Guild Wars 2

Maybe an idea:

Make two versions of GW2, one version free to play, the other version with a
$25/month fee. Offering superior content and skill balance in the pay version,
and slowly having the content changes come over to the free version, with a
delay of a few months.

Kinda weird I guess, don’t know if that would work.

I’d be willing to pay $25 to get a superior game, for sure, even if it would take a bit
for the improvements to start coming. You could also offer a chunk of other things
to improve gameplay for paying players, such as free gemstore items for example,
regularly expanding armor and weapon skins paying players can pick up for free,
maybe an amount of gold/karma/tokens awarded every week as well.

They could hire more than these two people to work on skill balance, and offer a
far superior game to an ever growing player base. Because really, two people to work
on the most important part of the game (skill design/balance/bugs), is just horridly
understaffed, even the most simple bug fixes and balance changes become “very hard
and complicated” that way, taking months or even years to finish, and this might
eventually kill the game entirely I’m afraid, maybe sooner than we think. A lot of new
MMOs that started out very promising, died real fast this way.

There would be complaints from the vocal minority on the forum, maybe even some
kind of spazzfest, but a LOT of people will become paying customers. The lure of extra
goodies like I suggested above, and the promise of a much better game, will be enough
to get tens of thousands of players to pay up, and it’s not like the non paying players
lose anything, they even gain a better game with a bit of a delay, so they benefit from
this as well.

I’m worried the game is going to crash and die because of the understaffed skill team.
No one is going to enjoy new content if their skills are bugged and underpowered, so I
think my idea is weird, but it might just work.

I enjoy guild wars partly because there is no subscription. What you suggested is essentually what Star Wars: ToR is doing with their “free to play” option, I can tell you in three words how that works:
Everyone hates it.

Or, not, since a huge draw to GW2 is the fact there is no monthly fee, and what you’re proposing is a fee almost twice that of WoW.

Thing is, Guild Wars 2 is an amazing game, a lot of people WANT to play it, but the
insane amount of bugged, badly designed and underpowered skills, make it very hard
to enjoy the game, especially if the profession you want to play is one of the worst to
play as, or even if your profession is viable but your build is not, and you don’t enjoy
any of the other builds.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Or, not, since a huge draw to GW2 is the fact there is no monthly fee, and what you’re proposing is a fee almost twice that of WoW.

The fee was just an example, set it at whatever is best.

Did you actually read my post or just responded to the thread title?

The draw remains because the free game version would still be available, people could
play for free the same game they would play now if nothing changed. The thing that
changes is that there is an extra game that people can pay for, to create the income
needed to stop the game from dying.

For non paying customers, absolutely nothing changes, except that their game will
improve faster than it otherwise would, because of the income generated by paying
customers, who get a superior version of the game. The free version wouldn’t be in
any way worse, it would be the same, and even improve once the changes come in
with the delay.

I promise you, that you can’t come up with any argument to show non paying players
getting any disadvantage from this change. On the contrary they get advantage, even
tho it’s delayed. The improvement without the pay-game, would not happen at all, as
there is no income to create it.. so non paying customers would get a much better
game as well, just with a delay and without the goodies that they would otherwise not
get anyway if nothing changes.

I can’t see a single downside to this really.

The system is used in my country with digital television. You get to buy the newest
movies for a hefty fee, but if you wait a few months you can get them for free from the
normal movie-list. Non payers get no disadvantage, but payers get an advantage, it’s a
win-win system all around. If you’re patient enough you get everything for free, if you’re
not patient you can spend money to get what you want right away.

In that system, those who pay get to create advantages for those that don’t pay, those
advantages would not exist at all if no one would pay.

It’s an empathic system that has no downsides and is not greed-based, since for those
that don’t pay, there are only advantages to this system, they don’t lose anything when
compared to the event if nothing changes, they only gain when it does change.

no. bad idea.

but do feel free to buy gems with USD if you feel like supporting ArenaNet.

every bit helps.

Please read the actual post first, before replying.

My idea is NOT changing the game from free to paid, the idea is what I wrote it is.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, then please don’t reply, it’s pointless since
you don’t actually know what you’re replying to.

Okay I changed the thread title to avoid this.

Zsymon.8457:

Please read the actual post first, before replying.

