GW2

Y'know, I wrote yesterday's comments during a lull in the work day. It wasn't until after finishing almost 11 hours working and coming home to get online that some observations really coalesced and came to the forefront in my mind.

GW2 is feeling very chore-like.

The increased emphasis on achievements (with achievements and bonuses for achievement points), the daily/monthly achievements for both points and laurels, the living story additions that run between about a week or a month and are starting to overlap, the daily reward chests for the world bosses, daily login influence...

Basically, the entire game design (and indications are future development is the same) all says "Hey, if you want the most out of this game, you need to log in for a while every single day!" You're not technically forced to. The game is playable at whatever pace. But the pressure is there, and it's just as bad as the most intense period of daily-activities-are-required-for-advancement that I've seen in WoW.

I think I'm reaching the point where it goes from "interesting" to "burdensome."

Comments

  1. kyn_elwynnJuly 24, 2013 at 3:20 PM

    At least WoW spaces out holiday events >.>;

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  2. marinredwolfJuly 24, 2013 at 4:03 PM

    It's a trade-off, definitely. WoW (and others) showed us that new content can revitalize a game, but if it takes too long to develop, things grow stale in the meantime. GW2 is almost going the other extreme. They've been pushing out something new at least every month for a while now, sometimes less than that when you consider certain elements. But most of it has been transitory - several places/activities might make a comeback, seasonal or otherwise, but without specific certainty of that each of these events is "you have approximately four weeks to get any experiences/items/achievements included in this batch that you may want." That adds to the feeling of a breakneck pace that must be kept up with.

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  3. tashiroJuly 24, 2013 at 9:18 PM

    With me it's a matter of 'does it interest me?' for the new content. There's the odd target I want, and I'll try to get it, but if it isn't something I want, I'm willing to let it go. I skipped most of two living stories where it involved the karka, because the general plot as a whole didn't interest me much. Other aspects of it did interest me, and I snapped those up. On the other hand, the story arcs themselves pique my interest, and I want to see where those go. But it's a catch-22. Do you want events to be worth your time... or does it become a case that the events have rewards too good to pass up? Which do you prefer?

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  4. marinredwolfJuly 25, 2013 at 7:55 AM

    Yeaaah. Pretty much. Can't really please everyone all the time. I want something that I can log into and play and enjoy without feeling like I have to 1) play constantly or 2) dump large amounts of money into in order to get anywhere. I started off cherry-picking. The first couple events, I blew off - except for what I specifically did with Samantha. Missing an event then meant missing out on a couple vanity items. Missing dailies/monthies meant nothing. ... Then they introduced ascended gear for laurels. Suddenly missing dailies/monthlies means a setback in time to attain gear with the best stats. .... Then they started giving actual rewards based on achievement point totals. Now dailies/monthlies are ALSO a prime source for achievement points. Blowing off a monthly event is now missing out on 5-50 achievement points you may never be able to get again. ... And they're talking about increasing the amount of things (like Magic Find) that are account-based, the paradigm shown so far seems to be tying this to achievement totals, which makes it a bigger deal yet. I seem to be hitting my tolerance limits in this progression now, but they look like they're still going.

    ReplyDelete
  5. tashiroJuly 25, 2013 at 8:42 AM

    So it became 'eh, I can skip it', to 'it hurts to skip' it, I take it. We only recently started doing monthlies because we discovered it can be done at a relaxed pace, and isn't too hard. We're just past 6000 achievement points, and slowly going up at that, but I'm not looking at that as any sort of race - we'll get there when we get there, and there's no time limit on that. You know, I've not got a single piece of ascended gear. Samantha picked up a necklace and a pair of rings, then picked up the minipet cat - I'm waiting for my chance to get something ascended, but I don't see it as a must-have, yet. I'm not in competition with anyone, really - it'd be nice, but it isn't a must-have. Sort of like how I'm not in any race to get a legendary.

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  6. marinredwolfJuly 25, 2013 at 10:22 AM

    Different mentalities. I've said I can get a bit obsessive sometimes. I have this deep desire to do what I do well (or not at all). ;) I'd probably enjoy the game more if I could settle for that, but... it doesn't work so well. And I do see a difference. Seriously. I have trouble expressing the stark contrast I've seen between some of the few guild-based dungeon runs (which mostly consist of casual solo players, possibly even fresh level 80's) and the runs I've done with more dedicated groups (who have practiced and geared up more). It's the difference between frustrating repeated wipes and a party mowing through everything even if one person is AFK. That's not all the effect of gear, but it's tied in because the people who feel compelled to gear up tend to be the ones that have the most practice at their characters/dungeons and have techniques down. Similarly, watching Caelan and Rebecca side-by-side... well, even when I'm playing pretty relaxed, I get the impression Caelan is hitting notably harder. Though, admittedly, without any hard metrics, that's all perception. I think I can be satisfied with just "getting by" in terms of gameplay skill and equipment pretty much only if there's some story I find compelling. With GW2, that ran out when I finished my personal story. And... I'm getting pretty far afield now, but I feel I should mention: That casual level of play is not very conducive to leading a guild if you hope to use adjectives like "active" or "thriving" for it, especially with the current design of guild rewards.

    ReplyDelete
  7. tashiroJuly 25, 2013 at 10:42 AM

    Actually, she's noticed it. Cael hits a lot harder than Rebecca does, and she has red-level weaponry, and ascended trinkets to help her. Her big thing though is condition damage, rather than raw power. Trust me, she's quite aware of the difference in damage between you and her, but you're playing two completely different aspects. She's more for conditions and DoT, and you're going for direct damage. I've seen the chunk of damage she does when a creature that's confused attacks - which inflicts self-damage.

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  8. marinredwolfJuly 25, 2013 at 12:15 PM

    Mmm. Fair point, a lot of the comparison between those two characters might be itemization/build rather than quality. There was a time, I was leaning toward condition damage with heavy reliance on Death Blossom to stack bleeds. Then I decided that about 95% of the time, I'm fighting things that either 1) don't last long enough to take full DoT damage (most solo PVE content) or 2) are subject to so many attacks they have an almost constantly capped stack of DoTs regardless of my own actions (PVE world bosses). Condition builds might shine more in dungeons and certain PVP situations. <- But that's all just my personal reasoning regarding stat priorities.

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