PopeUrban.2578

earlier GW2 stuff did this a bit. then they moved away from it Yeah. Sadly raids are the only place left in the game where the world actually recognizes that you're not the only important character. The player-to-player voice interactions there are pretty sweet. I'd like to see agame that went back to GW1 style 'assemble a team build' gameplay, but without the "you can totally replace a party with NPCs" problem they introduced when they came up with the hero system. Like, I really liked henchmen. they were good to fill a few spots, but not so good that getting another player wasn't always the clearly better option.

I would buy a GW3 that: Utilized the excellent PvE combat mechanics of GW2, in terms of mobility, and the excellect PvE mechanics in GW1 in terms of focus on resource management, interrupts, and team based skill synergies. Returned the series to a lobby-based cooperative RPG built around challenging instanced content and away from a timer-based MMO primarily built on shallow open world content. Returned to a primarily buy to play model in stead of a primarily microtransaction model. Made assembling builds and acquiring new build enablers (be the GW1 style skill captures and buys, gear, whatever) part of the gameplay reward loop. Did away with the notion of NPC companions. Recognized groups of players in its narrative in stead of pretending there's only one player character.

None. Additions to a game that require me to reroll or buy more characters slots are not compelling additions to the game. I don't play a games with persistant worlds to constantly restart them like I lost my save file.

You could do like other games and lay out the breadth of the content numerically. Lots of games brag about how big their new expansion's world is, or all the new gear it contains, or all the new monster types, stuff like that. Advertise how grand the expansion is to show potential customers the value of it and why now is the time to get in to or come back to GW2 because of all the new stuff. That tends to be more effective because its an objective statement that is inherently trustworthy rather than subjective statements from random players that for all they know you made up or random reviewers they may not have heard of or don't trust.

I dig it. It's unique, eye catching, and isn't lit up live seventeen suns formed from the remains of an interstellar fireworks factory. If I had the patience to build a legendary, this is one of the few I'd actually build.

Disagree. Potential customers should be told up front that they're buying a game that expects them to spend more money after they buy it. This store page is honest business and accurately portrays the GW2 business model for potential buyers.

Tell potential customers how many more mounts they can get by playing the game than the competition.

Like:Content and map are pretty cool.Story was a step up from PoF, things actually happening to important characters that didn't feel forced. Reintroduced Joko and took him in an interesting direction that seemed natural for the GW2 era world.Sunspears being sunspears.Reconnecting with an old GW1 friend (wish he had a better VO and fight though)Additional fractal sinks that feel worthwhile but not necessary.Lots of optional VO conversations, some are context sensitive.Small variations based on character choices, and effort to keep new PoF characters in the narrative rather than throwing them away.Leaving Joko offscreen for now to build tension with excellent "interrogation log" is good storytelling.Presence of opportunity to use HoT mastry that is entirely optional and not progression blocking. More of this please. Dislike:Overall lack of ingame rewards is even worse than LS3, combined with increased gem store prices. Game is straying even further away from the buy to play model.Only worthwhile Ingame reward is even more grindy and full of lazy annoying scavenger hunt achievements than previous LS seasons.Lazy copypaste mastry with nonexistant narrative justification.Battle for Amnoon lacks permanence. We could have some sort of phasing approach to replace ambient VO and some decorations to reflect the battle without splitting it in to two zones."Save Taimi" again. I love Taimi but you're really overusing her. Same story could have been told more effectively with any other character and an inquest golem.Too many tedious one liners. Seriously. Stop it. We don't need this much comic relief.

Anet can't even properly balance the one combat system they put all their effort in to very well. I don't think we need them to divide that effort to overhaul an even more complex set of content that we have to interact with to get anything important done. Let UW content be what it is already, an occasional distraction that isn't necessary to do anything important. At least that way all their guns are firing on the combat mechanics that actually mostly work well.

