Guild Wars 2

The game is getting awesome for people who are starting now, but veteran players got only some QoL changes that should’ve been added last feature patch

What is making the game lose players is the bad rewards and RNG dependency. I don’t feel appropriately rewarded for the time I invest doing content that requires experience and teamplay (dungeons, world bosses)

Markus Fischer.3405:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Puddles.6385:

Follow up question: What use is it to make a blog post that only really affects people who don’t yet play the game?

Hi Puddles,

First of all, we at ArenaNet very much appreciate the support that all players that have played the game for so long have given us. Without you guys, your love of the game and how you spread the word around you, things would clearly not be the same.

Today’s blogpost about the New Player Experience will not have as many visible effects to you specifically as it would have for a brand new player, that knows very little about the game. The new direction system should help you get a clearer and more useful top-tight UI, but also give your new characters better rewards.

As you noted, it is mainly targeted at new players, those that need it the most. We want their learning experience to be better so that they, too, can become veteran players of Guild Wars 2 one day! Learning to play a brand new game, and MMOs tend to be more on the more complex side of videogames, can be a daunting and hard task.

We want more people to be able to walk this path you walked and this is why we implemented the New Player Experience system, to create a route that new players can walk and feel rewarded along the way.

Again, thanks for your support!

lol

thats read like
thanks for buying the game and bye.

^ How it came off to me.

That being said

>Anet tells us things

Hate it

>Anet wants to surprise us

Hate it

Element of surprise? Is that what they’re calling it? I’ll believe it when I see it, until then “element of disappointment” seems more probable.

MUCH HYPE FOR NOTHING, WOW.

As of right now, and in part thanks to a post made by an Anet staffer over in the Facebook community to another person, I really feel like it is almost a joke with regard to veteran players over at Anet. One post in particular was immediately removed by them where they essentially told a veteran player upset by the content directed at new players that “it’s probably good you’re not a new player then”. Its a little disconcerting that they’d be so flip about a legitimate concern from someone who has played this game, stuck with it and doesn’t want to feel marginalized, yet all it seems like is that Anet cares more about dolling up the product for new and unfamiliar players. There is nothing about this new info today that seems appealing to me, or encourages me to even make a new alt, which saddens me as well.

The drip-feeding of info to players seems like it could have been rounded up in a simple tutorial added in the prologue.

Thing is, I would say
“I think a robust tutorial would have probably taken them a lot less time, effort, resources to get across how to play the game for “new players”, and would have ultimately kept them free to make changes that were frequently requested"

But then I realised that these are just ports from the china client, which means possibly localisation was the thing that took the most time.

On a side note:
Also, here’s a wild suggestion for the downed thing….Place the downed skills in the character skills UI area so i can see what skills I have BEFORE I’m downed!!!!

LostBalloon.6423:

Can you guys at least post the titles (tomorrow) so that we can at least speculate over the weekend, and not just have them pop when the first article of the week gets released.
Nothing major, bit it would be cool.

I’m starting to think they stagger the announcements, so that they have time to sort through the kittenstorm from each separate post. :P

nethykins.7986:

The drip-feeding of info to players seems like it could have been rounded up in a simple tutorial added in the prologue.

Thing is, I would say
“I think a robust tutorial would have probably taken them a lot less time, effort, resources to get across how to play the game for “new players”, and would have ultimately kept them free to make changes that were frequently requested"

But then I realised that these are just ports from the china client, which means possibly localisation was the thing that took the most time.

On a side note:
Also, here’s a wild suggestion for the downed thing….Place the downed skills in the character skills UI area so i can see what skills I have BEFORE I’m downed!!!!

Yep. Its a serious oversight that they aren’t in there.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Hmm…

Week 3: Collecting and Trading
In the September 2014 Feature Pack, we’re rethinking the way you collect and trade items!

Collecting and trading? Does this mean… we can finally trade person-to-person instead of over mail?

ArchCalder.3258:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Hmm…

Week 3: Collecting and Trading
In the September 2014 Feature Pack, we’re rethinking the way you collect and trade items!

Collecting and trading? Does this mean… we can finally trade person-to-person instead of over mail?

