For a game that presents so much content variety, rewards for that content seem kind of unbalanced.

The goal of guidwars 2 seems (to me) to be to allow the player to do what they enjoy with the game. Fractals, sPvP, WvW, Raids, open world pve, ect. There is some kind of content for everyone. Most of the types of content provide comparable end rewards but the time and effort to get there are not.

A few examples:

• Legendary armor. Considerably faster to get through raids(10 weeks min.) than WvW(21 weeks min.)/sPvP(9 seasons min.) You cannot even acquire it through fractals.
• Ascended Trinkets. You could acquire a full set in a day through farming LW maps if you have enough characters, but most likely it'll take you at least a few days to a week. Fractals/WvW/sPvP will take you considerably longer and all those modes don't even include all the stats.

I'm not saying that all areas of the game should take exactly the same amount of time and give the exact same rewards, they should just be comparable. In a game about fighting awakening elder dragons it doesn't seem right that the best way to acquire top of the line ascended trinkets is to run about picking berries and giving them to a quaggan. What if I want to spend my time fighting my way through fractals to acquire my end game gear? Why is that so much slower than picking berries for a quaggan? Would it be so bad for rewards to be brought a little more in line with each other as far as time? I know, I know, there is no one forcing you to pick berries as apposed to doing fractals or raids over WvW and you CAN get comparable rewards. It doesn't change the fact that by rewarding certain activities with much faster progression it devalues the time of the people who enjoy other activities the game presents.

(This whole rant sprouted from me being salty about having to pick berries to get viper trinkets, for context)

The problem is the player base demands each mode have some kind of exclusive reward for "dedicated players", but it also has to be equally profitable, only to end up with a demand that something be more profitable because "reasons", and that all the unique rewards have alternate methods of obtaining. This whole equation is also further complicated by the fact that all the rewards system for each content block are meant to feed back into themselves, but the players keep demanding everything be interchangeable because they only like one mode and hate the others.

Parity is impossible in this system, because the game modes have different levels of effort and differing skill set requirements.... enough that some players avoid them entirely. But they also want different modes to reward based on effort.... unless that effort is more then they want to expend. The competitive game modes also need Reward Bait to incentivize players enough to leave the Gold farm for more then 2 minutes; which by function of the incentive, will have to be greater then what the gold farm offers just to get consideration. Ascended gear only mechanically matters to Fractals, but every other area of the game (other then PvP) obsesses over it as a "best in slot" "choice". The same reason people obsess over legendary armor- but most give up on it because the effort cost is too high.

See...... the rewards are already comparable, because everything is practically interchangeable now. The only difference is the effort cost- and that will NEVER be "balanced" without destroying what makes the game modes different in the first place.

Oh..... and never conflate "balanced" with "optimal". Its a fast way to destroy the foundation of any argument about rewards.

What is this, reddit? These thread titles just get longer and longer.

Regarding trinkets, something might change when they increase Jeweler to 500 but still, equality will never be achieved when the content is also balanced by how engaging it is (for example, picking berries is, like, the most passive way of getting top-end gear) and I don't feel that's a problem.

you can't get viper trinkets from raids, berries only, I always wonders why.(wait til you need second earring and have to go to ember bay, then you think berries aren't that bad, lol)leg. armor from spvp is 3 seasons, not 9 unless you talking of all 3 sets.

@phs.6089 said:you can't get viper trinkets from raids, berries only, I always wonders why....of course you can get vipers from raids. I have no idea why you think you cannot.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@phs.6089 said:you can't get viper trinkets from raids, berries only, I always wonders why....of course you

can

get vipers from raids. I have no idea why you think you cannot.

he does not play raids, haven't you seen his threadds yet? he wants legendary gear from fractals and screw over the raid community :p

I agree with the op. People should play the game modes they choose to because they enjoy them, not because of the rewards. Maybe the only exception would be legendarios in raids. But other than that. Ascended equipment, materials, trans charges should be avaiable in all game modes.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@phs.6089 said:you can't get viper trinkets from raids, berries only, I always wonders why....of course you

can

get vipers from raids. I have no idea why you think you cannot.

then its my bad, i got a ring from raids once it had pof bit hot, but no viper then i checked wiki, prolly missed or forgot that part

Locking out the only legendary ring behind raids is unbalanced and not cool.

