Guild Wars 2

I have been trying to grasp what the Guild Wars 2 development team was thinking when they released Lost Shores content and predict their plans for future expansion. Here are some thoughts I hope will adequately start the conversation.

1. Gear level increase – This has me a little worried because, right off the bat, it looks like GW2 is pseudo-expanding the level cap and will reward dedicated, hard-working, no-life-of-their-own players, who already have finely-tuned skills with larger advantages over the rest of the playing community. I have seen this in other MMOs and it tends to drive away newer, or less dedicated players. Maybe none of the players mind that much but it reduces income in the long term. Am I correct in stating that the new Ascended equipment will have better stats than Exotic but not quite as good as Legendary? I thought I saw an official post saying that but I also thought the Legendary weapons were largely similar in performance to Exotics but have special runes and skins. How does Ascended gear, free to puzzle-dungeon champions who put lots of time in, fit in stats between Exotic and Legendary, while encouraging players to exchange real money at the BLTC?

2. Fractals of the Mist – I tried it for the first time last night in another group of first-timers. Aside from a couple of disconnections and losing a player, it was expensive in armor repair and painful to play despite the intellectual engagement of a difficult puzzle. Level 1 was not easy and the PUG I was in failed to finish after a couple of hours. Comments on other threads suggest players are already separating into classes. To be honest, I do not know what to think of FotM. It is clearly a puzzle-dungeon designed to better challenge those who have successfully farmed the other dungeons so teamwork and skills are critical.

3. Game economics – I am very happy to see the value of items denominated in gold stabilizing but I am curious as to how, or why, the ArenaNet team decided to reward so much Karma. Certainly, it makes it more “affordable” to purchase gear, gathering, salvaging, and crafted items using Karma and that economy is very stable. Possibly reducing the drop rate of junk items in exchange may also help reduce inventory on the TP. However, the additional Karma awards also lessen the difficulty in obtaining exotics denominated in that currency. This is probably a good enticement for newer, or more casual, players but I suspect it is tied in with the release of Ascended armor.

4. Lost Shores – There are a number of questions on this topic but the most glaring one on my mind is, why did ArenaNet not sell the area expansion? The BLTC sells chest keys, dye kits, things to throw away into the forge, and even some good items like costumes, character, bag, or bank slots. Why did they not sell the area expansion? I can see giving the new puzzle-dungeon away if it encourages players to sink real money into obtaining the Ascended gear. By selling Lost Shores expansion, ArenaNet could have trickled out keys to it and avoided some of the launch embarassments, too.

Right… im not a big fan of gear grind myself but than im not so missgided to say it drives off players. See wow and the 12 mill subs it ones had.

What it realy all comes down to is paceing.

After this last update i am actualy more hopefull and have had more fun than i think i ever have in this game i hope thay add more fractals withen the mist to make what you get more random

I hope thay never add agony to anything othere than fractals keep the real grind to the fractals for people who like that content but keep the story and explorables do able with just unsloted infusions.

Keep it so exotics still offer you more costomization than the new gear even if it is at the cost of a little power

You… actually WANT them to charge for new areas? I have no words.

I’m going to admit I’ve not fully read your entire post, and haven’t gave it the attention it deserves but a few small things I’d like to adress you on.

• You can’t fully expect them to stress test situations like the laggfest when lions’ arch was first invaded without giving atleast “some” hint to what a future major month event may hold.

• About the economy, and I’ve seen a lot of people argue about this (I’m talking about the real life market Arenanet owns with the micro-sales store). I’m rather glad they decided to bring out free content, especially one this size. I’m pretty sure there’s tons of folk that already bought a lot of gems (either with gems or real life money) to get the skins they want or to possibly get lucky and earn some quick gold.

As for the game economy, as to be expected when some new recipe arrives and which is quite an improvement (probably) to your current gear the demands rise up on the specific materials needed to create these new recipes will of course increase the price people are willing to pay for these required materials. Additionally the arenanet live anti-bot team will also have put a stop or atleast limited the bots roaming around selling and gathering actively which could also explain the increase in price.

Demand obviously also lowers prices when the item or material required is less demanded.

The major point I’m backing you up with is

• The gear thread mill, (While I honestly believe Arenanet genuinely didn’t mean to implement this for this reason) I love being able to upgrade my gear up to a point, but knowing the community a little (especially from prior mmorpgs), I’d say that they’ll most probably at some point demand that you wear Item A because Item A is better in their eyes to partipicate in their dungeon farm. For instance the ascended items over the exotic items. I’m 100% sure everything up to atleast level 9 FoM is perfectly able to be done with rare gear, at level 10 and higher you’ll start to get agony.. which is a real pain in the behind but we managed.. even though it sneaked up to my non-ascended geared team quite some times..

^ this is also why I don’t want any inspection feature ever being implemented, or atleast be able to turn it off in the options menu. Honestly I have the gear but I just support the entire idea not to exclude people because they may not have the right gear. Yes full berserkers may not be the wisest choice but that’s not what bothers me having rare gear doesn’t either. Sure I don’t mind some FoM levels having what they called a “Gear Check” but it should mostly be about how your skills are personally.

I’m glad they didn’t sell the Lost Shores area. Selling new zones would severely limit the amount of things they could do with them without being accused of pay-to-win; if a new area was very good for farming, for example, and you had to pay to access it, that would cause a lot of frustration from people feeling “forced” to buy it. On the other hand, if there were nothing special about it, nobody would feel like spending the money.

I assumed that Orr farming was nerfed because the Cove was meant to be a new area that would greatly reward level 80 players. That would explain the mob difficulty, since the enemies hold up much better to pounding from a zerg than the ones in Cursed Shore, and also the size of the zone (which I don’t consider a problem, really). My guess was that they wanted to direct people to the Cove, but knew they wouldn’t leave if Orr farming gave comparable rewards for fighting much weaker mobs.

Now, I’m not sure what their plan is for the new zone, but I’ll reserve judgement until the last part of the event is over.