It probably does. While I would use this feature, it’s yet another thing that would be completely unnecessary, as we already have a system in place that works. All they would need to do is tone down the mail suppression so we can at least send food/potions to the other 4 people in our party before shutting us down.

I do think they are changing the lower level game too much, and that you shouldn’t need to have the suggestions with the green arrows telling you where to go in the world, as one example. Also I think some things will hurt players in the long run, like when they suddenly get downed at level 5? and then when the rally assist stops working they will have a harder time, and what happens before level 5, are you just dead?

Also some of the changes seem a bit confusing like the instant unlock of all weapon skills, there was nothing wrong with the current system, and instant unlock doesn’t make sense for example, you unlock the skills on a bow, and can then instantly use all skills on axes and swords etc, and also moving around skills and the skill unlocks could make it seem like progression is slower than before, like weapon swapping is now later? And elite skills will be later to, seems like it will be more ‘grinding’ to get to the good stuff.

Also not all of the changes make things as easier as they said, for example “Our last feature pack also changed traits to no longer require going to a merchant and buying a book at each tier to unlock them; you unlock a tier for free as soon as you reach the appropriate level.”

Its not easy to unlock all the actual trait skills sometimes as that seems to suggest, and they are really expensive f you dont unlock them by doing the map completions and such.

I do enjoy making new characters and starting over, I have only had two level 80 characters, nearly 3, so the new story rewards will hopefully be good, but I do hope there is new content for all players, for example craftable aqua breathers, and an expansion announcement, more free skin rewards etc.

How long did they wait to release an expansion after GW1 anyway?

Also I think I good change would be to make skins bought from the TP free all the time to transmute, not just the once as it uses a lot of stones very fast to keep transmuting.

John.8507:

How long did they wait to release an expansion after GW1 anyway?

Unless I’m mistaken, both Factions and Nightfall both came out within 2 years of GW1’s launch.

GW released the Stone Summit content 1 year after launch. Factions came 6 months later and Nightfall 6 months after that. EotN was released 1 year after Nightfall.

Galphar.3901:

GW released the Stone Summit content 1 year after launch. Factions came 6 months later and Nightfall 6 months after that. EotN was released 1 year after Nightfall.

And what a joy it is top play.

Maybe we should be happy everything they have described so far is completely trivial. After the April 15th destruction of the trait system I am not sure ANET is capable of making a change for the better. Nothing they have presented for “new” characters comes close to making me want to create a new character. I love making alts and I tried several since the trait change. When they got to 80 they didn’t have any traits except for ones obtained by accident. I bought the ones I wanted and those characters will never try alternate builds until if ever the trait system changes.

nethykins.7986:

T
Also, here’s a wild suggestion for the downed thing….Place the downed skills in the character skills UI area so i can see what skills I have BEFORE I’m downed!!!!

This is a good idea, look at this devs. The one thing that I found difficult when making a new character was finding out what my downed skills did before I got killed.

biggs.4702:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Hopefully by then all the self-entitled crybabies will have drowned in their own tears. Such nauseating behavior.

It must be so easy living in your black and white world.

Kirani.2690:

Maybe we should be happy everything they have described so far is completely trivial. After the April 15th destruction of the trait system I am not sure ANET is capable of making a change for the better. Nothing they have presented for “new” characters comes close to making me want to create a new character. I love making alts and I tried several since the trait change. When they got to 80 they didn’t have any traits except for ones obtained by accident. I bought the ones I wanted and those characters will never try alternate builds until if ever the trait system changes.

Let the GW1 team step in and this game’s going to be bonkers! /dreams

LostBalloon.6423:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Can you guys at least post the titles (tomorrow) so that we can at least speculate over the weekend, and not just have them pop when the first article of the week gets released.
Nothing major, bit it would be cool.

I think after the grumbling that followed “Improvements Galore”, they’re not exactly clamoring to restart title hype.

