Guild Wars 2

To the dear GW2 dev team,

To make it clear before people flaming at me, I have played through every living story and enjoyed most of them; and I also have full SAB achievements (of course except for world 2 zone 3 Major of Baubles). What I want to say is the recent direction of living story patches has gone off the track that GW2 has promised.

First, it was the Queen’s Gauntlet. Some much farming and so much time consuming. I am an Asian, and I know the words ‘fun’ and ‘farm’ don’t sound the same. Then, there came the Scarlet’s invasions. More farming, and people start joking about this game should rename to Farmers’ War 2. Ironically, I recalled when the game was first released, I remember seeing somewhere advertising, there is no more grinding no more questing and traveling back and forth. Hmmm…

If this is the strategy to keep people locked online playing GW2, you have succeeded…for a short period of time. If this is the strategy to fight against the release the Final Fantasy XIV, I believe you are or will be failing very soon if the direction you are going isn’t changed. Take a statistics on how many people have gotten their legendary and disappeared, or stopped logging on everyday. Take a statistics on how many people have completed their SAB achievements, and how many have just ignored.

Last, it came the SAB living story. On April, it was a huge success, it was a triumph that marked the difference between GW2 and other MMOs, and everyone begged for more. And now comes September, go take a look at how many people have visited SAB and never entered again, and how many people have ignored the rest of the zones. Was it bad? No, I enjoyed it. But the general public doesn’t. I remember seeing people wanting to group up when they first entered, and the reaction he got was ‘Go do it yourself. You don’t need a group.’ ‘I aint got the time to wait for people to do their achievements. I’d rather do it myself.’

Is this what GW2 dev team promoting? No more teamwork, just do it yourself spirit? People who got their achievement points alone, unlock more account merits, and get more money and better loots, where are the interactions with others? And there are the general public who has work to attend, school to go to, and find themselves unable to catch up on any of the achievements every 2 weeks. They can’t live up to the speed, so they try harder, but still fails. Fail one more time, will try again. Fail another time, oh well, tough luck. Fail too many times, oh well, forget it.

What I am saying is your strategy seems to be catering the elite group of people who has the time to play and the skill to play. A well designed SAB zones having only the top 10% of players seeing its contents, seems to me is equivalent of a 40-men raid content that only few top elite guilds in the world can enter and finish. I thought the intention of GW2 game was meant to be easy, flexible, and enjoyed by every players that enter. Am I wrong?

Enough complaining, and here are my suggestions.

• SAB world 2 has great ideas and content, but a failure to general public. Why? It is way too long.

People get frustrated and then sick and tired of dying after some time. You have failed to draw that fine line between ‘fun but still challenging’ and ‘overly done’. If world 2 zones were much shorter, preferably the same length of world 1 zones. I am sure people will be more accepting to play. After all, not many people can stay online playing for 2 to 4 hours continuously, especially now that school has started, even students will find themselves having a hard time to catch up on the living stories. (For those who say they can finish within 30 minutes, stop lying or stop looking at Dulfy’s videos.)

• Infinite Continue Coin is a bad idea. Why? People felt cheated.

The impression we get is that if you don’t buy it = no SAB achievement done = no achievement points = no achievement chests = no account bonuses. While people are more than happy to spend gems on cosmetic, this Infinite Continue Coin marks the first gem store item that will bring unfairness to the game.

There are many other ways to profit other than this Infinite Continue Coin. Allow me to give you a few ideas. First, you can introduce a gem store item, lets call it ‘wardrobe’ for now. It can cost an incredible amount of gems, or real money only. What does it do? It will act the same way as a container of the achievement reward skins. People can take a skin that they have collected/unlocked/purchased from this ‘wardrobe’ at any time (out of combat of course) to refresh the look of their outfits and weapons. I am sure people will be more than happy to buy this ‘wardrobe’, because we love skins that you designed! Will this ‘wardrobe’ affect gameplay fairness? Nope, not at all. Will this ‘wardrobe’ boost the sales of your transmutation stone? Yes. Or you can even take out the transmutation stones, and just make us pay gems whenever we want to apply the skins. Let’s face it, the current situation is that everyone has 4 to 6 greatswords pocket in their bag with different skins that they love. Some they simply don’t want to give up, and there is no more room for the new skins. With this ‘wardrobe’ item, I am sure it will also boost the sales of gem store skins. (The gem store skin pricing may have to change since instead of 1 set, it will become infinite set.)

