One of my prime hopes for Guild Wars 2 was that it would have people re-evaluate things, possibly on a large scale, that it would have people looking at stuff that occurs that we take for granted as part of the system. That it would shake things up and prove that things set in stone don't need to be set in stone.
I'm familiar with the concept of a paradigm shift from a scientific viewpoint. Eventually something comes along, a new theorem that no one cares to accept, and then the evidence starts piling up in support of it and slowly you get more and more supporters. It really pisses people off, and everyone hates the change, but at the end of the day everyone still has a better understanding of the inner-workings of the Universe than they did prior.
And I really think that we need to do some deconstructionalist analysm of MMORPGs in general, there are many things that we accept as set in stone that clearly... well, aren't. The accepted paradigm of the MMORPG has a linear flow to it, and one that many developers have been afraid to break. It's something that's been so ingrained via both classic conditioning (pavlovian responses) and oeprant (consequential) conditioning that people believe it has to go that way.
What those who play a singleplayer or co-op game expect is vastly different to what those who play an MMORPG accept. And I think that the MMORPG has fallen into an unhealthy, stagnant rut. So what do we accept?
You pay a subscription.
You can't buy anything of worth in the game with real money.
You have to make time investments (called 'work' by some) in order to acquire resource units.
These time investements are massive and favour those without real life responsibilities or connections.
Excessive time investments cause MMORPG players to consider the genre 'hardcore' because of that.
Those who invest time ('work') control the economic flow.
Those with the best gear get into the best raids.
Those who make large time investments are entitled to exclusive content that no one else is.
Further content should take greater time investments and not be completed quickly.
In order to substantiate these time investments, a 'carrot' is needed.
this 'carrot' is exclusive gear, which is then used for further exclusive content.
That's when the raiding treadmill occurs.
This is a fascinating concept. Not only because I can't really understand the appeal, but because of the divide it creates. First of all, I want to cover not understanding the appeal. The lack of appeal in my case is that I can't understand why you'd want to waste your life for a constant chain of 'carrots.' There was one Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw video that summed this up eloquently.
It went something like this:
"So why are you raiding?"
"To get better gear."
"Which gives you?"
"Bigger numbers."
"Why do you need those?"
"The boss has bigger numbers."
"What do you get from the boss?"
"Better gear!"
"And what do you do with that?"
"Kill the next boss, duh!"
Imagine that.
The problem is is that not everyone is able to make these ridiculous time investments. You have people with children, a family, a job, social obligations, and so on. The sort of people who're considered 'casuals.' Now, the usual MMORPG talks about these people in derogatory ways, often considering them not 'leet' or not 'hardcore' enough. Because having a job and a child isn't 'hardcore.' So they sneer at such people and demand that the game be made more for them, creating more time investments.
But where did this begin?
It all started off with subscriptions. In order to justify a subscription, you have to pad out content. This means that instead of a ten minute mission in Mass Effect 3, you're doing a five hour questing slog. Really, it shouldn't be that long, but it is. So you get to the quest vendor and they offer you these 'carrots,' these rewards. The idea here is that more weak-willed people get hooked on the idea of somehow, somehow being better than other people. In some small way... better.
It takes advantage of them.
So via conditioning and peer pressure, the average MMORPG gamer then continues to spend their life playing the game, without even realising the harm it might be doing to them. What they get out of this is the feeling of controlling the economy, of being able to separate themselves into haves and have-nots, in order to sneer down at those who don't have the same level of access to the game that they do. That's what it's all about. That shiny mount, that exclusive raid, that high-end armour? It's all to be better than someone else. One-upmanship, plain and simple. It's not a difficult concept.
However, things are changing now. And that has those people terrified, because they can't handle change. What this means is that there's no grind, there's no gruelling slog. This in turn means that there's no carrot. That means that they have no way to be better than other people. This is something I've discussed before - Guild Wars 2 enforces player equality. It's an egalitarian game. Everyone gets the same chance at the game, through different methods of content.
At the power plateau, it won't matter if you've put eight hours into the game or eight thousand, you're all equal.
This is a terrifying concept to those who've ruled with time investments. Because for the longest time MMORPGs have been whispering delicately into their ears that their way is the only way. Subscribe to our game, we'll let you be better than other people. But the market is changing. More and more developers are realising that these people who want time investments to rule the economy are a vast minority (vocal, but still a vast minority).
There are casual players out there just waiting for the MMORPGs that are designed for them to play. And those are on the way. One of the first is Guild Wars 2.
And like I said, it's working.
What Guild Wars 2 is doing is shaking things up, it's altering perceptions. It's saying that what was set in stone was an illusion, and that things can be completely different. Those who helped set those rules in stone are going to rail against that. Of course they are. No more exclusive content for them. Yes, that's going to suck for them. Because the reason they play an MMORPG, even in PvE, is just to be better than someone.
But there are games out there for them. Games which encourage competitive PvE, games which encourage people being arseholes to each other, and games which encourage player inequality. And they'll always have those games. But they're worried that one day... they're going to run out of games and they'll have to play our games, the games of casual players. And yeah, that scares them.
I mean, look at WoW.
WoW, from the ground up, conditions you to want to be better than someone. It puts in various ways to force you to compete. You can easily accidentally flag yourself as PvP, resource nodes are instanced globally rather than per player, which makes people fight over them, and the whole thing is one massive sociopathic circlejerk. It's just people being horribly indecent to each other. But again, the old MMORPG player, the time investor, they're comfortable with that.
In Guild Wars 2 they'll actually have to socialise with people, they'll have to be nice, they won't be in complete control, they'll be equal. This turns everything they know on its head. And that's why we've had so many threads about this. It's old MMORPG players damn near having a brain aneurysm at all of the rules they thought they knew being turned upon their heads.
No longer lords and ladies. Just peons. Like the rest of us.
They have to come back down to the real world.
But what we're getting instead now is that they're seeing the other side of the equation. Just because there's equality, they're blowing it out of proportion and saying that money ivnestors will be on top. That's obviously not the case, but that's the fear that they have, because they're having these crazy slippery slope theories. You know? Oh no, we've lost our regal status, soon our slaves will be our masters, and we'll be the slaves!
That's not going to happen, but they're seeing things from the side of the have-nots and the results?
The results are frankly hilarious.
If I were a vindictive person, I'd pester ArenaNet to actually include an $80 monocle in the game, just so that I could buy it, wear it, and flaunt it at the time investors. But I'm not a vindictive person. Like I've said before, my approach to the game will be to find the most sensible, utilitarian armour I can and stick with that. I don't really give a shit about being the prettiest pony on the block.
But if you understand the paradigm shift, here, if you understand how the patterns are changing, then you understand why every one of these new threads exists. It's forcing people to question all that was supposedly set in stone about GW2. And like I said, that says to me... GW2 works. I am pleased.
I see a lot of big complicated words used here. But in reality it's just a large amount of generalizations that are obtuse and obscure. You are making a lot of assumptions about a few voices on the internet who does speak on the behalf of the silent majority. The idiocy and ignorance you see on display on various forums, can't possible be the status quo that you are indicating as.
I want you to know that I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I disagree with how you are going about it. You throw out your own concepts about "paradigm shifts" without really solidfying a base for it. Furthermore, you are not trying to view things from the other perspective.
I too think they are wrong, but to really educate people (I assume that's what you want to accomplish with this thread, dropping some knowledge on them) you need to take their party. Otherwise it ends up as propaganda. It's the old mantra of - "listen twice as much as you talk.".
Just love all the responses from the fearful "HARDCORE" elite who really wish this game to fail, too bad for them the math is on the side of Anet as casuals make up the largest number of players.
Please remember that people coin "casual" and "hardcore" differently.
For some people it's related to difficulty of game, for others it's time commitment, for others it's a mix of the two. For others again it's related to mainstream vs niche. Like with everything else there is no right or wrong.
Stop following a pre-determined pattern. There is more to it than being a blind fandboy/hater and just be completely black and white on all these isssues.
