Gift of Battle / Gift of Exploration: A petition.

[Edgy McEdgelord.4790]

> @"Steve The Cynic.3217" said:

> > @"Edgy McEdgelord.4790" said:

> > correct me if im wrong but isnt the gift of battle purchaseable from mayani at the mystic toilet for like 200 spirit shards?

>

> You're thinking of the [bloodstone Shard](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone_Shard "Bloodstone Shard"). See: [Gift of Mastery](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gift_of_Mastery "Gift of Mastery").

>

 

Yep, glad I've been corrected. Mea culpa.

[starhunter.6015]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> My option would be: "I'd rather see a suggestion for how to deal with the reasons ANet has for requiring these items to build a legendary weapon." Farmers want faster/easier farms, AP hunters want to see more and more AP, and of course, PvE-only players want to see a PvE-only option for everything. That doesn't mean that the current system is flawed and needs fixing.

>

> Plus, it's simply not as hard to get a Gift of Battle as people claim. It can be done in a month or so, using reward pots from WvW dailies, which require investing 5 maybe 10 minutes each day.

 

You're very correct it is not that hard to get GoB, got 4 GoB for Warbringer in less then a month. dailies, boosts and guild hall buffs.

[Fenom.9457]

Mainly PvE and both are fine by me

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> > > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > > The OP seems to have forgotten that originally you couldn't just use badges of honor to buy gifts of battle, because even if you could do it that way, you needed a minimum level to buy a gift of battle and more to the point, when legendaries first came out, you needed to complete all four WvW maps to get your world complete for your gift of exploration. So from launch the game has required you to play some WvW particularly for your first legendary.

> > >

> > WvW ranks were addded much later, the original requirement was lvl 80.

> > Then they added WvW ranks and put a rank requirement of 14 on it.

> >

> > And yeah, WvW was a part of world completion, but then they removed it, and yet they increased the time requirement (not the level of participation, mind you) in WvW.

> > Their message has been inconsistent at best.

> >

> > > It's not so onerous as the OP posts. You can't be banished from the mists because no one can kick you out of the mists. At worst, you can be kicked from a squad, but very little stops you from following a squad even if you're not in it. However, there are plenty of things you can do in small groups or even solo in WvW without ever joining a squad.

> > >

> > > It's just not that big a deal either way.

> > It's still several hours of gameplay that a person will most likely not be enjoying. Truth be told, PvE is the game mode that keeps the game running, and yet the least rewarding, and the one that gets less concessions.

> > The 10% (if that much) of WvW-exclusive players got their chance to unlock Hero Points without participating in PvE, they keep getting concessions that allow them to exclude themselves from PvE. And yet, the vast majority of players who only play PvE (because lets face it, it's the only good thing left in GW2) are still forced to endure the crap-quality of the other two game modes to unlock stuff that is used for PvE only.

> >

> > Arena Net, basically lost the ability to make PvP content in GW2 appealing, they either lost the minds behind GW1 and the original GW2 content, or they don't have the resources to put them to work effectively, whatever. The point is, since even before HoT, WvW was dying a slow death, and after HoT both PvP and WvW started a slow spiral of decay in quality and population (wvw saw a inversion of this due to the legendary back and the news of the rework, but still not even close), and their only solution has been to make it so that people that would not touch the game modes have almost no choice but to participate in it, either because the rewards are so kitten enticing, or because they're actually forced to, due to requirements for legendaries.

> > This of course leads to a big % of the already small population being composed of people that don't care the slightest about what's essentially a competitive team game mode, which, in turn reduces the ability of the team's they're inserted in to be as competitive, which then reduces the competitive people's enjoyment of the game, and with their dissatisfaction, they start caring less or just leaving, which increases the % of people in the already small population game modes that doesn't care about it, which creates a snowball effect.

> >

> > All because of a lack of creativity when it comes to creating motivators for people to participate in the game mode.

> >

> > The example of the most ridiculous of these changes in GW2 was when they started adding ascended gear as a reward in sPvP (the only mode that doesn't use it) and made it so cheap it kinda became the only way to obtain it. Then instead of removing it, or just making it more expensive in PvP (again the only game mode that doesn't use it), their choice was, lets make them craft stuff to avoid crafting stuff, and lets make it so that the best ways to avoid crafting stuff to avoid crafting stuff, is again through **the only game mode that doesn't use them**!!! That's some genius stuff going on in Arena Net's headquarters!

> >

>

> I don't know where you get your 10% number from. My memory is that, according to MO, 10% of the playerbase consider themselves PvP players, but 30% consider themselves WvW players. 60% consider themselves PvE players. Something along those lines if I'm not remembering the quote right.

>

Was there ever a survey to see who considers that, and i've been playing GW2 since launch, and to my best knowledge they never really revealed such numbers. So forgive me if i don't take your word for it, without a quote. Also numbers from 2012-2015 are wildly different from current numbers.

 

The 10% comes from reasoned estimation based on GW2 Efficiency. Only 12% of players in the GWEfficiency sample have a rank above silver in WvW. Even in players with over 4000hours of play time, only ~25% are in the Gold rank or above. So i'm thinking that saying that only 10% or significantly less of the whole game's population will play WvW exclusively isn't a big stretch.

 

> Also your memory of those first years of making legendaries may be faulty or you may have been lucky. I remember one tower I needed that my side could never cap because we never ended up that color, so I ended up having to transfer servers to get that point. It took me months of checking before I made that decision. It's not so cut and dried as you remember.

>

I played in SFR since launch, was there when we were climbing to #1 even when outnumbered, so i got my WvW exploration quite early. I think i 100% my first character within the first couple months, even as a pvx player. I had a similar problem when we were red for like 3 rotations in a row, but i don't think it would be possible to take months to rotate into a specific color, sorry, not buying it.

 

> In fact, there were far more complaints back then about having to complete WvW maps for world complete than we get now about how hard it is to get a gift of battle.