If you don’t like the ‘wardrobe’ idea, then why not allow us to purchase more bank tabs? They can cost increasingly more expensive as the number of bank tabs a character own. People need it need it, and will spend the time to farm gold or swipe their credit card to purchase gems. Or even make it a ‘renting’ business for example, a weekly gem charges necessary to maintain their extra bank tabs. People willing to pay gems get to enjoy more than normal amount of bank tabs. Simple.

With the game just celebrated its one year anniversary, players are all overloaded with badges/relics/tokens. They are equivalent to exotics gears that players salvage to profit or use in the mystic forge. Another great idea to profit from gem store or keep players playing this game is to introduce ‘durability’ or ‘age’ to our gears. There can be a new item in the gem store, lets call it ‘repair stone’ for now. A ‘repair stone’ can recover an item back to its full 100% ‘durability’ or renew its ‘age’, or it can guarantee 100% chance to full repair at the NPC. Without this ‘repair stone’, players repair their gear is up to a RNG that either the gear gets full repair or loses some ‘durability’. Essentially, people will either spend the gem to purchase this ‘repair stone’, or they will have to spend the time to farm tokens again for a new piece of gear. And the outlook of an aged item or with no durability needs to be easily distinguished. You get the idea.

Another idea I will give you on profiting is the ‘illuminating stones’. What does it do? It is an item that can be applied to any weapon and make it illuminate/glow. Every week, gem store can sell different colours of ‘illuminating stones’, boosting the sales. If I like certain colours, and I am afraid it will be a long time to see these colours of ‘illuminating stone’ again on gem store, I am sure I will stock pile them. This will also save you a lot of time to think of new weapon skins. Why? All exotic and above weapon skins are awesome. People have their own likings, but some old skins seem to be obsolete because they simply don’t glow. Let’s revive those skins! And that is also another way for players to personalize their characters.

The last idea I will give you is the ‘Personalized Finisher’. An huge image of my character showing up in the air doing a finish move in PvP, people will buy instantly. And you also need to widen the use of this ‘Personalized Finisher’ to PvE. Whoever does the last hit on an silver-portrait mobs or above, gets their ‘Personalized Finisher’ activated, a slow-motion of that player’s character stabbing/chopping above the corpse of that mob. He/she will be recognized! With combat log revamped showing more useful information. I am sure the character doing the last hit can also be found, then I can link the name with the huge image in the air I just saw. The only problem with this is the indoor boss, like Lyssa, the image will be up in the air and the view might be blocked by the ceiling. But you get the idea. Does this affect the fairness of the game? Absolute not, but sure is a way to brag.

• Living story content size and 2-week duration need to be well-balanced. It was summer vacation, so we stayed in front of the computer day-and-night to catch up on the achievements from the living stories. Now, school starts and work becoming heavy, it is even more essential to have that fine balance. Otherwise, when people find them lag behind on living story for too long, they simply stop caring. When their achievement points no longer comparable to their peers/friends, they stop logging on. Period. Do a statistics on those accounts that no longer active and see what happens to their achievement points and dailys like right before they stop playing.

• Dungeons and dungeons. Some players enjoy playing dungeons with friends. It’s not about farming or reward, but about connecting with friends, doing things together, spending the time together, and chatting while they are at it. If everything is like Queen’s Gauntlet, people might as well go play a single player game. And now, every instance is pretty much cracked or well-played by everyone, it is time to bring out some new dungeons for friends to explore together, for foes to compete. Without some fresh juice pumping in, people are turning away to play D3 on console with friends together or go explore the FFXIV together. And when I have no more friends playing GW2 together, I might have to join them somewhere else.

