New Players Can't Catch Up to Birthdays

[Lucy.3728]

On 12/21/2023 at 3:31 PM, kharmin.7683 said:

I deleted quite a few early on, not knowing about birthday gifts.  Whoops.

And you remember that?

Two years ago I sorted and organized my screenshots and my oldest screenshot is from 26.08.2012 and shows my login (see) and there are two chars that I don't know at all. I also don't remember creating them and I don't have them (anymore). xD
It's just been too long and was probably too unimportant.
If I hadn't seen the screenshot, I wouldn't have known that I'd deleted chars of mine before. I actually avoid doing that. I'd rather create a new slot than delete an old one.

 

[Gop.8713]

I'm a big believer in anet introducing ways for new players to 'catch up' through things like making skyscale quicker/easier, reintroducing deleted ap, etc., but I also think there needs to be a place to reward longtime players and if birthdays aren't it idk where it would be. I was actually disappointed to hear that there was apparently no 'special' reward for this most recently introduced birthday gift, from what I understand . . .

[Teknomancer.4895]

On 12/20/2023 at 3:39 AM, Iggystlev.7203 said:

GW2 is still rewarding people just because they purchased the game over a decade ago, even if they are not playing and have not played for the last 10 years.

If a reward drops but there's no player to loot it, was there ever a reward at all? 🤔

[Jumpin Lumpix.6108]

now you want to remove the only thing that rewards veterans lol. This after basically giving out gen 1 legendaries in the daily which that affects veterans the most.  Yah take away the last thing vets have too, why not lol

[kharmin.7683]

Please sell achievement points in the TP or let us purchase them with something like karma or laurels so that I can catch up.  Thanks.

[starlinvf.1358]

On 12/20/2023 at 10:30 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

What they incentivize is longterm participation. Either staying with the game longterm, or at least returning to it every now and then. I mean, sure, technically you don't have to play or return to the game in order to accumulate those rewards, but you won't actually receive them until you do return anyway. Notice, also, that there's a cap on the unique birthday rewards - from 10th birthday forward the reward just keeps repeating, adding nothing new. It's like with AP rewards and daily/monthly AP cap - you won't be able to immediately catch up, but any reward veteran player can obtain, a new player will eventually get to at some point.

Ease of catching up for new players is important, of course, but so is rewarding veterans for sticking with the game (and, usually, for paying premium for any new expansion, instead of getting it for massive discount years later). Any MMORPG will have design like that - and as far as the genre goes, GW2 is actually quite decent at balancing both sides.

To me this is a catch 22.  Old players have been here longer, but they're treated worse than new players who get all the cool stuff for no extra effort.  New players are second class citizens, because they can never hope to catch up to old players who have been around longer, and got the reward for all the things.  

The solution would be reward neither, and change nothing, so everything is equal in perpetuity.  But neither side would like that.  As lofty as this sounds, this needs to be fixed on a cultural level.  The less need for extrinsic rewards, the less extreme you need to make time based rewards to keep people interested.  Consolidating some of the presents down to a 3 year cycle might help.   

[Linken.6345]

35 minutes ago, starlinvf.1358 said:

To me this is a catch 22.  Old players have been here longer, but they're treated worse than new players who get all the cool stuff for no extra effort.  New players are second class citizens, because they can never hope to catch up to old players who have been around longer, and got the reward for all the things.  

The solution would be reward neither, and change nothing, so everything is equal in perpetuity.  But neither side would like that.  As lofty as this sounds, this needs to be fixed on a cultural level.  The less need for extrinsic rewards, the less extreme you need to make time based rewards to keep people interested.  Consolidating some of the presents down to a 3 year cycle might help.   

Or you can just keep throwing out new stuff for the veterans and new people get to gather all the old stuff aswell as the new stuff over time, depending on what stuff they feel is worth it to them.

[Nate Anabe.6091]

Why worry about it?

[Astralporing.1957]

9 hours ago, starlinvf.1358 said:

To me this is a catch 22.  Old players have been here longer, but they're treated worse than new players who get all the cool stuff for no extra effort.  New players are second class citizens, because they can never hope to catch up to old players who have been around longer, and got the reward for all the things.  

The solution would be reward neither, and change nothing, so everything is equal in perpetuity.  But neither side would like that.  As lofty as this sounds, this needs to be fixed on a cultural level.  The less need for extrinsic rewards, the less extreme you need to make time based rewards to keep people interested.  Consolidating some of the presents down to a 3 year cycle might help.   

The truth is, in a game like this new players will never be on equal footings. For the simple reason that 10 years of wealth accumulation is really hard to beat shortterm. There's just no way around it. The only solution, as you noticed, would be to get rid of extrinsic rewards altogether, but it's not really possible in MMO PvE games. In theory it should work fine in purely competitive games, but if you notice even those tend to sprinkle some rewards around to keep players interested longterm.

Still, as far as this issue goes, GW2 is not really in a bad spot at all. It's really easy (and fast) for new players to catch up to veterans in any meaningful way. What remains is cosmetics, but that also is more about quantity than quality - if new player is interested in a specific cosmetic reward, they are generally also able to reach that goal very fast. There are a few exceptions to that (like AP skins), but they are in truth extremely limited. Unless, by "fast" someone means "by tomorrow". In which case i do not see a solution that would satisfy such a player that would not be heavily detrimental to the game as a whole.

In short: if someone thinks that they should be able to acquire any and all reward in this game within just weeks from starting, i am afraid this game (and MMORPGs in general) is just not for them.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

11 hours ago, starlinvf.1358 said:

 New players are second class citizens, because they can never hope to catch up to old players who have been around longer, and got the reward for all the things.  

Unless Anet secretly removed birthday gifts that were once obtained by those old players just so new players can't get them those new players CAN catch up by obtaining the gifts the same way those old players did.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

On 12/24/2023 at 1:00 AM, kharmin.7683 said:

Please sell achievement points in the TP or let us purchase them with something like karma or laurels so that I can catch up.  Thanks.

Given how many collections there are that cost insane amounts of money, thats already the case. 

Wanna pay 2000g for 3 AP? 💰💰💰

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by DanAlcedo.3281

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 minute ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Wanna pay 2000g for 3 AP? 💰💰💰

Icebrood Saga Collections be like

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Just now, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Icebrood Saga Collections be like

Some of them are actually crazy good gold to AP ratio. The icy/fiery weapons are 50 AP per collection. 

Take the treasure hunt collection or the Dwayna weapon collection. Now that's bad. 

 

[Sirvaleen.1379]

It's the same for pretty much every long-standing game that rewards player's support - Warframe comes to mind. It's not a new or controversial concept and it has absolutely no impact on your gameplay. Let's be real, you don't want the exclusive thank-you-for-being-there-with-us-at-the-start-of-our-journey goodies to "incentivize new players". This game is so full of that kind of rewards already, it's truly not needed. You just want them and can't have them. I can understand, personally I want a lot of things I can't have either. Moving on is the solution imho 🤷‍♂️

[Sobx.1758]

The things new players "won't be able to catch up to" aren't exactly related to efficiency or, lets say, gameplay-changing options.
New players have 10+ years of content to enjoy, so I think they should focus on playing the game instead of being bothered by "wanting to catch up with wardrobe unlocks of players who played for x-xx years".

[Forum Moderator.3419]

Hi Everyone,
I'm locking this thread as it's run its course.
Regards. ☃️