Looks like OH sword and greatsword are both very popular. In terms of actually implementing them I'd wager Anet would be more willing to go with greatsword if they have a drastic mechanical change (something with the impact of changing steal to malice) and offhand sword if the core mechanical change is more minor (something like a tack-on effect to an existing mechanic in the vein of daredevil's mechanics) Interestingly enough, for thieves adding an offhand or mainhand actually requires them to make the same number of skills as a 2 hand because of the dual skills. 2h weapon only requires a 1-5 bar, but a new offhand requires 2 new MH or OH skills plus 3 separate dual skills for pistol, sword, dagger. This means that any thief spec will always get at least 5 new weapon skills, and thieves overall get much higher impact build changes from new offhands or mainhands even before any core class mechanic changes because of the nature of dual skills than they do for 2h weapons, which are larger build changers for most other classes simply because a 2h in any other classes hands requires more new skills than a new MH or OH.

For the sake of argument, lets say we don't call this or the BLCs "gambling" Without using the terms gambling, I'll describe what these are. These are purchases mathematically designed to disappoint the buyer and use that negative experience to encourage them to spend more money. These are purchases designed to randomly inflate the cost of a desired product beyond that which the user would pay for it were it offered to them for direct sale for the majority of buyers. These are purchases designed to monetize players unable or unwilling to participate in the gem market directly by turning them in to an officially sanctioned gold farming service for wealthier players that may have otherwise stopped buying gems after acquiring what they personally desire from the gem store. These are purchases designed to add and directly profit from frustration and tedium in a product with the stated goal of providing entertainment to its customers. These are systems similar to loot rewards for playing the game, that actively draw resources away from adding to the loot pool of the game, and that actively reward paying more to play the game less.

Because businesses are made of people, people aren't immune to making mistakes, and on average people often prioritize shot term gain at the expense of long term loss. As a business, why would Microsoft try and create a competing music player when the ipod dominated the market even though they already had a stable product and business model? The Zune is a great example here. It was an objectively pretty good piece of tech, but Microsoft misunderstood the market they were trying to break in to and lost a bunch of money in stead of doubling down on the one they were already been successful in. Companies don't TRY to lose money, but companies often DO lose money by placing the desires of the company for profit above the products or services that their customers actually want. In the case of GW2 specifically, they jumped on a bandwagon early, like everyone else, and failed at their "buy once play forever because we have microtransactions" model so hard they started selling expansions again to subsidize falling gem store profits. AND THEY LEARNED NOTHING from that experience. And doubled down on the gem store even after making a monetization move that should have rendered it obsolete, specifically because they halfassed it because they were investing even more in the business model that was already failing them. People noticed. Go back to the old forums and check out the player responses to HoT, how disappointed they were with its value for the asking price. As for the MMO market being different, that doesn't really apply to this discussion. Part of the reason players have gravitated to the most successful current MMOs is specifically because they're more complete experiences than the free to play alternatives with even more predatory cash shops than this one. The reason GW2 is doing better than a lot of games is specifically because it relies less on microtransactions, not because it keeps adding more of them. The industry as a whole moved to microtransactions specifically because they saw how much money it raked in, true, but I'll remind you that the industry did the same thing after WoW's improbable success, attempting to create a whole range of subscription based WoW clones until they learned that simply doing a thing because it makes someone else money does not guarantee your competing product will also make money. How many of these new CCGs inspired by hearthstone's success do you think will be around in five years? How many games do you think will have the sheer audactiy to tie progression directly to loot box economies like battlefront 2? Businesses love to look at numbers in a vaccum and in doing so make a lot of costly mistakes. The gaming industry specifically makes SO MANY costly mistakes because more often than not the people in charge of most of the money have very little understanding of their audience and how fickle that audience is in an extremely competitive market. The MMO market is smaller today specifically because companies invested millions in products and business models that were derivative to chase profits. They saw short term gain from WoW's example, then lost a lot of money when they realized that just because what someone else is doing is working, doesn't mean your consumers want two of that same thing. The thing you're saying excuses increasingly more customer hostile business models is the result of customer hostile business models. Attempting to replicate some else's profit numbers while simultaneously attempting to pull customers away from the thing you are emulating is why MMOs are in a downturn. Its why everyone is trying and failing to emulate the success of Marvel's cinematic universe. People who don't understand their customers don't understand that movies and video games are not toasters. In entertainment, specifically, can't just make the same product cheaper and expect the consumer to see it as a good value, and you can't charge the users for a luxury model with options and expect them to accept the increased cost. If what they were doing was working... they would have simply sold skins at a similar price point to gliders. The fact that they've attempted to implement a scheme specifically designed to cost the customer more on average to obtain a similar "optional" microtransaction indicates that what they were doing is NOT making them money as well as they expected, and their response to that problem is "let's try and force them to give us more money since we're not selling as many as we want" in stead of "lets figure out what they want to buy and sell them that" This is why the term 'exploitative' is often used in these discussions. Rather than attempting to create new customers and retain existing once by offering a better product or service, they're banking on upscaling the cost for what they believe is a captive audience. They're raising the price of bread because they're the only deli in town, and they know you love sandwiches, which only works as long as long as you don't get tired of sandwiches made with increasingly more shitty bread and decide to switch to soup. Or, god forbid... make your OWN sandwiches.

