How the new daily system in Wizards Vault reduced my enjoyment of GW2 [Merged]

[Futa.4375]

All the people here defending this sytem and modern gaming systems in general show how well it works and how blind they are to the manipulation.
And don't get me started on the the usual "it's optional" excuse.
I find it amazing that players nowadays basically work for companies for free and give them money at the same time. What a time to be alive.

[kharmin.7683]

Just now, Futa.4375 said:

All the people here defending this sytem and modern gaming systems in general show how well it works and how blind they are to the manipulation.
And don't get me started on the the usual "it's optional" excuse.
I find it amazing that players nowadays basically work for companies for free and give them money at the same time. What a time to be alive.

But it is optional.  I've probably selected only a few items from the vault since its inception.  I don't feel any pressure or compulsion to grab things before they're gone, and that includes the BLC as well.  None of the items obtained from either of these sources is required to play the game or complete content.

The money I've given to Anet was to purchase the latest expansion.  I'm not sure how that equates to me basically working for the company for free.  That's such a non-starter statement in this discussion.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

3 minutes ago, Futa.4375 said:

All the people here defending this sytem and modern gaming systems in general show how well it works and how blind they are to the manipulation.
And don't get me started on the the usual "it's optional" excuse.
I find it amazing that players nowadays basically work for companies for free and give them money at the same time. What a time to be alive.

What a time to be alive indeed, when the previous "log in each day and do your dailies for the rewards and make sure to do festival objectives as well during festivals or you get no rewards and then make sure to log in whenever a new LW is up to get it for free" is considered different than what we have now.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Old system had more FOMO with the loyalty chest imo. 

[Thron Stal.9367]

13 hours ago, Futeko.9405 said:

I feel the current direction spearheaded by the Wizard's Vault is making the game feel more and more like a mobile game experience, and I heavily dislike that.

Mobile games work by hooking you using (1) small reward cycles with daily/weekly resets so you feel compelled to log in and complete tasks every day to get your rewards, and (2) Fear Of Missing Out syndrome - "if you don't get it now, it'll be unavailable/more expensive later and/or everyone else will be ahead of you and you'll never catch up to them".

This is all based on addiction mechanisms and not on what makes a game fun or enjoyable. You're completing tasks because you "need" your rewards, not because the task and/or the rewards are fun. In other words, the fun over time invested ratio is very small and you're playing more because you feel you "have to" rather than because you want to.

That is my issue with the changed system:

• I feel forced to get as much Astral Acclaim as I can, because (1) there are exclusive rewards you can only get with AA, (2) those rewards will disappear or get more expensive later, and (3) you can only get so much AA per cycle.
  • It means I feel like I'll miss out on rewards I don't unlock in the current cycle and I'll never be able to catch up on them, because next cycle there will be new rewards, and the amount of AA one can get will still be limited.
• I feel forced to complete content I was not planning to complete (yet), because some dailies/weeklies/specials lead me to zones I have not yet reached in the story.
  • Most importantly, I feel forced to complete the current content in SOTO now, even though I'm not yet done with the story up to there, because of the Specials WV tab. Combined with my limited game time and the fact the WV tasks have me perform tasks e.g. in Cantha when I'm barely starting LW4, I'm spending most of my time rushing content out of order because of the time-limited nature of WV rewards.
• I feel channeled into a specific game mode as opposed to having the choice of how to spend my time for dailies.
  • Meaning, I can't choose to complete e.g. two dailies from the PvE list and one from the WvW list. I need to complete my whole list, meaning I can't take the risk of having a WvW daily I can't complete in reasonable time (or ever if I'm unlucky) so I'm stuck with a 100% PvE list that I don't necessarily enjoy, but know I can complete regardless of the time of the day I log in.

