Playstyle "Reward": Equal Time Spent - Maxing 1 Out vs. Playing Many

[CarbonBasedLifeform]

let me direct you to this thread that opened a can of worms a year ago. It touched upon an important issue: Rewarding Time/Effort Spent relative to a person's Playstyle.

http://guildwars.incgamers.com/showthread.php?t=463909

I never expected it to go past 10 pages, but it went well beyond that (59 pages).

It could be said that the time spent playing is the reward itself (making friends, killing baddies, stress relief, etc), but when Anet introduced a Reward that catered to one playstyle -- maxing out one character, in all aspects of titles, weapons, armor, etc -- it soured those of the other playstyle -- playing many different characters equally, and dividing titles up (for what reason, i'd guess for role-playing purposes - "Warrior with Legendary Vanguisher, Mesmer with Adept of Wisdom, Ranger with Grand Master Cartographer" etc).

I am in the latter camp. I like to play all the classes, some more than others but generally play them all. I also like to, for role-playing purposes, max different titles to different characters. My ele is an Expert Treasure Hunter, my paragon is a drunkard, etc. My time spent playing this way is equal to a friend of mine who likes to be exclusive and play monk and max her out.

Yet... even though time spent and effort spent is equal between us (same amount of max titles, mine are dotted about while hers is on 1 character), my friend gets exclusive access to content that i cannot.

The Rainbow Pheonix.

Is this fair? Obviously, no it isn't (in my opinion). I made that thread to see what other people thought about the problem and how to "fix it." And I also do not want to see this treatment happen again... in GW2.

Favoring one playstyle over the other (in terms of reward) is unfair, considering the time AND effort spent between the two playstyles are likely, relatively equal

Hopefully, revisiting and reintroducing this problem in the GW2 community section, Anet will take another look at their reward choices: to be fair.

[Gorani]

I think we have to make seperate groups of "is beneficial to one character", "helps all characters" is "cosmetic only".

The Rainbow Phoenix is "cosmetic only" and IMO an OK reward for a "maxing out one character", the setup of other things is not.
Wisdom & Treasure hunters are good examples. Now that I am almost finished with all "gameplay" stuff with my main character, I would like to play my other charscters more often, but opening chests & ID things with those is bad, because Wissom & Treasure hunter is not account wide.

The best solution would be, if GW2 follows EotN footsteps with a Hall of Monuments like "hall":
Make more stuff account wide (Treasure & Wisdom), offer a discount or unlock on reputation titles/requirements (e.g. one charcater has maxed "Sylvan" title, all characters can access their traders for weapons & armour.
If you enter your "hall" with the statue of a maxed title, this is displayed in Gold, if you enter it with another character on your account it is Silver (you could fill your hall faster, Gold statues would be pure vanity)

And they should focus on a better balance (SS rank easy, K/L rank ARGHHH HFFF for eternity)

[Akirai Annuvil]

I don't like character based advancement. Why not start with characters at max power and immediately jump into the interesting things (with the exception of a mechanics tutorial)?
Sticking to a character could still reward you with cosmetic advantages like a nice vanity title, which cannot be put in HoM nor can it reward you with in-game items or that kinda crap in GW2.

The threadlink is borked for me btw.

[dark3]

I think we have to make seperate groups of "is beneficial to one character", "helps all characters" is "cosmetic only".

The Rainbow Phoenix is "cosmetic only" and IMO an OK reward for a "maxing out one character", the setup of other things is not.
Wisdom & Treasure hunters are good examples. Now that I am almost finished with all "gameplay" stuff with my main character, I would like to play my other charscters more often, but opening chests & ID things with those is bad, because Wissom & Treasure hunter is not account wide.

The best solution would be, if GW2 follows EotN footsteps with a Hall of Monuments like "hall":
Make more stuff account wide (Treasure & Wisdom), offer a discount or unlock on reputation titles/requirements (e.g. one charcater has maxed "Sylvan" title, all characters can access their traders for weapons & armour.
If you enter your "hall" with the statue of a maxed title, this is displayed in Gold, if you enter it with another character on your account it is Silver (you could fill your hall faster, Gold statues would be pure vanity)

And they should focus on a better balance (SS rank easy, K/L rank ARGHHH HFFF for eternity)


Wouldn't that mess up a bit the whole "coherence" thing? I mean, a title is awarded to someone, not to a group of person, even if behind that "group" of characters there's only one player. I see why you're proposing the thing and I must say that it would be a nice feature, because as u said not everyone likes to stick to one particular char(I don't for one, but I'm forcing myself because I'd like to have a full HoM...), but I can't really see it happen :undecided:

[Dark Wolf]

Actually, GWEN, with the HoM, reputation gring, title grind, should be forgotten in the oblivion. This is what made me quit the game.