Did anyone stop to consider sales are declining because they go out of their way to make threadbare expansions specifically so they can offer them for reduced prices and overcharge you for gem store skins on the back end for increased profit while intentionally making a more frustrating game with less rewarding content? If they'd ACTUALLY moved to the expansion model and away from the "free updates subsidized by your annoyance at how few rewards are in them so you buy gem store stuff" model that was failing before they started working on HoT... has anyone considered they might be in a better place now? I mean by and large they used this model in the first game and made enough money to make a completely new game. An undertaking that costs way more time and money than making an expansion for an existing one. Has anyone considered "free updates" does not actually mean "free updates" and you've been relying on a fickle and transient minority of the player base buying overpriced wallet-farming loot to provide the majority of the revenue rather than focusing on making the best possible product to make it attractive to the most possible users? Did anyone stop to consider that the sales decline might be because they go out of their way to make a game where the point is convincing players to buy gems (or become licensed gold farmers for other players) rather than creating experiences so rich and rewarding people are happy to pay 60 bucks for expansions and tell everyone how awesome the game is?

The logic that the game can not survive on box purchases alone is false. We'd be paying a lower distributed cost in more frequent expansions at the cost of having as many free updates. We'd be paying full box price for these expansions. We'd be getting the full result of an entire development effort in once chunk. Actual cost of hosting servers in 2017 is DRASTICALLY lower than the days of the subscription model. Actual cost of developing games has not changed as drastically as you are led to believe, as the labor market in the industry is much more competitive and it is far easier to acquire better talent for less investment. Microtransactions effectively monetize a minority of a game's player base for the majority of their revenue by specifically targeting so-called "whales" Effective expansion models effectively monetize every player by distributing the income across the entire player base, and encourage the developers to release high value content loaded with whatever the players find desirable rather than specifically building their games in such a way as to withold content in order to drive cash shop sales under the guise of "free updates" The cost of developing and hosting an MMO in 2017 is not drastically dissimilar than the cost of maintaining online services for the plethora of shooters and sports games that offer these services for free, release iterative games once a year, and did not adopt microtransaction models until very recently although their business model was already so sustainable it bootstrapped multiple other projects. Very little of the added value from embracing a microtransaction model is actually reinvested in developing the game you buy them in. The idea that "they have to have a cash shop" is a myth. Offering discreet large chunks of complete content for direct pricing and placing all of the rewards within that package is very much a sustainable business model. If I had to choose between buying slightly more expensive expansions with no free updates that have all the rewards in the game, or having more free single map updates with two skins and being saddled with a cash shop and living in an environment where playing the game is not sufficient to access whatever reward mechanisms exist, I would most certainly choose the former. The problem is that without those people who "should know better" or "have the money anyway" spending hundreds and hundreds of collars more than the average on "optional" cash shop items, the profits do not keep pace with the rest of the industry. Making enough to continue making your game and paying your developers well is not the objective of such systems. Making as much as the rest of the industry that is exploiting their players for piles of money to deliver to cranky shareholders is.