None of the above existed with the previous daily system:

• I could miss log-in rewards or dailies without feeling I was missing content to which I'd never be able to catch up.
  • Log-in rewards were basically gold in various forms. Not logging in meant missing on some gold, and you can always "catch up" on gold.
  • Dailies meant gold and AP, and that was it. And the AP was (and still is) capped to a certain amount, so even if you miss some days you'll still be able to get AP-capped someday.
  • With AA, you get time-limited rewards. Miss a log-in/daily/weekly/special = miss on AA = miss on rewards that are exclusive to AA and that you can't buy with gold.
    • (I know you can miss some AA and still get every exclusive reward, with the rest just being "gold" or resources you can get with gold. But with the extra step of getting AA -> buying rewards instead of getting fixed rewards, it's much less intuitive what you're going to miss if you miss a daily/weekly/special, because you miss out on an exclusive currency, not on a specific reward).
• There was nothing exclusive/time-limited forcing me to complete specific content.
  • I could complete the story at my leisure, in the order I meant to complete it. I could spend a year catching up on the story up to the new expansion and I would not be penalized for it by missing out on some exclusive rewards/currency.
  • Now I'm essentially forced to either complete the new content as it gets released or miss out on exclusive AA from the Special tab.
• I could choose which 3 dailies to complete out of a list of 12 across PvE, PvP and WvW.
  • Now, I need to complete 3 dailies out of 4, and I need to choose from which mode(s) they are taken. I can't log in and do what I feel like doing that day.
  • And the extra daily task/two weekly tasks still reward AA, so I still have an incentive to complete those even if I already got my daily/weekly meta reward. As such I don't feel I need to complete 3 dailies and 6 weeklies, but 4 dailies and 8 weeklies.
    • As a result, I'm spending much more time per week doing dailies/weeklies than before - tasks I feel "forced" to do lest I miss out on exclusive currency.

So I feel like the new system is moving towards those mobile games addiction-based systems that have you invest a good chunk of your daily time into the game by dangling the FOMO carrot in front of you, instead of just producing/encouraging fun gameplay and content.

Yes, the rewards from the WV are much better than the previous dailies/log-in system. But no, I'm not having fun with it. After over a month of living with that new system, I still miss the old one, which I felt matched the base design philosophy of GW2 for all the reasons above.

I feel those issues could be solved with limited changes:

• Dispel the FOMO-feeling by ensuring AA can get you exclusive rewards earlier/faster, with the legacy tab using other currencies so you never "get behind" on AA.
  • For example, have legacy rewards also offered for spirit shards, gold, materials, etc.
  • That way, even if you miss out on AA, you know you'll still be able to get the exclusive rewards through other means. You won't feel that if you miss on 1000 AA, that's 1000 AA you'll never get back, and a reward you'll never be able to buy because new rewards for AA are constantly getting added.
• Go back to offering all PvE, PvP and WvW dailies/weeklies to everyone, but only award AA for the first 4 dailies/6 weeklies.
  • Further tasks can be completed for non-AA rewards (like a chest with materials, unidentified gear, etc.) like the previous system.
  • That way, you actually have a choice in what you want to complete on a specific day/week, and you can more easily skip what you don't like and/or don't have access to.
• (Bonus) Gate the tasks behind what the account has unlocked so players do not feel forced to complete content they have not yet unlocked.
  • For instance, do not offer Cantha dailies if the account has not yet reached the story step giving access to that zone/mastery.
  • The impact of that issue would be much lessened by the above point though - if you have more choices to complete the meta daily/weekly, and further dailies/weeklies do not give you AA, you can more easily skip e.g. Cantha tasks if you aren't there yet in the story.
    • This however would not protect you from days/weeks where a high number of tasks take place in Cantha. Rarer and less of a problem, but still some good added value if that can be implemented.

Right now, I'm tiring out of the game at an extremely accelerated rate compared to before SOTO and the new system because of that increased daily/weekly involvement the game "requires". As such, I hope the next cycle in 40 days will address those issues.

You're right!   That is clear now to me as well.  

I quit the PVE, quit the rewards, QUIT Clicking on crap I don't want.  I only do WVW now period.  and ANET QUIT that element, take all the enjoyment out. <----   ANET you waited and waited and waited for so long, NO ONE is playing WvW now, your right, why do an alliance, EVERYONE LEFT the kitten game. 

 

GG Anet

[Herr der Ringe.3251]

In order for you to buy all exclusives (that aren't just buyable with gold or similar), you'll need 4775 Astral Acclaim.

For you to get that, you could do every daily and weekly for 4 weeks out of the whole cycle and have some left over, or if you hate doing them, consider doing this:

log in every day, do 2/4 dailies (only do a 3rd ONCE to get the daily bonus), and do 4/8 weeklies each week, only doing another 2 for the weekly bonus on TWO weeks. Also, do none of the "special story rewards".

You'll still end up with enough AA to buy every single exclusive, all 16 weapons, 3 armour skins, the griffon and the emote.

