The feel of being rewarded.

One of the major problems in Guild wars 2, in my opinion, is that I rarely feel rewarded. The people I've gotten to play this game over the years have expressed to me the same thing before they quit.

When you play GW2, your bags are filled with an assortment of dirt, rocks, broken gizmos, salvage folly, and useless junk that only takes your time to clear out of your bag and manage. These things could be replaced with a few silver instead. We as players are here to experience the game, the art, the story, the gameplay, PVP, WVW, Fractals, Dungeons (RIP), etc. We don't want to spend our time looking at our massive inventories and clearing them out, just for the sake of not having full bags. You don't actually make very much money to warrant the time, but it's something the game forces you to do because of the design choices made.

The second thing is the in-game currency loot boxes (and cash shop for that matter...) You have to buy SO many to get anything worth any value its ridiculous. I recently watched a youtube video that popped up on my feed showing me a guy opening 25 THOUSAND Zephyrite boxes, He spent 4 THOUSAND gold and got back 800g in rewards. Now we all realize that it shouldnt be 1:1, but in no fair system should it be around a 20% ROI.

Please find/make a better system, for the sake of your own game and the people that are trying to enjoy it.

TL;DR: I wish the loot system wouldn't inundate me with junk worth a few silver, just replace all that junk with a few silver.

@Kahrgan.7401 said:

When you play GW2, your bags are filled with an assortment of dirt, rocks, broken gizmos, salvage folly, and useless junk that only takes your time to clear out of your bag and manage. These things could be replaced with a few silver instead.

I agree, it's more like playing inventory wars 2, there should not even be junk in the game that sell for copper, it's like some pre-historic currency for cave men.

Yeah, another problem it brings with it is instead of farming specific zones for a special reward you just farm the place with the highest gold per hour.I remember farming specific monsters in other games for a specific drop, but here you can just farm gold and buy the items you need.

I do tend to agree with you. I think all this stuff that is pretty much junk needs to go. We are drowning in junk drops, i would rather mobs drop gear/weapons for use or salvage, and coin gold/silver/copper instead of taking up my bags with all this kitten junk. I think thats something they need to change, it would go a long way to make players feel they are getting somewhere.

@Vavume.8065 said:

@Kahrgan.7401 said:

When you play GW2, your bags are filled with an assortment of dirt, rocks, broken gizmos, salvage folly, and useless junk that only takes your time to clear out of your bag and manage. These things could be replaced with a few silver instead.

I agree, it's more like playing inventory wars 2, there should not even be junk in the game that sell for copper, it's like some pre-historic currency for cave men.

Talk to the Jotun...

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Samhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pendant_of_Arahhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precursor_weaponhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker%27s_Lightward%27s_Battlestaffhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Dungeon_trinkets

I mean, it's not like drops that reward persistance don't exist. They're just extremely rare. And if every player got this sort of loot, then it would cease to be special - putting us back on square one.

Loot boxes work the same way in every game. Spend tons of money for almost nothing. Basically it's gambling and like all gambling, the house wins and the gambler loses.

@"Kahrgan.7401" said:We as players are here to experience the game, the art, the story, the gameplay, PVP, WVW, Fractals, Dungeons (RIP), etc. We don't want to spend our time looking at our massive inventories and clearing them out, just for the sake of not having full bags. You don't actually make very much money to warrant the time, but it's something the game forces you to do because of the design choices made.

If you just want to play the game and don't care about the rewards you can just sell all the unidentified gear on the TP without ever opening it, sell junk items to NPC merchants (which takes 3 clicks - 1 to talk to them, 1 to open the sell tab, 1 to click 'sell junk' at the bottom), deposit materials straight to your bank and then forget about them (or sell them on the TP too) and then deal with the handful of other items when you feel like it.

Since they added unidentified gear instead of direct drops it's rare that my inventory fills beyond the first bag in one session. (Admittedly for me 1 session can involve a lot of running around and talking, it's probably different if you're doing back to back meta events for hours at a time.) So it's easy to ignore it until I actually want to sort through it all.

As for loot boxes yes they're terrible, just like in any game. They're gambling, and just like in real gambling the house always wins. You buy them if you want the "fun" of imagining you might get something good before you open it and find that's not the case, not because you actually expect to make a profit.

There are a number of RNG things in the game where there is one exceedingly rare item (and therefore valuable, but only due to this artificial scarcity), and a bunch of complete junk. It's a lottery system, but a little less extreme lottery system would be welcomed. Like make the junk 10x better, and the "rare" item 10x more common. It'd still be stupid hard to get, and still be a net loss for most.

