REWARDS at endgame

[Expertus.5746]

Recently i lost my interest/motivation in gw2. I feel like i dont have a reason to do any of the endgame pve.
The game basically cant reward me in any meaningful way. In another game when you do heroic instead of normal raid the game just gives you a gear, that is +10 itemlvl better than yours. So reward is not a problem. Howerver, gw2 cant do that, because of the nature of the game, which i pretty much like, and prefer over a game where you can throw away all of your stuff when a new expac lands.

EoD STRIKES: After HT releases, youll be able to get 12g, and 5 LI every week by doing all the CMs. Lets assume you have a good group, and you can clear all 4 in 40 min. 12g in 40 min is terrible, but you get LI aswell.
RAIDS: Lets say you can get 100g out of a FC. If your group is somewhat good, you clear it in 3h. 33g/h is not bad, and you get ascendeds. The main reward here aswell is the LI. 25/week.

So overall 30 LI/week. In 6 months, youll have all 3 set of legendary armor, and then what? You can still do raids for gold, maybe going near 2,5-2h for even better g/h, but strikes are dead for you.
LI at this point is completly worthless, a random trash item that can be sold for 6 copper to the vendor worth more than doing a minister li CM.

My  solution would be: Acc bound cosmetic infusions.
What if you could buy acc bound chack, khan-ur, frost legion, and all of these high tier infusions for 120-250 LI/ea? thats 4-9 weeks of clearing endgame. It wouldnt inflate the economy because its acc bound. If some ppl because of this, sold their infus, well, they would do that on oveflow, so the BLTC wouldnt see much moovement around expensive infus anyway.
Same could be applied to prophet shards from IBS, and EoD strikes. 1-2k shards/infu. (which is 13 week of EoD clear for a 2k infu)
The population of these game modes would multiply. Id certeanly go and do them every week again.

TLDR: let us buy acc bound cosmetic infus for LI/prophet shards.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Expertus.5746

[Rasimir.6239]

Or you could play the rest of the game, instead of restricting yourself to a very small, niche part of this game's "endgame".

GW2 endgame isn't about running instanced group content in a continous loup, the way many other MMORPGs are set up. Instead, there's lots of other things to do, and many players are here precisely of this setup.

 

If instanced group content is the only (or even just the main) part of what you like about GW2, that's fine, but you'll have to accept that that's not the main focus of endgame in this game.

Changing the game's focus to areas that are already covered by other games, and as such changing the target audience, doesn't seem like the best idea, especially 10 years into the game's lifetime. While this might actually grow the population doing instanced group content, I somehow doubt it'll be a positive to the game's total population.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Rasimir.6239

[Expertus.5746]

Im not asking the game to shift, to chenge direction. Im not talking about new raids, or fractals, that ship has sailed. Im talking about making existing challenging content rewarding. The only thing i asked for in my post, is a new tab for a vendor. (Im not a game dev, i have no idea how that stuff works, but i assume, its not that hard to include a shop with purchasable items.)
This game is all about "play how you want." What if i wanted to play hard instanced content? Why shouldnt the game reward me for doing that? I was talking about a cosmetic item every 9-13 week.
The time, and gold investment of these game modes are way, way higher than any other game mode, not even talking about the preparation that needs to go into, before you can even start doing them. So why couldnt i get a few (worthless, because its acc bound) flashy item a year by doing them?

[Rasimir.6239]

4 minutes ago, Expertus.5746 said:

Im not asking the game to shift, to chenge direction.

Inflating rewards in one type of content only will shift the focus of the game by shifting the way players feel about their time commitment in different parts of the game.

 

5 minutes ago, Expertus.5746 said:

This game is all about "play how you want." What if i wanted to play hard instanced content?

You can already do this, nobody's stopping you but yourself.

 

5 minutes ago, Expertus.5746 said:

Why shouldnt the game reward me for doing that?

It does reward you, just not as extensively as you'd like.

 

6 minutes ago, Expertus.5746 said:

So why couldnt i get a few (worthless, because its acc bound) flashy item a year by doing them?

Those "worthless flashy items" didn't look as worthless last time I looked. Rare infusions and other rare cosmetics are one of the foundations of this game's economic system, which then is a foundation of the game's reward system.

 

This game's economy is a very involved, intricate thing, that manages to allow people to exchange the loot they gather in their gameplay to exchange for the things they'd like to have. It ultimately leads to lots and lots of people feeling "rewarded" and feeling that their shiny of choice is accessible to them. Rip out a major contributor and there's a good chance the whole thing comes crashing down, with all kinds of collateral damage for the whole game and all players that play it.

[Expertus.5746]

Raids, and srtikes are weekly activities, so if it was rewarding, would mean more ppl spend a night, or two doing them, not totally shifting towards endgame. I assume the game s goal would be to get as much player retention as possible, and having these weekly things to do, would defenetly make it more successful.
Having acc bound stuff is indeed worthless, you cannot sell, or trade them. If i had a full set of gen1, 2, and a few gen3 legendary weapons, 7 runes, 8 sigils, all the trinkets, back items, but i had 200 gold in my wallet, how would i inflate anything? Im not rich, acc value cannot be transfered. I have 200 gold + like 800g worth of stff in my storage. I can commit to the economy by 1k gold, while sitting on 150k+ g worthy legendary.
The reason endgame is dieing is because the lack of reward compared to the time investment is nowhere near worth it. The number of ppl who has good amount of useless LI is like 0.001% of the game s total pop. Im not a mathematician, or economist, but i doubt that would impact the economy. Maybe chack worth 2k less gold for a week?
Making challenging content rewarding should be obvious. And im talking about exclusively account bound cosmetics.

[Astralporing.1957]

Raid rewards, even after getting your legendary armor and all the skins you might have wanted, are still quite okay. Assuming you like raiding, that is. If you don't like that content, then yes, it will feel like unrewarding chore and you should probably stop doing it. Remember, don't get the design of other MMORPGs influence how you perceive GW2. Here, the raids are not supposed to be the endgame everyone runs after max level. The motto of GW2 was "whole game is the endgame". And even though there were some changes to game design since that time, for most GW2 players that motto still works fine.

[Ashen.2907]

If you have no need of ascended gear or LI, many aspects of instanced content in this game are not particularly rewarding IMO.

[Hashberry.4510]

Too much focus on gold per hour makes Jack a dull boy.

[Taclism.2406]

Many players cannot help approaching a game as an optimization puzzle. Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game - Sid Meier.

 

 

Also, if you lack rewards, isnt making infusions account-bound instead of character-bound diminishing the amount of remaining things that could reward you?

Edited June 4, 2022 by Taclism.2406

[Ashen.2907]

1 hour ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Too much focus on gold per hour makes Jack a dull boy.

And yet he is seeking account bound cosmetics....not worth gold at all.

[Expertus.5746]

I dont care about g/h, i have nearly everything that the game has to offer, but many players do. And when they see how much it takes to get into endgame, and how low the reward is. Makes it obvious why endgame is dead.
Said, i dont care about gold, but id like to get something out of what im doing. For that, acc bound infusions would be great. (It doesnt metter if its acc, or char bound, the only meaningful aspect is that, its not tradeble.)
Other games doesnt have that problem, but it wouldnt take much for gw2 to solve either.
Yes, i could go and play orc vs humans, or bunnygirl simulator XIV, and most ppl who seek this kind of content, probably already playing those. But i dont like tabtarget combat, it makes me scream when i get rooted every time i cast a spell. For me gw2 has the best combat out of all mmos, including shiny titties online.
I accepted long ago, that there wont many new endgame, but it doesnt mean, that the existing ones should not have good reward.
What did we get by the new expac as endgame? 4 boss. And ls1 final strike, probably will be the last time we see endgame content added, because very little amount of ppl play them. Because it isnt rewarding. Most ppl do stuff for reward.