Just love all the responses from the fearful "HARDCORE" elite who really wish this game to fail, too bad for them the math is on the side of Anet as casuals make up the largest number of players.
Please remember that people coin "casual" and "hardcore" differently.
For some people it's related to difficulty of game, for others it's time commitment, for others it's a mix of the two. For others again it's related to mainstream vs niche. Like with everything else there is no right or wrong.
Stop following a pre-determined pattern. There is more to it than being a blind fandboy/hater and just be completely black and white on all these isssues.
well i was using the hardcore to reflect the Time Commitment player mentioned by the OP's post. They can monster-under-the-bridge it to death but they can't deny that this pattern of raiding and the pattern of timecommitmentplayer > timerestrictiveplayer isn't factually evident by ten years of examples.
I and the OP have both experienced this sense of a mmo caste system inside themepark mmo's of every kind (I went in search of another mmo long ago and learned these people are everywhere).
well i was using the hardcore to reflect the Time Commitment player mentioned by the OP's post. They can monster-under-the-bridge it to death but they can't deny that this pattern of raiding and the pattern of timecommitmentplayer > timerestrictiveplayer isn't factually evident by ten years of examples.
I and the OP have both experienced this sense of a mmo caste system inside themepark mmo's of every kind (I went in search of another mmo long ago and learned these people are everywhere).
MMO caste system in terms of time commitment? Heaven forfend that not every single game is all about instant action right.
I'm a time restrictive player and yet I don't feel the need to cry about a genre which is about long term player development because there are countless gaming genres which cater to instant action fun.
Regardless, the OP was waaay out whack with the real reason many have issues with cash shops and the perceived casualisation of the genre.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
but seriously, if people don't understand the appeal of this game, then really you're not paying attention.
jump puzzles
TOR has these too, and they are a minor distraction at best.
traps in dungeons (something that hasn't been seen since DDO)
Cool idea, but not enough to get me excited about a game.
real DE's with arching trees of events not that timed public questing crap in other games
They are still basically just a giant PUG, and I'm never going to get excited about something that involves PUGing.
no tagging mobs
Don't even know what this means.
no tagging resource nodes in gathering
Or this.
crafting actually matters
Plenty og games have good crafting, and I was never under the impression crafting was a large focus of GW2.
and don't get me started on the trinity, that things been a pain ever since it was made
A lot of people like playing healers or tanks.
oh oh and my personal favorite, their separating the code for pvp skills and pvp skills so one doesn't have to relearn their character's attacks EVERY WEEK. Left WoW 8 months ago because of that, and because the marine biologist there just plain hates hunters and has publically admitted it no less.
Just because your skills are separate doesn't mean patches and nerfs or buffs will require you to change how you play your class.
While I agree, it is nice to see someone put effort into a post here. The use of capitalization, punctuation, and your brain definitely sets you apart from the majority of posters here. With that said, I don't agree with everything you said. Particularly, the comment about casual players waiting for a game that is designed with them in mind.
Personally, I consider most of the games on the market as casual player games. World of Warcraft is probably the easiest target, since it has been so prevalent in this genre of gaming. The game has been changed considerably over time. In the past, players might be required to socialize to form groups, to trudge through a dungeon together. It took a little time to form a group and travel to the dungeon, and then complete it. Players remembered the names of other players, because they were on the same server. Over time, this changed, and catered directly to the casual gamer community. No longer did players need to talk to each other to form a group, because they could use the interface to be thrown together randomly. Also, they were thrown together with people from other servers. This meant they could be extremely rude without any real consequence, because they could simply rejoin a new queue for a dungeon.
Casual gaming has been dominating this genre, which is why developers are less likely to risk implementing innovative ideas, or meaningful content. Casual players want the prize at the bottom of the box of cereal, and they want it now. They'll flip the box to get it, and they don't care about anyone but themselves. Granted, this is an extreme generalization of the community as a whole. Fortunately, most of the casual gamers never frequent sites like this, because they aren't passionate about the games.
Again, thank you for posting intelligently. It was a good read.
