My perspective on the reward structure

Hi,

Let me start by pointing out all the great things gw2 has to offer. Theres the technical stuff, like the animations, the physics, graphics in general... and of course the combat system. The music is great. The whole world is just... gorgeous. No big gear progression, very little grind.

Except, well... for me the game has been mostly a kind of grind for the last few years. Im logging in, and then my daily schedule starts. Tequatl, daily fractals with friends, VB, AB, TD. Followed mostly by metas I still need for a collection, or when Im working towards something I want to buy... then silverwastes farm. In between, Im going gathering on my daily route. So you can see, even though I cant repeat any of those things (except silverwastes) on the same day, they still become a grind very fast, because Im doing the same thing over and over, each time I log into the game.

The reward structure in gw2, with its daily/weekly rewards makes the game very inflexible and yes, grindy, for me. Most days I actually want to do something different. Like just do raids, or just kill worldbosses. But doing so would mean missing out on those daily rewards and getting pretty much nothing instead. Most days, I have to decide between "do I want to have fun today? or do I want to be productive?", and when I decide to "just" have fun, then theres always this nagging feeling that I should do something else, that theres a chore that I absolutely HAVE to finish before reset.

I know, the intention behind the daily rewards is probably to entice players to try out content and as an anti-grind measure. Thing is, Im still getting burned out grinding. That daily schedule feels like a chore and I cant even enjoy NOT doing it, because I always feel like Im missing out.

Instead of daily rewards, personally Id rather have similar rewards across everything, and additionally repeatable achievements for each category, very much like what we have for dungeons. A special reward for doing X out of Y raid encounters/fractals/worldbosses/map metas/whatever. Keep daily login and daily achievement rewards so its still worthwhile to log in daily. But please, please... remove the daily/weekly restrictions on content. Its slowly, but surely, driving me away.

You say there's very little grind in this game but I would disagree. People will of course have different thresholds and definitions of grind but this game is very much built around repeating the same things over and over.

Now I'm not sure which daily/weekly rewards you're talking about. The normal log in and daily rewards are very easy to get so that wouldn't be it. Could you specify which rewards you speak of?

No doubt the correct choice is fun, but getting nice stuff is also fun. I used to feel the same way, specifically fractals , and before I took a 2 yeah hiatus , HOT metas non stop. I slowly but surely burned out. I did however got what I wanted, skins/legendary weapons to outfit my character.

You'll get to a point where, you'll enjoy the game more when you're able to get that mindset that you don't NEED to do anything. But if what you're doing is fun(I enjoy fractals) and profitable all the better. I just do what I want now for fun and if a skin/item comes along that I want, I'll grind it and won't feel burned out.

It's a game, not a job. You'll enjoy the the journey more with that mindset.

What exactly burns you out grinding? 3 daily tasks that take 15 minutes maximum?This what grind is, that can burn someone, the things we have here are nothing

@phs.6089 said:What exactly burns you out grinding? 3 daily tasks that take 15 minutes maximum?he means the daily rewards from metas.

sometimes i have the same feeling. do i want to have fun or play my metas for the rewards. Fun is more important. Play want you want, because if you dont, you burn out.IMO this game is pure grind. Grind Wars 2. But you have a clear target and can keep working on it.

@Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

@phs.6089 said:What exactly burns you out grinding? 3 daily tasks that take 15 minutes maximum?he means the daily rewards from metas.

You don't know what grind is, no offence.

@phs.6089 said:

@Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

@phs.6089 said:What exactly burns you out grinding? 3 daily tasks that take 15 minutes maximum?he means the daily rewards from metas.

you think you do, but you don't.

compared to other west MMOs, Guild Wars 2 is very grindy. don't compare it to east MMOs.

@Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

@phs.6089 said:

@Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

@phs.6089 said:What exactly burns you out grinding? 3 daily tasks that take 15 minutes maximum?he means the daily rewards from metas.

What is grindy here? After you got your first ascended gear, that takes 26 days max, you are free to go do whatever you want.You literally don't need anything else, you don't need to worry that next expantion/patch will make your gear into trash. Worst case scanario will cost you 30-100 gold to change stats. So what I don't konow? What exactly is grindy here?

@Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

@phs.6089 said:

@Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

@phs.6089 said:What exactly burns you out grinding? 3 daily tasks that take 15 minutes maximum?he means the daily rewards from metas.

I have to agree with phs.6089 on this one.

It depends on the persons subjective perception obviously, but not getting the maximum reward in gold per hour played is not grind, that is more akin to having an OCD which prevents one from going:"I don't need this."

That's just it, most of the perceived dailies are not dailies (when compared within the same metric as other MMO dailies). They are at most reward optimization. Other MMOs actually have substantial daily reward locked behind having to do said content or face: gear depreciation, falling behind in some arbitrary metric, falling behind on some arbitrary goal, getting locked out of content by not achieving a certain title, etc. The worst you suffer in GW2: no 10 AP (until you hit cap) and some loss of account value.

Especially the gear aspect is huge in other games dailies. That just doesn't exist in GW2. You could forfeit any daily content and not even notice the lack of doing them (except actual dailies since that's the only way to hit the AP point cap eventually). That is not the case in other MMOs, even western ones. So if we really wanted to compare grind, we would first have to establish a common definition and subjective guideline of what a daily is.

If you consider everything a daily which resets per day, then yes, GW2 is quite grindy simply because the developers are giving you choice as to what to do, not expecting you to do all of it. Unlike some other MMOs where dailies are more funneled to the highest endgame content and other dailies fall away since they would not reward in a proper way.

Let's take WoW as an example, the game has thousands of dailies (going by the definition of: it can be done daily with unique rewards), 90% of which people do not do because they are of no use towards achieving better gear, etc. WoW doesn't have less dailies, the reward structure is simply designed in a way to encourage people to not do older dailies.

Stop looking at every daily as a requirement and instead as a cap.

There's only the 3 dailies for the 10AP (which stops at 15k). Everything else is just daily capped , whether it is HOT zones such as VB,AB,TD,Dragon's stand , the living story zones (the most popular being istan), world bosses + anomaly, etc.

Over time, I expanding the list of things I was doing every day. They all fell into a clear category of "high value, low effort" activities. It ended up being over an hour worth of stuff. None of it was that much work; collectively, it was exhausting.

So over time, I've been re-evaluating which ones I still enjoy doing, are high-enough value... and which I don't need to do any longer (they were just habit). Now, my "calisthenics" take 15 minutes, if things go wrong. There's plenty of other stuff I can do quickly while waiting for others. But lots of stuff... I stopped completely.

This is a very individual choice. And there are a variety of ways to go about it. I used an analytic approach. Another more visceral method is to go cold turkey from the game for a week (as if on vacation). When you return, you'll find a lot of things you don't want to bother with. Or try playing the game from your laptop with worse GFX and horrid loading screen times... there's a ton of stuff you'd stop doing.

tl;dr do less stuff and focus on maximizing your fun per time spent rather than your profit.

Let's take WoW as an example, the game has thousands of dailies (going by the definition of: it can be done daily with unique rewards), 90% of which people do not do because they are of no use towards achieving better gear, etc. WoW doesn't have less dailies, the reward structure is simply designed in a way to encourage people to not do older dailies.

Wow has endless grinds, reputation grinds (for every alt!) endless AP/azerite grinds (with massive rng on top to make it more grindy) but more importantly lots of grinds that simply are not fun such as completing quests that say 'go kill 10 xxx' time after time after time- and fun is the key for me.

All MMO have grinds/repetitive aspects by nature, but if the repetitive bits are fun then they dont feel like it. Using wow as an example, when i first played battlegrounds years and years ago, i loved the huge alterec valley battles, i was actually a rubbish player most likely but i would get so involved in trying to coordinate my team. I was the same with the other battlegrounds

It didnt feel like a grind even though it took a long time to get a piece of gear as a reward.