Corpus Christi.2057:

Kirani.2690:

Maybe we should be happy everything they have described so far is completely trivial. After the April 15th destruction of the trait system I am not sure ANET is capable of making a change for the better. Nothing they have presented for “new” characters comes close to making me want to create a new character. I love making alts and I tried several since the trait change. When they got to 80 they didn’t have any traits except for ones obtained by accident. I bought the ones I wanted and those characters will never try alternate builds until if ever the trait system changes.

Let the GW1 team step in and this game’s going to be bonkers! /dreams

I think the GW team is dead or something. It would make sense the way GW:B just stopped suddenly. They must’ve all died suddenly and Anet is trying to cover it up.

narwhalsbend.7059:

nethykins.7986:

T
Also, here’s a wild suggestion for the downed thing….Place the downed skills in the character skills UI area so i can see what skills I have BEFORE I’m downed!!!!

This is a good idea, look at this devs. The one thing that I found difficult when making a new character was finding out what my downed skills did before I got killed.

I will third this idea, this would be extremely beneficial.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

we already got news relevant to 80’s.. though they were bad news (Im looking at you loot by profession)

SPOILER : It’s something really amazing that you have to buy from the gem store.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Thank you, Stephane, it was nice of you to comment and reassure us. That said, I really feel that the three week parceling out of information like this sprinkled by dev posts telling us to be patient and that we’ll be excited is increasing the fandom kitten within the community. The blog posts feel a little fluff-y to get a length out of them that may not be warranted. I venture to guess that there would be a little less bitterness if the announcements were more compact and substantial. Of course, I can see how small nibbles of information is easier on the PR team when it comes to fan feedback; perhaps merely changing up the order, or two instead of three weeks would ease the feelings of being strung along. Hopefully you guys can see where the disappointment/antsiness from veterans stems from on this, the most glorious of birthday weeks, having nothing to do with us in the news department. Your fans hang on your every word, which is a double edged sword that I don’t envy, haha. It is demoralizing hearing that some of my favorite elements of leveling have been gated and at the same time seeing no news relating to my current in-game situation. Thanks again for the communication and all your hard work <3 Enjoy those cupcakes.

I just felt the need to post after I saw this topic, because this is exactly how I feel.

As a player who’s been around since beta, the only thing that I feel directly affect me, now that we’re done with 2/3 of the blog posts, is the WvW tournament. AND even still, what I really got from it its that my server will have to LOSE 2 weeks on PURPOSE just so that we’re not crushed on in a HIGHER and therefore BETTER tier and still recieve LESS rewards.
So the second feature patch so far has given me 2 weeks of NO FUN ALLOWED just so I can have a chance of having fun in the upcoming weeks.
Lets just hope they turn it all around this last week, but lets face it, what are the odds?

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Honestly, at a time when even ANet employees are openly admitting that communication with players needs improvement, don’t you think that maybe this style of “playing coy” with announcing new features is a mistake?

Dragging out these announcements for so long only reinforces the whole “Nope, can’t tell you anything yet!” vibe that frustrated players have been putting up with for far too long already, not to mention that it severely undermines the “wow” factor by having some of the announcements be…uh, less spectacular than I think you were counting on.

Trust me, if your new features are worth being excited about, we’ll know…without your having to resort to gimmicky prolonged announcements designed to artificially increase the hype machine.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Stephane, I support Guild Wars since 2005, and was very happy when i read a french guy was hired by Anet. I know you’ve done a very good job, but could you explain your colleagues at Anet, that if you don’t know what’s the players wants you should avoid surprises.
The announcement of this feature pack was such a disaster. Do you really think you had enough content for 3 weeks anouncement ? I read the posts every day and every day i think, i should not read it tomorrow, i’ll be dispointed again. Annoucing “A fresh start” for the second birthday was a really bad move to all veterans who come back to open their birthday gifts. Do you think in your 3 weeks annoucement, it was the best thing to announce today ? The best thing to get all thoses veterans at play again ?

How do you plan your communication ? Is it something like :
A/ How can we make this annoucement the most effective ?
or is it more :
B/ How can we avoid to be instant-killed by all raging players ?

I’m pretty sure at Anet most of you think the early annoucement of the precursor quests was your biggest mistake. It wasn’t. The silence after it was. You should know the first rule of communication : YOU CAN NOT NOT COMMUNICATE. Even if you don’t say a word you are already communicating. So telling us about the precursors was not a bad moove, but you should have explained that to implement it you need more time and that you need to implement some other things before. That’s why we won’t see it soon, and instead we’ll see many other things coming. But at some point we will have it. You could event have made a special webpage, with a progression bar and some annoucement, like :“The bar won’t progress for a few months because we have some important things to do…” or “We got 1% today, not a big leap, but a step in the good direction”. This way, we have no idea when it will be ready (because you probably don’t either), but we know you are working on it. Slowly because it’s a big project, but you are aware of it, and someday it’ll show up.

I know you can’t be fully transparent in your developpement timeline, because it just doesn’t work that way. I know that from a developper point of view (or from anyone who has worked in any company’s point of view), this progress bar i was talking about is absurd. But from a communication perspective it’s a good way to be honest with players. “We can’t do miracles, but we are working kitten it”. We know that’s what you do, but we just need to hear it.

I mean sometimes it’s better to hear, “hey guys we have bad news…” than “don’t worry, we can’t say anythnig, but you’ll be very happy”. Because we know that you can’t make all of us “very happy” in one moove. So we know you are lying to us, and it’s very frightening, because usually when someone lies to you, something bad is coming, and you don’t know what !

So please reconsider your way of communicating. Because yes it’s good to hear you, but when we realize you are lying, we are scarried. Remember that when i say you lie, i talk about “we can’t tell anything but you will like it”.
1. Yes you could say something because you know something
2. You have no idea if i will really like it, do you ? I mean when i read your words i am alone, i am not a community, you know that. So you have no idea what i like.
I can’t think anything else than “I can’t trust him”.

Despite what i said at the begining of this post, I know you know what your players (i mean the community, not individually) want. After all you did this great game, so you knew what we want before us. It just seems your fear of miscommunicating is misleading you.

That and maybe some issues with economy. I know John Smith will come and explain everything is working as intended, and that we have to prove something is wrong, but we can’t because he has all the data, he could share it with us, but he doesn’t have time…. He seems to be a nice guy, but you can’t argue with him lol. But seriously, 300gold per color for commander tag, what did you think ? I have to say that changing your plans after the anoucement and listening to your players was a really good move. That and the very high presence of all of you guys here on forums, give us hope, a lot more than “we can’t say anything but you will like it”. We really need to get rid of this policy. That’s what we fear to read when we see a Moderator tag. Please, i beg you, stop it now.

PS: Sorry for my franglish, i hope your eyes didn’t bleed too much, i did my best.

Veteran players are looking for new content and more stuff to do.

This is a feature pack which anet has said means no new content. (although the blog post 2 days after that being said announced new content in the form of low level weapons to help new players level)

Unless you hate the current trading post and collections tab I wouldn’t get your hopes up about next weeks announcements. Maybe take a month off come back for the return of LS and see what that has to offer.

wwwes.1398:

narwhalsbend.7059:

nethykins.7986:

T
Also, here’s a wild suggestion for the downed thing….Place the downed skills in the character skills UI area so i can see what skills I have BEFORE I’m downed!!!!

This is a good idea, look at this devs. The one thing that I found difficult when making a new character was finding out what my downed skills did before I got killed.

I will third this idea, this would be extremely beneficial.

I agree, this would definitely be a beneficial (and logical) addition to the skill tabs in the Hero Panel. My experiences with downed skills ties in closely with the mysterious Death Shroud skills that I’ve always wanted to be listed in the skills panel as well.

Short-short version, I agree.

• Downed State skills, as well as Death Shroud skills, really need to be easily accessible for review while outside of those states.

Long version of my introduction to the Death Shroud Skills and Downed State Skills
It was such a shock when I first started and played a necro. I saw that the description for Death Shroud said it would give me new skills. Cool. However, it did not state that it would replace my existing skills and make them unusable while in Death Shroud.
I expected additional skills…

So I found myself nearly dead and I decided it was time to give this Death Shroud a try. I entered Death Shroud for the first time hoping to use the additional health bar to save me.

Suddenly I find all of my skills gone and replaced with completely new ones.
My response? Confusion and panic.

The Kitten-friendly version of my actual response would be something like:
“Oh, gee, I am unsure of what has just transpired.”

I then quickly began spamming Death Shroud skill 1 despite not knowing what exactly the skill was doing and assuming that it was a damaging attack. I then had to pay no attention to what was going on in combat just so I could spend a few seconds to read a few words of its description.

While I was reading I took note that my Life Force was dwindling quickly due to the damage I was sustaining. I then lost Death Shroud and my skills flipped back to my weapon skills. As I had almost no health remaining from before I entered Death Shroud, I got put into Downed State immediately for the first time. What did I find? Yet another bar of new skills to try to quickly read the descriptions on.

Yeah…was quite jarring and confusing to put it in nicer and more mild terms.

After that I had to work on building up Life Force so I could then enter Death Shroud while outside of combat. I would then just to stand there spewing blackish green smoke everywhere without an enemy in sight just so I could spend the few seconds I had built up to read each skill, one at a time. Since it didn’t last very long I had to do this across several times of building up Life Force and entering Death Shroud while out of combat before I was clear on what each skill did and what situations they would be useful in.

Ok: Death Shroud skills understood. Now to look at those Downed State skills.
I then went and found a lone, easy to kill enemy someplace and proceeded to almost kill it. I then let it beat me up and knock me into Downed State once again so I could read each skill one at a time now that I knew that I can kill the enemy with one attack.

Got to read some of the skills and was almost dead so: Skill 1 -Life Leech-
Oh, nice. I rallied! Good to know that killing the enemy lets me return to my feet immediately.

Did this another time and found that Downed State skill 4 lets me slowly get to my feet as long as the channeled skill isn’t interrupted from being attacked (can’t leech health from an enemy with skill 1 if there aren’t any around, so use skill 4).

Later found that Rangers -Throw Dirt- for Downed State skill 1 (similar to other non-necro classes) so I then had to rely on Downed State skill 4 on other classes to recover whereas necro is able to use skill 1 to damage (and potentially rally) and heal at the same time. So necro could rally/recover (whichever comes first) with skill 1, everyone else…rally with dirt/rocks if possible or hope to recover with skill 4 eventually (or a combination of both to stay alive).

None of this would have been a problem if I could review the skill descriptions in the Hero Panel like I did with the weapon and utility skills.

“So telling us about the precursors was not a bad moove, but you should have explained that to implement it you need more time and that you need to implement some other things before. That’s why we won’t see it soon, and instead we’ll see many other things coming. But at some point we will have it”

They did say that over the course of several interviews since that announcement…i have to give them that.

Problem is u know ppl want that..u know u made a promise to deliver it…instead u deliver dumb content nobody cares about and market it as vital to the process of delivering precursor crafting. I am sorry but it took way to much time from the announcement to the release of the precursor crafting. It’s just unacceptable in our day and time. It’s like literally ANet has 1 employee..otherwise i can’t imagine why precursor crafting would take this long.

…this (and other features we wanted but never got delivered) gave us the impression (for good reason) they put our needs on the very bottom of the To Do list, instead making what THEY and they alone, in a very small office, a handfull of ppl think what’s best for millions of players. Ironic….and the saddest thing i’ve seen from any mmo company to date.

ArchCalder.3258:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Hmm…

Week 3: Collecting and Trading
In the September 2014 Feature Pack, we’re rethinking the way you collect and trade items!

Collecting and trading? Does this mean… we can finally trade person-to-person instead of over mail?

That would be the worst change in GW2’s history of bad changes. That would essentially end the game for many people.

Just give is Precursor crafting or hunting already! The prices increase everyday. Soon it will get to the point where they will be out of almost everyone’s reach, which will make getting a legendary, almost impossible without spending cash money IRL.

I have many things to say but I think the only worthy mentionning at this point is: You are completely disconnected from your player base and while you try to maintain this image that you are listening, you clearly are not. This fiasco proves it. As a veteran player, as a PvX player, I feel let down. Getting new players is not gonna fix it, but getting back your players that have quit the game with actual meaningful changes would.

