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Originally Posted by Sjeng
Most of the time I think Anet is doing a hell of a great job with GW. I really do. I love GW.
Sometimes though, I really wonder what the hell they were thinking when things like this pop up... Maybe there is this ONE mischievous guy at Anet who likes to drive the players crazy by slipping in things like this...
Back on topic: The 1-hour notice is enough imo. People should take responsibility for their own actions. Do grown up people really need a nanny to tell them the obvious their whole life? I think that's sad.
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I quote the above sentences because I agree about the first 2 but not on the last.
The game as it is now is the result of A.nt effort to satisfy 2 opposite requirements from the playerbase:
- the "casual" players, who are interested in game content, like missions, dungeons, and also like to get the titles achievable playing the game.
A casual player can be also a very skilled player, someone with legendary guardian or vanquisher, his distinctive feature is that he's interested in challenges and improvement in his skills rather than on items or gold.
- the "grinders", those who like to spend 6-8 or more hours per day in game doing the same repetitive actions to increase some "counter", be it amount of gold, ectos, alcohol, everything which can be measured with a number.
They come to forums like this asking for "gold sinks" "uber rare items" "no level cap" and so on, they need goals that can be achieved repeating elementary sequences of actions for endless hours.
When I say "grind", I don't refer to some titles like SS/LB, norn asura and so on. Those fit to "casual" players, are achievable in 20-30 hours max, which are
absolutely nothing compared to the time a real grinder is available to spend in game.
A.net changed several things in the game to make it more enjoyable for the "casual" players, namely:
- greens, inscriptions, insignias, that allow every player to get every kind of customizable item simply playing the game;
- loot scaling, which combined with the previous reduced dramatically every price for runes, upgrades and so on.
Well, if you remember, both the previous changes have found a fierce opposition from the "grinders", they saw those features like something that removed some goals for the endless hours they
wanted to spend in game.
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In my opinion, A.net has never taken
drastical actions to get rid of the "grinding" attitude, simply because grinders are customers and they don't want to alienate a part of their customer base.
They left in game several things designed for pure grinders, because they know that there are people who buy their games to grind 8-10 hours per day, without even having to pay for a monthly subscription.
Maybe as the poster I quoted said, there can be some guy in A.net who also likes this kind of game design, who knows ...
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The 1-hour alert has been introduced just to avoid possible legal actions against A.net, and it's totally unsufficient in my opinion.
A.net should have taken a more courageous attitude and deployed some significant changes in game design, even at the cost of losing some potential customers,
totally removing every possible goal to grinders.
I know this is very hard to accept though ...