My idea is NOT changing the game from free to paid, the idea is what I wrote it is.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, then please don’t reply, it’s pointless since
you don’t actually know what you’re replying to.

Okay I changed the thread title to avoid this.

still a terrible idea to have 2 versions.

guild wars 2 billing / subscription system is fine the way it is now.
please do not fix what is not broken.

again, please feel free to buy gems to support the developers!
thanks!

Well im part of the biased minority of the forums , but i think this time , the idea went too far.

Honestly, i think this would easily affect great part of the population.

You seem to forget , Anet built GW name over its system of B2P. That means this is how this game is know , how this company is seen.

I might be wrong , but really , changing this is a MAJOR shift , something that does not even compare to adding raids or grinding for gear.

This would cut the game population is a MAJOR cut in my opinion. Now if it would be worthy it with the subs + people free still using the shop … i cant say. But i would bet it would not.

You’re forgetting that nothing actually changes for those that don’t pay the fee.. for
those who want things to stay as they are, nothing changes, there is no difference. You
have your BTP game with your gem shop, and nothing has changed for you.

You just add an additional version of the game for those that want to pay, they get a
better version, and after a few months the improvements get transferred to the normal
version. The normal version stays the way it is with its 2 skill programmers, nothing, at
all, changes for the original game. Improvements they would never get though, they’ll
now be able to receive due to the income of the paying customers.

The game stays buy to play, there is just an additional version to generate the income
this game needs to prevent itself from crashing and dying. Because having two people
work on the most important and most difficult part of an MMO, is a recipe for early
death, the same early death all other post-WoW MMOs have suffered from.

There is no reason to complain against this really, because nothing changes for those
that don’t want to pay a monthly fee.. all that happens is those that do want to pay a
monthly fee, now get the chance to do this, and they get rewarded for it, which is fair.

But because they pay, those that don’t pay get a much better product. An improved
product they would otherwise never get at all because there is no income.. people are
asked to pay for a game with bugged, badly designed and underpowered skills, and no
amount of game content and islands will fix that, if the skills you use to play content,
are not good, then the content can be amazing, it will not be appreciated or enjoyed.

Bad idea, and here’s why:

1. No subscribtion is one of the core design elements of the game, and ANet’s phylosphy. Can’t go back on that.
2. You say there will be no disadvantages to non-paying players, and while that could in a perfect world be true, that will still mean that they will feel like second-class citizens.
3. So how exactly do you see this working? Subscribers will be playing with the new, balanced ,not buggy skills, while the free players have the old ones at the same time (getting the new ones only a couple month later)? Or are you proposing dividing the player-base in two, with different servers for each? Both are horrible ideas.
4. ANet is doing fine, and the game is very profitable, even without subscription. No change needed to their business model.

Zsymon.8457:

Please read the actual post first, before replying.

My idea is NOT changing the game from free to paid, the idea is what I wrote it is.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, then please don’t reply, it’s pointless since
you don’t actually know what you’re replying to.

Okay I changed the thread title to avoid this.

I’ve read your post and it’s still fundamentally a terrible idea. Giving anyone content earlier than someone else on the premise of paying extra is exactly what GW is NOT supposed to be. There are plenty of games like that, and in every case, it just causes greif and makes for a sub part gameplay experience for the majority of the population.

That’s the thing though, they don’t get content early, without the income no one will
get the content at all, and skills will remain buggy and underpowered for everyone. It’s
not rare that it takes literally years for problems, bugs and imbalances to get fixed. If
anet was “doing fine”, they would have more than two people working on skill code.

It’s easy and fun to break down someone’s idea, try instead to offer your own solution
to the understaffed problem. If they could afford it they would obviously have more
than two people working on skills, so how would you solve this problem?

The game has a huge array of bugged and underpowered skills right now, often times
devs came to the forum to say a bug is just too hard to repair, that they do not have
the resources necessary to repair these major bugs, basically implying that it will never
get fixed, so how would you solve the problem and allow anet to hire more coders?

The only other solution could be adding more attractive goodies in the gem store, but
if someone doesn’t enjoy the game because of bugged/underpowered skills, then he is
not going to buy any gems either, plus you get the problem of buy-to-win then.

