Reward Creep

I always suggest "moderate effort needed" for everything. As such, I'm quite happy to see the too extreme aspects of the game, including many titles, be brought down.

After all: I already have 50/50 and GWAMM, so I often look at my guildies working hard, and wish I could help them.

So, reward creep as it is: positive direction.

Even with reward creep obtaining any titles associated with the rewards is still an insane grind. That just means the grind was super insane to begin with. Either way, it's all about grind and terrible game design.

They gave up on GW1 when they decided to make GW2 so they packed the game to the brim with grind to give players 'something to do' rather than actually make new content, which takes time and effort. Adding a title that reuses old content to a monotonously mind numbing level of grind with next to no programming effort? Priceless.

Just be glad someone is the design chair is trying to chip away at the insane level of grind the game had prior to recent udpates.

Honestly, I've not been disappointed with most of what ANet's Live team has done. They've made a few mistakes, to be sure - but not many. What they did with the Dervish was right - the only way to change player's opinions is to vastly overpower it, then nerf it. If it just got some subtle buffs, it wouldn't really receive much play because it wouldn't change the current perceptions enough. Jeydra linked a very interesting page discussing balances and player's opinions at one point. If anyone wants it, I'll dig it up. And I've enjoyed 7-heroes, and all the other content.

At this point, I'd say I trust them to make the judgement calls. They're making decisions that are planning for the future after GW2 comes out, a few marketing strategies (make the game easier for people to jump in before GW2), and things that player's enjoy and hold their attention. New content frequently. It's pretty great.

Like I have said, it is inevitable for reward creeps to happen and continue to happen. Most people want that to happen.

To me it just seems they are focussing a lot more on things that will allow people to get certain titles faster and to motivate people to participate more in certain parts of the game.

This has as an effect (hopefully) that even with lower population the game is still playable for the remaining players and for me it's an indication that GW2 is coming closer and closer....they just want people to be done with their titles in GW1 when GW2 hits the shelves I would think

This can be a positive thing, just use it as a teachable moment. If you want to achieve something in GW2 wait for them to announce GW3 and you'll be able to do it twice as fast for half the cost.

Is it going to far?
- No. The last think a PvP player needs is to waste time trading. Items like the 50-point consumables are good for them, they can get points for those titles without wasting time and just playing PvP.

Will it just keep going and by gw2 the rewards will devalue everything to near worthlessness?
- The value of things lies in their use. If something is more useful, then it's more valuable. Only humans are fool enough to pay for things just because they have low availability even when they are useless. One should not fall into "Emperor's New Clothes" traps in which things are given more value than what they really have. If you want the stuff just to sell it, then GW1 may not be your game. GW2 will probably be more desirable, since it will have an actual trade system, which means they can make some things harder to get, since it's easier to sell and buy them.

Is this a strategy to retain casual players longer?
- It's clearly a strategy to retain all players longer. And if you look at many outposts in-game, you'll see it's working.

How effective are these changes at meeting the developers goals and what are the developers goals by introducing reward creep?
- Isn't a bit too early to know, right after the update?

What are the pros and cons to reward creep?
Pros?
- Those that get the stuff just sell it will get less cash from doing that.
- Those that get the stuff to use it themselves will get more of it from their efforts.
- Even if game population decreases, getting some things by yourself becomes possible without having to buy part of it from others.
- Those that have less time to play can get some things while playing normally without having to to stupid things like calling in sick and staying at home, or not going out with their friends, or not going to see that movie they wanted to see, and staying at home farming to pay for the stuff from others, and then spamming for ours to buy it.

The cons are... hm... I see no cons.

It really doesn't matter to me.

I don't want to derail this thread too much, but I couldn't agree more. If you do the Treasure Hunter, you can effectively work on at least 4 titles all at once: Treasure Hunter, Unlucky, Lucky, and Wisdom (all of which are account wide). Most people should have no problem maxing Unlucky while working on TH, and significant progress can be made on Lucky and Wisdom. For the cost and time investment, it is a bargain. Not to mention the fact that if you chest run specific areas, I have read that the drops can be rather lucrative (see the Chest Runner thread). I have also read that people typically make back all of their money and in some cases make a profit. Plus, most players can do it casually just by playing.

In other words, Treasure Hunter is fine as it is. The rewards for doing it are more than adequate.

On-topic: You can add all of the new content you want, but if there isn't some sort of carrot to draw people in, then it won't succeed. People will gravitate to things that provide an ample reward for their time. All this does is point out how inadequate the incentives are for new players to engage in certain PvP types. Personally, I think the carrot is actually insufficient in this case, and most people who have tried PvP in the past few days will not continue with PvP in the long term. So I wouldn't worry too much about the impact of the new rewards on current prices for consumables.

I agree with Twilno. Out of several in-game aquintances who decided to give PvP a try due to strongboxes, I don't think any of them will keep doing it. Let's just say that RA was a horribly confusing experience for more than one of them. And, strangely, for once it was not because of other players being mean, it was the game itself. It was described as "trying to learn to ice skate in the middle of a hockey game". I suggested Codex/FA/JQ, we'll see if they pick up on it but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Total influx to game economy: 2 boxes per person and that's it.

I enjoyed it. I played RA for the first time, taking an invoke ele with return, and did rather well. Won the first 3 games as a piece of cake, once I started learning to blind melee and spike appropriately, it went smoother.