Plus, if you were to ever miss out on any of them, you can gain something like 14245AA in an 11 week cycle (also without specials), so you have plenty opportunity to buy what you missed.

 

All this to say that I'm tired of people complaining about this new system. It's so much better and more rewarding than the old one, it's also the best implementation of a "Battlepass-like feature" I've come across, and battle passes tend to be good for games overall, as long as they are not predatory, monetized, let you choose your rewards, make it so you can still get rewards from previous passes later on, just like this one does.

I don't even think it forces you to go out of your way to do things, half the dailies/weeklies just happen for me, and the other few are often things I should do anyway, or encourage me to do something else, but never take longer than like 5-10 mins max.

That doesn't mean this system couldn't still be improved to be even more consumer friendly than it already is, but I think we should show some more gratitude for getting what we did, rather than trying to paint it as something bad, or even a downgrade over the old system.

[Herr der Ringe.3251]

14 hours ago, ruinedEclipse.7896 said:

I completely agree with the FOMO tactics but for a few different reasons than what you've got here. The last few week's "Black Lion Stolen Goods" event not being able to be completed if you missed something during the week prior is absolute nonsense, for one.

I had a horrible addiction to Genshin Impact prior to getting back into GW2. The fact that the content lately has been focused on "Pushing out as much as we can in as little time as possible" has me extremely worried. And now we're seeing more and more of the FOMO tactics and such being pushed on players. I had a panic attack last night over this because I don't want to have to quit a game I absolutely adore because it starts implementing FOMO tactics and other seriously psychologically damaging ways of getting players hooked. Like. I don't see the point. GW2 has a huge community already.

I despise the fact that we can't have more than 1300 astral acclaim because it goes against everything this game is built on. Material gathering and working up to achievements is the complete opposite of the game now forcing you to spend this currency as soon as you obtain it.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I'm just really worried about the quality of the next few updates based on how SOTO was in its entirety.... worried about time-limited events that never come back and make players feel like they need to continue playing every day. It's... draining....

I think it's a fair point to consider the fact that "if you can't handle it step away" but seeing a game like this that has been really really minimal on lootbox mechanics and is more about community steadily kindof take away the things that make the community (changing dailies to be less community oriented, allowing players to just spam 2 on skyscale to complete events, etc etc) it's just frustrating! also, there's no such thing as "self-inflicted FOMO" when games put things in to make people feel the need to play every day or they'll miss out.

All this being said it's nowhere near as bad as genshin and other games. Here's hoping this is as far as they'll go!

I think FOMO is at it's worst when it's actively used to drive sales, by making you fear that if you don't take this deal or buy this thing before it goes away, you'll hve to pay more/not get it in the future, thereby making you spend money. This is way different, as it's basically just giving you free things, and unlike many other titles, doesn't make you go to the cash store to get it in another attempt to increase revenue. Gw2 is basically just giving you free things. As for the limited time nature: As far as I recall, all rewards from the limited time events can still be gotten outside of the events, as none of it is exclusive (or will be available indefinitely from the WV). It's really just using time limited events that give a slight increase to rewards to do something good, funnel players into the same content. Games have been doing limited time events for years, and it was never really considered FOMO back then. GW2 had living world season 1, which was entirely temporary, and the system of making LW seasons free if you played them when they came out.

I would be a little bit more careful with what we consider FOMO. The old daily system was FOMO in the sense that you could never get those two gold ever again, or the reward for daily fractals. Just because something is limited doesn't make it the same kind of FOMO as everything else, it's all about the level, and other ways to obtain the things you want, and I think with most things in this game boiling down to "acquirable with gold", and gold being easy to obtain, you're never missing out on much when not playing the game for a day. It's not really FOMO when I miss out on gold by not farming DS 24/7, otherwise everything could be FOMO due to our limited lifespans 😛

 

As for the last paragraph, I wouldn't consider the fact that people maybe have different dailies as destroying the community, but if so, those limited time events actually help with that, by incentivising players to play the same content for a week, while not really forcing it (due to minimal bonus) (it's not like all of us only play the most profitable content at all times).

And when it comes to people just spamming skyscale 2, that's really no different from standing still and spamming longbow 1, is it? xD

I consider GW2 a pretty consumer friendly game when compared to most other big titles, and while everything could always be even better, I'll just count my blessings.