It's a Catch-22.Players complain when they don't get rewarded for doing something so trivial, corpses can do it.If they increased the rewards, then players would get that instant gratification and will likely play less. You won't do the activity anymore once you get what you want, unless it's fun. And fun is subjective.If they increased the challenge of the activity in order to insert more rewarding loot tables so players would have a longer play time due to the difficulty, players would complain about that too.

Anet can't win. And we asked for this. We wanted trivial, non-challenging activities and we will be rewarded as such.

@borgs.6103 said:It's a Catch-22.Players complain when they don't get rewarded for doing something so trivial, corpses can do it.If they increased the rewards, then players would get that instant gratification and will likely play less. You won't do the activity anymore once you get what you want, unless it's fun. And fun is subjective.If they increased the challenge of the activity in order to insert more rewarding loot tables so players would have a longer play time due to the difficulty, players would complain about that too.

Anet can't win. And we asked for this. We wanted trivial, non-challenging activities and we will be rewarded as such.

Also when a lot of people ask for more rewarding loot what they mean is items they can sell for a lot of gold on the TP. But if they're easy to get then everyone will be able to get their own, so hardly anyone will buy them from the TP, and then they won't be valuable. For an item to be worth a lot it has to be rare enough that lots of people will buy it rather than getting their own drop.

The alternative of course is to make items which are cheap individually but where players can obtain and use very large numbers, so it's still possible to farm them and make a lot of gold, but that's crafting materials and apparently doesn't feel rewarding even if it's profitable.

(The other possibility is to make drops that are easy for one group of players to get but very hard or impossible for anyone else to get, so they're forced to trade for them. But then you're getting into profession specific drops, areas which are only accessible by certain characters and other things Anet wanted to avoid. And to be balanced it has to cancel out - so you get your super-amazing drop, sell it for a lot of gold and use it to buy an equivalent item from another player because you couldn't get it yourself.)

@Vavume.8065 said:

@Kahrgan.7401 said:

When you play GW2, your bags are filled with an assortment of dirt, rocks, broken gizmos, salvage folly, and useless junk that only takes your time to clear out of your bag and manage. These things could be replaced with a few silver instead.

I agree, it's more like playing inventory wars 2, there should not even be junk in the game that sell for copper, it's like some pre-historic currency for cave men.

See, from the very beginning ANet wanted GW2 to be such a different MMO. Now it's actually becoming the major problem of the game. Getting rid of vertical progression makes GW2 a LOT more accessible - but without vertical progression there is no real reward (which more hardcore-ish players would want) other than cosmetics.So, if GW2 doesn't have any actual rewards beside cosmetics, players have to be rewarded in other way. And I myself like opening bags, most people do. But once you realize that this is all just a trash loot it simply becomes unfun as we start to feel being fooled. Actually the majority od GW2 starts to feel like it.Well, I think we all know that this crap loot could be changed into silver or Zone-specific items. But I'm afraid that's not going to happen.

I am all for the idea of clearing up the bag loot system. It's boring, doesn't matter where you go, you always get the exact same loot (+ map currency). Just get rid of this system.

@Kahrgan.7401 said:These things could be replaced with a few silver instead.If they were, we wouldn't notice. In fact, we do get coin rewards, from events, from foes, from bags. And we ignore it. People seem to think that spirit shards only accumulate for those with maxed masteries, when we actually get a lot of them from drops, but we don't notice because they automatically go into the wallet.

When PoF launched, we got tons of items that could be consumed for karma. And boy did we complain (they piled up and had to be processed). ANet heard our prayers and turned them into auto-consume, and now people don't notice.

So sure, they could replace 'junk' with silver; we just wouldn't notice.

You don't actually make very much money to warrant the time,Actually, you can. And if you don't, sell on the TP and someone else can gain the value

it's something the game forces you to do because of the design choices made.Forced?

The second thing is the in-game currency loot boxes (and cash shop for that matter...) You have to buy SO many to get anything worth any value its ridiculous. I recently watched a youtube video that popped up on my feed showing me a guy opening 25 THOUSAND Zephyrite boxes, He spent 4 THOUSAND gold and got back 800g in rewards. Now we all realize that it shouldnt be 1:1, but in no fair system should it be around a 20% ROI.It's always been intended as a material sink, not a reward system. It is never worth spending on lotto boxes (except during Lunar New Year). ToTs, Dragon Coffers, Zephyrite, etc. Don't buy intending to open. Instead sell and use the proceeds to buy the specific things you want.

TL;DR: I wish the loot system wouldn't inundate me with junk worth a few silver, just replace all that junk with a few silver.tl;dr Nice idea. It turns out, players don't like that system either.