I have a ranger main, and that class feels just fine, albeit some tweaking needed on trait trees. Also I have warrior and mesmer alts. Out of those, only mesmer feels a bit weak on early levels, but he offers such tremendous support ability, that it more than makes up for it.

So do specify which skills exactly you’re talking about, that are bugged or underpowered?

Also, where did you get the information about two people working on coding, bug fixing, and balance?

And also answer the above post of mine which specifically breaks down why your idea is bad (and no, I didn’t have fun writing it, although you’re right, it was easy, but only because your idea is that bad). Otherwise u just trolling, mate.

Zsymon.8457:

You’re forgetting that nothing actually changes for those that don’t pay the fee.. for
those who want things to stay as they are, nothing changes, there is no difference. You
have your BTP game with your gem shop, and nothing has changed for you.

You just add an additional version of the game for those that want to pay, they get a
better version, and after a few months the improvements get transferred to the normal
version. The normal version stays the way it is with its 2 skill programmers, nothing, at
all, changes for the original game. Improvements they would never get though, they’ll
now be able to receive due to the income of the paying customers.

The game stays buy to play, there is just an additional version to generate the income
this game needs to prevent itself from crashing and dying. Because having two people
work on the most important and most difficult part of an MMO, is a recipe for early
death, the same early death all other post-WoW MMOs have suffered from.

There is no reason to complain against this really, because nothing changes for those
that don’t want to pay a monthly fee.. all that happens is those that do want to pay a
monthly fee, now get the chance to do this, and they get rewarded for it, which is fair.

But because they pay, those that don’t pay get a much better product. An improved
product they would otherwise never get at all because there is no income.. people are
asked to pay for a game with bugged, badly designed and underpowered skills, and no
amount of game content and islands will fix that, if the skills you use to play content,
are not good, then the content can be amazing, it will not be appreciated or enjoyed.

Heh , it seems you either still need to get used to it or you are pretending you dont know for the sake of your argument.

Most people are petty when it comes to games.

Now most can turn around from the legendaries and ascension gear , because they know it is effort put in these ,while many already complain people got these by exploits or buying gold.

Can you imagine what would happen , if people got better stuff because they pay the game? People would not simple understand that is 5 months later be added to them also. After all , this is not a free to play , they all paid the box. To them Anet worked a totally different way.

This is my simple opinion really, maybe im the wrong one.

Either way we both gotta agree on one point, this is a huge bet. It could work like you said , and the game would get more money , but could also break the game. Dont base your decision on direct logic like people were computers. That is not the way things work usually.

If any of you have a better idea to generate the income necessary to hire more
programmers, please share. I agree my suggestion is not very elegant at all, but if it
is so bad, then surely you have a better one?

To answer a question above, it was JonPeters that said in the ranger thread: the team
that handles all skill code for all professions, consists of two people. They don’t have
the resources to deal with a lot of these bugs, so it is the situation that these bugs
simply do not get fixed.

It’s not because anet doesn’t want to fix these bugs and improve bad and weak skills,
they just don’t have the manpower to deal with it. Two people to work on insanely
complicated codes like that, is beyond horrible understaffed, you cannot get such a
large amount of skills (+500) at good quality with only two people, even fulltime at
work, if they work fulltime at all that is.

$25 monthly is way too much, not everyone here is rich. I play this game because it has no subscription. Otherwise, bye.

Zsymon.8457:

That’s the thing though, they don’t get content early, without the income no one will
get the content at all, and skills will remain buggy and underpowered for everyone. It’s
not rare that it takes literally years for problems, bugs and imbalances to get fixed. If
anet was “doing fine”, they would have more than two people working on skill code.

It’s easy and fun to break down someone’s idea, try instead to offer your own solution
to the understaffed problem. If they could afford it they would obviously have more
than two people working on skills, so how would you solve this problem?

The game has a huge array of bugged and underpowered skills right now, often times
devs came to the forum to say a bug is just too hard to repair, that they do not have
the resources necessary to repair these major bugs, basically implying that it will never
get fixed, so how would you solve the problem and allow anet to hire more coders?

The only other solution could be adding more attractive goodies in the gem store, but
if someone doesn’t enjoy the game because of bugged/underpowered skills, then he is
not going to buy any gems either, plus you get the problem of buy-to-win then.

Wow… seriously, do some math before you say anymore. You have no idea how much Anet is getting and stop making stupid assumptions.

