Curse

melissa b · Jun 03, 2011, 09:25 PM // 21:25

Reward Creep - Increasing the reward for the same amount of work

It seems like in the last year this game has recieved more and more reward creep.

Wintersday Quest a 5x increase of the reward in 2010 vs 2009

April Fools Quest rewarding an excissevely high reward for the short joke quest it was

Fort Aspenwood (JQ, AB) despite the rewards being buffed several years ago, another nearly doubling of rewards

Consumables (party for example) starting out as 1 point(hello sparkler requires 10,000 to max party) going to 3 point varieties (hello crate) going to 7(disco ball requires 1429) point varieties now 50 point varieties (jesus beam -requires 200 to max party)

PVP now rewarding strongboxes as a free bonus reward
__________________________________________________ _________

Is it going to far?
Will it just keep going and by gw2 the rewards will devalue everything to near worthlessness?
Is this a strategy to retain casual players longer?
How effective are these changes at meeting the developers goals and what are the developers goals by introducing reward creep?
What are the pros and cons to reward creep?

Thoughts?

My New Name · Jun 03, 2011, 09:39 PM // 21:39

anet is just trying to devalue us people who got our titles "the hard way", and they are doing hell of a good job at it...
yes it is going too far, and it will keep going that way... just ignore that shit and play your game, that is what i am going to do

Plutoman · Jun 03, 2011, 09:58 PM // 21:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by My New Name

anet is just trying to devalue us people who got our titles "the hard way", and they are doing hell of a good job at it...
yes it is going too far, and it will keep going that way... just ignore that shit and play your game, that is what i am going to do

Lol, if they wanted that, they'd just remove the titles. Contrary to what you may think, ANet is not trying to make the game experience horrendous, grinding, and frustrating with constant attempts to make people feel bad.

There's several reasons.
#1 - Guild Wars is a relatively old game. People enjoy the new content, and they want new rewards. People play games for rewards - but not the same rewards for 6 years. They're adding in more high value content, making GvG more competitive for the top emote, while simultaneously making the rest of the content easier and more approachable.

#2 - They want titles to be more approachable to players who may play before GW2.

#3 - They want more people involved in PvP. Rewards will do that.

Alvarez · Jun 03, 2011, 10:02 PM // 22:02

Nope, I don't mind what they're doing. That's all I have to say.

Hobbs · Jun 03, 2011, 10:08 PM // 22:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alvarez

Nope, I don't mind what they're doing. That's all I have to say.

I can agree with that, even as someone who got all the titles (bar Survivor and LDoA) "the hard way".

JSX · Jun 03, 2011, 10:16 PM // 22:16

I wouldnt mind the RA rewards if they kept RA as it was, but I agree with the codex stuff, that arena is just plain terrible idea

LordDragon · Jun 03, 2011, 10:20 PM // 22:20

I got a lot of my titles "the hard way" and I am overjoyed at the changes. This has breathed new life into the PvP areas. Well, at least for now, more people are getting involved with PvP which is certainly a good thing.

Then again, I am not consumed with jealousy because someone can now get their title with less work than I put in. Oh the horror.... lol

*lemming* · Jun 03, 2011, 10:21 PM // 22:21

People like big numbers. Look at how many people play JQ relative to three years ago.

Shrug.

Reverend Dr · Jun 03, 2011, 10:23 PM // 22:23

Most people play mmo's not for enjoyment, but for the carrot. To keep those people around you have to keep replacing the old carrot with a bigger, newer, shinier one.

Xsiriss · Jun 03, 2011, 10:25 PM // 22:25

They basically try to make things less of a grind...by giving us new stuff to grind for. It's overall a bit easier but still doesn't seem to make it more attractive to be honest.

Fay Vert · Jun 03, 2011, 10:40 PM // 22:40

Increasing the reward is also a very good way to bring areas back to life, hence the weekend events. If there is one thing worse than a high reward, it's a dead game.

btw, I got all my titles the hard way too so to hell with that stupid theory.

thunder boy · Jun 03, 2011, 10:42 PM // 22:42

I like the new changes it brought new interest in PvP arenas. I know allot of ppl that grinded titles prior to to the changes may feel different but you got to realize that anet is preparing for GW2 and the more of us that pursue 50/50 in our HoM will more than likely get GW2 its good buisness for them imo

*Darcy* · Jun 03, 2011, 10:49 PM // 22:49

I also achieved all my titles the "hard way." Does that make me resent the new rewards? No. I think it is great that someone will be able to complete their faction titles by having fun in JQ and FA and AB instead of having to vanquish the same areas over and over.