>

True, i also never said it was a bad decision to do that. Only thing i said about it was that on one hand, they removed that requirement for the legendaries, on the other hand they have consistently made it take longer to get the gift of battle. And i mean it takes longer, it's not harder, unlike in the past where you had to be mildly active to get the gift of battle by either doing JPs, or fighting. Now you can be semi-afk just making sure to keep the participation up, and you'll get the reward track progression within a few hours.

 

> More to the point, just because only 30% of the population consider themselves WvWers doesn't mean that 60% of the PvE'ers dislike WvW so immensely anyway. I run a casual PvE guild and even people who dislike WvW, seem to enjoy it on the rare occassions we go in there to work on gifts of battle. It's something else to do. We're not looking for big fights, or zergs. We just run around and cap stuff and it works fine.

>

Its not about liking or disliking, it's about who cares for each content stream enough to keep it working. Without people that are utterly invested in a content type (without wvw guilds, commanders, etc in this case) the experience decays, and the content becomes less and less played. That's what's been happening in PvP, and all because they shifted their focus from the people that care about the content and keep it alive, to people that care about the rewards provided by the content type.

 

WvW, thankfully isn't that bad yet, maybe because it's easier to pick up, and you can more easily "blend in" into a large group and participate with minimal investment. But it still has suffered from the minimal ammount of support that has been given to PvP modes in general.

 

> Does it take a while? Sure. But even as a PvE player that doesn't mean I can't get some enjoyment out of it. I might say I don't like dungeons but when it started I had to do 9 dungeon runs. There were no reward tracks anywhere. Now you can do five or either PvP or WvW if you prefer for dungeon tokens.

>

To some it does. Its an entirely different beast comparing dungeons to WvW. A lot of people avoid any form of pvp, just because it's a form of pvp.

 

> PVE doesn't need concessions in this because 80-90% of the time in making a legendary is PvE anyway. In reality you could just do dailies like wait for big spender 80 times and use badges from your chests to buy something cheap, which would give you 80 WvW reward potions which would give you a gift of battle.

>

80 times lol... OK some quick thinking and quick maths...

From the [wiki](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daily#List_of_possible_daily_achievements "wiki")

You have 8 achievements in the pool where Big spender is at. It selects 2 at random from that pool, which gives it a 2 in 8 chance to get picked, so 25%.

25% means that in 100 tries, you theoretically should get 25 of that result. That means, unless i'm already half asleep, that you'll need around 320 attempts (days) to get 80 days with big spender, and that's assuming that person has the Badges to spend on the daily. So pretty close to 11 months of waiting for that to work. Solid plan.

 

PvE needs concessions, because reward tracks and WvW and PvP pip chests are a much to faster way to obtain PvE rewards than you can obtain them in PvE. That's why you have crap situations like when they released the WvW back piece. Sure you had more people playing WvW, but you also had much more people afk, not doing anything worthwhile, while preventing people that actually want to, and enjoy playing WvW to do so.

 

> Doing easy WvW dailies (veteran creature slayer, daily ruin capture) would make this much faster. It's really not as hard as some people are making it out to be.

It's not hard, but to some people it's forced. And when you force people into doing something, they'll likely not do it, just because they're being forced to.

Think about it this way: how many of those mandatory reading books from school did you read? I'm an avid reader, and i read one of those only while in school. I did end up reading and enjoying most of them years later.

 

That's what i mean, pushing people into doing stuff they don't want just to boost some numbers, when there's people that actually want to enjoy that content and can be hindered from doing that, because of the people that don't want to do it, is not a great policy. And it has been a big part of how sPvP has fallen in quality.

 

And you can bet it affects WvW as well, and you'll start noticing those more when they release the reworked worlds, and populations start being more even across the servers. When we start having all servers at more or less equal strength (assuming they do a better job with that match maker than current ones), every person afk for ppt, or killing stuff just for a daily will start having a larger effect, especially at peak times.

 

[Ashantara.8731]

> @"MauChann.3081" said:

> The 2 most cursed items in Legendary Crafting.

> 1: The Gift of Battle is a feared item by PvE players, because it forces us to play WvW content. Besides that WvW players are not happy to have us pugs intrude in their squads [...]

 

1. You find out what TS server your world is using.

2. You enter an active open squad channel and introduce yourself.

3. You will gladly be invited into the squad.

 

> 2: Gift of Exploration. Now I am not a WvW player so I can't really speak for the WvW community here but I can imagine how tedious it is to be forced to play PvE core content, to get your shiny weapon.

 

While this is true, I have to say that this method of obtaining both items forces you to take a look at game modes you would otherwise not touch. And who knows, maybe you end up liking them, if only on an occasional schedule? I know it got me into playing WvW every now and then when I get bored with PvE. I am currently working on my dungeon weapons collections via WvW. ;)

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> Its not about liking or disliking, it's about who cares for each content stream enough to keep it working. Without people that are utterly invested in a content type (without wvw guilds, commanders, etc in this case) the experience decays, and the content becomes less and less played. That's what's been happening in PvP, and all because they shifted their focus from the people that care about the content and keep it alive, to people that care about the rewards provided by the content type.

 

I wanted to single out this part of your comment above because I think it's a topic worth discussing, although I don't think it's germane to the phrasing in the original post here. That is, it's not directly related to whether Legendary Weapons should depend on a Gift of Battle (or Gift of Exploration) nor what sort of effort required to obtain either.

 

If I might rephrase to highlight the new idea:

 

> What's the best way _for ANet_ to support the people who care about the content and keep it alive, without making the rewards so attractive that it brings in people who only play for those tangible benefits?

 

 

 

[crepuscular.9047]

I'm fine with Gift of Exploration, can pretty much get it almost done by rolling a new toon without using tomes by doing personal story.I find Gift of Battle to be my most painful part when crafting legendaries, because it needs me to sit in front hours straight to constantly maintain T6 participation; taking a break > 5min or long down time of zerg could mean downgrade of participation or get kicked out of WvW for afk, or even worse is disconnect and having to requeue again.