This game has had randomized loot boxes since launch. Nobody cared because they could pay other players in gold to gamble in stead of doing it themselves. Doesn't change the fact that Anet is heavily monetizing a minority of the player base at the expense of the majority's selection of ingame rewards and always has been. When people buy skins or BL items for gold they are still supporting this business practice and actively saying to anet they'd rather be nickel and dimed a skin at a time than buy larger more content rich expansions at a standard game price point.

I've been saying the same thing about black lion chests for quite a while. Hilariously nobody cared about the exploitative real money RNG until it walled off something they actually wanted and they had to pay for it themselves in stead of getting some other anonymous player to do it for them. You people brought this on yourselves by supporting Anet's "you might win 1/10 of a weapon skin or get boosters we give you for logging in" nonsense in the first place. You people brought this on yourselves by BEGGING to pay ten bucks for mount skins in an expansion that cost forty dollars. Imagine a world where you all got up in arms about the ridiculous stacking rng of black lion tickets, or the overpriced nature of GW2 skins in general. Imagine how much better the game would be. Imagine how much more loot would actually exist in the game that wasn't clones of stuff you already had. You're mad now, sure, but where was that rage before? Where was that rage when you wanted that nice black lion skin? Where was that rage when arenanet released gliders or mounts as a focal point of an expansion, in a game where cosmetics collecting is the rewards loop, with no customization in sight for MONTHS without asking someone to pull out their credit card? Where was your anger when someone who wasn't you was paying for the gems you got "for free" on the currency exchange? Where was that anger when in the entire lifetime of HoT the VAST majority of rewards appeared not in the expansion you already paid for, but in the gem store? Where was that anger when on RELEASE DAY Anet was selling you glider skins while having none to earn at all? Where was it? Why are you surprised? You voted with your wallets, and in doing so indicated that you are complicit with overpriced skins and RNG bullshark. My advice to you: Learn from this experience. Stay Angry. Stop buying Gems. Demand better value for your consumer dollars. Stop treating gems you get on the exchange like they're free. Stop giving Anet a free pass to exploit you.

This is the one thing we agree on. This thread should be evidence that your system also fails to please everyone. The fact of the matter is that until all players value all types of content and reward equally, you can not please everyone. That will never happen. People are different, and want different things for different reasons. Specifically, you're removing context from all rewards in this manner. While that would certainly please you, such a drastic change to the fundamental reward mechanisms of the game is bound to upset just as many or possibly more people as it pleases. In a world where you simply can not please everyone, I'd prefer the status quo, because it has proven tolerable enough to all involved that it seems an adequate compromise. Your absolutist revision that aims to decouple reward from content is certainly intriguing as a general idea, were some game built around it from the ground up, but ill suited for a game that already has an entrenched user base largely content with the existing mechanism. I would find your approach to loot dreadfully boring to play as I rather enjoy the act of downing specific dungeons or bosses for their unique drops, and I dislike systems in which I can just buy everything on the trade post. I know its difficult for you to really understand, but when I save up tokens or gold or whatever and buy stuff from a vendor, its doesn't feel earned, and one of the specific reasons I play these types of games is to earn loot. I don't begrudge you this desire for everything. I simply don't find this system appealing, and I prefer the one we already have. That system is part of why I continue to play the game. I like being rewarded with skins relative to what I'm doing in the game, and thus I've been playing a game that does that for around five years.