The entire reason for the encouragement of competition and grinding was based on a subscription model. GW2 does not have a subscription model, so it uses a different approach. GW1 actually had a similar approach, so GW2 is nothing new in that regard.
Your psychological assumptions for the "conditioning" of gamers are simply wrong, since the biggest determining factor for the design of an MMO is consumption by independent individuals who have little influence on each others' purchases.
People aren't forced to play, they choose to play given financial/economical constraints, so it's an economics problem, not a psychological one.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
Now I remember why I stopped coming to gaming forums, after reading this thread I can honestly say I really dislike gamers! After all look at their well thought out comments and self absorbed nature…””It is instant gratification when you do this” or "it is pay to win for this reason." Who cares with the logic of these comments you can make all of gaming look like crap!
World PVP is full of a bunch of instant gratification losers, after all only a baby would get there thrills off of one shooting lower levels.
It is pay to win because someone else can buy something to level faster, does that affect me, no but it is still pay to win because they are buying something that affects the game. But does it affect you playing the game in any way shape or form, NO but it doesn’t have to..it is the principle.
Oh look this person over here is able to play 10 hours a week more than me, that is unfair, we need to have limits on play time so everyone has equal footing. Does it affect me no but it is the principle of the thing!
God it is like listing to 5 year olds that have never grasped the concept that the world does not revolve around them and their significant ideas!
Now I remember why I stopped coming to gaming forums, after reading this thread I can honestly say I really dislike gamers! After all look at their well thought out comments and self absorbed nature…””It is instant gratification when you do this” or "it is pay to win for this reason." Who cares with the logic of these comments you can make all of gaming look like crap!
World PVP is full of a bunch of instant gratification losers, after all only a baby would get there thrills off of one shooting lower levels.
It is pay to win because someone else can buy something to level faster, does that affect me, no but it is still pay to win because they are buying something that affects the game. But does it affect you playing the game in any way shape or form, NO but it doesn’t have to..it is the principle.
Oh look this person over here is able to play 10 hours a week more than me, that is unfair, we need to have limits on play time so everyone has equal footing. Does it affect me no but it is the principle of the thing!
God it is like listing to 5 year olds that have never grasped the concept that the world does not revolve around them and their significant ideas!
Amen to that
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Now I remember why I stopped coming to gaming forums, after reading this thread I can honestly say I really dislike gamers! After all look at their well thought out comments and self absorbed nature…””It is instant gratification when you do this” or "it is pay to win for this reason." Who cares with the logic of these comments you can make all of gaming look like crap!
World PVP is full of a bunch of instant gratification losers, after all only a baby would get there thrills off of one shooting lower levels.
It is pay to win because someone else can buy something to level faster, does that affect me, no but it is still pay to win because they are buying something that affects the game. But does it affect you playing the game in any way shape or form, NO but it doesn’t have to..it is the principle.
Oh look this person over here is able to play 10 hours a week more than me, that is unfair, we need to have limits on play time so everyone has equal footing. Does it affect me no but it is the principle of the thing!
God it is like listing to 5 year olds that have never grasped the concept that the world does not revolve around them and their significant ideas!
Amen to that
He he so true. That;'s why I decided to be blissfull in my ignorance =P If I want to enjoy this game I simply can't read too much about it =]
Now I remember why I stopped coming to gaming forums, after reading this thread I can honestly say I really dislike gamers! After all look at their well thought out comments and self absorbed nature…””It is instant gratification when you do this” or "it is pay to win for this reason." Who cares with the logic of these comments you can make all of gaming look like crap!
World PVP is full of a bunch of instant gratification losers, after all only a baby would get there thrills off of one shooting lower levels.
It is pay to win because someone else can buy something to level faster, does that affect me, no but it is still pay to win because they are buying something that affects the game. But does it affect you playing the game in any way shape or form, NO but it doesn’t have to..it is the principle.
Oh look this person over here is able to play 10 hours a week more than me, that is unfair, we need to have limits on play time so everyone has equal footing. Does it affect me no but it is the principle of the thing!
God it is like listing to 5 year olds that have never grasped the concept that the world does not revolve around them and their significant ideas!