@"trev.1045" said:

Let's take WoW as an example, the game has thousands of dailies (going by the definition of: it can be done daily with unique rewards), 90% of which people do not do because they are of no use towards achieving better gear, etc. WoW doesn't have less dailies, the reward structure is simply designed in a way to encourage people to not do older dailies.

I thought about this quite some time, and it describes my problem with gw2 reward structure quite well. The things that would be fun for me - as Id say a typical mmo veteran - are quite unrewarding when repeating them outside of timegated rewards - worldbosses, HoT metas, raids, fractals. And the things that are totally unfun to me - silverwastes and istan - can be repeated (and yes, grinded) for best rewards in the game.And what turns "fun" things into grind, is when you have to do them daily even though you'd rather do something else.Those two things are whats fundamentally wrong with the rewardstructure in gw2.The rewards in gw2 are heavily frontloaded into timegated (dailies, weeklies) rewards, dissuading everyone from repeating content that would normally be fun to them. The only notable difference from this concept is Silverwastes chestfarm, which is my personal definition of grind to begin with.

What we would need instead, is higher and streamlined base rewards. So what if you want to repeat worldbosses... you shouldnt be punished for that. Or raids, or fractals, etc. And thats exactly how it feels. If you want to do whats fun, you get punished for it. If you do what anet dictates you to do, on their schedule, you get rewarded.Daily and weekly extra rewards are fine. They really are. But they shouldnt be the only reward, there shouldnt be such a big discrepancy between timegated and normal reward. Rather those timegated rewards should be used to gain some extra EXP while leveling up, or getting special skins as rewards.

@Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

@phs.6089 said:

@Stalkingwolf.6035 said:

@phs.6089 said:What exactly burns you out grinding? 3 daily tasks that take 15 minutes maximum?he means the daily rewards from metas.

Mmmm. Looking back at FFXI, you literally had to grind to get to max level. Not even talking about grinding for max crafting or or grinding for top-tier grinding gear or event gear or hell, even getting to places around the world required you to do outpost runs so you could continue to fast travel which is in itself a grind since still had to get their by foot.

@Infusion.7149 said:Stop looking at every daily as a requirement and instead as a cap.

There's only the 3 dailies for the 10AP (which stops at 15k). Everything else is just daily capped , whether it is HOT zones such as VB,AB,TD,Dragon's stand , the living story zones (the most popular being istan), world bosses + anomaly, etc.

I've played since mid 2012, I just started actually trying for dailies today. I won't be doing a lot of them, I dont like PvP, though I may eventually try to hit the WvW ones. Point is, this game is as grindy as you want it to be. I'm also not one to spend all day every day playing this game, and often take breaks (a month or so), so I'm not at a loss for things to do.

One of the great things in MMOs, is that there is actually nothing that you HAVE to do.All the obsession with rewards is because I WANT.

@mauried.5608 said:One of the great things in MMOs, is that there is actually nothing that you HAVE to do.All the obsession with rewards is because I WANT.

Thats where you are wrong in gw2's case. You have to do dailies/weeklies if you want to progress anything. Ofc I could treat gw2 as a shiny fluff chat program and not progress my account at all... but thats not really what a mmo should aim for. Everything else, anet went and put all the rewards in a daily chest so you arent tempted to repeat that content more than once a day. And that chest then usually is just participation reward, so it also misses the sense of accomplishment you'd get otherwise.

@Klowdy.3126 said:

@Infusion.7149 said:Stop looking at every daily as a requirement and instead as a cap.

There's only the 3 dailies for the 10AP (which stops at 15k). Everything else is just daily capped , whether it is HOT zones such as VB,AB,TD,Dragon's stand , the living story zones (the most popular being istan), world bosses + anomaly, etc.

You are missing out on a lot if you dont go for the timegated rewards, and Im not talking about daily achievements here... daily loot drops like the Heroic chest you get from doing HoT meta events once a day etc. All PvE legendaries are gated, most collection skins are gated. And whats not directly timegated via the drops you need from daily chests, then is timegated because the only way to effectively farm gold is silverwastes (which is pure grind), or do a daily routine of timegated rewards.