[Padrion.7382]

15 hours ago, Futeko.9405 said:

None of the above existed with the previous daily system

I disagree here. It was just as prevalent with the previous system. Each day you didn't log in to complete dailies you effectively lost gold, which would never come back.

[Forum Moderator.3419]

Hi Everyone,

Just a reminder to keep it civil. I've removed some posts.

Regards.

[Herr der Ringe.3251]

13 hours ago, Futeko.9405 said:

I am aware of that quote from ANET stating exclusives will remain available in the Legacy tab, and that's exactly my point: if legacy rewards can be bought only with AA, then it means the number of exclusive rewards you can buy with AA will only get bigger. The more rewards you "miss", the more AA you'll need to "catch up", and since you can only get so much AA per cycle, that is FOMO-triggering because it could be if you miss too much AA you won't be able to "catch up".

Isn't that like saying "they will add more skins to the game, so the number of exclusive rewards you can only buy with gold will grow, so any time I don't spend farming at maximum efficiency is triggering my FOMO"?

Any time you don't play, you'll miss out on gold you could have had to complete your wardrobe, and you'll never be able to get that back. The important thing is that it's easy enough to get gold, that you'll be able to get everything you want eventually by playing long enough. It's basically the same for dailies. You can get such a vast overflow of AA if you just get exclusives, that if you stop playing for the next 6 months, you can probably still earn enough to get all exclusive WV content within the next cycle, which is probably faster than the time it would take to get all "gold exclusive rewards"

It's also important that you may not want all exclusive rewards, further lowering the burden, much like you don't want every gemstore item, thereby reducing the amount of gold you need to farm to convert to gems.

[DeanBB.4268]

14 hours ago, Batel.9206 said:

Why is FOMO a term that's suddenly come into popularity now?

Just wait. P2W FOMO is coming soon. 😮

[Futeko.9405]

@Herr der Ringe.3251: you are correct when you say missing a daily in the previous system was "missing 2 gold you'll never get back", but that is not the point - because the main difference is that there is nothing time-gated about gold. There is no limit to the amount of gold you can earn per day/week/quarter outside of your own play time, but there is one on AA.

Missing out on daily gold is simply missing out on "easy money". There is nothing preventing me from spending as many hours as I want in the game to get as much gold as I need. So missing 2 golds just means I'll have to get those 2 golds some other way, and I'll always be able to do that, at any time, without limits (outside of the number of hours in a day, but again, that's beside the point).

Missing out on AA ... you're truly never getting that AA back, because you can't get as much AA as you want any time you want. You only get so much potential AA per cycle and that's it.

That's the main difference. You can catch up on missed gold because gold is not limited. You can't ever catch up on missed AA because AA is by design limited.

I certainly do agree we have many options to get AA so it's actually not easy to "miss out" on exclusives - at some point, missing AA just becomes missing out on gold, like before.

But as @Astralporing.1957 so justly said (emphasis mine):

Quote

 

Targeting psychological vulnerabilities like that is at the core of this marketing strategy. Notice, that for FOMO to work it's not necessary to you to miss anything out when you do not "take bait". All that is needed is to make you feel you will lose out. Promotional "one of a kind" occasions that try to sell to you things you do not need and would not even think of buying otherwise also use that approach. Logical reasoning might tell you that there's nothing to "lose out" on, but the marketing specifically aims at making you not think calmly and logically, but make emotionally driven, impulsive decisions.

And, unfortunately, this approach works extremely well against a lot of people. Which is why it's so popular.

 

Since there is no direct link between AA and rewards, it's so much easier to feel like you're missing out on something exclusive, even if at the end of the day you're actually just missing out on gold. By adding another layer between the completion (or skipping) of tasks and the granting of rewards, it increases its FOMO-potential, and that's something you often see in mobile games/FOMO-based games for that exact reason.

It's important to understand it's not targeting logic or optimization strategies. It's targeting psychological vulnerabilities.

It's also important to understand that once you're aware of your own vulnerabilities, it's easier to mitigate them, but that doesn't make them go away - that is why those strategies remain so powerful even when you're aware of what they are and what they're doing to you.