Amen to that
that I disagree with. There is no reason to be max lvl so getting there faster doesn't make you "win" Pay to win is being able to buy items that are more powerful than what you can get in game via in game currency... like an axe that is twice as good as the best axe that drops or is crafted.. or twice the stats. I do agree with the rest however including Distopia's(I almost called you Disturbia >.<) amen =P
Now I remember why I stopped coming to gaming forums, after reading this thread I can honestly say I really dislike gamers! After all look at their well thought out comments and self absorbed nature…””It is instant gratification when you do this” or "it is pay to win for this reason." Who cares with the logic of these comments you can make all of gaming look like crap!
World PVP is full of a bunch of instant gratification losers, after all only a baby would get there thrills off of one shooting lower levels.
It is pay to win because someone else can buy something to level faster, does that affect me, no but it is still pay to win because they are buying something that affects the game. But does it affect you playing the game in any way shape or form, NO but it doesn’t have to..it is the principle.
Oh look this person over here is able to play 10 hours a week more than me, that is unfair, we need to have limits on play time so everyone has equal footing. Does it affect me no but it is the principle of the thing!
God it is like listing to 5 year olds that have never grasped the concept that the world does not revolve around them and their significant ideas!
Amen to that
that I disagree with. There is no reason to be max lvl so getting there faster doesn't make you "win" Pay to win is being able to buy items that are more powerful than what you can get in game via in game currency... like an axe that is twice as good as the best axe that drops or is crafted.. or twice the stats. I do agree with the rest however including Distopia's(I almost called you Disturbia >.<) amen =P
I think that was sarcasm hehe (in red) at least I thought it was. But the overall message is so true lol, forums tend to be not much more than a cluster**** of ideals and the posturing of them lol.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Now I remember why I stopped coming to gaming forums, after reading this thread I can honestly say I really dislike gamers! After all look at their well thought out comments and self absorbed nature…””It is instant gratification when you do this” or "it is pay to win for this reason." Who cares with the logic of these comments you can make all of gaming look like crap!
World PVP is full of a bunch of instant gratification losers, after all only a baby would get there thrills off of one shooting lower levels.
It is pay to win because someone else can buy something to level faster, does that affect me, no but it is still pay to win because they are buying something that affects the game. But does it affect you playing the game in any way shape or form, NO but it doesn’t have to..it is the principle.
Oh look this person over here is able to play 10 hours a week more than me, that is unfair, we need to have limits on play time so everyone has equal footing. Does it affect me no but it is the principle of the thing!
God it is like listing to 5 year olds that have never grasped the concept that the world does not revolve around them and their significant ideas!
Amen to that
that I disagree with. There is no reason to be max lvl so getting there faster doesn't make you "win" Pay to win is being able to buy items that are more powerful than what you can get in game via in game currency... like an axe that is twice as good as the best axe that drops or is crafted.. or twice the stats. I do agree with the rest however including Distopia's(I almost called you Disturbia >.<) amen =P
I think that was sarcasm hehe (in red) at least I thought it was. But the overall message is so true lol, forums tend to be not much more than a cluster**** of ideals and the posturing of them lol.
Have you ever repeated a word so many times that it started sounding funny and started to lose its meaning. Thats pretty much what we end up with here.
TOR has these too, and they are a minor distraction at best.
TOR definitely doesn't have this because there are bosses at the end of each puzzle and traps along the way.
traps in dungeons (something that hasn't been seen since DDO)
Cool idea, but not enough to get me excited about a game.
Ever been in a DDO dungeon?
real DE's with arching trees of events not that timed public questing crap in other games
They are still basically just a giant PUG, and I'm never going to get excited about something that involves PUGing.
PUGing in the classic sense is not fun, but without the classic trinity there isn't an issue of survival or the scripting dance that occurs in dungeons.
no tagging mobs
Don't even know what this means.
This means that when you hit a mob after someone else hits it you don't lose the experience from it when it dies. No competition for mobs. The idea you didn't know this speaks volumes about who i'm replying to about it. It's been a boon in mmo.
no tagging resource nodes in gathering
Or this.