I completed my Kurzick title in JQ where I had a great time. But, due to the lack of participants on the Luxon side, I was unable to do the same with my Luxon title. The new Imperial Faction means more fun and that can never be wrong.

**cosyfiep** · Jun 03, 2011, 11:10 PM // 23:10

I see no problems with it other than I like to collect stuff--making more consumables means I need more storage space (good thing I got some whilst is was on sale)...so now I want that battle iced tea and the party starter and one of each strongbox and the delicious cake and...........you get the idea right??? (not to mention the new envoy weapons

)

so no problems with it here...just more space requirements---

makosi · Jun 03, 2011, 11:24 PM // 23:24

Let's not forget those who did LDoA the old way. What a slap in the face.

Kanyatta · Jun 03, 2011, 11:28 PM // 23:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by melissa b

PVP now rewarding strongboxes as a free bonus reward
__________________________________________________ _________

Is it going to far?
Will it just keep going and by gw2 the rewards will devalue everything to near worthlessness?
Is this a strategy to retain casual players longer?

No, they're not going too far. I don't think Anet every wanted to have the massively expensive items that GW currently has. I'm not entirely sure if they ever expected anything to really even be worth over 100k, hence the trade barrier.

The point of the strongboxes (in addition to RP's and Zkeys), I always felt was to offer some sort of bridge for people who want to exclusively PvP (which was GW's main selling point from the start) to get shinier, rarer PvE rewards. That's why HoH always had the chest. Then in Factions, they started introducing more high-end armors, rare-skinned weapons, etc. And it only got worse with Nightfall and finally the shiz hit the fan in EotN.

People who only PvP'd kind of got sick of having only one armor type to look at for every single profession, and every player was a clone of the other on the battlefield. People were pumping in hundreds of hours into PvE characters and filling their entire inventories with weapon sets and different armors just to look cool for when they GvG'd.

I think that doing stuff like strongboxes and Tournament RP's is mostly just to keep the good PvP'ers around longer, and also to give some incentive for the PvE community to jump into PvP, since that was always what Guild Wars was about (even check out the name of the game, it was always about GvG).

melissa b · Jun 03, 2011, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bright Star Shine

It's because of people like you that keep QQ'ing "this game is too hard for me, please give me everything I want". I think they call them 'casual players' nowadays..

Offtopic Nothing in this game in pve is too hard for me. I'm not talking about power creep, or difficulty.

On topic Some areas may involve too much grind (treasure hunter). Increasing point rewards per chest open would be great. (reward creep)

Reward Creep...Do objective A get 1 point...update...do objective A get 2 points or get 1 point plus 1 item...comparable difficulty or time investment but bigger reward."

Another example would be the zrewards. Despite increasing the amount of coins per completion a while ago, they decreased the number of coins required for getting some items.

Now there has to be some balance point between providing not enough reward that no one bothers to do something and provided a reward thats so big that people reach their goals so fast that they quickly get board and quit.

What is that balance point?

Lortext · Jun 03, 2011, 11:35 PM // 23:35

So many titles/achievements are about the journey and not the destination.

Bright Star Shine · Jun 03, 2011, 11:48 PM // 23:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by melissa b

Offtopic Nothing in this game in pve is too hard for me. I'm not talking about power creep, or difficulty.

I never said this was about powercreep either. I was talking about people that want everything handed to them, not specifically talking difficulty here..

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/p...tml?t=10474105

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/b...tml?t=10473949

Also, of course nothing is too hard I guess, when you let everyone run your VQ's.. Gotta love the search button..

jackinthe · Jun 03, 2011, 11:49 PM // 23:49

they also require less work for the same (amount of) reward.

survivor... how many times did everyone remake theirs the first time around?

drunkard... we spent 10k minutes drunk. now people spend 5 minutes with an autoclicker.

skill hunter... hunted down most every boss ingame. now you can get this without leaving town.

legendary defender of ascalon... /deaths. need i say more?