Guild Wars 2

With the voting coming to an end, I think it is wise to stop and think about what Cutthroat Politics taught us.

Setting the personal preference to who is a better or worse candidate, I’d like to thank the Community for a fun time campaigning Ellen and Evon. It’s been a blast.

Now, to the main topic; having us choose between certain sets of perks associated with each candidate was a great idea. It adds the feeling of having an impact on the world, even if for some it was only a feeling.

I played GW1 and personally I would die to see the Abaddon fractal. I didn’t understand why someone could pick Thaumanova over it until I realized that there are people who feel the same about the second fractal. People with different preferences and backgrounds pick different things. This is natural and perfectly understandable, but…

It’s the first time we’re getting something meaningful, something that actually intrigues the players and having them give up on one thing for another isn’t right.

Right now:

• We don’t need minigames and yet you give us all of them.
• We don’t need more backpieces, but here they are.
• We don’t need more jumping puzzles and yet again…
• We could live without completing another sets of piñata-achievements, but they keep coming.
• We need interesting new adventures in places never seen before, but you come and tell us to take our pick.

It shouldn’t be like this, this is not a choice I want to make. Life has enough of those.
I don’t want such choice because someone will be disappointed. (in this case quite possibly close to 50% of the voting playerbase)
If the choice was whether to move Lion’s Arch to Skrittsburgh or which one of the two already existing areas to explore first then it would be okay.

But you show us two beautiful pictures and say that the one we pick will be given to us, while the other will disappear, being only an idea planted in our minds. How many people will like both pictures?

Give us both fractals, I don’t want cheaper waypoints. Hell, you can even make them more expensive for some time if it could get us both adventures.
If the conclusion of Cutthroat Politics means that we will not see the Fall of Abaddon or the Thaumanova explosion, then I no longer want to be a part of this game.

I get your viewpoint. But as an Evon voter and since 2005 GW player, I personally wouldn’t want both fractals. This whole experiment is interesting and it kind of ruins the point of it if they just do both. I agree that it is disappointing though. That is a significant con to this idea. But it was also cool to have a say in what content gets made.

Personally, after this I want to see them start opening up the other named areas on the map. I am not sure what they were thinking when they just pulled something right out of the Ocean(Southsun).

I actually hope they stick to their guns and only release the winning fractal, but on one condition. Before they release the winning fractal, Anet gives out whatever internal info they have on both fractals. More as a way to really drive home why this choice mattered, but also to inform everyone about what to look forward to and what could have been.

I’ll be a little disappointed by not getting what I personally wanted (Abbaddon), but I really like the idea of the community’s actions having impact, and this vote was an interesting way to go about it.

Well, wouldn’t that ruin the purpose of voting..?

They haven’t started development of either fractal, so creation of both fractals would not only take away from the entire purpose of us voting, but also prevent different content from being created in the future.

I still don’t get why the fractal was a part of this event anyway. It’s a really low blow to people who actually do fractals. I would like to see the number of voting players that do fractals, and if that number is higher on Evon, than obviously Abaddon should win, and vice versa for Kiel. It was wrong to create this melting pot of casual/less casual players in the first place by using fractals. I hope I’m being clear. I don’t intend to whine about one fractal or the other, but it was totally inappropriate for fractals, an event considered “more than casual” to be included in this content.

To be fair those of us that are actively doing fractals do not care one bit about the story or lore in them past the first time we did one.

When you are farming level 40+ and hitting a daily from each tier every day, the last thing you care about is why the mossman is attacking you, all we care about is how fast we can get the grind done today.

The 2 possible new fractals are not about that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were not in the random rotation at all but rather a dungeon that takes place in the fractals of the mists. Even if they were they would be the “Oh wow that was cool” Part of the fractals like Maw was for the people that did enough to see that and moved on.

It could be said that us fractal grinders shouldn’t get a vote on it either. because I have to admit that if the choice was left up to me as far as which fractal I want, My answer would be “Which one is shorter?”

Lokki.1092:

To be fair those of us that are actively doing fractals do not care one bit about the story or lore in them past the first time we did one.

Some people do a little bit of everything. I by no means hit every tier every day or even do fractals everyday. I do them when my guildies feel like doing them. Still, I have ~175 fractal frequenter so I wouldn’t define myself as a ‘non-fractal-person’.

I care about all aspects of the game: All gameplay types, art, sound, story and writing.

Balance helps keep me from getting bored.

Lucky.9421:

Some people do a little bit of everything.

Agreed. I just don’t think it’s fair to say “If you aren’t a fractal grinder then you should have no say in this vote”

Which is the tone I got from Gnat

Lokki.1092:

Agreed. I just don’t think it’s fair to say “If you aren’t a fractal grinder then you should have no say in this vote”

Which is the tone I got from Gnat

I can see that but it is also not great when you care about something but it doesn’t get much support because it is somewhat of a niche area of the game.

I should add that I don’t think that means people shouldn’t vote.

There are both pros and cons to this whole voting system. I am sure Anet has learned a lot about their community.

It was neat experiment but maybe next time there should be a line-item type voting system. I have a feeling they won’t do this often, if again.

Lokki.1092:

Lucky.9421:

Some people do a little bit of everything.

Agreed. I just don’t think it’s fair to say “If you aren’t a fractal grinder then you should have no say in this vote”

Which is the tone I got from Gnat

That’s not what I was saying, and I’m sorry if it came off that way. I wouldn’t want to limit anyone’s participation in any content based on their play style. What I was saying is kind of the opposite really. I just don’t think the fractals should have been part of the decision because they play a pivotal role in every day content. Fractals are so far out of the context of this living story content. I think two separate dungeons that were not considered fractals would have been vastly more appropriate.

Hopefully this post is a little more clear.