Most paid MMO is $15 monthly, GW2 is free but some players are paying up to $100 gems under 1-2 months for events and such. That’s $100 is equal to $15 monthly MMO of 6 months and more!

Anet is getting profit. The reason why the game is buggy because their team isn’t mega huge as Blizzard or other MMO. SWTOR is BUGGED like hell and yet took forever to fix (small team) Bioware.

DJRiful, I can only repeat myself: if Anet had enough income, then they would have
more than two people work on all skills for all professions. Then they wouldn’t come
on the forum and say to the playerbase that they don’t have the resources to fix the
bugs we are complaining about for months.

Zsymon.8457:

DJRiful, I can only repeat myself: if Anet had enough income, then they would have
more than two people work on all skills for all professions.

Do you work for Anet? Guess not. They have been hiring lately, and you’re out of the loop. Look up on LinkedIn and etc.

The post where Jon spoke about this was barely a week ago.

You’ll be seeing a lot of big red messages when you log in: “New build, no content
changes.” I am not blaming anyone, I am not attacking anyone, I love the game and
I love the team, I am just trying to offer suggestions to improve it, where as you folks
only break down the idea without offering any alternative suggestions whatsoever.

gibzy.7329:

And also answer the above post of mine which specifically breaks down why your idea is bad (and no, I didn’t have fun writing it, although you’re right, it was easy, but only because your idea is that bad). Otherwise u just trolling, mate.

How about instead of breaking down people’s ideas, you offer your own suggestions to
solve this major problem. And how on earth do you get to the conclusion that I am
trolling? The definition just doesn’t apply at all to my OP.

Zsymon.8457:

How about instead of breaking down people’s ideas, you offer your own suggestions to
solve this major problem. And how on earth do you get to the conclusion that I am
trolling? The definition just doesn’t apply at all to my OP.

As i also said above, I don’t see the problem. I don’t personally see any huge amount of buggy or underpowered skills (you still haven’t given any examples). And I also am sure ANet is getting enough money.

I’m not going to bother reading all the posts, just to the topic starter:
Why would you recommend a subscription-style second version of the game, when the core game is bugged and flawed at the moment? Just to hire more programmers to fix the bugs for the 2nd version? They’ll need even more programmers to then implement the fixes in the first version as well, while still writing updates for the 2nd version.
Let them first fix the normal/core version so that at least people can enjoy that one without too many frustrating bugs and annoyances.
If all you want are more skins and add-ons, why not buy them from the Gem store? Recommend them to add (more) skins – not weapons/armor, just the skins – to the gem store, and you’d basically get what you’re asking for, except having to pay for a billion different skins that you’re not using. You’d be able to buy the 8 skins you actually do use, and never mind the rest… I’d think that would be a nice idea, for those of us with deep pockets.
As a long-time WoW player, I’m not one to back off the whole subscription thing, but as it is now, I would quit GW2 right away if they started to make it pay-to-play.
Next to that, having 2 versions will create a massive rift between the communities. Especially if one version is superior to the other. People will not switch over, because GW is, and has always been, pay-once-to-play-forever. It would probably drive away a huge chunk of the community.
Next to that, the end game content is too little, to actually keep playing after being level capped for a month. So they’d lose another big chunk of players because of that.

I’m guessing, adding a subscription-based 2nd version, could be an even earlier death of the game. I say ‘even earlier’, because if nothing happens to all the bugs and annoyances, the game will die a rather early death already…

gibzy.7329:

As i also said above, I don’t see the problem. I don’t personally see any huge amount of buggy or underpowered skills (you still haven’t given any examples). And I also am sure ANet is getting enough money.

They’re not getting enough money, because if they did they wouldn’t have a totally
understaffed skill team. Hiring a programmer costs a ton of money.

Dastor.3546:

Let them first fix the normal/core version so that at least people can enjoy that one without too many frustrating bugs and annoyances.

I know Dastor, the problem is that this is not going to happen.. the normal/core
version is not getting fixed because they are understaffed. JonPeters said that even
tiny changes such as movement for ranger greatsword block skill, cost them huge
amounts of effort, time and resources. Because the skill team consists of only two
programmers, again a quote from Jon, they just cannot fix the major bugs, they’ve
only got the resources to fix simple bugs, that is why you see all these major bugs
still around from the first beta. They’ve known about these major bugs right from
the start, but just don’t have the resources to fix them. It’s not that they don’t care
or don’t want to bother, they just can’t fix them with what they have available.

That’s the whole point of my suggestion, create income through a fee version, so
the bugs can be fixed. Without the income they will simply never get fixed, just got
to look at GW1 and other MMOs, some bugs take five years to get fixed, and many
just don’t ever get fixed, and these are sometimes really significant and debilitating
bugs, but the code is too much work for the few programmers they have.

It’s not anyone’s fault, there is no one to blame, there is no bad decisions or dumb
ideas, it’s just a money problem. That’s why I try to bring suggestions to get money
flowing, to create more income without disadvantaging anyone.

My idea may not be elegant, but it will create increased money flow without in any
way disadvantaging players. Even non paying players will only experience advantage
like this, they lose out on nothing, and only gain, while paying customers gain more.
But without the change, no one gains anything at all, and bugs never get fixed, weak
skills never get upgraded, badly designed skills never get overhauled.

These patches are so bad, not because anet doesn’t care or doesn’t have enough of
insight into the game, it’s not their fault at all, they just haven’t got the manpower,
they have two people for all skills for all professions, and that is not nearly enough..
which is what Jon said in the ranger forum quite clearly. Maybe those two people
do not even work fulltime.

1) Any income ANet makes doesn’t stay with ANet. It goes to NCSoft, who then allocates ANet a budget, meaning that although they would be making more money, they won’t necessarily see much of it.

2) Offering bug fixes (which would also include skill bug fixes) and superior skill balance in a sub version would essentially make the F2P version a ‘freemium’ model, and wreck the balanced PvP that they are aiming for.

3) ANet marketed this game on the premise that it would be buy once, but still have the content updates of a subscription MMO. Adding a superior sub version is more likely to drive players away (many who came because of this).

4) Because of the lack of constant gear progression (Ascended is one step, and even then all that gear isn’t out) and focus on end-game raiding and stuff, the game isn’t really designed to retain a large number (if any) of subs.

Do I have an alternate solution?

Aside from:

• completely splitting skill balance between PvP, WvW and PvE, hiring an extra guy for skill balance (who doesn’t necessarily have to be a programmer; they mentioned before that they can easily create / modify skills with their development tools, and it’s the actual skill testing that takes time) and giving each person one based on their experience of that game-mode.

• improving their code structure to easily highlight where things go wrong (known as optimization, which comes with time).

Then no. But I don’t think a freemium / sub model would bring anything to the table. It’d either be all sub or no sub in the interests of keeping balance in PvP.

Very bad idea. The payment system ArenaNet now uses is the best there is. I would suggest all MMO’s to do this. Doing what you suggest would make the game bad for the free to play gamers. You can see that with all the other games that use this system.

Moth fee is bad because a lot of people don’t want to pay monthly for a game and free to play is bad because those companies will bother you will all the payable options and make the game worse for non-paying players. (F2P could be good if they make a good system, for example, being payed by ads on ingame advertisement billboard and on cars and so on. Would work good for race-games or open world games where billboard would be in place (not like GW2). But I have never seen it implemented that way.)

You now suggest mixing the two together and as we see in a lot of other games, that will stay bad.

Just keep the ‘buy to play’ system. It’s the best choice that ArenaNet has made.

Zsymon.8457:

The post where Jon spoke about this was barely a week ago.

You’ll be seeing a lot of big red messages when you log in: “New build, no content
changes.” I am not blaming anyone, I am not attacking anyone, I love the game and
I love the team, I am just trying to offer suggestions to improve it, where as you folks
only break down the idea without offering any alternative suggestions whatsoever.

The whole forum is full of suggestions but the payment system is not a problem (without that GW2 would not be as popular as it is) so nobody comes with a solution for this not existing problem. If you say the fact that only 2 people are fixing bugs it the problem I can give you a solution, put more people on bug fixing and take them (for now) away from some other things. And that is, of they could not spend more, would they be able to then just hire a new person.

BTW, did you also read back your on post and notice how you are kinda disproving your own story?

“A lot of new MMOs that started out very promising, died real fast this way.”. Yeah, and they where all FTP, monthly fee or a combination of.