@"Westenev.5289" said:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Samhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pendant_of_Arahhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precursor_weaponhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Berserker%27s_Lightward%27s_Battlestaffhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Dungeon_trinkets

I mean, it's not like drops that reward persistance don't exist. They're just extremely rare. And if every player got this sort of loot, then it would cease to be special - putting us back on square one.

I don't think you get the point. Pretty much everything you've linked has the same problem OP is complaining about: we're all just here to grind gold all the time and that's not interesting at all. These items are just big gold bumps. Nothing the game throws at me is something I actually want to keep. Like, tie a single mount skin to CM fractals and people will be going ham farming it, keeping them busy for a good while and they'll feel GREAT when it drops. This is the bread and butter of MMOs and it's almost completely absent from GW2 now.

@Zuldari.3940 said:I do tend to agree with you. I think all this stuff that is pretty much junk needs to go. We are drowning in junk drops, i would rather mobs drop gear/weapons for use or salvage, and coin gold/silver/copper instead of taking up my bags with all this kitten junk. I think thats something they need to change, it would go a long way to make players feel they are getting somewhere.

I have gotten to this point as well. Broken lockpicks, unidentified common gear, and the like -- boring, repetitive, and anything but rewarding.

It sounds to me like people are playing for all the wrong reasons...shouldn't you be playing the game because you enjoy it and get fun out of it and not for the rewards? The rewards being a bonus to the fun.

I always get this feeling when a game has mtx, the feeling of reward is not really there cause lots of items that should be the awesome reward from playing the games content and overcoming its challenges gets moved into the mtx store or rng boxes which means you could just buy the items or boxes until you get the reward you wanted which makes it rather pointless cause why are we even playing then if the challenges and the rewards that should go together is just paying until you get it and yet no matter how much you would actually pay in the mtx shop the product you have will never be a full product.

@"Kahrgan.7401" said:[...] a guy opening 25 THOUSAND Zephyrite boxes, He spent 4 THOUSAND gold and got back 800g in rewards. Now we all realize that it shouldnt be 1:1, but in no fair system should it be around a 20% ROI.

The mistake is assuming boxes in this game are "fair". Anyone with that kind of money knows it's a numbers game and chose to play it to either see if they could get lucky or help others realize it's not worth it. And, if I'm honest, I assume to show off how wealthy they are in game.

This is tangential to the main discussion, but...

@"DonArkanio.6419" said:[...]- but without vertical progression there is no real reward (which more hardcore-ish players would want) other than cosmetics.

Vertical progression isn't really progression, though. It's mostly, "Hey, your numbers are pretty good! But now we've increased everything's numbers, so go and make yours bigger to match again." I fail to see why that's a reward.

@Zaklex.6308 said:It sounds to me like people are playing for all the wrong reasons...shouldn't you be playing the game because you enjoy it and get fun out of it and not for the rewards? The rewards being a bonus to the fun.

This is pretty much my view. Why do we need to have loot confetti to enjoy the game? I find it easy to set my own goals and enjoy my time regardless of my luck, or lack thereof, when I open a container.

That said, I certainly would call most boxes underwhelming. But isn't that to be expected? We're not going to get exotics or tons of map currency from every little box.

Also, recognizing I am not an economics expert so take this with a grain of salt, I can't help but feel the typical rewards off a mob kills or whatever are in line with what the game's mostly been since launch, but the player-driven market and TP has drastically evolved and inflated. So there's, like, a big disconnect from what an individual drop feels like in value as a result, perhaps?

@Zaklex.6308 said:It sounds to me like people are playing for all the wrong reasons...shouldn't you be playing the game because you enjoy it and get fun out of it and not for the rewards? The rewards being a bonus to the fun.

Its called carrot on a stick, all games use it. It becomes a problem when the carrot turns into a pile of kitten. Then you have players doing less because the carrot isnt there, just the junk that clutters your bags and isnt exciting at all.

Nothing in this game feels rewarding anymore. The problem is in a few areas and I recently talked to a member of the rewards team about it.

I don't want this to be a huge post so I'll try to summarize it. The current problem in GW2 is that all rewards fall into two categories. Nearly worthless or worth a lot. You can do Chak Gerent and get an infusion and be set for a long time by buying just about anything you need. However, not getting one and the loot you get is worth maybe a 30 silver at most. How are people supposed to feel getting items so high in supply they only sell for a few copper on the trading post? While PvE has been better about introducing new farms after Silverwastes, the rest of the game still needs help. Gold income in WvW is atrocious. Since the skirmish tickets came, unidentified dyes have halved in price. While they are still one of the only things WvW players can make gold from, its nothing compared to other parts of the game. If Anet's end-game is really going to be around infusions, they need to make more and build upon that system. Allow only one at a time via a wardrobe slot. Make many, many more. Allow the new ones to drop all across the game and not just a few infusions that are worth so much you can't list them on the TP without losing gold (IE Confetti and Chak are both worth more than 10,000g so listing them at anything less and you're losing a lot of gold). They need to look at all the items you can get that aren't worth anything and make them either worth something or get rid of them. Tag ornate keys as junk worth 1s. Reduce the droprate of things like Eyes of Kormir and Resonating Slivers. A lot of work for Anet, for sure. It needs to be done for the health of the economy and the overall game though.

Unfortunately gw2s design puts it in a position where the carrot aka fashion competes directly with their primary form of monetization. Also as a dev who works on a large online game, I can say that based on data from our game, cosmetics earned by the player hold much higher value to the individual and has a noticable impact on monetization if the two compete. That is likely why anet wont ever put mount and glider skins outside of legendaries into the game as a medium size carrot for people to chase. It's too risky to their bottom line.

@Zaklex.6308 said:It sounds to me like people are playing for all the wrong reasons...shouldn't you be playing the game because you enjoy it and get fun out of it and not for the rewards? The rewards being a bonus to the fun.

Rewards, in the form of loot, are part of the core gameplay experience of pretty much every MMOrpg, or even plain MMO. Actually, rewards are part of the core experience in single player RPGs too. We can go even further back and see rewards being a core aspect of PnP DnD, the grandaddy of this genre of video games.

Taking all that into account, I don't see how one who considers rewards/loot a very important aspect of this game, is playing it wrong.

Zephyrite boxes is probably a bad example, the whole point of the box is to help drain the oversupply of gold and materials out from the economy, with the hope of getting that shiny chak ball sac, which is like 1 in a million, just like playing the lottory

If that Youtuber wants make gold, he probably should have saved up for Luna new year, the avg return rate is about 1.25 gold for every gold spent

I started skimming answers after awhile, but I think you guys are missing the point. The reason why it is that the game (or rather, parts of it) don't feel rewarding isn't because of some monetary scheme. It is because of the Play How I Want philosophy. When GW2 was being made, there were several things that they were trying to avoid. I don't have sources for these, because it was seven years ago and I don't document everything like a psychopath, but there were some things that Anet specifically designed against:

Having to grind the same enemy for a specific dropMaking one and only one part of the game rewardingClustering all of the players into one spotForcing players to move forward through the maps as they leveled upRewarding only particular playstyles"FU;GM" mentality with events and enemiesHostility toward other player's presence

Etc. and so on. The central problem to all of the stuff I listed, however, is economics. Traditional RPG loot systems weren't going to cut it. So, to create this new gaming paradise, Anet instituted a general loot system. That is, almost no matter where you go and what you do, you're going to get the same kind of loot. The drop tables for enemies looks something like this:

Level appropriate junk itemLevel appropriate fine materialLevel appropriate random gear dropScaled junk itemScaled fine materialScaled appropriate random gear dropAdded Later: Scaled BagAdded Later: Level appropriate bag

It is with rare exception that these will vary. This loot design, while not forcing players into any particular spot to grind away enemies, has an unfortunate side-effect: you're not pulled into any particular direction, either. Anywhere you go, you're going to get remarkably similar loot. To make this bland, samey loot valuable, the crafting system had to be tweaked until you need a whole lot of the salvage materials to create anything, thus keeping the generic drops "in demand" regardless of how common they are. Instead of going to fight specific enemies for loot, we flock to places that give the largest volume of loot.

As an aside, I do find it interesting how GW2's game design at launch was influenced by the political climate at Arenanet.

I still feel rewarded. Yes: Junk loot and having to salvage is annoying. But also a point of the "system" - when ArenaNet tries to sell permanent gathering tools and salvage kits (to save you a bit the way th the merchand to rebuy the normal ones) to make money.

Achievements and stuff ... and getting some new skins by just playing. Doing story and stuff. All is fun.

I have more a problem with games that have item treadmills. While for others it might feel rewarding to get constantly new gear and having to grind the next level gear ... I find this boring. Since it devalues older stuff. I want to have the feeling of having reached "the end". Should I ever get legendary stuff ... I guess it would feel nice. Should suddenly another tier of gear get added I would feel trolled since legendary then would be devalued. I wouldn't feel in the mood to grind for the next tier since it might get devalued as well (by addming more tiers) ... and I wouldn't feel rewarded by earning a possibly only temporary top level geard.

I don't care about the Black Lion Chests. Just som free stuff on top - with the earned keys. And I won't open too much. Sometimes there is a 100 percent stuff unique to the chests. Like some mini with Skyscale I think some time ago. Also chance at statuette things and other stuff where you can collect to trade in for stuff you like. But that is not the main point of the game.

Similar to skins and stuff in games like LoL. Not adding anything to the gameplay.