I am indeed an altholic myself and I've divided my time among my alts since may 2005 and I am severely punished for it in late GW and GWEN, HoM, etc. This must not happen in GW2.

[Sunbane]

Another altholic here, and I too am discontent with GW's title system. I always thought that titles were a cool thing, but not the way they were implemented in GW.

I'd rather see the title system changed so that the game decides for you (based upon your play style) what title your character displays, and that it may change depending on where you are and what you're doing.

Rewards for time played and things achieved are one thing, and should be separated from the titles, IMO. But that may be just me.

[Wethospu]

This is how I would like to see it (in case that we get similar title system):
You can show only your titles / account-wide titles.
You will get KoABD for every different maxed title of your characters.
You will get bonuses from the highest titles of your characters (so they would be account wide :) )

[igwy]

I would like to see accomplishments go for all your characters so you don't have to do the same thing for each one over for each class (IE. drink 1000 alcohol, open 1000 chests, identify 1000 items)it's just more grinding.

[Nikhera]

HoM should have been account based, titles should have been registered across characters and once you achieve 10 max titles total (or more, w/e) Rainbow Phoenix for you. Ah well :D

[inscribed]

I posted this as an idea on another forum, but its relevant to this discussion. This is how I propose they fix this problem.

I mostly play PvE. A problem I see with PvE is that a majority of the rewards and benefits earned in PvE are in the form of titles. Now, two players can go through the game, do the exact same missions and quests, spend the exact same amount of time farming or doing challenge missions or whatever, but the player who spends all of his time on one character will have a good number of titles and rewards to show for it. The player who spreads his time across multiple characters has next to nothing to show for it, title-wise, despite doing the exact same thing. In my eyes, a player should not be penalized in this way for playing multiple characters.

What I propose is to have all of your characters on an account part of a party. With the introduction of heroes and the Nightfall theme of "a hero to lead them", the idea of a party of heroes traveling together, even though they are not all active at the same time, has been introduced. This idea should be expanded to include our own player characters. When I brought my warrior to Nightfall, instead of making a brand spanking new Dervish starting from square one, I could of been recruiting a new Dervish into my warrior's party. The Dervish would of still had to go through the tutorial section and what not, but after that, the Dervish would be part of the team, and have access to the same areas and same maps and same achievements my warrior had, because they were partied together. You could even expand this to have player character's usable as heroes, if desired.

This would remove the penalty on playing multiple characters through different parts of the game, allowing them to access the same achievements as people who focus only on a single character. With the advent of Hard Mode and other vanquisher titles and other stuff, there is already enough of a replayability factor to cause most players to go back through early areas again with their new characters, if that is a concern with characters created late in the game. I really can't see any downside to this idea, and would really create a sense of unity between the different characters of a player.

This would mean shared titles, maps, access points, etc for all characters, and would provide it in a logical way. Just my two cents.

[Balan Makki]

Simply making titles account based would help.

But my take on the problem of Altoholism is that Arena Net may be moving toward single character advancement by allowing one character to learn all Primary professions. You're alts then become the different races rather than the different classes.

My biggest complaint early on in GW was anonymity. Players have way too many characters for player relationships to develop. I constantly see this with new players coming to GW, who only play one character and have no clue why they don't know anyone, or can't find anyone that they had met just yesterday.

Identity is key for an MMO, if Arena Net wants a sense of community, they'll need to force familiarity a bit more. Separate servers are one way. But a primary character that can become Masters of All professions is where I'm guessing they'll be going with GW2.

Altoholics will be spread among the races.

[MonkeyForLove]

Bad: How titles are now.

Good: Any statistical/functional reward attached to a title should be account based. Any vanity reward can be character based.

In this regard, I really don't see the problem with the rainbow phoenix as bad as the others (L/K, reputation, wisdom, treasure ects). However:

Best: Titles only give a vanity reward and not a statistical/functional reward.

[Sunbane]

I posted this as an idea on another forum, but its relevant to this discussion. This is how I propose they fix this problem.

[snip]

This would mean shared titles, maps, access points, etc for all characters, and would provide it in a logical way. Just my two cents.

This must be one of the coolest suggestions I have seen ever! :grin:

:thumbsup: