Carrots are for donkeys.

Soz couldn't resist.

For me it will be completion. Achievements in all aspects of the game.

Originally posted by omegadethh7

Fun and enjoyment

Yup!

shesh, and there they are again, our 3 problems :)

as it seems  we don't play games for fun, we do so to get items to show off to our buddies.

you know, back in the last millenia (or at the beginning of this one). games had exactly ONE motivation: the story  and the action... exactly TWO motivations... uh and fun, so exactly THREE MOTIVATIONS! :)

nowadays, it seems this ain't enough anymore, we want our ferraries, our pools, our blond big boobed GF yadda yadaa....

seriously, a game that is fun should be it's own reward.

where was the carrot in UT? - kill your enemy! the most spectacular way :>

where was the carrot in planescape? it was the game itself! rewarding ingame humor and story telling.

where was the carrot in tekken3? juggle your enemy through the air, hit him with combos so his head would literally explode from watching his char go WHEEEEEEE

uh. and i could go back even more:

bubble bobble? beat baron of blubba!

international karate? just kick it! and smash those silly urnes good!

packman? it was enough to eat some pills and kick some ghosts!

pong? make that little sqauare cross your friend's "goal-line"

guess you know where i am going here, if not, one more question:

where is the fun in hide and seek? (that's a game we used to play in "RL" / outside with our friends in my youth  :P  actually all we did was hide from one set "player" (or friend as we called em back in those days) and if he found you... it all started over again :>

got it? no? well.... seriously... you should :>

This is an excellent question.  The knee jerk reaction is to say it's about having fun but let's face it the carrot on the stick in most themepark MMO's is gear and only the very casual players will say otherwise. 

My guess is that GW2 will be a lot of fun for a month or two but once the novelty wears off it will be difficult to keep players incentivised without some sort individual rewards like gear. 

People like to show off their stuff, it's an integral part of the MMO experience.  Without gear or any sort of meaningful way to display how awesome you and your guild are, there isn't a lot of incentive to run the same raid 20 or 30 times.

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People like to show off their stuff, it's an integral part of the MMO experience.  Without gear or any sort of meaningful way to display how awesome you and your guild are, there isn't a lot of incentive to run the same raid 20 or 30 times.

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Originally posted by Mythios11

This is an excellent question.  The knee jerk reaction is to say it's about having fun but let's face it the carrot on the stick in most themepark MMO's is gear and only the very casual players will say otherwise. 

My guess is that GW2 will be a lot of fun for a month or two but once the novelty wears off it will be difficult to keep players incentivised without some sort individual rewards like gear. 

People like to show off their stuff, it's an integral part of the MMO experience.  Without gear or any sort of meaningful way to display how awesome you and your guild are, there isn't a lot of incentive to run the same raid 20 or 30 times.

 

There is hard to obtain gear to show off, its just not more powerful than what everyone else wears.

Originally posted by Mythios11

This is an excellent question.  The knee jerk reaction is to say it's about having fun but let's face it the carrot on the stick in most themepark MMO's is gear and only the very casual players will say otherwise. 

My guess is that GW2 will be a lot of fun for a month or two but once the novelty wears off it will be difficult to keep players incentivised without some sort individual rewards like gear. 

People like to show off their stuff, it's an integral part of the MMO experience.  Without gear or any sort of meaningful way to display how awesome you and your guild are, there isn't a lot of incentive to run the same raid 20 or 30 times.

 

Especially now that you can buy the same gear for cash

You just compared non mmo games to mmo games. Most mmo games have a carrot but GW2 doesnt need it.

Break the boring mold  FTW !

then what is the carrot?

Community...

he won? :)

ps: the carrot is actually a lie! ^^ 

uh uh uh, got a better one: there is no carrot!

Originally posted by Dreadblade

Originally posted by Mythios11

This is an excellent question.  The knee jerk reaction is to say it's about having fun but let's face it the carrot on the stick in most themepark MMO's is gear and only the very casual players will say otherwise. 

My guess is that GW2 will be a lot of fun for a month or two but once the novelty wears off it will be difficult to keep players incentivised without some sort individual rewards like gear. 

People like to show off their stuff, it's an integral part of the MMO experience.  Without gear or any sort of meaningful way to display how awesome you and your guild are, there isn't a lot of incentive to run the same raid 20 or 30 times.

 

Especially now that you can buy the same gear for cash

Uh, no. There's absolutely no proof you'll beable to buy the same gear you earn through grouped PvE in the cosmetic shop. That would be atrocius and dumb. Sorry.

There are many ways of showing how "awsome" you are, seems Anet likes to show that with skill, other than uber gear.

And to top it off, they change the grind from raiding the same dungeon over and over, to winning the WvWvW over and over.

I love it!

There doesn't seem to be one... which to me is an issue. As much as you can claim to enjoy a game and have 'fun' its human nature to expect some type of reward from it. Having nothing to gain out of it just makes the whole process so much less rewarding. 

Name one thing 'fun' you do and you don't get anything out of it.  Now that you just tried to prove me wrong, really think hard about it in what you might get out of it besides fun. If your not being ignorant, I'm sure you just thought of something. With PvP it can be moderately rewarding with winning, but in the end if your just winning and not getting some shine of progress for it, your just going to eventually loose interest in it. 

Originally posted by Benthon

Originally posted by Dreadblade

Originally posted by Mythios11

This is an excellent question.  The knee jerk reaction is to say it's about having fun but let's face it the carrot on the stick in most themepark MMO's is gear and only the very casual players will say otherwise. 

My guess is that GW2 will be a lot of fun for a month or two but once the novelty wears off it will be difficult to keep players incentivised without some sort individual rewards like gear. 

People like to show off their stuff, it's an integral part of the MMO experience.  Without gear or any sort of meaningful way to display how awesome you and your guild are, there isn't a lot of incentive to run the same raid 20 or 30 times.

 

Especially now that you can buy the same gear for cash

Uh, no. There's absolutely no proof you'll beable to buy the same gear you earn through grouped PvE in the cosmetic shop. That would be atrocius and dumb. Sorry.

 All gear is going to be the same endgame. When you reach max level the gear you have will be just as powerful as the gear the people that farm constantly have. The difference is the appearance.

Cooler looking gear will be rarer but have the same power.

Im not sure about the cash shop but if there is gear on there it will just have a cool appearance since it will have the same stats as everyone elses gear.

Originally posted by hikaru77

Sadly, thats not how the MMO world works.

Post begins on a flawed premise, logical errors thus follow, and the post becomes useless because of how it began.

"How the MMO world works."

You are talking from a position where you feel entitled to dictate how the MMO world should work, but you are not. Therein is the flawed premise. In fact, you may be part of the problem. See, the MMO world, as you put it, has become an incredibly stagnant thing that most gamers dislike. It's become the realm of basement-dwelling nerds.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but the reason I was following Guild Wars 2 is because it was the game that promised to shake all that up. Thus, shaking that up would mean creating a game that doesn't really need carrots. Does this mean that prior carrot-laden MMOs are broken? Yeah, I kind of think it does. They were grindy, padded, and the carrot was there to reinforce the subscription.

The problem is is that you're stuck in the past and you can't see how things could be done. You haven't spent enough time with non-MMO entertainment. So you're caught in this feedback loop where you believe that the only way you can proceed through a game is via some kind of carrot.

But that's broken.

When I was playing New Vegas, which is in my opinion one of the greatest RPGs of recent times, I didn't need a 'carrot' to go about my business and help people. I didn't need a carrot to enjoy the story. I didn't need a carrot to enforce artificial compulsion. Now, if your game needs to enforce artificial compulsion, all that means is one of two things:

A.) The game isn't fun enough on its own.

B.) The game has so much padding (yay subscriptions) to keep you paying from month to month that the 'carrot' needs to be there to keep you paying (not a typo).

By believing that this factor cannot change, you're a relic and part of the problem.

This can change.

In fact, it's changing already. Gaming in general is heading more towards just being fun and enjoyable storylines, there's no gruelling slog, and there shouldn't be. If you don't have a broken game, you don't need a carrot. But sadly I believe that this is wisdom that you'll not be able to understand for a long while yet.

I am not blaming the OP as it seems he is not awere of the sense of RPG. Devs were pouring down no brainer games where you run on a gear threadmill. People are to shy to role play and find it lame yet they are looking for a role playing game, whinin about the lack of meta-roleplay features.

Originally posted by Badgered86

The entire premise of the OP shows just how conditioned most people (especially MMO gamers) are.  The point of MMOs (and games in general) is not to grind something, it's to have fun.  Grinding is a tool used by subscription-based games to prolong the amount of time you will spend playing so as to generate more revenue from subscription fees.

 Ever stopped to consider maybe the OP finds grinding and challenging instances with beneficial rewards fun?

I know I do and many other people do as well, I want progression, I don't want to run an instance for cosmetics, it's the same gear grind but for something less valuable IMO.

The PvP should entertain me for a while(if it is all it is hyped up to be) but after that I don't expect PvE to do it for me, the problem is other games have good PvP as well AND the PvE endgame to back it up when you get tired of it.

Originally posted by Purutzil

There doesn't seem to be one... which to me is an issue. As much as you can claim to enjoy a game and have 'fun' its human nature to expect some type of reward from it. Having nothing to gain out of it just makes the whole process so much less rewarding. 

 

Name one thing 'fun' you do and you don't get anything out of it.  Now that you just tried to prove me wrong, really think hard about it in what you might get out of it besides fun. If your not being ignorant, I'm sure you just thought of something. With PvP it can be moderately rewarding with winning, but in the end if your just winning and not getting some shine of progress for it, your just going to eventually loose interest in it. 

only one thing?

* chess

that's what i meant before, beating your oponent once (upon a time) used to be enough :P

i know it sounds like a fairytale to some, but playing soccer (non leagued) would be another example. you just win.

winning is no reward if you get nothing out of it? sheeesh, please :>

human nature changed. i blame diablo :)

Originally posted by Benthon

Originally posted by Dreadblade

Originally posted by Mythios11

This is an excellent question.  The knee jerk reaction is to say it's about having fun but let's face it the carrot on the stick in most themepark MMO's is gear and only the very casual players will say otherwise. 

My guess is that GW2 will be a lot of fun for a month or two but once the novelty wears off it will be difficult to keep players incentivised without some sort individual rewards like gear. 

People like to show off their stuff, it's an integral part of the MMO experience.  Without gear or any sort of meaningful way to display how awesome you and your guild are, there isn't a lot of incentive to run the same raid 20 or 30 times.

 

Especially now that you can buy the same gear for cash

Uh, no. There's absolutely no proof you'll beable to buy the same gear you earn through grouped PvE in the cosmetic shop. That would be atrocius and dumb. Sorry.

But you are wrong 

We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold. If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems. We think that’s important, because it lets more players participate on a level playing field, whether they use their free time or their disposable income to do it.

From the mouth of Mike O'Brien himself

In GW1 were titles, unique looking armor, unique looking weapons, skills, heros, hard mode, PvP, ... 

GW2 will be different but I'm betting there will be equally as many things to do.

When I left GW1 for an MMO the main thing PvE-wise there was to do was raiding for the only desirable gear in game.  I think many of the newer MMOs have distilled the PvE experience down to the raid. Sad really.