Alright, first, the issue is not “we’re improving…such and such systems.” What is being taken as a slap in the face is “we cannot retroactively give these rewards to…”

Why the Kitten not? Or rather, why nothing at all? I get that retroactively applying rewards to so many accounts, with so many characters, could be somewhat, unfeasible. But to say “Vets, you get nothing” is insulting. Why?

Because you have in the past. I won’t point out all the examples, but the most prime example of this was the Karka Queen Release. The release initial battle release event occurring only one, was a poor choice of direction.

When every other game company I can think of would have just thrown up their hands and said “Well, we’re sorry for that, we’ll do better next time; maybe…” Anet took responsibly and said in no uncertain terms “We screwed up, it was a bad idea, we’re sorry.” Then they made at least a gesture to try and put some substance behind the words.

Imagine my surprise, when, getting home from work, knowing I missed the release event, to find a mail in my inbox; with the rewards from the fight. Yes, I missed the event, and I don’t have a memory of the massive, lag filled carnage; but in exchange I got a memory of a game company doing something they didn’t have to do. Because it was right, and because they wanted not just my, but all their players trust.

To then, two years later, turn around and say “sorry, we’ll do better next time; maybe…” is upsetting.

In fact it might be interesting for your company to know I have been SO impressed with GW1 and the first year of GW2; that I applied to Anet, twice. Yes, your behavior as a company inspired me enough to make me want to work for you, and with you all to make great games.

Somewhere along the line, something changed, someone started pushing the “merchandise everything, and get new meat for the grinder” mentality. I suspect it was some suit from NCSoft.

But whoever it was. The next time you get that person, or those people telling you to shove another set of fixes or changes we don’t ask for down our throats so they can make more money, you tell them the following.

“We’re Anet, and the way we did things made people want to work with us; everything you’re doing makes them want to uninstall the game. So shut up and let us do our thing!”

I Need to somthing add here as well. Sadly enough last bigger updates were nothing for me. I lost my whole Progress from fractals Level 81 to 30 with the excuse of leaderboards and fractal chests beeing implemented. This update so far I see changes the only affect new Charakters while having all classes at max Level. It’s kinda sour to hear about the AWESOME REWARDS that won’t be given to you retroactivly because you already done the Story.. It just gives me the Feeling that I would have been better off buying the game now and start it now. Having better Story rewards and more fun leveling and on top of that not many hours and hours deleted for fractal leaderboards.

narwhalsbend.7059:

nethykins.7986:

T
Also, here’s a wild suggestion for the downed thing….Place the downed skills in the character skills UI area so i can see what skills I have BEFORE I’m downed!!!!

This is a good idea, look at this devs. The one thing that I found difficult when making a new character was finding out what my downed skills did before I got killed.

Agreed, and I’ll add in other sets of skills that disappear faster than you can figure them out especially as you must do so in combat situations: Death Shroud and the two Guardian tome elites. I don’t have time to grok the tool tips on those, I have to sort of skim them fast and click them and hope they do something cool. (Yeah, over time I’ve learned them better than that, but it would be nice to have an in-game way to carefully study them). If you want them to be a surprise, well, at least add them to the skills panel once they’re unlocked?

I guess if it makes you feel better, the title of the segment “fresh start” indicated that they were going to fix some lowbie things up. If you’re feeling like you’re missing out because you’re done with the early content, that probably just means they did a good job upgrading it!

Considering that next weeks updates are related to “Trade & Collectibles” (“we’re rethinking the way you collect and trade items!”) the best thing I can think of that they would implement would be, possibly (but probably unlikely w/ the TP tax/gold sink) player-to-player trade windows, and best case something like the shared account bag, so all of your characters have access to account bound items like the unlimited harvesting tools, salavage-o-matic, tickets/passes, etc. Ideally, it would include a rework of the loot tables so farming wasn’t a necessity, but that’s highly doubtful.

It’s unlikely, but I can’t really think of anything really revolutionary they could implement, even after reviewing past CDIs and whatever is off the top of my head after following the subreddit/forum for the last year or so.

I can’t really think of anything exciting enough (in a feature patch) to make me want to log in again, and that’s a sad thing, because I love this game. I’m just tired of it, and lack motivation to sign in for more than a few minutes. I miss the excitement and hype of patch announcements, and the even greater rush of patch day (a whole week later!) shoulder to shoulder with my server mates laying waste to enemies (Tower, LA, Marionette, etc.). Now I just have what’s feels like more solo personal story instances, which I never bothered to finish in the first place. :/ Ah well, hopefully they didn’t change the halloween and christmas events too much.

For me, “A fresh start” was obviously concerned about the new character creation or levelling, also because they’ve put on sales the Character slot + exp booster.
Maybe, the only thing that Anet missed in the blog was to write, at the bottom, something like "And you, Veterans, stay tuned for some “fresh news!”

kimeekat.2548:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

Thank you, Stephane, it was nice of you to comment and reassure us. That said, I really feel that the three week parceling out of information like this sprinkled by dev posts telling us to be patient and that we’ll be excited is increasing the fandom kitten within the community. The blog posts feel a little fluff-y to get a length out of them that may not be warranted. I venture to guess that there would be a little less bitterness if the announcements were more compact and substantial. Of course, I can see how small nibbles of information is easier on the PR team when it comes to fan feedback; perhaps merely changing up the order, or two instead of three weeks would ease the feelings of being strung along. Hopefully you guys can see where the disappointment/antsiness from veterans stems from on this, the most glorious of birthday weeks, having nothing to do with us in the news department. Your fans hang on your every word, which is a double edged sword that I don’t envy, haha. It is demoralizing hearing that some of my favorite elements of leveling have been gated and at the same time seeing no news relating to my current in-game situation. Thanks again for the communication and all your hard work <3 Enjoy those cupcakes.

It’s like getting a surprise pair of socks. Sure, I’ll use them… but did it really warrant the hype of a surprise? It stimulates hope and imagination, only to be let down with something banal.

Last feature pack, it made sense. There were a few big changes. This time? I’m pretty sure it would have all done nicely in one release, with blog posts to elaborate on the features. Then we wouldn’t have the “Surprise!”>Disappointment issue we’re seeing now.

Because, socks.

yea you rewarded me with a level 20 scroll for the 2nd birthday. i am really surprised.

Again, thanks for your support!

So, exclamation points make everything better.

Lytalm.5673:

I’m sure a lot of people really likes the change for character experience (including me), yet, there is always people to shout “ME ME ME I WANT FEATURE FOR ME ME ME ONLY, NO ONE ELSE GETS FEATURE BUT ONLY WHAT I WANT TO PLAY”. Get a grip and wait for the end of the feature patch before squeeking geez.

Thanks Stéphane for the clarifications.

But the teaser for the feature pack that released on the ANNIVERSARY of the game where more veterans who are taking breaks from the game will log in to see what the birthday gifts are should not have been an update geared mostly for new players.

Especially when the other updates have been geared for new players.

If these kinds of patches were released more often, we also wouldn’t have this issue. But it’s been six months since the last one. ANet shouldn’t leave veteran players hanging for over a year for major balance patches and new features.

ANet: We can handle Living Story updates and feature packs being put into the same patch.

Or heck, Week 1 – Living Story Patch, Week 2 – Feature Patch, Week 3 – Living Story Patch. If you don’t want patches to be too large.

Zackie.8923:

yea you rewarded me with a level 20 scroll for the 2nd birthday. i am really surprised.

I know right? Not a lvl 30, 40 or 60 scroll..same lvl 20 as last year (not even stack-able… really?) I don’t mine the scrolls but I thought it would be a higher lvl one this time around.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

The Feature Pack announcements will continue next week and some of them will definitely contain information that’s relevant to those of you who’ve been playing the game for long. We won’t tell you about them until the articles are live though, to keep the element of surprise!

The risk is that if there’s a complaint like the one with the commander’s tag change, it will be too late to adjust it based on feedback and get it run through Q&A. I think the desire for surprise contributes greatly to the discontent with the lack of communication. Time for the community to give more feedback hopefully in a less harsh way than last week’s would be easier to deal with? I think this is why the community is looking for more communication to better provide details on what they are wanting and why before it gets so far along that it is a surprise the week before the patch.

Given that Monday is a holiday here in the USA, I doubt they’ll be posting anything that day. They’ve not posted anything on Fridays. So, that leaves three days, and three announcements.

I expect one day to include new collectibles. One day that you can now sort by stat in the market (but not armor type). And one day that there is now an ascended rank to Sigils and Runes.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Puddles.6385:

Follow up question: What use is it to make a blog post that only really affects people who don’t yet play the game?

Hi Puddles,

First of all, we at ArenaNet very much appreciate the support that all players that have played the game for so long have given us. Without you guys, your love of the game and how you spread the word around you, things would clearly not be the same.

Today’s blogpost about the New Player Experience will not have as many visible effects to you specifically as it would have for a brand new player, that knows very little about the game. The new direction system should help you get a clearer and more useful top-tight UI, but also give your new characters better rewards.

As you noted, it is mainly targeted at new players, those that need it the most. We want their learning experience to be better so that they, too, can become veteran players of Guild Wars 2 one day! Learning to play a brand new game, and MMOs tend to be more on the more complex side of videogames, can be a daunting and hard task.

We want more people to be able to walk this path you walked and this is why we implemented the New Player Experience system, to create a route that new players can walk and feel rewarded along the way.

Again, thanks for your support!

With all due respect. We know you have to focus on new players because that brings in guaranteed money. We “veteran” players do not. Some, I’m sure, drop regular amounts of $$ on gem store purchases, but some of us (perhaps most) do not.

So you cannot obviously say that, “no, our primary focus is not on retainment of loyal players” because that would further alienate an already alienated player base. We would expect polite, tactful, and vague responses from PR to “assure” us that we are not neglected.

However, actions do speak louder than words, and this feature patch is sending a pretty loud message to us veterans.

I am so excited about this exciting blog post of excitingness!

You see, for years I have struggled, often crying myself to sleep at night, with my failure to teach my dog how to play Guild Wars 2.

As clever of a girl she is, she just couldn’t grasp that downed state. It was just too overwhelming. But now I see the light at the end of the tunnel! Thanks to these wonderful features coming in September, I can finally explore Tyria with my best canine friend.

In fact, I’m sure if I can convince a couple of chickens from the neighbourhood to pick up the game, we could even form a dungeon team in a couple of weeks. It’s just that easy!

…

Tsssk, as a veteran I have to say fowl play Anet. At this point, do you give a cluck about us still? Because you’re really ruffling some feathers.

Evans.6347:

I am so excited about this exciting blog post of excitingness!

You see, for years I have struggled, often crying myself to sleep at night, with my failure to teach my dog how to play Guild Wars 2.

As clever of a girl she is, she just couldn’t grasp that downed state. It was just too overwhelming. But now I see the light at the end of the tunnel! Thanks to these wonderful features coming in September, I can finally explore Tyria with my best canine friend.

In fact, I’m sure if I can convince a couple of chickens from the neighbourhood to pick up the game, we could even form a dungeon team in a couple of weeks. It’s just that easy!

…

Tsssk, as a veteran I have to say fowl play Anet. At this point, do you give a cluck about us still? Because you’re really ruffling some feathers.

Anet’s goals seem a bit scrambled, but the yoke is on us.

Labjax.2465:

Evans.6347:

I am so excited about this exciting blog post of excitingness!

You see, for years I have struggled, often crying myself to sleep at night, with my failure to teach my dog how to play Guild Wars 2.

As clever of a girl she is, she just couldn’t grasp that downed state. It was just too overwhelming. But now I see the light at the end of the tunnel! Thanks to these wonderful features coming in September, I can finally explore Tyria with my best canine friend.

In fact, I’m sure if I can convince a couple of chickens from the neighbourhood to pick up the game, we could even form a dungeon team in a couple of weeks. It’s just that easy!

…

Tsssk, as a veteran I have to say fowl play Anet. At this point, do you give a cluck about us still? Because you’re really ruffling some feathers.

Anet’s goals seem a bit scrambled, but the yoke is on us.

Eggcelent summary!