Where was I? It has been 4 hours since I started writing this, and is my first post ever on GW2 forum, and as you can tell, I am not here to troll. Wish I could have better format this post. Hope GW2 dev team really takes time to read them through. Thank you.

Reserved for later

Machiavel.6042:

Badster.5801:

There are many other ways to profit other than this Infinite Continue Coin. Allow me to give you a few ideas. First, you can introduce a gem store item, lets call it ‘wardrobe’ for now. It can cost an incredible amount of gems, or real money only. What does it do? It will act the same way as a container of the achievement reward skins. People can take a skin that they have collected/unlocked/purchased from this ‘wardrobe’ at any time (out of combat of course) to refresh the look of their outfits and weapons. I am sure people will be more than happy to buy this ‘wardrobe’, because we love skins that you designed! Will this ‘wardrobe’ affect gameplay fairness? Nope, not at all. Will this ‘wardrobe’ boost the sales of your transmutation stone? Yes. Or you can even take out the transmutation stones, and just make us pay gems whenever we want to apply the skins. Let’s face it, the current situation is that everyone has 4 to 6 greatswords pocket in their bag with different skins that they love. Some they simply don’t want to give up, and there is no more room for the new skins. With this ‘wardrobe’ item, I am sure it will also boost the sales of gem store skins. (The gem store skin pricing may have to change since instead of 1 set, it will become infinite set.)

Speak for yourself. I don’t have a bazillion skins of greatswords. But still, wardrobe idea already started with the Zenith skins, so I guess it’s a possibility…

If you don’t like the ‘wardrobe’ idea, then why not allow us to purchase more bank tabs? They can cost increasingly more expensive as the number of bank tabs a character own. People need it need it, and will spend the time to farm gold or swipe their credit card to purchase gems. Or even make it a ‘renting’ business for example, a weekly gem charges necessary to maintain their extra bank tabs. People willing to pay gems get to enjoy more than normal amount of bank tabs. Simple.

Worst.Kitten.Idea.Ever.

So…more farming (which we almost ALL hate), or paying cash…

And, here’s the best part: paying cash TO KEEP THEM. Oh god, I love you man… : D

With the game just celebrated its one year anniversary, players are all overloaded with badges/relics/tokens. They are equivalent to exotics gears that players salvage to profit or use in the mystic forge. Another great idea to profit from gem store or keep players playing this game is to introduce ‘durability’ or ‘age’ to our gears. There can be a new item in the gem store, lets call it ‘repair stone’ for now. A ‘repair stone’ can recover an item back to its full 100% ‘durability’ or renew its ‘age’, or it can guarantee 100% chance to full repair at the NPC. Without this ‘repair stone’, players repair their gear is up to a RNG that either the gear gets full repair or loses some ‘durability’. Essentially, people will either spend the gem to purchase this ‘repair stone’, or they will have to spend the time to farm tokens again for a new piece of gear. And the outlook of an aged item or with no durability needs to be easily distinguished. You get the idea.

Repairs are a nice idea. We all know that, if you get killed, there is a repair cost, but repairing your armor to keep it in shape…not so bad.

But to assume everyone is loaded with badges/relics/tokens/candy/cash/whatever-floats-your-boat is being a little presumptuous, isn’kitten I played since launch, never got a char to 80, never even done a dungeon, and you think that people went and farmed dungeons ?

…we’re still talking about the vast, casual, player-base, right ? Huh…who could have known…

Your ideas would be great if you were trying to make the dwindling player base even smaller. Durability loss on armor that only a cash shop item can repair? Sounds awesome, can`t wait to sell my account! A wardrobe that costs so much money it puts itself out of the reasonable pricerange of what most people are willing to spend. That sounds like a solid idea! Renting bank space? That sounds good, spend good money on something that is going to expire and will need constant renewals. Honestly man, this is the kind of garbage that makes the lesser quality asian mmo`s not worth bothering with no matter how fun they may be to play. Turning this game into a nickel and dime machine isn`t going to make it better for anet, it will only drive people away.