1. Not everyone likes to raid/wants to/can because of reasons.
2. Raiders are the smallest player base in GW2.

I am not saying I want the exact same ring. I am saying I want a legendary ring without raiding. Usually I wouldn't mind locking something behind a core game mode like WvW / PvP / PvE, but raids are something else - when I play a raid I feel like playing another game. The behavior of the community there is disgusting. I don't mind harder content either - In fact, I like HoT more than PoF. IMO, nothing should be locked behind the current state of the raiding system. And this, my friend, is not balanced.

i don't mind about specific equipment either way, but i do want all content to be profitable in terms of gold per hour.

@melandru.3876 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"phs.6089" said:you can't get viper trinkets from raids, berries only, I always wonders why....of course you

can

get vipers from raids. I have no idea why you think you cannot.

@"bOTEB.1573" said:Locking out the only legendary ring behind raids is unbalanced and not cool.

1. Not everyone likes to raid/wants to/can because of reasons.
2. Raiders are the smallest player base in GW2.

I am not saying I want the exact same ring. I am saying I want a legendary ring without raiding.Usually I wouldn't mind locking something behind a core game mode like WvW / PvP / PvE, but raids are something else - when I play a raid I feel like playing another game. The behavior of the community there is disgusting. I don't mind harder content either - In fact, I like HoT more than PoF. IMO, nothing should be locked behind the current state of the raiding system. And this, my friend, is not balanced.

If you can craft only ONE trinket of the same type, then I don't think you should bother acquiring it, no matter if it is from raids, fractals or even by doing dailies. One trinket is not solving the problem with the trinkets for 9 toons for example, so, I think that crafting one represents only a partial solution and it is not worth the materials and the effort.

On the other hand, if you can craft as many as you want, well, this changes the situation. Even with a great cost of materials and gold, at the end you will solve the problem with the trinkets for your toons, so I think it is worth the effort.

Just my opinion.

i feel like wvw is mostly forgotten, i used to only play wvw, but nowadays i only pve. i wish the structural server change would come soon so i can get back into wvw. cuz at the moment, the times im playing, there r hardly any ppl

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@melandru.3876 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"phs.6089" said:you can't get viper trinkets from raids, berries only, I always wonders why....of course you

can

get vipers from raids. I have no idea why you think you cannot.

and you somehow think legendary fractal armor would not include fractal challenge motes?what makes you believe so?

i'll do you one better: look at fractal legen,dary backpack, that did require challenge motes, right?

tell me challenge motes (including 99 and 100) are casual content for casual players.

i'd be a matter of hours (after release of fractal legendary armor) for the first thread simmilar to "the requirements are to hard and limited to a certain part of the playerbase, please lower them to meet the standards of the majority( read this as: "lower them to my, me the OP, standard")

you can't please anyone, and following the game developpers they have the same opinion

lock the best gear,behind the hardest content

if you want an easy way, with nonunique skins then they allready gave in to the whine and made pvp and wvw a set.

if everyone and their mother run around with legendary, then what exactly is legendary about it?my friend who got the game 4 days ago allready runs around with twilight, 1 swipe of the plastic card and the deed was done

that, is not the game i had in mind so i welcomed the hot legendaries that had to be actually crafted yourself

@melandru.3876 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@melandru.3876 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"phs.6089" said:you can't get viper trinkets from raids, berries only, I always wonders why....of course you

can

get vipers from raids. I have no idea why you think you cannot.

For me it's not about how easy it is, it's about how long it takes. Does it really matter how hard people think other modes are compared to raids? People's time is their most valuable asset. Once you spend it, you don't get it back. If I'm choosing to invest that time in this game to have fun I want to do something in the game I enjoy. I don't want to have to sacrifice my enjoyment in order to save on my time. It's one thing choosing between two skills to run on a build, it's not good at all to have to choose between my time and my enjoyment of the game. It wouldn't change the value of legendary armor to make it take 10~ weeks in all modes to get, specially if all modes give a different skin. All I'm asking is to be able to play the content I enjoy (the whole reason I play the game) and be rewarded with comparable rewards in a comparable amount of time compared to people who play other content.