And this one “There would be complaints from the vocal minority on the forum” the minority, lol the majority chose this game because it was B2P so the majority would complain and “a LOT of people will become paying customers.” I can tell you, most people will stop playing. Just common sense will tell you that.

“The lure of extra goodies like I suggested above, and the promise of a much better game, will be enough to get tens of thousands of players to pay up” Like with all those other games that, like you said yourself, failed?

“and it’s not like the non paying players lose anything” that’s what all those games (that failed) said. But it’s simply not true. They will always lose.

“they even gain a better game with a bit of a delay, so they benefit from this as well.” I think they will end up with a dead game.

So I guess that means, the game is designed to get income from initial game purchases,
and then just let it die out, losing all subs until the game world is empty, moving on to
the next game, rinse and repeat? That is sad.

not saying I like or dislike the idea but Ill chip in and say the model DCUO uses seems to work well.

Zsymon.8457:

So I guess that means, the game is designed to get income from initial game purchases,
and then just let it die out, losing all subs until the game world is empty, moving on to
the next game, rinse and repeat? That is sad.

Nope. Based around micro-transactions. Like the first GW.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Zsymon.8457:

So I guess that means, the game is designed to get income from initial game purchases,
and then just let it die out, losing all subs until the game world is empty, moving on to
the next game, rinse and repeat? That is sad.

Nope. Based around micro-transactions. Like the first GW.

Are people going to keep investing in gems if there’s no staff to fix bugs and
underpowered skills/builds/professions though? If every new update ends up
with the “no new content” tag, major bugs from BW1 still unchanged, weak
and useless traits and skills everywhere, and according to Jon Peters, barely
any hope of them ever getting fixed because it is just too hard for the two
lone coders?

I want to buy gems, but if I know patches keep coming up empty, what is the
point? I don’t play an underpowered profession/build, but many people do,
and if you read the forums you see that they’re getting sick of it. If they read
Jon’s comments on the ranger forum, they will get disheartened and they’ll
never buy gems.

Zsymon.8457:

So I guess that means, the game is designed to get income from initial game purchases,
and then just let it die out, losing all subs until the game world is empty, moving on to
the next game, rinse and repeat? That is sad.

No, you better do not become a professional gambler because you guess wrong.
They also ask money for the expansions. For Guild Wars 1 they released all expansions in 1 year or less. I don’t say it will also be the same in Guild Wars 2 but you can expect them to release them faster then monthly fee payed games. Next to that they also have the gem-store to generate some extra income, but that should not become leading (else you will get the same problem as FTP games have). The releases of the expansion should keep bringing in money.

Besides, if you like to pay 25 dollars a years you are free to do so. The gem-store gives you that options. So you already have the options but you seem to want to oblige it (to get a certain experience). A lot of people don;t like those obligations. It might be the reasons why most of the games who do so fail.

Zsymon.8457:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Zsymon.8457:

So I guess that means, the game is designed to get income from initial game purchases,
and then just let it die out, losing all subs until the game world is empty, moving on to
the next game, rinse and repeat? That is sad.

Nope. Based around micro-transactions. Like the first GW.

Are people going to keep investing in gems if …

Like I said.. the game is based on the income from the game / expansions. the gem-store is (or should be) extra.

I wonder where those “superior balance” and game changes would come from. Magically out of thin air? :P

Zsymon.8457:

Are people going to keep investing in gems if there’s no staff to fix bugs and
underpowered skills/builds/professions though? If every new update ends up
with the “no new content” tag, major bugs from BW1 still unchanged, weak
and useless traits and skills everywhere, and according to Jon Peters, barely
any hope of them ever getting fixed because it is just too hard for the two
lone coders?

I want to buy gems, but if I know patches keep coming up empty, what is the
point? I don’t play an underpowered profession/build, but many people do,
and if you read the forums you see that they’re getting sick of it. If they read
Jon’s comments on the ranger forum, they will get disheartened and they’ll
never buy gems.

Quick question: Name one game that’s perfectly balanced 3 months out of the gate.

1) They said they cut down on the number of skills to make balance easier. Probably with the budget in mind. Eventually it’ll get there. But you’ll be hard pressed to find a game that has perfectly balanced everything. When DK’s were first released in WoW, for example. They were self-healing, indestructible powerhouses that took about 6 months to alter.