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Stalkingwolf.6035 said:you think you do, but you don't.

compared to other west MMOs, Guild Wars 2 is very grindy. don't compare it to east MMOs.

But then, Final Fantasy IS a eastern MMO.

To the people recommending OP to ignore the grind and "just have fun", there is no clear distinction between the two. MMOrpgs, like GW2, are still rpgs and in those a major gameplay pillar is decking out your character with stuff that improves them either statistically and/or aesthetically. Obviously since there is no gear grind after ascended, you are left with the aesthetic part after a point in this game.

Here lies the issue though, we are not getting a steady stream of new activities in game, rewarding new gear " skins". What we are getting instead is a steady stream of cash store skins and on occasion a skin in game that usually looks worse and is still locked behind grind. The gameplay loop of "kill stuff/boss and get shiny (or a chance at it)" is very rare in GW2, with the exception of some old content like Teq or the ridiculously low RNG infusions. That only leaves one option, you grind , to get mats, to sell for gold, to finally get the "shiny" from the store using the constantly rising gem exchange. In order to engage in the "fun" of customizing your character's gear (fashion wars), you have to grind, there is no way around that. This game desperately needs new activities rewarding exciting loot drops even if they have to employ some (sensible) RNG and make them bound to account.

@Yasi.9065 said:

@mauried.5608 said:One of the great things in MMOs, is that there is actually nothing that you HAVE to do.All the obsession with rewards is because I WANT.

@Klowdy.3126 said:

@Infusion.7149 said:Stop looking at every daily as a requirement and instead as a cap.

There's only the 3 dailies for the 10AP (which stops at 15k). Everything else is just daily capped , whether it is HOT zones such as VB,AB,TD,Dragon's stand , the living story zones (the most popular being istan), world bosses + anomaly, etc.

@Leo G.4501 said:

@"Stalkingwolf.6035" said:you think you do, but you don't.

compared to other west MMOs, Guild Wars 2 is very grindy. don't compare it to east MMOs.

And you missed the part where I said this game doesn't encompass my life. I play this game for fun. I'm sure I "miss out on a lot," but I do not care, even a little. I've crafted a full set of ascended gear, and focused on doing time gates stuff, and then I left for six months. Since returning, and only doing things I want, I'm much happier, and much more willing to come back daily to do my own thing. You always miss out on something by skipping the grind, in every single MMO in existence, but what does that matter if you don't enjoy playing the game? I'm not working toward anything but my own personal progression, and actually enjoying RPG aspects of this game, not the MMO part. I'm not missing out on anything, because in the end, it's all to have fun, not to have a boring daily routine.

@Yasi.9065 said:

@"mauried.5608" said:One of the great things in MMOs, is that there is actually nothing that you HAVE to do.All the obsession with rewards is because I WANT.

And maybe that is what's wrong with MMO's as a game genre. They're about "encouraging" people to play often and a lot at a time rather than encouraging people to play when they want to to have fun. That they get away with it is probably a result of a lot of psychological stuff that is not worth discussing, but there is a real question whether the play styles that fit the business model are healthy.

Everything else, anet went and put all the rewards in a daily chest so you arent tempted to repeat that content more than once a day. And that chest then usually is just participation reward, so it also misses the sense of accomplishment you'd get otherwise.

GW2's design offers those who have bought into the MMO paradigm the opportunity to pursue a lot of different things in a given day. This allows them to play many hours per day while also allowing those who use the game at a more sane pace to still have fun and get some virtual fluff as a reward.

As to "sense of accomplishment" ... this is a video game. The idea that someone somehow "needs" a sense of accomplishment from doing things in such games is one of the poster children for modern society's struggle with nihilism.

@"AlexxxDelta.1806" said:To the people recommending OP to ignore the grind and "just have fun", there is no clear distinction between the two. MMOrpgs, like GW2, are still rpgs and in those a major gameplay pillar is decking out your character with stuff that improves them either statistically and/or aesthetically. Obviously since there is no gear grind after ascended, you are left with the aesthetic part after a point in this game.