Thought this thread would be about buffing PoF meta rewards and was disappointed.

@melandru.3876 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@melandru.3876 said:

he does not play raids, haven't you seen his threadds yet? he wants legendary gear from fractals and screw over the raid community :pWhy would that "screw over" the raid community? If legendary armor in fractals would be bad for anyone, it would be for the part of the community that

doesn't

like playing hardcore instanced content. Not raiders - they already have their armor after all.

What i said was, that, if a second legendary armor for PvE would be released through Fractals, it would not be raids community that would get "screwed over", but rather that majority of PvE players that doesn't frequent hardcore instanced content.

But in case it's still not clear:

1. raid community would not have any right to complain if a fractal legendary armor set would be released.
2. people that do not raid, and do not play high-tier/CM fractals would have right to complain.

In short, fractal legendary armor is not a good idea. It would not be so because of raiders feeling sore for no reason, however, but due to the rest of the PvErs that would get ignored (again).

A second PvE legendary armor set should be released, but it should be delivered through some more core PvE content than Fractals.

Hm, I wonder why a difficult game mode that requires leadership, coordination, extensive knowledge, and good group composition has better rewards than a mode where you can half-AFK as you re-capture camps and sentries all day. What a mystery!

@gateless gate.8406 said:Hm, I wonder why a difficult game mode that requires leadership, coordination, extensive knowledge, and good group composition has better rewards than a mode where you can half-AFK as you re-capture camps and sentries all day. What a mystery!

Like I mentioned earlier, it doesn't matter how much harder you think your mode is. Everyone deserves comparable rewards for their time investment. No mode is really difficult, no more so than you want it to be. It's possible to also just buy raid runs and afk your way through.

@gateless gate.8406 said:Hm, I wonder why a difficult game mode that requires leadership, coordination, extensive knowledge, and good group composition has better rewards than a mode where you can half-AFK as you re-capture camps and sentries all day. What a mystery!

Yeah game is designed the way, that most people are sure that SKINS are better REWARD

@Zexanima.7851 said:

@"gateless gate.8406" said:Hm, I wonder why a difficult game mode that requires leadership, coordination, extensive knowledge, and good group composition has better rewards than a mode where you can half-AFK as you re-capture camps and sentries all day. What a mystery!

Wrong.

I mean, you can state "everyone should receive equal rewards simply based on time," but that's a fairly controversial opinion, and you're offering no reasoning to convince anyone of your opinion. The more reasonable approach is that rewards scale based on time, difficulty, organizational requirements, or a combination of several of the three. According to you, a person who literally just auto-runs laps around the starting zone for 3 hours should receive the same rewards as someone who just raided for 3 hours, purely because they spent the same amount of time in the game.

I want legendary stuff from killing mobs in queensdale for 4 hours.

@gateless gate.8406 said:

@Zexanima.7851 said:

@gateless gate.8406 said:Hm, I wonder why a difficult game mode that requires leadership, coordination, extensive knowledge, and good group composition has better rewards than a mode where you can half-AFK as you re-capture camps and sentries all day. What a mystery!

Not according to me, don't you straw man. Never did I say that it can't be difficult. I just said I want it to take a comparable amount of time. It's not like they can't have their exclusiveness either as far as skins, achievement collections, ect. I want to go kill things, I don't want to spend my time picking kitten berries so I can get the gear to go do the content I actually enjoy just because the difference in time investment. How does it negatively impact a raider if someone want's to spend 10 weeks to earn a set legendary armor from fighting world bosses? What, 10 weeks of dedication isn't good enough for you? It's not like the armor would have the same skin. It doesn't devalue their time investment, the stuff is account bound, it has zero value in the market. If they have different skins it's not like people will be 'posing as accomplished raiders', they won't be stealing any of people's merit who do the "hard" content. I really don't get why people are against this idea other than some elitist mentality.

@Voltekka.2375 said:I want legendary stuff from killing mobs in queensdale for 4 hours.

You're going to have to do better than mocking me with a faulty analogy.