Finally: those 3 points I raised are not calls to just drop the WV and revert to the old system, or calls to say the WV is intrinsically bad, or that it does not give great rewards. It has many benefits. It also has flaws, which I feel can be rather easily mitigated. That is the whole purpose of this post.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

I don't really see the complaint that it's bad to make the daily reward system (which has always existed in the game) more fun as valid

Edited September 28, 2023 by Elricht Kaltwind.8796

[Herr der Ringe.3251]

32 minutes ago, Futeko.9405 said:

there is nothing time-gated about gold

Gold is still time gated by how much (and how efficiently) you can play. Any time you don't get gold, you will have less gold than you otherwise would have, just like AA. If you have limited time, it's probably easier to get AA than it is to get gold, as you can get all available WV rewards with avg. <30 min play per day, but only 30 min a day won't give you a whole lot of gold. In that sense, getting skins from the gemstore (with gold) is probably harder than the WV ones.

As an example, if you want the the glove skin, it's 375AA, which is 5 days of doing all dailies, coming up to maybe 2h playtime, if you're slow (not considering weekly or special rewards,or achievs that give AA). A glove skin on the gemstore on the other hand will run you about 400 gems, so roughly 150g. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find something in this game that gives you 75g/h.

Also, seeing as the WV is limited in items, you can reach a point where all you can buy is either worthless or the infinite 1g bag, so at a certain point, all you miss out on from not doing dailies/weeklies/specials is, in fact, gold. I for one am already at that point, since most rewards in the WV aren't really worth getting.

 

I also think that we should maybe differentiate between "FOMO" and "Weaponized FOMO". FOMO just describes a feeling that is ever present in all things, most of the time it's just so little that we don't notice, but as some have pointed out, every action is a million other actions not taken. We can only try to reduce it, which is what I think you want from the Devs, but I think that that's a personal thing to evaluate how much is too much. Weaponized FOMO is when that natural human tendency is purposely exploited for benefit by someone else, and I don't think that really applies here:

Mobile games will use artificial FOMO to make you spend money. This system in GW2 doesn't do that, it just gives you free rewards, and already tries to heavily reduce FOMO by letting you pick what to get first, making things never unavailable, and giving you a massive surplus of resources that makes it hard to miss out on anything for active players, unlike most other battlepass systems. It is also not monitized in any way: you can't buy AA with money, they don't even force you to go to the gemstore to get your free reward to tempt you into buying something else the way mobile games or supermarkets do.

 

All this to say: Yes, there is FOMO in this system, but that is inevitable, because it's in everything. They have taken several steps to reduce the feeling of FOMO, and are not even doing it to their own benefit in any way, beyond maybe making people enjoy the game more and eventually end up buying an expansion or gems they wouldn't have otherwise, but that's not different from any other content. Could they reduce FOMO even further? Absolutely, but I don't think it'd be good, and defeat the purpose of the WV existing in the first place, as people could just spend money or gold to get the rewards, and not have to engage with the game, which is what the WV is trying to make people do. At that point they could have just increased the droprate of all items, or given you free 10g for logging in (just just per day, regardless of login)

  

32 minutes ago, Futeko.9405 said:

By adding another layer between the completion (or skipping) of tasks and the granting of rewards, it increases its FOMO-potential, and that's something you often see in mobile games/FOMO-based games for that exact reason.

 

To add to this as well though: The added layer is there to allow the player to choose which reward to get, rather than have to get them in a set order, and is there to reduce FOMO, as it allows you to still get the rewards you want and skip others, as opposed to having to collect all the rewards to get to the end of the battle pass.

I also believe that you'r referring to mobile games adding intermediate currencies to obscure the true/real-money value of items, thereby reducing your "inhibition threshold", as you won't think of an item as costing say 5$, but rather just 500 blorgs. That's something different entirely. Here, AA is the only currency in this system, which also can't be converted to anything else other than the specific rewards, and can't be gained/bought in other ways

Edited September 28, 2023 by Herr der Ringe.3251
Added last section to reply

[Chichimec.9364]

6 hours ago, Aliblabla.3670 said:

So you are saying that having 10 alt parked at flax farm is fun for you. In this case i am happy for you. But actually your argument of choice is an oversimplyfication. Would you do the flax farm if it woudn't give you gold? I would argue that you woudn't. So you don't do them because they are fun but because you feel presured to do them and because it doesn't bother you to do them. This is a big difference.

The thing is that i enjoy doing stuff like fractals, raid etc. I mean i help people train even without getting any loot at all. Which means that i am confronted with the drama in there caused by the presure to farm gold. And this part takes a lot of fun out of the game for me.