Nodes are resource gathering locations, when you tag one no one else can gather it. This game is all about cooperation, not competition.
crafting actually matters
Plenty og games have good crafting, and I was never under the impression crafting was a large focus of GW2.
well in GW2 it's not an economic take-over mechanism which in most games is why people love crafting, so they can get rare or almost impossible recipes make them and make large amounts of currency. It's my understanding that in GW2 the armor weapons etc are relevant (equal to drops) all throughout the leveling and end game.
and don't get me started on the trinity, that things been a pain ever since it was made
A lot of people like playing healers or tanks.
I'm sure they do, but it's a small price to pay giving up these roles so that we never see millions of players hanging out in cities (ahem WoW and TOR) waiting for a dungeon run for hours on end, and to never force certain roles on players that aren't crazifried DPS nuts which is what's happened to the entire genre. I liked playing a healer in WoW during LK but that doesn't mean i won't say by by by to my healadin to be able to not have the massive issues plaguing EVERY major themepark mmo to date.
oh oh and my personal favorite, their separating the code for pvp skills and pvp skills so one doesn't have to relearn their character's attacks EVERY WEEK. Left WoW 8 months ago because of that, and because the marine biologist there just plain hates hunters and has publically admitted it no less.
Just because your skills are separate doesn't mean patches and nerfs or buffs will require you to change how you play your class.
Uhm yes it does. It means when they patch and balance only the pvp side of skills damage healing and mechanics, it will NEVER touch pve because it will be separate code entirely. That's what this means. These people at Anet are brilliant i tell yeah.
It is pay to win because someone else can buy something to level faster, does that affect me, no but it is still pay to win because they are buying something that affects the game.
God it is like listing to 5 year olds that have never grasped the concept that the world does not revolve around them and their significant ideas!
Someone has issues and i think you meant Insignificant but i'll take the compliment. The only 5 year olds here are the people still pointing out that the shop is pay2win when rushing to the end game in this game is not going to do anyone a single bit of good. The level scales in pvp to the zone you are in, the level scales to the zone for pve, your skills are based solely on how many times you've used other skills on a specific weapon type or weapon combination. So getting to end game first, doesn't matter in the slightest. Learn2read PLS.
Comments
I see a lot of big complicated words used here. But in reality it's just a large amount of generalizations that are obtuse and obscure. You are making a lot of assumptions about a few voices on the internet who does speak on the behalf of the silent majority. The idiocy and ignorance you see on display on various forums, can't possible be the status quo that you are indicating as.
I want you to know that I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I disagree with how you are going about it. You throw out your own concepts about "paradigm shifts" without really solidfying a base for it. Furthermore, you are not trying to view things from the other perspective.
I too think they are wrong, but to really educate people (I assume that's what you want to accomplish with this thread, dropping some knowledge on them) you need to take their party. Otherwise it ends up as propaganda. It's the old mantra of - "listen twice as much as you talk.".
Please remember that people coin "casual" and "hardcore" differently.
For some people it's related to difficulty of game, for others it's time commitment, for others it's a mix of the two. For others again it's related to mainstream vs niche. Like with everything else there is no right or wrong.
Stop following a pre-determined pattern. There is more to it than being a blind fandboy/hater and just be completely black and white on all these isssues.
They did aion? lol
well i was using the hardcore to reflect the Time Commitment player mentioned by the OP's post. They can monster-under-the-bridge it to death but they can't deny that this pattern of raiding and the pattern of timecommitmentplayer > timerestrictiveplayer isn't factually evident by ten years of examples.
I and the OP have both experienced this sense of a mmo caste system inside themepark mmo's of every kind (I went in search of another mmo long ago and learned these people are everywhere).
MMO caste system in terms of time commitment? Heaven forfend that not every single game is all about instant action right.
I'm a time restrictive player and yet I don't feel the need to cry about a genre which is about long term player development because there are countless gaming genres which cater to instant action fun.
Regardless, the OP was waaay out whack with the real reason many have issues with cash shops and the perceived casualisation of the genre.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
yeah no comparisson between GW2 and Aion, such an ignorant comment.