Ohoni, again, you're phrasing the intrinsic/extrinsic value of skins as mutually exclusive. They are not. Value is entirely subjective which is why I belive it is most appropriate to offer a range of acquisition methods for a range of rewards rather than unify every single reward in to the same system that aims for the skill floor exclusively Because it ensures that skins, titles, trophies, etc. etc. exist with variant acquisition methods suitable to variant playstyles and subjective reward values because it addresses a larger number of the many niche personal goals that players hold. I own SAB tribulation skins that I don't even use specifically because they are trophies and I worked much harder to get several of my silverwastes titles than I did to obtain the sunspear armor that my most played character wears and they have corresponding different personal value to me I adore my sunspear armor for its aesthetic value. I adore my SAB skins for their trophy value. I adore my monocle skin because it was a gift. Skins are not a different animal just because you wear them. They are purely cosmetic rewards, and they have relative value persuant to personal taste and personal meaning. Skins are absolutely the rewards most desired by players for the reasons you have specified which is why I am of the opinion that they are absolutely appropriate as trophy pieces in addition to their utilization as clothing. I am also completely against any situation in which the possibility of utilizing the most desirable rewards in the game as trophies is removed. I'm against this because this application literally removes the game's most appealing reward mechanism from the game's most challenging content. Your theoretical system removes the very possibility of skins as wearable trophy items for no reason other than that someone might want it but be unwilling or unable to to its associated content. I do not believe simply desiring a cosmetic reward, in a game where the entire endgame reward structure is focused around playing the game to acquire cosmetics, is sufficient reason for a player to have it. I don't believe my desire to have the houndskin mantle should obligate the game to give it to me for doing some fractals just because I enjoy repeating fractals more than repeating open world content. I believe that players are entitled to the rewards they earn, and I am cognizant of the fact I have not earned that reward. Just like I haven't earned most of the dungeon skins, or any of the raid skins. I am cognizant that I'm playing a game in which the acquisition of skins is "do whatever task the game has attached to this skin" whether its simply buying it from another player, collecting a bunch of tokens, completing a collection, or finishing a raid wing and crossing my fingers. I am appreciateive of the fact that the game offers a wide variety of cosmetic rewards for all types of play so that all types of play are uniquely rewarding to those that play them. I LIKE that people that like to farm open world stuff have skins dedicated to that play pattern. I LIKE that PvP and WvW having their own unique armor rewards now. I LIKE this despite the fact that I may never obtain those rewards, even though I find many of them attractive because I know it means that the content I do enjoy also confers its own special rewards. Trophies, titles, and skins are all cosmetic rewards that have no value other than to serve as trophies or to be displayed for aesthetic value and that's what I mean, specifically, when I state they have the same mechanical purpose. When you divorce rewards from their subjective personal value, they do the same thing. They are displayed in the client for the character/guild hall and those in view of them. As to your example for having multiple skins tied to small, simple sections of content? Absolutely. In fact the personal story in PoF does a pretty good job of this by rewarding an entire armor set simply for completing the storyline. However I don't understand why that system can not coexist with other completely different skins that are rewarded for different challenge levels of content and recognize that this is a compromise that best rewards all involved players already. Again, your argument is an absolute. Its a fundamental change to the way the core reward mechanism of GW2 works that effectively reserves only the rewards you deem appropriate rather than all rewards as fair game for variant acquisition methods. It is not an additional mechanic like mounts. It is a complete upending of the way the game's reward system functions for all content done in a way that makes a minority of content in the game less rewarding for the majority of players that play it. Contrasted with the current system, where all levels of content are treated with an even hand for unique rewards based upon playing that content I prefer the latter, because it ensures that literally every player can get something cool and different and personally for doing their preferred content while also benefiting from several shared pools.