2) Skills, contrary to popular belief, aren’t created by programmers. Programmers created the tools for the staff to easily create skills. In which case, most of the time it’s the actual testing and balancing of the skills that takes time.

3) As above, see below. Programmers don’t create the content. They create the tools for content designers, meaning if there’s a bug, the content designers aren’t going to be the ones that fix it. At the same time, they can’t wait to put out content until everything else is fixed, otherwise people will leave.

4) As I said in another post, ANet doesn’t get the money. NCSoft gets the money, who then in turn allocates a budget to ANet.

5) Knew there was something I was going to add. Everyone thinks their class is underpowered, x class is OP, and their class deserves special treatment. However, they are working on it (did you not see the Nov 15th patch?) and it’s down to people needing a little commodity called patience.

Beside I never really got the problem of the so-called unbalanced classes. You have different classes and so one class will be better at one thing and the other at something else. This whole idea about balancing is all bases on the idea that in PvP every class should be of the same strength. I think that is strange. If you complain that one or two classes are way to much overpowered I can agree but except for those extreme ones I think it should be unbalanced. The teamwork should make the difference, not the one on one fight and if you want to be good in one on one fights that you pick the class that is very strong in one on one fights. It is that simple.

I do understand your frustration for a lot of bugs that do not get fixed. But changing one of the best things of this game to something proven not to work will definitely not fix that problem.

I think many people are also forgetting that two people can actually achieve quite a lot
Especially considering it’s their full time job. Let’s also not discount all the people involved in the design, discussion and testing.

How many people started GW1? Three.

Silver.8023:

I think many people are also forgetting that two people can actually achieve quite a lot
Especially considering it’s their full time job. Let’s also not discount all the people involved in the design, discussion and testing.

How many people started GW1? Three.

Also, Brook’s law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law

Its taken me ages to read through all these posts but heres my thoughts on the matter. A paid subscription version will break the game look at SWTOR and even if the free version stays EXACTLY as it is for GW2 and a subs version gets a bigger better kick, thats clearly unbalanced as the game would become pay-to-win. Anet generates its cash through the gem store and initial purchase plus whatever expansions will be released as previously stated somewhere in this thread but 1 idea that NOBODY mentioned would be a free trial system. I know several people who think they might buy the game but dont want to pay out and then find out they dont like it. All the MMOs I can think of have a free trial function, wether timed or limited to a certain point in the game. If GW2 has some form of free trial that players could give to their friends wether it only lasts 48 hours or they can only reach level 20 or whatever it opens the scope for the game and lets us players help GW2 by advertising for them and bringing in more players for them. THIS I think is a good way of generating Anet more money and a MUCH better idea than adding a paid subscription version which in my opinion would destroy the game

Zsymon.8457:

DJRiful, I can only repeat myself: if Anet had enough income, then they would have
more than two people work on all skills for all professions. Then they wouldn’t come
on the forum and say to the playerbase that they don’t have the resources to fix the
bugs we are complaining about for months.

I would suggest reading this post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-teams-that-work-on-PvP-WvW-Balance/first#post818357

Bonefield.9813:

I would suggest reading this post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/The-teams-that-work-on-PvP-WvW-Balance/first#post818357

I thought it was a bit strange only having a total of two people XD

Your name also rings a bell, and I can’t think where from.

So basically your suggestion is to change their market approach because they don’t have money to hire more people to work at skill balance?

Current Job Openings (as seen on 11/22/2012 at ArenaNet)

Architect & Lead Developer Roles for ArenaNet
Audio Tools Engineer
Character Artist
IT – Systems Engineer
Marketing Copywriter
Mobile- Mobile Developer
QA – Quality Assurance Tester (Contract)
Senior Producer
Senior Programmer Roles at ArenaNet
Sr Recruiter – Recruiting Lead For Great Gaming Company
Web – Database Programmer
Web Developers for ArenaNet

That may answer about their profit and interest in further development on their products.

Also take a look here.
Please refer to the skill change log.

Your suggestion isn’t helpful because it is trying to fix something that isn’t broken.