I feel burnt out every time when I finish a Gift of Battle.

The reason why I still prefer the old method of purchase with Badges of Honor because there's no punishment for downtime, and the same reason why I do not mind the how Gift of Exploration is obtained; I could do the content for an hour or two, have a long break and resume the progress without getting punished.

[Etria.3642]

You realize you can pip down in obsidian sanctum and carry on the next time you feel like wvw? No need to do the whole gosh darn thing in one go.

[Vayne.8563]

> @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > > @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> > > > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > > > The OP seems to have forgotten that originally you couldn't just use badges of honor to buy gifts of battle, because even if you could do it that way, you needed a minimum level to buy a gift of battle and more to the point, when legendaries first came out, you needed to complete all four WvW maps to get your world complete for your gift of exploration. So from launch the game has required you to play some WvW particularly for your first legendary.

> > > >

> > > WvW ranks were addded much later, the original requirement was lvl 80.

> > > Then they added WvW ranks and put a rank requirement of 14 on it.

> > >

> > > And yeah, WvW was a part of world completion, but then they removed it, and yet they increased the time requirement (not the level of participation, mind you) in WvW.

> > > Their message has been inconsistent at best.

> > >

> > > > It's not so onerous as the OP posts. You can't be banished from the mists because no one can kick you out of the mists. At worst, you can be kicked from a squad, but very little stops you from following a squad even if you're not in it. However, there are plenty of things you can do in small groups or even solo in WvW without ever joining a squad.

> > > >

> > > > It's just not that big a deal either way.

> > > It's still several hours of gameplay that a person will most likely not be enjoying. Truth be told, PvE is the game mode that keeps the game running, and yet the least rewarding, and the one that gets less concessions.

> > > The 10% (if that much) of WvW-exclusive players got their chance to unlock Hero Points without participating in PvE, they keep getting concessions that allow them to exclude themselves from PvE. And yet, the vast majority of players who only play PvE (because lets face it, it's the only good thing left in GW2) are still forced to endure the crap-quality of the other two game modes to unlock stuff that is used for PvE only.

> > >

> > > Arena Net, basically lost the ability to make PvP content in GW2 appealing, they either lost the minds behind GW1 and the original GW2 content, or they don't have the resources to put them to work effectively, whatever. The point is, since even before HoT, WvW was dying a slow death, and after HoT both PvP and WvW started a slow spiral of decay in quality and population (wvw saw a inversion of this due to the legendary back and the news of the rework, but still not even close), and their only solution has been to make it so that people that would not touch the game modes have almost no choice but to participate in it, either because the rewards are so kitten enticing, or because they're actually forced to, due to requirements for legendaries.

> > > This of course leads to a big % of the already small population being composed of people that don't care the slightest about what's essentially a competitive team game mode, which, in turn reduces the ability of the team's they're inserted in to be as competitive, which then reduces the competitive people's enjoyment of the game, and with their dissatisfaction, they start caring less or just leaving, which increases the % of people in the already small population game modes that doesn't care about it, which creates a snowball effect.

> > >

> > > All because of a lack of creativity when it comes to creating motivators for people to participate in the game mode.

> > >

> > > The example of the most ridiculous of these changes in GW2 was when they started adding ascended gear as a reward in sPvP (the only mode that doesn't use it) and made it so cheap it kinda became the only way to obtain it. Then instead of removing it, or just making it more expensive in PvP (again the only game mode that doesn't use it), their choice was, lets make them craft stuff to avoid crafting stuff, and lets make it so that the best ways to avoid crafting stuff to avoid crafting stuff, is again through **the only game mode that doesn't use them**!!! That's some genius stuff going on in Arena Net's headquarters!

> > >

> >

> > I don't know where you get your 10% number from. My memory is that, according to MO, 10% of the playerbase consider themselves PvP players, but 30% consider themselves WvW players. 60% consider themselves PvE players. Something along those lines if I'm not remembering the quote right.

> >

> Was there ever a survey to see who considers that, and i've been playing GW2 since launch, and to my best knowledge they never really revealed such numbers. So forgive me if i don't take your word for it, without a quote. Also numbers from 2012-2015 are wildly different from current numbers.

>

> The 10% comes from reasoned estimation based on GW2 Efficiency. Only 12% of players in the GWEfficiency sample have a rank above silver in WvW. Even in players with over 4000hours of play time, only ~25% are in the Gold rank or above. So i'm thinking that saying that only 10% or significantly less of the whole game's population will play WvW exclusively isn't a big stretch.

>

> > Also your memory of those first years of making legendaries may be faulty or you may have been lucky. I remember one tower I needed that my side could never cap because we never ended up that color, so I ended up having to transfer servers to get that point. It took me months of checking before I made that decision. It's not so cut and dried as you remember.

> >

> I played in SFR since launch, was there when we were climbing to #1 even when outnumbered, so i got my WvW exploration quite early. I think i 100% my first character within the first couple months, even as a pvx player. I had a similar problem when we were red for like 3 rotations in a row, but i don't think it would be possible to take months to rotate into a specific color, sorry, not buying it.

>

> > In fact, there were far more complaints back then about having to complete WvW maps for world complete than we get now about how hard it is to get a gift of battle.

> >

> True, i also never said it was a bad decision to do that. Only thing i said about it was that on one hand, they removed that requirement for the legendaries, on the other hand they have consistently made it take longer to get the gift of battle. And i mean it takes longer, it's not harder, unlike in the past where you had to be mildly active to get the gift of battle by either doing JPs, or fighting. Now you can be semi-afk just making sure to keep the participation up, and you'll get the reward track progression within a few hours.