After that, we went up against a good team with a derv, R/A, warrior, and a monk, and got taken down quickly. -.- It was fun, though, so I'll probably go back and play more. I've always been relatively good with builds so I might try into Codex.

As someone that has had gwaam since shortly after HM GWEN release.... they have been making the game easier every year since....dumb-ing down hard mode... making title points and faction easier to get... ect ect... but it kinda needs to be that way so ppl have hope to finish HoM before gw2... yeah it sucks because your accomplishment is easier to get now....so welcome to the club fellow achievement holders

In keeping with the original design philosophy of guild wars (that all players should be equal), some of these things are in fact perfectly reasonable. The EotN titles, for example, should be easy to get. They provide a mechanical benefit. Therefore, players should be as entitled to them as they are to having max weapons. However, the amounts of effort required to achieve them (and similar titles) are unreasonablly high. Therefore, making it easier is a good thing.

Purely cosmetic titles (such as LDoA), on the other hand, are a completely different story. Their value comes purely from the time required to obtain them. Therefore, making them easier to obtain does devalue them, and is therefore a bad thing.

I'd like to get rank 9 without wasting time and playing PvE but you don't see a mechanism that gives PvE players five times the fame.

You've picked the worst possible example. LDoA was not devalued - it was made playable. Games should be about play, not AFK.

Either way it's still some form of grind. I wish LDoA was something more interesting, such as vanquishing Northlands solo. You know, something genuinely complicated, that is not possible to get direct help on, and gives a real sense of achievement -- you can either do it or you don't. And it's not too late for them to actually introduce such a title, something like "Dire Charrslayer" has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Speaking of sense of achievement, death leveling at least involved some major skill in grouping the mobs, there were techniques for pruning them etc. The Vanguard quests are completely dumbed down -- zone, kill 3 foes, repeat for 10 hours.

If you feel slighted by the unfair things they've done, you should buy blizzards Diablo 3 etc instead of GW2. You'd think that they'd care more about their loyal customers who jumped thru their bullshit hoops to get bs titles. They could give those who did leg def or survivor or drunkard the old way a special title or something.

They should have done those titles this way from the beginning. 10000 RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing minutes of drunkard lmao. Death leveling foes for weeks to get lvl 20 in presear bwahahaahaa. Carefully getting survivor and then only using that toon as a mule cuz cant risk losing title hahahaa. All that work and then people come through and get drunkard in under an hour and the other titles in under 4. That's stone cold, man.

I hope they continue to make titles easier. Mainly factions so I can max that for the pve skills. All of them should be account wide imo. Doing the norn bear quest for the 40th time is bullshit. They know that. VQing the same place over and over is crap. They know this. They love making their customers jump through hoops just to try another class/toon. Everyone farming lb/ss points this weekend will be cuz they need to raise those PVE skills for their 3rd - 8th toon. How many hours does it take the average player to get kurz/lux*, eotn, ss/lb for each toon? They do realize that if people didn't have to raise those pts, they might actually try other classes and play where they wanted to play instead of keeping track of 12 handbooks or memorizing every inch of some vq they do 3 times a day for a month. Be nice to play whatever flavor of month anet buffs instead complaining that it takes too long to get ran/skills.

There must of been people at the meetings who said the time investment was too hight for v, w, x, y, and z titles. And there must have been ass holes there who laughed and said lets see how much we can RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO with them.

I couldnt work for this company. I'd have gotten fired for saying how stupid it is to treat paying customers like this.

*factions account wide.

You do realize that it is a video game and you can actually play what you want to play and don't HAVE to do anything?

To be honest, I decided to max my Eotn titles on my ssin for her GWAMM. I already have a GWAMM on my ele, so I already did all those silly titles. Only difference, with my ele I speedbooked all of them, then started VQ'ing and Dungeons, not the brightest idea...

Now that I did it on my ssin, first I VQ'ed all areas and did all dungeons NM, then HM. All of my titles were either maxed by doing so, or very close. I just needed 2 more HM Hero books to max my Vanguard and Asura, Norn and Dwarven were maxed by doing the things I did. I say leave the eotn titles alone, they are made in such a way that they are all attainable by playing the game and getting trough all of it, plus a little bit of extra grind, but nothing remarkable. They pale in comparison to Luxon or Kurzick tbh... If you can't max the titles through regular gameplay, you're doing it wrong..

And... Your right

Sorry for not putting the whole quote in, but the last four words pretty much sums it up in my opinion.

for the whinners; adapt please.

Drunkard is not a PvE title. It's an 'item' title.
Item titles are acquired by using items, for example, using Zaishen keys to open the Zaishen chest.

Many PvE players getting them relatively quickly by purchasing the stuff doesn't make them necessarily PvE titles.

You'll never get a protector or a Vanquisher by doing PvP. Titles like those are the PvE titles.

Do you mean the domain of anguish??... I am doing it for the first time with Heroes it is pretty fun.

Legendary Defender of Ascalon...

Fail.....

Your lame ass grind Titles and armor and crap were all fine and good to keep to yourselves until they put HoM and required that we all have to grind.
So reward creep should happen to devalue the HoM so people can get their crap quick and get out.

Want a Whaaaaaaamburger with those French Cries?

I think it's great they are rewarding more now, not going too far at all.
Just wish they'd fix AB rewards (and maps ofc).