For the record I was not constructing a straw man in the trophy example, I was asking a simple question: What is the intrinsic difference that places skins in a category that should be immune to exclusivity separate from trophies or titles? A question you have failed to answer. My point there is that all rewards have intrinsic value. Personally, I place higher value on guild hall trophies than skins or titles specifically because I can display all of them at once, and that players other than myself can enjoy them even when I'm not around. That doesn't mean I get to dictate apropo of nothing that trophies have an intrinsically higher value to all players. You, specifically, place a higher personal value on skins. I recognize that rewards have subjective value to their recipients. I was pointing out that your logic is based upon a concept that doesn't exist in GW2. That skins are divorced from content. I was pointing out that your logic and "compromise" is flawed from that perspective. In reality, the skin-based compromises that have thusfar been made are that the majority of PvE skins can be acquired through PvP and WvW reward tracks. Past that, I can't think (and please correct me if I've missed one) of an instance where a skin reward bound to content was ever decoupled from it. I'm not ascribing moral value here to the act or lack of such decoupling. I'm ascribing appropriateness for this specific game based upon this specific game's reward model that has remained largely unchanged in PvE since launch. I am also ok with you not being OK with it not because of a lack of empathy, I understand that you want access, specifically, to skins regardless of content completed. However, I also understand that these two positions are mutually exclusive. My position on this matter aligns with the existing desgin and reward structure of the game, its overall intent, and the trend of development from its developers since launch. This is, why I hold this opinion. If we were having the same discussion in a different game, where skins were and had always been decoupled from content, I would agree with you. if we were playing Overwatch, in which all cosmetics are divorced from content because they are randomly acquired, I would be upset if suddenly some new game mode came along thatwas the sole source of specific skins. In the case of GW2 I disagree with you specifically because content based rewards are part of why I currently enjoy playing the existing game and see no reason to upend the entire system and remake it in to something it has never been. Not because I want you to be sad. Because your position is an absolute. The question is "should skins be tied to specific content?" and from what I understand of your position the only option is "Never" while mine is "Sometimes, and in varying degrees" This is the same answer I give in response to all forms of reward, while you have a difference of opinion that makes skins a special case. And that's fine, you're entitled to your opinion, provided it isn't phrased as if the act of witholding is the motivation for those who wish to continue the status quo. Witholding is a product of, not the motivation for, content based loot. It is the result of someone wanting something the game has never offered them, and choosing to be because a theoretical reality that has not come to pass. I understand the theoretical reality that you want here. I also understand that it by its absolutist nature, destroys a mechanic of the existing one that I happen to enjoy. I don't for a moment think you're asking this to inconvenience me, nor do I think you're devoid of empathy. I think we're both adults capable of recognizing that this is a computer game that we play for recreation, and that we hold opposing and irreconcilable viewpoints. I'd also like to think we're both capable of holding said viewpoints without calling in to question the stated motives or personal integrity of the other.

Ohoni, at what point have I stated to either of you that your statements "ring hollow" or asked you to "just admit what you really want?" You are deliberately, and repeatedly dismissing the basic argument of risk/reward balance and its role in loot assignments by attempting to rephrase it as "elitists want special stuff only for themselves" Your seeming inability to understand that challenge and loot, are not mutually exclusive desires, but expected parts of the same hole for a large number of players does not "ring hollow" to me. I'm not asking you to "admit what you really want" here. I understand that you really do think that a significant portion of the player base is motivated specifically by the rewards themselves, rather than by the fact that exclusive rewards serve as meaningful trophies for completing hard encounters, and that their existance is part of, not the entirety of, that which makes that content engaging. Was my assessment that your basic position is that you want access to the entirety of loot based rewards (specifically, skins and stat sets) for doing whatever content you choose incorrect? Please clarify for me if I have misunderstood you. When reacting to the statement "people want unique rewards for completing challenging content" with variants on "no, you want to gate people out of content, you don't care about the challenge of the content, only the exclusivity of the loot other people can't have" it appears that you're not actually considering the point given. It appears you're attempting, primarily, to appeal to a statement that was never made. It appears that you, specifically, are incapable of viewing loot gated behind content you can't or won't complete as being witheld from you unfairly. I'm not projecting here, I'm reacting to the posts the two of you actually typed. Further, I can't agree that titles or trophies are "ok" as exclusives while skins are not because, functionally, they serve the same purpose. They are cosmetic acquisitions used to decorate. I can't see a functional rift that necessitates that skins, specifically be treated differently than titles or trophies. I don't specifically see how that's a "compromise" as the "compromise" is already in effect. You can't do fractals for LS skins. You can't do open world content for raid skins. You can't farm silverwastes for pof titles and skins. I don't own the vast majority of open world token skins because it is beyond my personal ability to tolerate grind. I do not have the patience to do that content in the amount of repetition it would require to obtain them. I do not possess that player skill. The difference between our two positions seems to be that I am okay with being gated out of rewards for which I don't enjoy the content, and you are not. Don't let me put words in your mouth here. Please clarify if I have misunderstood you. The crux of your position seems to be, at its core, the ideal that skins should be exempt from the requirement of completing specific tasks because some players may not be able to complete specific tasks. Am I correct? I fundamentally disagree with this position not because I think you have some ulterior motive. I disagree with it because I think it creates boring loot and undermines the primary reward mechanism of the game as it is and has been since launch. I don't think your statements "ring hollow" and I don't think you are saying anything other than exactly what you mean to say.