>

> > More to the point, just because only 30% of the population consider themselves WvWers doesn't mean that 60% of the PvE'ers dislike WvW so immensely anyway. I run a casual PvE guild and even people who dislike WvW, seem to enjoy it on the rare occassions we go in there to work on gifts of battle. It's something else to do. We're not looking for big fights, or zergs. We just run around and cap stuff and it works fine.

> >

> Its not about liking or disliking, it's about who cares for each content stream enough to keep it working. Without people that are utterly invested in a content type (without wvw guilds, commanders, etc in this case) the experience decays, and the content becomes less and less played. That's what's been happening in PvP, and all because they shifted their focus from the people that care about the content and keep it alive, to people that care about the rewards provided by the content type.

>

> WvW, thankfully isn't that bad yet, maybe because it's easier to pick up, and you can more easily "blend in" into a large group and participate with minimal investment. But it still has suffered from the minimal ammount of support that has been given to PvP modes in general.

>

> > Does it take a while? Sure. But even as a PvE player that doesn't mean I can't get some enjoyment out of it. I might say I don't like dungeons but when it started I had to do 9 dungeon runs. There were no reward tracks anywhere. Now you can do five or either PvP or WvW if you prefer for dungeon tokens.

> >

> To some it does. Its an entirely different beast comparing dungeons to WvW. A lot of people avoid any form of pvp, just because it's a form of pvp.

>

> > PVE doesn't need concessions in this because 80-90% of the time in making a legendary is PvE anyway. In reality you could just do dailies like wait for big spender 80 times and use badges from your chests to buy something cheap, which would give you 80 WvW reward potions which would give you a gift of battle.

> >

> 80 times lol... OK some quick thinking and quick maths...

> From the [wiki](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daily#List_of_possible_daily_achievements "wiki")

> You have 8 achievements in the pool where Big spender is at. It selects 2 at random from that pool, which gives it a 2 in 8 chance to get picked, so 25%.

> 25% means that in 100 tries, you theoretically should get 25 of that result. That means, unless i'm already half asleep, that you'll need around 320 attempts (days) to get 80 days with big spender, and that's assuming that person has the Badges to spend on the daily. So pretty close to 11 months of waiting for that to work. Solid plan.

>

> PvE needs concessions, because reward tracks and WvW and PvP pip chests are a much to faster way to obtain PvE rewards than you can obtain them in PvE. That's why you have crap situations like when they released the WvW back piece. Sure you had more people playing WvW, but you also had much more people afk, not doing anything worthwhile, while preventing people that actually want to, and enjoy playing WvW to do so.

>

> > Doing easy WvW dailies (veteran creature slayer, daily ruin capture) would make this much faster. It's really not as hard as some people are making it out to be.

> It's not hard, but to some people it's forced. And when you force people into doing something, they'll likely not do it, just because they're being forced to.

> Think about it this way: how many of those mandatory reading books from school did you read? I'm an avid reader, and i read one of those only while in school. I did end up reading and enjoying most of them years later.

>

> That's what i mean, pushing people into doing stuff they don't want just to boost some numbers, when there's people that actually want to enjoy that content and can be hindered from doing that, because of the people that don't want to do it, is not a great policy. And it has been a big part of how sPvP has fallen in quality.

>

> And you can bet it affects WvW as well, and you'll start noticing those more when they release the reworked worlds, and populations start being more even across the servers. When we start having all servers at more or less equal strength (assuming they do a better job with that match maker than current ones), every person afk for ppt, or killing stuff just for a daily will start having a larger effect, especially at peak times.

>

 

I found an older quote for you, which should help some:

 

Link here: https://massivelyop.com/2017/09/27/guild-wars-2s-mike-obrien-on-classic-guild-wars-playstyle-balance-and-building-social-mmos/

 

There’s a bit on Path of Fire, of course, a note about people pitching movies, and a fun stat: “About 90 percent play a lot of PvE content, about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.”

 

This quote seems to indicate 40% of the playerbase plays predominantly WvW, which is higher than I said. I don't always source my quotes, because it's time consuming but my memory has been pretty good. In any event, Mike Obrien has given a higher number of people who predominantly WvW than I said, so there's your quote. It's from the interview linked in that interview. Obviously Anet doesn't have to poll anyone to get those numbers they HAVE those numbers.

 

You have no evidence of how many of the people who are pushed into that content dislike it, how many like it but need the encouragement and how many end up liking it but would have never tried it are running around. What you're doing is saying I feel this way so probably most people do. In my experience that logic doesn't always hold true.

[Ashen.2907]

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> I found an older quote for you, which should help some:

>

> Link here: https://massivelyop.com/2017/09/27/guild-wars-2s-mike-obrien-on-classic-guild-wars-playstyle-balance-and-building-social-mmos/

>

> There’s a bit on Path of Fire, of course, a note about people pitching movies, and a fun stat: “About 90 percent play a lot of PvE content, about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.”

>

> This quote seems to indicate 40% of the playerbase plays predominantly WvW, which is higher than I said. I don't always source my quotes, because it's time consuming but my memory has been pretty good. In any event, Mike Obrien has given a higher number of people who predominantly WvW than I said, so there's your quote. It's from the interview linked in that interview. Obviously Anet doesn't have to poll anyone to get those numbers they HAVE those numbers.

>

> You have no evidence of how many of the people who are pushed into that content dislike it, how many like it but need the encouragement and how many end up liking it but would have never tried it are running around. What you're doing is saying I feel this way so probably most people do. In my experience that logic doesn't always hold true.

 

"A lot of WvW or PvP," is not the same as, "predominantly WvW."

 

I have been playing, what I consider, a lot of WvW lately. Still less than half of the PvE I play.

 

And keep in mind that the 40% mentioned needs to be divided between PvP and WvW.

[Rauderi.8706]

I'm perfectly fine with making either tradeable on the trading post or having some way to exchange them 4:1.