Here lies the issue though, we are not getting a steady stream of new activities in game, rewarding new gear " skins". What we are getting instead is a steady stream of cash store skins and on occasion a skin in game that usually looks worse and is still locked behind grind. The gameplay loop of "kill stuff/boss and get shiny (or a chance at it)" is very rare in GW2, with the exception of some old content like Teq or the ridiculously low RNG infusions. That only leaves one option, you grind , to get mats, to sell for gold, to finally get the "shiny" from the store using the constantly rising gem exchange. In order to engage in the "fun" of customizing your character's gear (fashion wars), you have to grind, there is no way around that. This game desperately needs new activities rewarding exciting loot drops even if they have to employ some (sensible) RNG and make them bound to account.

Very nicely put, thanks.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@Yasi.9065 said:

@mauried.5608 said:One of the great things in MMOs, is that there is actually nothing that you HAVE to do.All the obsession with rewards is because I WANT.

For one thing, what you are referring to is already quite frowned upon by most western mmo publishers. Sure, theres one especially big black sheep out there, but "time spend equals rewards" hasnt been a thing for years really. The change from subscription to f2p made that obsolete really.The other thing is, you completely misunderstand me. Im not advocating the old or eastern mmo model. Not at all. How to put this most directly. What Im advocating, is that everything in the game should give as much rewards in terms of normal currencies (mats, gold, karma, exp) as opening chests in silverwastes. Everything "extra", like skins, or map currencies that unlock extra rewards, should be kept in timegated chests.The difference between a "normal player" doing a daily farm routine, and farming silverwastes is already pretty slim, this change would ergo not necessitate for players to spend more time ingame.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@Yasi.9065 said:Everything else, anet went and put all the rewards in a daily chest so you arent tempted to repeat that content more than once a day. And that chest then usually is just participation reward, so it also misses the sense of accomplishment you'd get otherwise.

I disagree. GW2 is designed in a way that Im forced to do different things, if I like them or not, if I want to not "waste my time". And those playing the game only every few days miss out on the daily rewards in between. So in a sense, that system is bad for both sides. Those playing a lot gain a lot, but only by playing the game in a rather un-fun way. And those not playing a lot also dont get a lot, AND they have to still adhere to the same strict schedule like those playing a lot.No, Im sorry, but daily login rewards already take care of the "casual" crowd not loosing out. The timegated rewards punish everybody, Id even go so far as to say, they punish gamers with less time even more, because they have trouble adhering to the schedule for optimal daily farming.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:As to "sense of accomplishment" ... this is a video game. The idea that someone somehow "needs" a sense of accomplishment from doing things in such games is one of the poster children for modern society's struggle with nihilism.

No clue what Nietzsche has to do with rewards being rewarding, but sure.

In my experience, GW2 is one of the least grindy MMOs out there.

@"Yasi.9065" said:But then, Final Fantasy IS a eastern MMO.

Whatever happened to the whole "diversity is our strength" nonsense? I guess progressiveness doesn't extend to MMOs lol

@Leo G.4501 said:

@"Yasi.9065" said:But then, Final Fantasy IS a eastern MMO.

You answer someone that expressly says "dont compare to eastern mmo" by comparing to eastern mmo. Thats nothing to do with diversity.

Well... you say that you're doing the same thing every day, and that's becoming a grind. So you only have to switch up what you're doing from day to day. You do Tequatl every day, but you can also do Triple Trouble for a daily 2g. You can do your very basic dailies, like daily completionist, daily gathering, and daily crafting at no cost to you, and in very little time. But pick a day where you only do things that you wanna do that day. A day for farming gold, a day for farming achievements, a day for gathering, a day for raids, a day for legendary crafting...

Put all your eggs in one basket and you'll see how full and unbearable it gets. You're already feeling the fatigue. If it's that bad then just take a break from the game, and come back with a fresh perspective. If it helps: sit down and figure out what you can do daily that's very easy to achieve. Decide if you want to do those first thing when you log in, or leave it as the last thing you do for the night. Fill in the rest of the day with whatever your heart desires.

Above all else, do not overload yourself trying to do everything in a single day...