Are you responding to my post here Ayumi? I apologise if my wording wasn't clear but I happen to agree with what you've posted. I'm not sure if you're responding to me or Stihl here and am kind of confused if you're trying to make a point to me.

What happens when a player sees a title and says "I want that" and finds out they need to do specific content to get it? How is that any different from a skin? That's an exclusive reward, exclusively obtainable, for doing exclusive content that may be beyond a player's challenge level. I mean I decorate my guild hall regularly, and I'm seeing these PvP tournament trophies that are literally unobtainable. In your opinion, should there be some method for me to obtain a world championship trophy for my guild hall that commemorates an event that has ended, for which only a handful of players could ever have recieved this award? I get your stance, and I disagree with you. The difference is you're going out of your way to cast doubt on the basic argument that is being presented to you. You're assigning some kind of ulterior motive to it. You're creating a straw man to rally against. You're saying "I hear what you're saying, but that's not REALLY what you mean" ad infinitum without stopping to consider that yes, perhaps this really is what people mean when they say it. Is it so hard to do what the people responding to you are doing, take their arguments at face value, and respond to them accordingly? Until you can respond to the desires of players that disagree with you without first assigning to them a set of opinions that your yourself have manufactured I'm not sure what the point is in this discussion. You've set out specifically to villify people that disagree with you first and foremost. Your first response is to call them liars and tell them what they think rather than actually listening to what they think. That's my overall issue with what you're both saying. Not that you have a different view of loot distribution or acquisition that I happen to disagree with, but that you begin and end your arguments from a false position of implied superior morality because you're "telling the truth" and your opponents are "lying about their motivations" or that what they say "rings hollow" Can you engage in debate on this particular topic without baselessly calling people liars, or is calling people liars the entire point of continued debate here?

The crux of this argument Stihl now, and Ohoni (who I've had this debate with before) hang upon is, specifically "people only ask for harder content because they want to lord rare loot over plebs" And feel free to tell yourselves that all you like. I don't doubt for a moment that this is specifically the motivation of some players. What you seem to fail to understand is that this is not the motivation of literally every single player that wants to be rewarded accordingly for completing content. The reality is it isn't ABOUT lording the loot over anybody. It's about finishing a world boss where one acquires a guaranteed rare, and then finishing, let's say, one of the raids, or a challenge mode 100 fractal... and recieving the same loot feeling ultimately unrewarding. Your desire to make literally everything about you misses the point here. It isn't about you. You can put words in people's mouths all you like, but the consensus is not "I don't want other people to have things" it's, quite simply "I want to feel rewarded for content I complete." People want to have special shiny bits for completing tougher content. Yes. That is not in dispute. What neither of you seems to understand is that it has nothing to do with exclusivity. These rewards are not exclusive. The content itself is sitting there, waiting to be completed, by every player. Just like every collection achievement, every map completion award, and every piece of loot dropping from every mob in the game. Specifically, what you're asking for is "I want to have access to everything by doing only the narrow part of content I personally enjoy." where as those who want to be rewarded well for completing specific content are saying "I want to be rewarded this specific thing for completing this specific bit of content." As to Stihl's point about GW2 being the "retirement home" of MMOs... that's not a position arenanet seems to agree with. They've gone out of their way to add additional, challenging content, with exclusive rewards for completing that content, since the beginning of the game. Its a core design concept of risk versus reward. They've expanded it from its roots in the release dungeons, to the scaling difficulty of the fractal system, to the tightly designed raid encounters, challenge modes, story mode achievement challenges, and various collections tied to specific content. Over two expansions and countless live patches the game has kept pace with its core open world content, which is designed to be accessible, while simultaneously expanding on its more challenging content. They've done so without withholding mechanical power from players that would gate them from attempting to complete that content specifically to make that content as approachable as possible for new players that may want to engage with it. The idea that players are not entitled to rewards that are reflective of content completed begs the question: why do we have rewards for completing content? If the point of loot is not as reward for completing pve content, then why does it exist? Why don't we just remove inventories from the game. Why have loot drop at all from anything if players aren't entitled to rewards relative to successfully completing encounters? Why require players to play PoF to gain sunspear or elonian skins if players aren't entitled to rewards reflective of content completed? Why doesn't purchasing the expansion simply unlock the skins and new stat sets? GW2 does not seem to be the game you both think it is, and I'm not sure it ever really has been. It seems to be a game interested in serving a large and diverse player base with a diverse level of game types and challenge levels with a diverse number of reward types relative to that content. The problem you both seem to have with it that you believe you're entitled to everything while only doing the things you want to do for it. Please correct me if I misunderstand you here because I don't want to put words in your mouths. And there's merit in a system like that, sure. Many games exist where this is possible. GW2 isn't one of them, never has been, and seems to be incrementally moving further away from, rather than closer to that approach to loot. In fact, over time it seems it has worked very hard to offer a diverse array of content with an ever more diverse amount of challenge levels, and assigns specific rewards for specific content. I understand your point and I'm not going to try and put words in your mouths here. I disagree with you, and specifically I find it puzzling that you see loot in GW2 as something that has been historically non-exclusive and worry about changing the game in to something different. From my vantage, I see the specific point of content based rewards as one of the core mechanisms by which the game has always worked. You're free to dislike the way the game works, you're free to disagree with the implementation of loot, but I don't get why you're going out of your way to tell me the game does something it obviously does not. Nobody across the fence for you in this debate is asking for any radical shift in gameplay mechanics. They're literally asking for more of what the game already does. They're asking for the same exact GW2 they've been playing for quite a while.

Stihl, look, I don't understand why this is a difficult concept for you. If people specifically just wanted more loot they wouldn't be begging for content that makes it harder to get. They'd just ask for drops for the current level of content to be improved. People don't JUST want more loot. They want loot to be appropriate to the challenge undertaken, AND they want more challenging content. You're phrasing this as an either-or scenario and it really isn't. People don't necessarily want either challenge OR loot. In cases like this one the motive is very clearly stated. People want both, not one or the other, because they find either or to be unsatisfactory. Many people don't like taking on greater challenge without greater reward, and find it boring to simply be given greater rewards without doing anything particularly challenging. While I realize this is not how you specifically decide whether or not to complete content, I find your continual deliberate blindness to this very simple to understand concept baffling. You must understand that this particular set of motivations is common enough among players that the basic risk/reward paradigm of the majority of loot reward systems obeys it as a convention. You must also understand that a majority of opinion is not a monopoly of opinion. That there are certainly people whos ONLY motivation is loot, or whos ONLY motivation is challenge. However, we do not live in a world where those are two opposing factions forever locked in eternal war because a large number, if not the majority of players occupy a space somewhere in between those two poles. If you still don't understand that this is not an either-or discussion I don't really know any better way to explain it to you. I suspect you are being willfully obtuse specifically to try to harvest lulz and bait people anyway. As a side note, you can finish the race in under two minutes on foot. Its still worth it for the loot or challenge, whichever you prefer. Try it with a daredevil if you have one, or join a squad specifically doing that. Its definitely not as easy as doing it with a mount, but it is possible. One of the lab farms I was in was really nice and helped someone do it this way when they asked.

Mace, because I really like the idea of a lower damage crowd control playstyle. Mainly because crowd control as a personal defense also has massive group utility. Rather than step on spellbreaker's toes and engage in overloading it with stuns and interrupts, I think it might be fun to focus thief mace around soft knockbacks, projectile reflection, pulls, and switching enemies between taunts and fears in stead. Sort of a reverse daredevil, where rather than being more agile to outmaneuver the enemies, you're focused on being the one that maneuvers them.