PS: Spend regularly $25 at gemstore and you can buy items offered there, so they don’t need to “offer it for free for a $25 subscription”. It’s a contradiction. And you really showed your colors at “maybe an amount of gold/karma/tokens awarded every week as well”.

Btw, to those around here spending time to see that kind of suggestion, take a look at this suggestion. This is the kind of stuff that end-game would benefit.

@OP: I can understand your intentions: having a game without bugs but it is not a solution. You obviously don’t know how development work. Adding $$ and people in the project will not magically get the bugs fixed faster.

Someone mentioned Brook’s law. New people need to be formed and learn how the current code works, and with such big programs it takes months, even years: a guy who is here since the beginning and coded the game will achieve more in one day than 100 newcommers who have no idea where to look in the million lines of code.

But more importantly they have processes that they have to follow, which inherently make correcting a bug slow: coding, then reviewing, then testing with QA. It takes weeks even if it was just a minor modification, and it does not depend of the number of people in the company.
And seeing how some corrections are failed, I think they are already trying to rush those processes (a bit too much imho).

So basically you’re suggesting a paid game ran side by side with a free game, where they gate the updates to the free game just so that people would go to the paying version?

Guess what? They do that with a lot online websites already. Crunchyroll does it. And guess what else? That kind of obvious money-grubbing pisses off more people than it makes happy. I know for sure I ran the kitten out Crunchyroll as soon as I realized that they’re not only spamming advertisements, delaying all the content by a week, but also offering better quality to their subscribers.

And I can totally see the same happening here. Because let’s face it, gating your updates is about as blatant of a money-grab you can do. Not to mention that you even wanted them to gate bug fixes and skill balance. That’s total bullkitten, dude.

Zsymon.8457:

Make two versions of GW2, one version free to play, the other version with a
$25/month fee. Offering superior content and skill balance in the pay version,
and slowly having the content changes come over to the free version, with a
delay of a few months.

Because really, two people to work on the most important part of the game (skill design/balance/bugs), is just horridly understaffed

A server where people get updates before the rest, to test them on a massive scale?
It’s called a pre-patch test server. You get them for free in most games and most people are happily testing the skill balance on these just to “get ahead” of the competition.

Does GW2 have those? Would probably more efficient than two developers trying to test those skills.
I think a public test server “a la WoW” where the developers can test their most extreme ideas and >>>don’t have to apologise<<< for it would be the best.

Your idea is bad, because you give basically “Beta” content to the paying player base, whereas the rest of the crowd (non paying) gets content that has been “tested and approved” by the fools who are paying their fee.

Public test server:
Player: gets ahead of the content, so is happy.
GW2 team: test their thing as required, so is happy.

Flamfloz.6732:

Zsymon.8457:

Make two versions of GW2, one version free to play, the other version with a
$25/month fee. Offering superior content and skill balance in the pay version,
and slowly having the content changes come over to the free version, with a
delay of a few months.

Because really, two people to work on the most important part of the game (skill design/balance/bugs), is just horridly understaffed

A server where people get updates before the rest, to test them on a massive scale?
It’s called a pre-patch test server. You get them for free in most games and most people are happily testing the skill balance on these just to “get ahead” of the competition.

Does GW2 have those? Would probably more efficient than two developers trying to test those skills.
I think a public test server “a la WoW” where the developers can test their most extreme ideas and >>>don’t have to apologise<<< for it would be the best.

Your idea is bad, because you give basically “Beta” content to the paying player base, whereas the rest of the crowd (non paying) gets content that has been “tested and approved” by the fools who are paying their fee.

Public test server:
Player: gets ahead of the content, so is happy.
GW2 team: test their thing as required, so is happy.

Not only that, but he also says “Superior content”, which would probably cover all the events. And the OP makes it sounds less like a test server and more like ANet just not releasing the content to the free versions. Which is what a lot of subscription based webservices, such as Crunchyroll, do. And if you ask me, that’s about as blatant of a money-grub as you can have.

You should never not provide content just so that you can make more money on it. You should never give unfairly better content just so that you can make more money on it. Doing either of these is like outright saying that the money of your playerbase matters more than the people. And in a game that is only able to exist because of the playerbase numbers, that’s like saying that you would be killing to shut down your game for money.

Hello,

Since many opinions were given here, this thread as run its course. Therefore it is now locked.

Thank you for your contribution.