While I agree, it is nice to see someone put effort into a post here. The use of capitalization, punctuation, and your brain definitely sets you apart from the majority of posters here. With that said, I don't agree with everything you said. Particularly, the comment about casual players waiting for a game that is designed with them in mind.
Personally, I consider most of the games on the market as casual player games. World of Warcraft is probably the easiest target, since it has been so prevalent in this genre of gaming. The game has been changed considerably over time. In the past, players might be required to socialize to form groups, to trudge through a dungeon together. It took a little time to form a group and travel to the dungeon, and then complete it. Players remembered the names of other players, because they were on the same server. Over time, this changed, and catered directly to the casual gamer community. No longer did players need to talk to each other to form a group, because they could use the interface to be thrown together randomly. Also, they were thrown together with people from other servers. This meant they could be extremely rude without any real consequence, because they could simply rejoin a new queue for a dungeon.
Casual gaming has been dominating this genre, which is why developers are less likely to risk implementing innovative ideas, or meaningful content. Casual players want the prize at the bottom of the box of cereal, and they want it now. They'll flip the box to get it, and they don't care about anyone but themselves. Granted, this is an extreme generalization of the community as a whole. Fortunately, most of the casual gamers never frequent sites like this, because they aren't passionate about the games.
Again, thank you for posting intelligently. It was a good read.
I completely think this post is off the mark.
The entire reason for the encouragement of competition and grinding was based on a subscription model. GW2 does not have a subscription model, so it uses a different approach. GW1 actually had a similar approach, so GW2 is nothing new in that regard.
Your psychological assumptions for the "conditioning" of gamers are simply wrong, since the biggest determining factor for the design of an MMO is consumption by independent individuals who have little influence on each others' purchases.
People aren't forced to play, they choose to play given financial/economical constraints, so it's an economics problem, not a psychological one.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
Now I remember why I stopped coming to gaming forums, after reading this thread I can honestly say I really dislike gamers! After all look at their well thought out comments and self absorbed nature…””It is instant gratification when you do this” or "it is pay to win for this reason." Who cares with the logic of these comments you can make all of gaming look like crap!
World PVP is full of a bunch of instant gratification losers, after all only a baby would get there thrills off of one shooting lower levels.
It is pay to win because someone else can buy something to level faster, does that affect me, no but it is still pay to win because they are buying something that affects the game. But does it affect you playing the game in any way shape or form, NO but it doesn’t have to..it is the principle.
Oh look this person over here is able to play 10 hours a week more than me, that is unfair, we need to have limits on play time so everyone has equal footing. Does it affect me no but it is the principle of the thing!
God it is like listing to 5 year olds that have never grasped the concept that the world does not revolve around them and their significant ideas!
Amen to that
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
someone is confused
He he so true. That;'s why I decided to be blissfull in my ignorance =P If I want to enjoy this game I simply can't read too much about it =]
that I disagree with. There is no reason to be max lvl so getting there faster doesn't make you "win" Pay to win is being able to buy items that are more powerful than what you can get in game via in game currency... like an axe that is twice as good as the best axe that drops or is crafted.. or twice the stats. I do agree with the rest however including Distopia's(I almost called you Disturbia >.<) amen =P
OP - awesome post. You are OUR voice!
MODS - get this featured!
I think that was sarcasm hehe (in red) at least I thought it was. But the overall message is so true lol, forums tend to be not much more than a cluster**** of ideals and the posturing of them lol.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Have you ever repeated a word so many times that it started sounding funny and started to lose its meaning. Thats pretty much what we end up with here.
Someone has issues and i think you meant Insignificant but i'll take the compliment. The only 5 year olds here are the people still pointing out that the shop is pay2win when rushing to the end game in this game is not going to do anyone a single bit of good. The level scales in pvp to the zone you are in, the level scales to the zone for pve, your skills are based solely on how many times you've used other skills on a specific weapon type or weapon combination. So getting to end game first, doesn't matter in the slightest. Learn2read PLS.