[Khisanth.2948]

Why is fractals excluded? O_o

Also how many hours a day are you expecting people to play?

Edited June 4, 2022 by Khisanth.2948

[Expertus.5746]

Just now, Khisanth.2948 said:

Why is fractals excluded? O_o

Because, despite it also wont get any update, probably ever. Its still good, and worth doing.

[Erise.5614]

7 minutes ago, Expertus.5746 said:

I dont care about g/h, i have nearly everything that the game has to offer, but many players do. And when they see how much it takes to get into endgame, and how low the reward is. Makes it obvious why endgame is dead.
Said, i dont care about gold, but id like to get something out of what im doing. For that, acc bound infusions would be great. (It doesnt metter if its acc, or char bound, the only meaningful aspect is that, its not tradeble.)
Other games doesnt have that problem, but it wouldnt take much for gw2 to solve either.
Yes, i could go and play orc vs humans, or bunnygirl simulator XIV, and most ppl who seek this kind of content, probably already playing those. But i dont like tabtarget combat, it makes me scream when i get rooted every time i cast a spell. For me gw2 has the best combat out of all mmos, including shiny titties online.
I accepted long ago, that there wont many new endgame, but it doesnt mean, that the existing ones should not have good reward.
What did we get by the new expac as endgame? 4 boss. And ls1 final strike, probably will be the last time we see endgame content added, because very little amount of ppl play them. Because it isnt rewarding. Most ppl do stuff for reward.

You greatly overestimate the amount of players who have everything they can get out of the content.

Even just clover farm is extremely valuable. The ideal clover farm is getting MCs from strikes & fractals and converting those to clovers with raid currency. So the fastest way to all legendary items is through all end game content. Or one has to wait a few weeks longer.

Also, Strike CMs are actually extremely rewarding. It's 3 raw gold + 2 gold worth in mats + 1 gold worth in shards. Which makes for a whopping 31 gold per hour assuming you clear all on the first try but use up the full 10 minutes. That's the highest, consistent gold per hour in the game as far as I'm aware (for actually playing content. Daily login is better if you log off immediately).

[Khisanth.2948]

6 minutes ago, Expertus.5746 said:

Because, despite it also wont get any update, probably ever. Its still good, and worth doing.

By this logic  WvW should be handing out infusions like candy 🤣

2 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Also, Strike CMs are actually extremely rewarding. It's 3 raw gold + 2 gold worth in mats + 1 gold worth in shards. Which makes for a whopping 31 gold per hour assuming you clear all on the first try but use up the full 10 minutes. That's the highest, consistent gold per hour in the game as far as I'm aware (for actually playing content. Daily login is better if you log off immediately).

A well organized group(I assume a static group) can apparently do around double that for fractals but that is just claims I've seen, no idea about the details.

On the other hand I've seen similar claims about dungeons so maybe I should go search for a salt block .

[Erise.5614]

15 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

By this logic  WvW should be handing out infusions like candy 🤣

A well organized group(I assume a static group) can apparently do around double that for fractals but that is just claims I've seen, no idea about the details.

On the other hand I've seen similar claims about dungeons so maybe I should go search for a salt block .

The profit of dungeons and fractals seem exaggerated on calculators like fast farming because they assume extremely optimized gameplay (e.g. 4 minutes for a dungeon run. 3 minutes for a fractal, etc.). Absolute minimum durations to complete content. 

My strike calculation, on the other hand, assumes the worst possible time that can lead to a success. So long as you do not wipe repeatedly, you will actually end up with ~30 gold per hour. Strike CMs, especially the daily Strike CMs (plus 2 gold), are very profitable indeed. 