I have alts parked at key points to farm mats, jade runestones, and such. They are parked there to earn gold. It's not that I feel pressured to do that though. I like having goals in the game that I am working toward and I like making tangible progress toward those goals on a steady basis. It feels good to make the gold. So it's an enjoyable process for me, not something bad I am pressured into.

As for the toxicity in fractals and raids, Find or start a guild that does the training you enjoy without the drama. Me, I'm a WvW main. My WvW guild is casual, friendly, and works at being drama free. Once I was running with a different guild and in their Discord vc, the tag was yelling, screaming, and swearing at squad members who didn''t follow commands precisely enough to suit the commander. I dropped out of that squad and their Discord at that point and never went back. There are WvW guilds that are tightly comped and who want a high level of skill out of every member. I'm too old and slow to play at that level so I don't join those guilds either. I found a guild I am comfortable with and I happily run in WvW on a daily basis with that guild. While I don't do raids and rarely do fractals, there are guilds who do those regularly, with many of those guilds also doing training for newcomers. Finding one that you like or starting your own should help you minimize the toxicity.

[Futeko.9405]

@Herr der Ringe.3251, you make very good points, thank you very much for your insights! That's giving me a very valuable perspective to explore and think about.

[Herr der Ringe.3251]

4 minutes ago, Futeko.9405 said:

@Herr der Ringe.3251, you make very good points, thank you very much for your insights! That's giving me a very valuable perspective to explore and think about.

Maybe you can think of FOMO more as a sliding scale, rather than an "is" or "is not". Everything is on this scale, but not everything is bad. In some cases, it can even be considered good and motivate us to do the things we want to do, or get us to do something we don't want to, because what we get out of it is worth it.

I think the difficulty in designing any system, especially one like this, is that this sliding scale goes from positive and motivating to oppressive and pressuring at different points for different people. While I can't relate to your feeling on this particular issue, I can sympathize with it, and I hope that maybe over time, as it gets developed, and people get a better feeling for just how easy it can be to obtain rewards, and how "forgiving" missing out is, they might feel less anxiety around it. I can say from my personal experience, that I used to care about doing dailies a lot at the start, but over time I ended up barely doing them, if ever, as they just seemed like a chore, so I just had to ask myself if the good feeling from the reward was greater than the bad feeling from the task to obtain it, and it often wasn't. As the post above touches on, sometimes we don't exactly enjoy sometimes, but we do it because it's worth it, and that's what dailies have always been to me to an extent.

What I like about the new system is that the rewards feel more special and rewarding, precisely because they aren't just another gold thing, which I have plenty of, and because they got me to engage with some content I hadn't played in a while, but do typically enjoy, namely pvp, but I also ended up doing a world boss train after doing the one for the weekly, or ended up chatting to other people also trying to get 100 awakened. In addition to that, I find that most of the tasks are easier/quicker to complete, the longest daily for me is doing 3 events, while in the old system it would have specified where to do those, now I can get it done in fractals or raids or even wvw while just playing the way I would otherwise. (Also things like "dodge" or "combo" just happen, which is extremely nice).

 

Anyway, i do hope that you'll feel better about this system eventually, as I think it can be much more rewarding than the old system overall, and get players to engage with content together.

 And who knows, maybe they'll still improve it over time, one thing I always appreciated about GW2 is all the QoL updates they've given us for free over the years 😄

Maybe they'll let you choose 3/12 instead of 3/4 dailies or something, though that could also trigger someone's decision fatigue and have them not do any at all xD

[jokke.6239]

Yeah I really disagree

The good thing about this new system is that you can just do the weekly and the special objectives and you will have plenty to get the shiny rewards

You don't have to do the dailies at all

If you choose to do so, you will get more rewards ofc, as you should

[Cronospere.8143]

17 hours ago, Futeko.9405 said:

 

• (Bonus) Gate the tasks behind what the account has unlocked so players do not feel forced to complete content they have not yet unlocked.
  • For instance, do not offer Cantha dailies if the account has not yet reached the story step giving access to that zone/mastery.

 

I think this is a very good request, which should imo not be a big hard thing to implement. 

[Lanz.7312]

They explicitly said older stuff will remain available. This is some serious chicken little stuff.

