If all extrinsic rewards were removed...

What content would you play? That is, playing the game gives you no further skins, gear, consumables, cosmetics, or gold. No experience or WXP or rank or karma or AP or titles. No UBM or VM or berries or crystals or fractal relics. Assume you've already got all desired abilities unlocked, and BiS gear with whatever stats and skins you prefer.

If the only thing you ever got from playing GW2 content was the experience of playing that content, what would you spend your time doing in the game? Or would you quit altogether?

Same I've always done, never really care that much about the rewards, you get "something" for almost anything anyways. What drives me away is when fights gets boring, when the mobs are too easy or just hp sponges, or single gimmicks etc. Or when the balancing and power creep in wvw gets so silly I just don't enjoy it any-longer.

As long as I have fun fighting and killing stuff, I'm happy. Darn, that makes me sound like a murder-hobo...

Fractals and building racetracks in the guildhall I think :)

It would probably also result in elitists who just do raids to "finish them as quickly and efficiently as possible" to not raid anymore, so I might get into raids with people who actually enjoy playing them and getting better at it together instead of rushing through to get their stuff.

There is no enjoyment in something that offers 0 challenge, 0 reward.

I would probably still strive to finish every raid, every dungeon path, every event, for completions sake. But once that is done there is nothing that would further interest me, so I either wait until something new was added or I uninstall the game. It's nothing more than a single player game you played for the story once and then uninstalled after you said "ok, that was a good experience", or a bad one if you're unlucky.

@"perilisk.1874" said:If all extrinsic rewards were removed...What content would you play?

Mostly the same as what I do now: fractals, sometimes raids, all the time LS and new maps, sometimes metas. I try to min|max my fun-per-time-spent, not my "potential fun from earnings by spending too much time now grinding."Some things would change, as I like to work on chieves and acquiring skins (whether collection-oriented or not), just not that much.

I enjoy exploring/map completion. So, I'd still do that, just as I've always done. And the stories, as well, I suppose. Which are a kind of exploration. Just like seeing/hearing/experiencing things I haven't before, and many times things I have.

Well, the most sensible thing to do would be to challenge my friend to a game of 'look at this tall thing I climbed on.'

Even with all the rewards now, beating her is still the most challenging end-game content available.

PvP as all they afk/iddle farmers and win traders would be gone

Same as I do now. Fractals (CM's) and Raids, and some WvW and sPvP as well as Story when it comes out.

The engaging experience is most of the reason to play it, rewards are to keep you around longterm.

The same thing I've been doing for the past few years - soloing stuff and helping people in fractals.

Aside of that, the dps-meter has always been a bigger motivation for me to play than the rewards.My motivation was min-maxing and to become better at what I've already done.

This game needs a new lvl cap and next living world season with lvl 85+ monsters that way people would spend time lvling up like it happens in other mmo's , lvl 80 is so easy to achieve and its been there since 2012 right? omg...

Better and unique rewards beyond the 0.0001% chance for some cosmetic infusion, neither ascended gear or exotics im talking bout something like the zodiac set or stuff you would see only in the gem store, its called "incentive" and when you give a couple of 60s items with mats people goes to SW instead because investing more time doing such boss/event 10000 times and get nothing but items worth some silver and exotics at best is not the way for making people repeat the challenge again and again, this goes for world bosses, meta events and living world maps.

More "dragon stand" meta events, that one is awesome like a dungeon run that finish with the boss battle, haven't seen anything like that since HoT why?

Another WvW map/mode where the most powerful/smart faction could keep the castle for a whole week and then on weekends the castle would be "vulnerable" again, i imagine 10000000000 guys preparing to invade the castle and take it back, doing a massive siege for hours and lots of action or a "mists" map only available on weekends, maybe just saturday, for some hours only where all the WvW community could siege a fortress being held by some "mists warlord" npc or any faction and when the siege is over winner would get some nice title, skin (a crown idk) or something special like +10% gold, luck buff, skins (just one piece that way ppl would siege every weekend to complete the set).

anyway it needs a new lvl of challenge & rewards, we know everything is just the same but "different" in appearance, skins & visual effects, it doesn't have to be p2w or have the "korean mmo grind" style but it wouldnt hurt if we get some in a very controlled & reasonable way , bringing some challenge for some weeks or months till most ppl catches up coz gw2 raids are very difficult and just a few participate and then the regular pve stuff is just too meh, "been there done that, 'ill go back to sw farm...".

Same as I do now. I've played since launch, I have three accounts and I play pretty much every day. Without rewards none of that would change. I use virtually none of the rewards I get and haven't for a very long time. I just stick them in the bank and forget them. I set the looks of all my characters when they dinged 80 and almost never change them so cosmetics are meaningless. I set my builds the same way and only ever change them if something ANet does completely breaks them. Mostly I play Staff Eles in Tempest builds from HoT that haven't changed for four years.

About the only actual "reward" that interests me these days is my WvW rank and my progrees towards the 50k kill achievement. If those were removed, though, I'd still play the same amount ofWvW anyway. I play GW2 because I like the look and feel of the game, the animations, the spell effects and the fluidity of the combat.

I'd keep doing mostly the same things too. I spend most of my time playing through the stories and exploring PvE maps and either it's stuff I've done before so any rewards I get are minimal or I don't even know there is a reward or what it will be until I've completed it. For example when I did the dwarven ruin puzzle/s in Desert Highlands I didn't actually know what was down there, I was just exploring because it was there. Admittedly when I thought I'd finished I did use the achievements to check if there was anything I'd missed, but again only because I wanted to make sure I did everything, I don't think I actually wanted any of them.

Honestly though it shouldn't be surprising that people would keep playing, and keep playing the same things, without rewards as an incentive. Outside of GW2 the rewards are utterly meaningless, you can't use any of them outside the game and getting them doesn't mean anything (except maybe to other GW2 players). Even in the game most of them are purely cosmetic, and the ones that aren't serve the purpose of making it easier to play the game and to play more of it. So unless you're enjoying playing the game there is absolutely no point getting any rewards, because you won't use them, and if you can play everything without needing them it's one less thing to worry about.

The problem is that all content over time becomes repetitive. So that's why I would stop playing if rewards were gone because then I'm just left with stuff I've already done many times without something to be working towards something. My brain just needs something to keep it busy or I'll die from boredom essentially. Doing something over and over again without any added layers just won't cut it for me.

If one was to only play the game for the experience, not the rewards, then there would have to be an increase of new content release 10 times what we are currently getting.

While I do enjoy the game in general, a lot of my play is directed by goals I'm working toward. (Yeah, unlocking skins and achievements and that stuff.) If those goals were removed, I'd go on playing the story and exploring new areas.

@Obtena.7952 said:If one was to only play the game for the experience, not the rewards, then there would have to be an increase of new content release 10 times what we are currently getting.

I agree with this 100%. I would say there is enjoyment in playing something completely new, learning new mechanics. Trying it on with different professions. etc.But if with no rewards and no significant new content I would probably stop playing the game and maybe only return for LWS releases which is 2 hours every three months.

HoT maps, sPvP and fractals.

In answer to the question: Yes, I have fun playing the game.

I would probably quit. The MMORPG genre has loot progression (either stats or cosmetics) as its core foundation with the "rpg" part being an afterthought. If you take rewards and "shinies" out then you are left with a mediocre story compared to narrative-driven games and a huge playground with no purpose. One could argue that GW2 is not even rewarding enough in its current state although I am sure this is by design.

I dislike most of the in game rewards in gw2 and so, with a few exc3ptions, have been playing as if they do not exist since launch. Story content, except LS chapters, wvw, fractals, and whatever strikes me at the moment.