[Vayne.8563]

> @"Ashen.2907" said:

> > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > I found an older quote for you, which should help some:

> >

> > Link here: https://massivelyop.com/2017/09/27/guild-wars-2s-mike-obrien-on-classic-guild-wars-playstyle-balance-and-building-social-mmos/

> >

> > There’s a bit on Path of Fire, of course, a note about people pitching movies, and a fun stat: “About 90 percent play a lot of PvE content, about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.”

> >

> > This quote seems to indicate 40% of the playerbase plays predominantly WvW, which is higher than I said. I don't always source my quotes, because it's time consuming but my memory has been pretty good. In any event, Mike Obrien has given a higher number of people who predominantly WvW than I said, so there's your quote. It's from the interview linked in that interview. Obviously Anet doesn't have to poll anyone to get those numbers they HAVE those numbers.

> >

> > You have no evidence of how many of the people who are pushed into that content dislike it, how many like it but need the encouragement and how many end up liking it but would have never tried it are running around. What you're doing is saying I feel this way so probably most people do. In my experience that logic doesn't always hold true.

>

> "A lot of WvW or PvP," is not the same as, "predominantly WvW."

>

> I have been playing, what I consider, a lot of WvW lately. Still less than half of the PvE I play.

>

> And keep in mind that the 40% mentioned needs to be divided between PvP and WvW.

 

Right but then it doesn't count players like me who play predominantly PvE and I still enjoy WvW. That's the point with the original 10% comment which is clearly wrong. 10% of the game doesn't WvW, which is what was said.

 

Edit: Not to mention this isn't the quote that I was quoting in the first place, which was a different quote, that I have no real way of finding. I paraphrased, but some people make comments that only 10% of the game's population WvW and that's clearly not true. I was responding to that. Someone asked me for a quote and I found an older one, which should be enough to disprove his number at least. Sometimes, context is everything.

[PlagueParade.7942]

The only thing I do not like is that you can only get the Gift of Battle in wvw and not in PvP. They both take place in the mist. They both concern fighting pvp. They are both competitive. They should both have the reward track to get.

[miraude.2107]

I think it should be changed but that's mostly from playing other games and what they did. I used to play WoW and well, was super excited for the legendary cape as that meant I didn't have to do a solid 'nope can't get it, you don't have the time to do the raiding required'. To have it accessible through doing dailies, collecting reps and doing the lfr, meant I could do 'my time' and not be shit, the guild raids on this day and have to plan around that guild. The pvp requirement didn't bother me too much.

Until I hit that part. I wasn't a stranger to it, I knew what I needed to do but the pvpers, the hardcore ones, were so upset that Blizzard was forcing pvers into their domain of not having the right gear, etc, that some went out of their way to vote kick people or just flat lose the match. After months of trying, I gave up in frustration. Being camped, being harassed by my own side, just eventually killed any desire I had, and basically killed my desire to play the game too as oh hey, even the pick up raid groups wouldn't take you if you didn't have the cape.

So I came to GW2 and decided to stay here. Then I learned you can no longer buy the Gift of Battle. That went byebye in 2016 just a few months before I started playing again. It's been 4 years and I have no legendaries. Ascended items is as far as I got. I don't care if it's a different game, I don't care that the community here is nicer, I loathe pvp that much. I'd prefer a having to kill each world boss 500 times grind over touching a mode I've become soured too. And most of 2nd gen, requires you to get Gift of the Mists, which is made with parts from pvp tracks.

 

I will not do a mode I have no interest in, and I feel that those that pvp shouldn't be forced to pve if they have no interest in it. There should be two separate ways, one pve and one pvp to acquire these items. Have Gift of Exploration be win 50 times on each BG map and leave the map exploration for pvers to do. Have Gift of Battle remain in the pvp track and give pvers something like kill each world boss (cept Triple Trouble because that's just cruel there) 50 times to acquire it. I mean, look at the Gen 1's that got the collections achievements. Look at the ascended backpacks that are bread crumb trails (Mawdrey being a good example). Something like that could easily be done as separate tracks for pve and pvp. I honestly think that pvp would probably get a bit of a boost if it started getting inclusive in that manner, just my opinion on that. Overall, everyone has their own style of playing the game and I know it's impossible and improbable to cater to everyone, however when you know there is two factions of pve and pvp in the game, it just feels wise to not force one mode onto the other. Dailies are separated like this, I'd love to see legendaries get the same treatment.

 

 

[phs.6089]

> @"miraude.2107" said:

> And most of 2nd gen, requires you to get Gift of the Mists, which is made with parts from pvp tracks.

> will not do a mode I have no interest in, and I feel that those that pvp shouldn't be forced

Those things cost less then a dirt in Trading Post. No one is forcing you to pvp

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shard_of_Glory

 

 

[miraude.2107]

> @"phs.6089" said:

> > @"miraude.2107" said:

> > And most of 2nd gen, requires you to get Gift of the Mists, which is made with parts from pvp tracks.

> > will not do a mode I have no interest in, and I feel that those that pvp shouldn't be forced

> Those things cost less then a dirt in Trading Post. No one is forcing you to pvp

> https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shard_of_Glory

>

>

 

So I can use Shards of Glory to make a Gift of Battle in the Mystic Forge? What's the combo of items?

[phs.6089]

> @"miraude.2107" said:

> > @"phs.6089" said:

> > > @"miraude.2107" said:

> > > And most of 2nd gen, requires you to get Gift of the Mists, which is made with parts from pvp tracks.

> > > will not do a mode I have no interest in, and I feel that those that pvp shouldn't be forced

> > Those things cost less then a dirt in Trading Post. No one is forcing you to pvp

> > https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shard_of_Glory

> >

> >

>

> So I can use Shards of Glory to make a Gift of Battle in the Mystic Forge? What's the combo of items?

 

Just trade x250 Shards with https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge_Attendant

 

But its Gift of Glory for gift of Mists, I was talking about

[miraude.2107]

> @"phs.6089" said:

> > @"miraude.2107" said:

> > > @"phs.6089" said:

> > > > @"miraude.2107" said:

> > > > And most of 2nd gen, requires you to get Gift of the Mists, which is made with parts from pvp tracks.

> > > > will not do a mode I have no interest in, and I feel that those that pvp shouldn't be forced

> > > Those things cost less then a dirt in Trading Post. No one is forcing you to pvp

> > > https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shard_of_Glory

> > >

> > >

> >

> > So I can use Shards of Glory to make a Gift of Battle in the Mystic Forge? What's the combo of items?

>

> Just trade x250 Shards with https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge_Attendant

 

She doesn't sell GIFT OF BATTLE. That is exclusively in the WvW track.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gift_of_Battle_Item_Reward_Track

You have to do pvp to get it. No exceptions. Your only option is to complete the WvW reward track for it as it's the very last item you get from that track. If the attendant had sold it and I only need to have both 250 shards of glory and 250 shards of war to get a Gift of Battle, I would have done that ages ago since I know you can buy the bloody shards on the TP. PvPers should have a different way to get Gift of Exploration and PvErs should have a different way to get Gift of Battle if they don't want to touch map exploration or pvp.

[Plautze.6290]

I used to think that GoB would be a nightmare to grind out. How wrong I was. At first I tried to get it by only doing easy dailies like vet creature, take a ruin or spend badges. But halfway there, my impatience kicked in, I popped one of those XP boosters (the one increasing reward progress) and got into it. When there was no blob, I gathered small groups of players and flipped camps, ruins, even some towers. But reward progress wise, nothing can beat the blob, thus I too did some of that. And I had indeed so much fun, that I missed the point where I had enough progress + reward potions to get my GoB and kept on playing for hours. That's how great it was.

 

Of course, your results may vary, but what I'm trying to say is that you never know if something's a nightmare unless you tried it. Perhaps, you are even in for a surprise.

Nowadays, the biggest horror when thinking about crafting a legy is the tons of T5 mats I need to acquire. Don't want to buy it all, but it takes ages to gather that much!

Still, nothing that's gonna stop me from merrily producing further legies!

 

On the GoE: Seriously, guys? With core Tyria being what it is, you're asking for an even easier way to get a good portion of your legy? It's practically for free!

[Rasimir.6239]

> @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > Also your memory of those first years of making legendaries may be faulty or you may have been lucky. I remember one tower I needed that my side could never cap because we never ended up that color, so I ended up having to transfer servers to get that point. It took me months of checking before I made that decision. It's not so cut and dried as you remember.

> >

> I played in SFR since launch, was there when we were climbing to #1 even when outnumbered, so i got my WvW exploration quite early. I think i 100% my first character within the first couple months, even as a pvx player. I had a similar problem when we were red for like 3 rotations in a row, but i don't think it would be possible to take months to rotate into a specific color, sorry, not buying it.

Check out Vabbi's ranking during the first couple of years. I started my 2nd account on Vabbi about a year after the game launched, and we were so far behind everyone that we were red 95% of the time, blue 5% of the time, and it was mathematically impossible for us to be green at all (due to the way servers were placed in matches back then). I fondly remember the night me and two random strangers opened all the keeps on green borderland to grab the pois and vistas in there, which finally brought me my first gift of exploration on that account.

 

[phs.6089]

> @"miraude.2107" said:

> > @"phs.6089" said:

> > > @"miraude.2107" said:

 

> She doesn't sell GIFT OF BATTLE. That is exclusively in the WvW track.

> https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gift_of_Battle_Item_Reward_Track

> You have to do pvp to get it. No exceptions. Your only option is to complete the WvW reward track for it as it's the very last item you get from that track. If the attendant had sold it and I only need to have both 250 shards of glory and 250 shards of war to get a Gift of Battle, I would have done that ages ago since I know you can buy the bloody shards on the TP. PvPers should have a different way to get Gift of Exploration and PvErs should have a different way to get Gift of Battle if they don't want to touch map exploration or pvp.

 

I see where confusion comes from 'pvp for second gen leg'. Please stop calling wvw 'pvp'

[Vayne.8563]

> @"Rasimir.6239" said:

> > @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> > > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > > Also your memory of those first years of making legendaries may be faulty or you may have been lucky. I remember one tower I needed that my side could never cap because we never ended up that color, so I ended up having to transfer servers to get that point. It took me months of checking before I made that decision. It's not so cut and dried as you remember.

> > >

> > I played in SFR since launch, was there when we were climbing to #1 even when outnumbered, so i got my WvW exploration quite early. I think i 100% my first character within the first couple months, even as a pvx player. I had a similar problem when we were red for like 3 rotations in a row, but i don't think it would be possible to take months to rotate into a specific color, sorry, not buying it.

> Check out Vabbi's ranking during the first couple of years. I started my 2nd account on Vabbi about a year after the game launched, and we were so far behind everyone that we were red 95% of the time, blue 5% of the time, and it was mathematically impossible for us to be green at all (due to the way servers were placed in matches back then). I fondly remember the night me and two random strangers opened all the keeps on green borderland to grab the pois and vistas in there, which finally brought me my first gift of exploration on that account.

>

 

This is my memory too. I had to transfer to another server to get my weapon done because I got tired of waiting for the one tower that I simply couldn't get week after week. The server never claimed the tower and I'm no PvPer and was even less so back then. Now, I'd get a group together and try for the tower. Back, then, not so much.

 

People in my guild, a few who are still around, remember, because after I transferred servers, my world became full and I couldn't transfer back right away. I was stuck on a different server. Remember this was before megaservers and I had to guest a lot. It was a royal pain in the kitten.

[pietjepuk.9832]

Map completion takes so much longer then the Gift of Battle, even with Mounts. I am purely a PvE player, so I feel I can't really complain about the WvW requirement for the Legendaries. I really dislike WvW but at least the zergs I can stomach for an hour before I get bored out of my skull. Unfortunately I got bumped as a Ranger during my last GoB run so I guess I will make a Well bomb Necro and pretend I am useful that way. :)

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> > > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > > > @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

> > > > > @"Vayne.8563" said:

> > > > > The OP seems to have forgotten that originally you couldn't just use badges of honor to buy gifts of battle, because even if you could do it that way, you needed a minimum level to buy a gift of battle and more to the point, when legendaries first came out, you needed to complete all four WvW maps to get your world complete for your gift of exploration. So from launch the game has required you to play some WvW particularly for your first legendary.

> > > > >

> > > > WvW ranks were addded much later, the original requirement was lvl 80.

> > > > Then they added WvW ranks and put a rank requirement of 14 on it.

> > > >

> > > > And yeah, WvW was a part of world completion, but then they removed it, and yet they increased the time requirement (not the level of participation, mind you) in WvW.

> > > > Their message has been inconsistent at best.

> > > >

> > > > > It's not so onerous as the OP posts. You can't be banished from the mists because no one can kick you out of the mists. At worst, you can be kicked from a squad, but very little stops you from following a squad even if you're not in it. However, there are plenty of things you can do in small groups or even solo in WvW without ever joining a squad.

> > > > >

> > > > > It's just not that big a deal either way.

> > > > It's still several hours of gameplay that a person will most likely not be enjoying. Truth be told, PvE is the game mode that keeps the game running, and yet the least rewarding, and the one that gets less concessions.

> > > > The 10% (if that much) of WvW-exclusive players got their chance to unlock Hero Points without participating in PvE, they keep getting concessions that allow them to exclude themselves from PvE. And yet, the vast majority of players who only play PvE (because lets face it, it's the only good thing left in GW2) are still forced to endure the crap-quality of the other two game modes to unlock stuff that is used for PvE only.

> > > >

> > > > Arena Net, basically lost the ability to make PvP content in GW2 appealing, they either lost the minds behind GW1 and the original GW2 content, or they don't have the resources to put them to work effectively, whatever. The point is, since even before HoT, WvW was dying a slow death, and after HoT both PvP and WvW started a slow spiral of decay in quality and population (wvw saw a inversion of this due to the legendary back and the news of the rework, but still not even close), and their only solution has been to make it so that people that would not touch the game modes have almost no choice but to participate in it, either because the rewards are so kitten enticing, or because they're actually forced to, due to requirements for legendaries.

> > > > This of course leads to a big % of the already small population being composed of people that don't care the slightest about what's essentially a competitive team game mode, which, in turn reduces the ability of the team's they're inserted in to be as competitive, which then reduces the competitive people's enjoyment of the game, and with their dissatisfaction, they start caring less or just leaving, which increases the % of people in the already small population game modes that doesn't care about it, which creates a snowball effect.

> > > >

> > > > All because of a lack of creativity when it comes to creating motivators for people to participate in the game mode.

> > > >

> > > > The example of the most ridiculous of these changes in GW2 was when they started adding ascended gear as a reward in sPvP (the only mode that doesn't use it) and made it so cheap it kinda became the only way to obtain it. Then instead of removing it, or just making it more expensive in PvP (again the only game mode that doesn't use it), their choice was, lets make them craft stuff to avoid crafting stuff, and lets make it so that the best ways to avoid crafting stuff to avoid crafting stuff, is again through **the only game mode that doesn't use them**!!! That's some genius stuff going on in Arena Net's headquarters!

> > > >

> > >

> > > I don't know where you get your 10% number from. My memory is that, according to MO, 10% of the playerbase consider themselves PvP players, but 30% consider themselves WvW players. 60% consider themselves PvE players. Something along those lines if I'm not remembering the quote right.

> > >

> > Was there ever a survey to see who considers that, and i've been playing GW2 since launch, and to my best knowledge they never really revealed such numbers. So forgive me if i don't take your word for it, without a quote. Also numbers from 2012-2015 are wildly different from current numbers.

> >

> > The 10% comes from reasoned estimation based on GW2 Efficiency. Only 12% of players in the GWEfficiency sample have a rank above silver in WvW. Even in players with over 4000hours of play time, only ~25% are in the Gold rank or above. So i'm thinking that saying that only 10% or significantly less of the whole game's population will play WvW exclusively isn't a big stretch.

> >

> > > Also your memory of those first years of making legendaries may be faulty or you may have been lucky. I remember one tower I needed that my side could never cap because we never ended up that color, so I ended up having to transfer servers to get that point. It took me months of checking before I made that decision. It's not so cut and dried as you remember.

> > >

> > I played in SFR since launch, was there when we were climbing to #1 even when outnumbered, so i got my WvW exploration quite early. I think i 100% my first character within the first couple months, even as a pvx player. I had a similar problem when we were red for like 3 rotations in a row, but i don't think it would be possible to take months to rotate into a specific color, sorry, not buying it.

> >

> > > In fact, there were far more complaints back then about having to complete WvW maps for world complete than we get now about how hard it is to get a gift of battle.

> > >

> > True, i also never said it was a bad decision to do that. Only thing i said about it was that on one hand, they removed that requirement for the legendaries, on the other hand they have consistently made it take longer to get the gift of battle. And i mean it takes longer, it's not harder, unlike in the past where you had to be mildly active to get the gift of battle by either doing JPs, or fighting. Now you can be semi-afk just making sure to keep the participation up, and you'll get the reward track progression within a few hours.

> >

> > > More to the point, just because only 30% of the population consider themselves WvWers doesn't mean that 60% of the PvE'ers dislike WvW so immensely anyway. I run a casual PvE guild and even people who dislike WvW, seem to enjoy it on the rare occassions we go in there to work on gifts of battle. It's something else to do. We're not looking for big fights, or zergs. We just run around and cap stuff and it works fine.

> > >

> > Its not about liking or disliking, it's about who cares for each content stream enough to keep it working. Without people that are utterly invested in a content type (without wvw guilds, commanders, etc in this case) the experience decays, and the content becomes less and less played. That's what's been happening in PvP, and all because they shifted their focus from the people that care about the content and keep it alive, to people that care about the rewards provided by the content type.

