from point A to point B should be traveled (completing the story) because there is content to be enjoyed with different alts that have different combat styles and challenges to overcome. I would like more reasons to do the story again. THATS IT! How about we proceed without any knowledge of the chak and auric weapon sets, because that is like a lead weight on the conversation when it should have been a primer...

My reason for discussing the rewarding of repeating story is that I like what's in place, and the content is pretty neat. BUT I am not incentivized to repeat the story! This would also apply to the living story segments! I hope in the next few seasons, and the coming expansion, I would have a reason to use different classes in the story because Id like to try the challenges presented with the variation of combat that comes with changing between a necro and a ranger.

I want to beat the mind of modremoth with my decked out scourge and see if I know the class well enough, because that guy is a toughy (relatively speaking)! But why bother? I get an exotic... oh yeah. No, man. Even a 1 AP chieve would be better incentive. maybe 9 total for completing it on every class, with a title, or something. ANYTHING to let players enjoy the content further.

I'd be okay with adding a few more rewards to the PoF story.

Offhand, HoT has:

• Bladed armor box (Wiki says Head, but I thought one path was Head and the other Shoulders).
• Auric weapon
• Chak weapon (not all are available)
• Black lion key
• Leystone armor box
• Viper/Minstrel/Trailblazer armor box
• Random Exotic

I can't recall a single reward that I would repeat the PoF story for. And checking the wiki there are zero exotics. Two instances give Lost Saddlebags which supposedly have a (very low?) chance for a named Sunspear weapon. My suggestion would be something along the lines of:

• Box with Exotic Sunspear weapon (not named) or ~100-250 trade contracts at the conclusion of Ch1 (The Sacrifice).
• Box with Exotic Mordant weapon (not named) or ~100-250 trade contracts at the conclusion of Ch2 (The Way Forward)
• Armor box with choice of one Spearmarshal, Bounty hunter or Warbeast piece or a Black lion key at the conclusion of Ch3 (To Kill a God)

This gives a similar number of exotics to HoT (3 vs 5 as opposed to 0 vs 5). All three are part of collections so you can slowly work toward completing them at a reduced cost through story, then as an alternate reward trade contracts or a black lion key if you don't need/want the exotics.

I'm finding this whole thing an oxymoron? "Make the story more rewarding by adding more rewards to farm, but not enough to be abused", when thats pretty much whats going to happen when put emphasis on a better reward. In fact, thats the entire premise of this suggestion..... "make the story give more rewards, so I can abuse it, rather then doing that other method that already exists and does exactly what I need it to do".

Its kind of hard to not fixate on that point, when its the foundation of the entire discussion.

@The Night Fox.6018 said:@Cyninja.2954

Thanks for the breakdown!... though it's what I was advising against by saying "That is more alts than I have! Nonetheless, dont fixate on that point."

Was trying to talk about motivation for repeating the story, the enticement per se.

It's a double edged sword. Make story to rewarding, and you hurt the games economy. Make it not rewarding enough and players will barely play it. That's on top of the entire difficulty debate (where I personally think base story should be easy while challenge motes/modes should be difficult).

Personally I would love for Arenanet to add a bit more story unique skins/rewards or some other goodies which are not directly market place related to encourage players to play the story multiple times. Achievements and challenge motes sort of cover this, but not every one enjoys achievement hunting.

I feel they sort of did this with the armor skins gained from the PoF story. They simply didn't implement the necessity to replay the content multiple times. If my memory serves me right, picking any of the armor pieces unlocks all skins. I might be mistaken though since I finished the story on multiple characters.

As far as story delivery, yes I enjoyed PoF a lot more than HoT too. Mostly because HoT felt a bit rushed while PoF seemed as though Arenanet got most of the stuff in they were aiming for. The actual story and lore was great in both, but HoT felt more in touch with the games main premise.

Here's an idea: Standardize all rewards through the entire game, so you earn the same no matter what you do, as long as you maintain a certain activity level (kill a mob every 5 min or similar depending on mode). That would let people play whatever they wanted to, not what is the most rewarding.

Obviously a few things are supposed to be locked to specific stuff, like the gifts in their respective modes, and skins to dungeons etc. I'm talking about the actual loot gold/green/blues/mats etc.

On 8/31/2018 at 5:57 PM, starlinvf.1358 said:

I'm finding this whole thing an oxymoron? "Make the story more rewarding by adding more rewards to farm, but not enough to be abused", when thats pretty much whats going to happen when put emphasis on a better reward. In fact, thats the entire premise of this suggestion..... "make the story give more rewards, so I can abuse it, rather then doing that other method that already exists and does exactly what I need it to do".

Its kind of hard to not fixate on that point, when its the foundation of the entire discussion.

personally i dont see what the difference is between running a storyline for rewards vs running meta events ect. it lets solo players earn something or players to help eachother. i dont like meta events or grinding non stop and helping new players is not really possible. i can however replay the expansion storyline with more enjoyment that killing random mobs aand events repeatedlly with 200 other people killling the same mobs.

Rewards are fine. Not everything needs to reward a legendary.

If Anet's goal is to encourage players to interact with the community, then rewarding repeat completions of the story would negatively impact that goal.  Repeat rewards for story completion encourages single player play.

I really liked how in guild wars 1 completing a campaign rewarded something rare or hard to get and it felt good. And it felt like it was even worth it after doing the same campaign on a different character.

Usually it was a currency that could be traded to a vendor for a weapon. Once was good enough, but getting that currency again on a second character was still very cool, because then you could pick something else in that vendor's list.

I can only remember a token that you could exchange for a weapon given after completing Prophesies.  Did the other campaigns have something similar?

15 hours ago, DarcShriek.5829 said:

If Anet's goal is to encourage players to interact with the community, then rewarding repeat completions of the story would negatively impact that goal.  Repeat rewards for story completion encourages single player play.

Maybe, but I go and help people with stories they can't get through quite frequently and often I get no reward at all for doing so. I don't think anyone thinks playing stories should be massively rewarding, but it would be nice to get something. I'm going to do it anyway.  It would feel better to have a chest at the end, even if the reward is small.

why are we ressing this topic?

On 2/23/2022 at 8:40 PM, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I can only remember a token that you could exchange for a weapon given after completing Prophesies.  Did the other campaigns have something similar?

You get an amulet to trade in with any one of the adepts. And there is a phoenix to tame.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Divine_Path

edit: I had it look it up but Nightfall did a similar thing, but the token was a Book of Secrets to trade in with Keepers of Secrets for items. https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Book_of_Secrets

Ah, cool.  Thanks.

Of course, those were Campaigns and not expansions.  Did Eye of the North give something similar?

On 2/24/2022 at 1:53 AM, Redfeather.6401 said:

I really liked how in guild wars 1 completing a campaign rewarded something rare or hard to get and it felt good. And it felt like it was even worth it after doing the same campaign on a different character.

Usually it was a currency that could be traded to a vendor for a weapon. Once was good enough, but getting that currency again on a second character was still very cool, because then you could pick something else in that vendor's list.

This is what i was missing in gw2.. 

Its also why i really like the knight of thorn side story.. it feels like it gives a big reward for completing HoT

2 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Did Eye of the North give something similar?

Yes. Beyond also had one. wiki

Nice.