[TheNecrosanct.4028]

20 hours ago, Futeko.9405 said:

I feel it's important to note two things:

• "FOMO" is not something you can turn on or off at will. Trust me, if I could do without it, I'd gladly throw that away in a blink.
  • It's thus important to understand you can't easily rationalize FOMO away. As I mentioned in my post, I know you can get all the time-limited rewards without getting all the AA there is to get.

FOMO is a form of social anxiety and it is not a problem (at least not in developed countries) to get treatment for an anxiety disorder. One way to deal with that is cognitive behavioral therapy. In other words, yes, you can rationalize FOMO away. It's just that most people initially can't do it on their own and need to be taught how that works.

And I don't mean this in any snarky way, but FOMO is your problem. Why is it ANet's responsibility to deal with it? Or worse, cater to it? I believe this is a valid question and one we should all ask before we plead (or worse, demand) someone do something for us.

[azorean.1850]

skritt crap

[keykey.9182]

22 hours ago, Futeko.9405 said:

I feel the current direction spearheaded by the Wizard's Vault is making the game feel more and more like a mobile game experience

Just the Vault? What about the Skyscale Press 1 for Chest's Fireball Meta's?

Or the never ending "Chase the Rift" waste of time.

Or the 0 Social interaction because you mostly can clear everything in AutoPilot.

I do understand Anet decisions tough, from a business perspective that is , mobile apps generate quite the amount of income.

I would not be surprised to see GW2 ported to Android / Google Play in 2 to 3 years from now.

Current/past decisions taken by the team have been disappointing.

Edited September 28, 2023 by keykey.9182

[Sobx.1758]

23 hours ago, Futeko.9405 said:

I feel the current direction spearheaded by the Wizard's Vault is making the game feel more and more like a mobile game experience, and I heavily dislike that.

Mobile games work by hooking you using (1) small reward cycles with daily/weekly resets so you feel compelled to log in and complete tasks every day to get your rewards, and (2) Fear Of Missing Out syndrome - "if you don't get it now, it'll be unavailable/more expensive later and/or everyone else will be ahead of you and you'll never catch up to them".

This is all based on addiction mechanisms and not on what makes a game fun or enjoyable. You're completing tasks because you "need" your rewards, not because the task and/or the rewards are fun. In other words, the fun over time invested ratio is very small and you're playing more because you feel you "have to" rather than because you want to.

That is my issue with the changed system:

• I feel forced to get as much Astral Acclaim as I can, because (1) there are exclusive rewards you can only get with AA, (2) those rewards will disappear or get more expensive later, and (3) you can only get so much AA per cycle.
  • It means I feel like I'll miss out on rewards I don't unlock in the current cycle and I'll never be able to catch up on them, because next cycle there will be new rewards, and the amount of AA one can get will still be limited.
• I feel forced to complete content I was not planning to complete (yet), because some dailies/weeklies/specials lead me to zones I have not yet reached in the story.
  • Most importantly, I feel forced to complete the current content in SOTO now, even though I'm not yet done with the story up to there, because of the Specials WV tab. Combined with my limited game time and the fact the WV tasks have me perform tasks e.g. in Cantha when I'm barely starting LW4, I'm spending most of my time rushing content out of order because of the time-limited nature of WV rewards.
• I feel channeled into a specific game mode as opposed to having the choice of how to spend my time for dailies.
  • Meaning, I can't choose to complete e.g. two dailies from the PvE list and one from the WvW list. I need to complete my whole list, meaning I can't take the risk of having a WvW daily I can't complete in reasonable time (or ever if I'm unlucky) so I'm stuck with a 100% PvE list that I don't necessarily enjoy, but know I can complete regardless of the time of the day I log in.

None of the above existed with the previous daily system:

• I could miss log-in rewards or dailies without feeling I was missing content to which I'd never be able to catch up.
  • Log-in rewards were basically gold in various forms. Not logging in meant missing on some gold, and you can always "catch up" on gold.
  • Dailies meant gold and AP, and that was it. And the AP was (and still is) capped to a certain amount, so even if you miss some days you'll still be able to get AP-capped someday.
  • With AA, you get time-limited rewards. Miss a log-in/daily/weekly/special = miss on AA = miss on rewards that are exclusive to AA and that you can't buy with gold.
    • (I know you can miss some AA and still get every exclusive reward, with the rest just being "gold" or resources you can get with gold. But with the extra step of getting AA -> buying rewards instead of getting fixed rewards, it's much less intuitive what you're going to miss if you miss a daily/weekly/special, because you miss out on an exclusive currency, not on a specific reward).
• There was nothing exclusive/time-limited forcing me to complete specific content.
  • I could complete the story at my leisure, in the order I meant to complete it. I could spend a year catching up on the story up to the new expansion and I would not be penalized for it by missing out on some exclusive rewards/currency.
  • Now I'm essentially forced to either complete the new content as it gets released or miss out on exclusive AA from the Special tab.
• I could choose which 3 dailies to complete out of a list of 12 across PvE, PvP and WvW.
  • Now, I need to complete 3 dailies out of 4, and I need to choose from which mode(s) they are taken. I can't log in and do what I feel like doing that day.
  • And the extra daily task/two weekly tasks still reward AA, so I still have an incentive to complete those even if I already got my daily/weekly meta reward. As such I don't feel I need to complete 3 dailies and 6 weeklies, but 4 dailies and 8 weeklies.
    • As a result, I'm spending much more time per week doing dailies/weeklies than before - tasks I feel "forced" to do lest I miss out on exclusive currency.

So I feel like the new system is moving towards those mobile games addiction-based systems that have you invest a good chunk of your daily time into the game by dangling the FOMO carrot in front of you, instead of just producing/encouraging fun gameplay and content.

Yes, the rewards from the WV are much better than the previous dailies/log-in system. But no, I'm not having fun with it. After over a month of living with that new system, I still miss the old one, which I felt matched the base design philosophy of GW2 for all the reasons above.

I feel those issues could be solved with limited changes:

• Dispel the FOMO-feeling by ensuring AA can get you exclusive rewards earlier/faster, with the legacy tab using other currencies so you never "get behind" on AA.
  • For example, have legacy rewards also offered for spirit shards, gold, materials, etc.
  • That way, even if you miss out on AA, you know you'll still be able to get the exclusive rewards through other means. You won't feel that if you miss on 1000 AA, that's 1000 AA you'll never get back, and a reward you'll never be able to buy because new rewards for AA are constantly getting added.
• Go back to offering all PvE, PvP and WvW dailies/weeklies to everyone, but only award AA for the first 4 dailies/6 weeklies.
  • Further tasks can be completed for non-AA rewards (like a chest with materials, unidentified gear, etc.) like the previous system.
  • That way, you actually have a choice in what you want to complete on a specific day/week, and you can more easily skip what you don't like and/or don't have access to.
• (Bonus) Gate the tasks behind what the account has unlocked so players do not feel forced to complete content they have not yet unlocked.
  • For instance, do not offer Cantha dailies if the account has not yet reached the story step giving access to that zone/mastery.
  • The impact of that issue would be much lessened by the above point though - if you have more choices to complete the meta daily/weekly, and further dailies/weeklies do not give you AA, you can more easily skip e.g. Cantha tasks if you aren't there yet in the story.
    • This however would not protect you from days/weeks where a high number of tasks take place in Cantha. Rarer and less of a problem, but still some good added value if that can be implemented.

Right now, I'm tiring out of the game at an extremely accelerated rate compared to before SOTO and the new system because of that increased daily/weekly involvement the game "requires". As such, I hope the next cycle in 40 days will address those issues.

They threw so much AA at us that if you were consistently going for it, you're already out of things to buy (outside of unlimited 30aa gold and pure garbage items). If you're scared of fomo, you should understand that you can simply skip any non-exlusive items and easly go for the skins.

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, TheNecrosanct.4028 said:

FOMO is a form of social anxiety and it is not a problem (at least not in developed countries) to get treatment for an anxiety disorder. One way to deal with that is cognitive behavioral therapy. In other words, yes, you can rationalize FOMO away. It's just that most people initially can't do it on their own and need to be taught how that works.

And I don't mean this in any snarky way, but FOMO is your problem. Why is it ANet's responsibility to deal with it? Or worse, cater to it? I believe this is a valid question and one we should all ask before we plead (or worse, demand) someone do something for us.

It's like saying that gambling (*) does not need to be regulated, because gambling addiction is a "you" problem someone needs to deal with on their own.

(*)you can insert in this place also smoking, drinking, or even narcotics toeven better illustrate why this "logic" is massively flawed. (Notice: this does not mean i'm equalling Vault rewards, fomo, gambling, smoking and/or drugs. It's just for illustrating the flaw in the reasoning).