> >

> > WvW, thankfully isn't that bad yet, maybe because it's easier to pick up, and you can more easily "blend in" into a large group and participate with minimal investment. But it still has suffered from the minimal ammount of support that has been given to PvP modes in general.

> >

> > > Does it take a while? Sure. But even as a PvE player that doesn't mean I can't get some enjoyment out of it. I might say I don't like dungeons but when it started I had to do 9 dungeon runs. There were no reward tracks anywhere. Now you can do five or either PvP or WvW if you prefer for dungeon tokens.

> > >

> > To some it does. Its an entirely different beast comparing dungeons to WvW. A lot of people avoid any form of pvp, just because it's a form of pvp.

> >

> > > PVE doesn't need concessions in this because 80-90% of the time in making a legendary is PvE anyway. In reality you could just do dailies like wait for big spender 80 times and use badges from your chests to buy something cheap, which would give you 80 WvW reward potions which would give you a gift of battle.

> > >

> > 80 times lol... OK some quick thinking and quick maths...

> > From the [wiki](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daily#List_of_possible_daily_achievements "wiki")

> > You have 8 achievements in the pool where Big spender is at. It selects 2 at random from that pool, which gives it a 2 in 8 chance to get picked, so 25%.

> > 25% means that in 100 tries, you theoretically should get 25 of that result. That means, unless i'm already half asleep, that you'll need around 320 attempts (days) to get 80 days with big spender, and that's assuming that person has the Badges to spend on the daily. So pretty close to 11 months of waiting for that to work. Solid plan.

> >

> > PvE needs concessions, because reward tracks and WvW and PvP pip chests are a much to faster way to obtain PvE rewards than you can obtain them in PvE. That's why you have crap situations like when they released the WvW back piece. Sure you had more people playing WvW, but you also had much more people afk, not doing anything worthwhile, while preventing people that actually want to, and enjoy playing WvW to do so.

> >

> > > Doing easy WvW dailies (veteran creature slayer, daily ruin capture) would make this much faster. It's really not as hard as some people are making it out to be.

> > It's not hard, but to some people it's forced. And when you force people into doing something, they'll likely not do it, just because they're being forced to.

> > Think about it this way: how many of those mandatory reading books from school did you read? I'm an avid reader, and i read one of those only while in school. I did end up reading and enjoying most of them years later.

> >

> > That's what i mean, pushing people into doing stuff they don't want just to boost some numbers, when there's people that actually want to enjoy that content and can be hindered from doing that, because of the people that don't want to do it, is not a great policy. And it has been a big part of how sPvP has fallen in quality.

> >

> > And you can bet it affects WvW as well, and you'll start noticing those more when they release the reworked worlds, and populations start being more even across the servers. When we start having all servers at more or less equal strength (assuming they do a better job with that match maker than current ones), every person afk for ppt, or killing stuff just for a daily will start having a larger effect, especially at peak times.

> >

>

> I found an older quote for you, which should help some:

>

> Link here: https://massivelyop.com/2017/09/27/guild-wars-2s-mike-obrien-on-classic-guild-wars-playstyle-balance-and-building-social-mmos/

>

> There’s a bit on Path of Fire, of course, a note about people pitching movies, and a fun stat: “About 90 percent play a lot of PvE content, about 40 percent play a lot of World vs. World or PvP content, and about 30 percent play a lot of both.”

>

> This quote seems to indicate 40% of the playerbase plays predominantly WvW, which is higher than I said. I don't always source my quotes, because it's time consuming but my memory has been pretty good. In any event, Mike Obrien has given a higher number of people who predominantly WvW than I said, so there's your quote. It's from the interview linked in that interview. Obviously Anet doesn't have to poll anyone to get those numbers they HAVE those numbers.

>

Yeah, and population on GW2, like on Russia, is over 100% then? You look at that quote, which means nothing, really, since it doesn't really differentiate the population. Unless that 40% is actually a typo and it's 10%.

 

That sentence is actually nonsense, unless that 40% is a typo, or the numbers are just meaningless without further context.

 

> You have no evidence of how many of the people who are pushed into that content dislike it, how many like it but need the encouragement and how many end up liking it but would have never tried it are running around. What you're doing is saying I feel this way so probably most people do. In my experience that logic doesn't always hold true.

Yeah, logic doesn't hold true for religious fanatics, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, and zealots in general. For the rest of the cosmos, there's a reason why it's logic.

 

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"Plautze.6290" said:

> I used to think that GoB would be a nightmare to grind out. How wrong I was. At first I tried to get it by only doing easy dailies like vet creature, take a ruin or spend badges. But halfway there, my impatience kicked in, I popped one of those XP boosters (the one increasing reward progress) and got into it. When there was no blob, I gathered small groups of players and flipped camps, ruins, even some towers. But reward progress wise, nothing can beat the blob, thus I too did some of that. And I had indeed so much fun, that I missed the point where I had enough progress + reward potions to get my GoB and kept on playing for hours. That's how great it was.

>

> Of course, your results may vary, but what I'm trying to say is that you never know if something's a nightmare unless you tried it. Perhaps, you are even in for a surprise.

> Nowadays, the biggest horror when thinking about crafting a legy is the tons of T5 mats I need to acquire. Don't want to buy it all, but it takes ages to gather that much!

> Still, nothing that's gonna stop me from merrily producing further legies!

>

> On the GoE: Seriously, guys? With core Tyria being what it is, you're asking for an even easier way to get a good portion of your legy? It's practically for free!

 

Twice for free... Since you get two!

 

YEah, GoB is easy to obtain, just eats up a lot of time, that for a lot of people isn't enjoyable... T5 and T6 mats can be obtained in a few creative ways, there's material bags for laurels if you have a lot of those, otherwise you have trophy chests and others like those in PoF and HoT.