Edited June 4, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Seera.5916]

34 minutes ago, Expertus.5746 said:

I dont care about g/h, i have nearly everything that the game has to offer, but many players do. And when they see how much it takes to get into endgame, and how low the reward is. Makes it obvious why endgame is dead.
Said, i dont care about gold, but id like to get something out of what im doing. For that, acc bound infusions would be great. (It doesnt metter if its acc, or char bound, the only meaningful aspect is that, its not tradeble.)
Other games doesnt have that problem, but it wouldnt take much for gw2 to solve either.
Yes, i could go and play orc vs humans, or bunnygirl simulator XIV, and most ppl who seek this kind of content, probably already playing those. But i dont like tabtarget combat, it makes me scream when i get rooted every time i cast a spell. For me gw2 has the best combat out of all mmos, including shiny titties online.
I accepted long ago, that there wont many new endgame, but it doesnt mean, that the existing ones should not have good reward.
What did we get by the new expac as endgame? 4 boss. And ls1 final strike, probably will be the last time we see endgame content added, because very little amount of ppl play them. Because it isnt rewarding. Most ppl do stuff for reward.

 

How do you know the end game is dead?

Guild Wars 2 is one of those games where end game is the entire game. So some players may be doing dungeons. Others may be playing WvW. Others could be working on map completion. Others could be doing fractals. Others could be working on the various achievements. Or expansion and living world story or even core story if they had not stopped to do the story beforehand as the story doesn't lock anything behind it. Strikes and raids aren't all there is to end game.

[Expertus.5746]

13 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Strike CMs are actually extremely rewarding. It's 3 raw gold + 2 gold worth in mats + 1 gold worth in shards. Which makes for a whopping 31 gold per hour assuming you clear all on the first try but use up the full 10 minutes. That's the highest, consistent gold per hour in the game as far as I'm aware (for actually playing content. Daily login is better if you log off immediately).

Afaik, there are no groups that can do that, and even if there was, the amount of hours you need to put in to get to that point where you can consistenly clear that is ridiculos. So again, time investment vs reward.
So you can train on strike CM s for hours upon hours every week to get 31g/h which is weekly locked, or you go to drizzelwood withoun any requirements, viable build, game knowledge, and preparations, and you get 30, and you can repeat that.

26 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

By this logic  WvW should be handing out infusions like candy 🤣

31 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

WvW sucks aswell, but there you have different content every day depending on who you are play with, or play against. Also the barrier to entry is way lower than strikes/raids.

[Erise.5614]

2 minutes ago, Expertus.5746 said:

Afaik, there are no groups that can do that, and even if there was, the amount of hours you need to put in to get to that point where you can consistenly clear that is ridiculos. So again, time investment vs reward.

But in that case. What's the right balance?

Do you want rewards for 1 failed attempt? 2 failed attempts? 50 failed attempts?

There is no way to balance that. Either you shower experienced groups with obscene amount of gold or have it not very rewarding for inexperienced groups. 

[Expertus.5746]

16 minutes ago, Seera.5916 said:

 

How do you know the end game is dead?

Guild Wars 2 is one of those games where end game is the entire game. So some players may be doing dungeons. Others may be playing WvW. Others could be working on map completion. Others could be doing fractals. Others could be working on the various achievements. Or expansion and living world story or even core story if they had not stopped to do the story beforehand as the story doesn't lock anything behind it. Strikes and raids aren't all there is to end game.

In general ppl call raids, and dungeons endgame in MMOs, and i know its dieing, because im playing it.

[Seera.5916]

17 minutes ago, Expertus.5746 said:

In general ppl call raids, and dungeons endgame in MMOs, and i know its dieing, because im playing it.

 

And GW2 has a different end game philosophy than just raids and dungeons.

So how do you know GW2's end game is dying?

Edit to add:

Could rewards be modified to make certain end game activities more enticing?

Yes, but then you risk the crowd that can't/doesn't want to do that end game activity coming out of the word work to complain that they can't get the reward and that it should be added to some other activity.

So ANet has to balance unique rewards vs making one aspect too enticing with their unique rewards due to the complaints from both sides of the argument. Need unique rewards to get people to do it before they know if it's fun for them or not, but others will complain about how said rewards are inaccessible to them and that they should be obtainable another, easier way.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Seera.5916

[Expertus.5746]

3 minutes ago, Seera.5916 said:

 

And GW2 has a different end game philosophy than just raids and dungeons.

So how do you know GW2's end game is dying?

You have pvp, bg, open world, world bosses, world quests, fishing, exploration, fashion wars, and many other stuff in world of space goats aswell, but still, again, ppl call dungeons, and raids endgame.
In brownie online (black dessert haha) ppl say there is no endgame, despite it has pvp, sieges, node system, life skills, world bosses etc... but it has no dungeons, and raids. (they added like one in the past 10 years.)
So how do i know? Because im playing it.

[Rasimir.6239]

2 hours ago, Expertus.5746 said:

So how do i know? Because im playing it.

How can you play it if it's dead? 😉

 

Joke aside, you vastly overestimate the crowd you're playing with in relation to the whole playerbase.

 

If I went and extrapolated what this game's playerbase is interested in and likes to play from the people I regularly play with, then instanced content, gold per hour, and "exclusive" rewards would be a non-issue, because next to noone out of the people I play with is interested in any of that.

 

I don't presume that the people I play with are representative for the game's playerbase, but likewise neither are the people you play with. The playstyles and the kinds of content we enjoy automatically lead to us interacting with a disproportionate number of like-minded players, but you really shouldn't make the mistake of thinking who you meet in game is actually representative of the majority of the game's players.

 

Besides, where is it written that only instanced group content is "endgame", and that each MMORPG needs to implement this exact same kind of endgame?

Edited June 4, 2022 by Rasimir.6239

[Expertus.5746]

5 minutes ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

How can you play it if it's dead? 😉

 

Joke aside, you vastly overestimate the crowd you're playing with in relation to the whole playerbase.

 

If I went and extrapolated what this game's playerbase is interested in and likes to play from the people I regularly play with, then instanced content, gold per hour, and "exclusive" rewards would be a non-issue, because next to noone out of the people I play with is interested in any of that.

 

I don't presume that the people I play with are representative for the game's playerbase, but likewise neither are the people you play with. The playstyles and the kinds of content we enjoy automatically lead to us interacting with a disproportionate number of like-minded players, but you really shouldn't make the mistake of thinking who you meet in game is actually representative of the majority of the game's players.

 

Besides, where is it written that only instanced group content is "endgame", and that each MMORPG needs to implement this exact same kind of endgame?

In one of my comment, i menationed that 0.001% of the population may have significant amount of li as a reply to you, when you thought it could have impact on the economy. I dont overestimate the crowd that raids, and do strikes. Im completly aware that, like 1 or maximum 2% of the playerbase is engaging with endgame content. But thats mostly because there is no freshmen, exacly because the time investment/reward ratio is horrible.
Endgame. Its just how it goes in every mmo. Unless its like some hardcore pvp mmo, that has 100% of its content as pvp. So its not written anywhere, that endgame is only raids, and dungeons, but thats how ppl refer to it in every mmo. When someone says "endgame" they dont mean fishing, exploring a map, doing life skills, grind mobs, doing stuff open world, player housing, world bosses etc... etc... you can do that in every mmo, and they are just as relevant as in gw2. Gw2 isnt unique at that. They mean dungeons, and raids. Its also usually contains that, its challenging, requires coordination. So looking for raid difficulty in world of towncraft isnt count as "endgame" despite being a raid.

[Diak Atoli.2085]

'Raids' and 'dungeons' are endgame content in other MMOs. Cool. So? They are not the endgame content for GW2. GW2's PvE endgame includes raids, dungeons, strikes, and fractals. It also includes world boss, bounties, map completion, achievements, puzzles, Living Story, and fashion.

TL:DR - GW2 is designed so that everything is 'endgame content.' It is not other MMOs. Stop comparing it.