Guild Wars 2

I’m questioning the attitude the ArenaNet staff is showing off. They accept flaws for the sake of change. They improve aspects without making sure it wont hinder other aspects. We can see that everywhere in the game. They want to do the Living Story, so the game feels alive and changing but they discount dungeons and PvP for doing so. They implement the Megaservers and streamline the worldbosses in order to do so. They implement the wardrobe and kill off town clothes doing so.
They are not adding first-person view or rework the AI because it would take too much time and wouldn’t progress the game as much as new half-baked content would.
All changes look like the staff is too small. Maybe they can’t do something about that but I question their attitude to progress at any price. If their staff is that small, they should first of all make sure that the quality isn’t suffering. Right now it is.

Old OP:

I notice ever so often that the ArenaNet staff uses flawed arguments.
One example are the NPE changes. They said the game losing new players becasue they don’t get it, they say they lost more than 10000 players due to this. They said that the NPE changes got developed based on a survey filled by those players.

And I’m just sitting here asking myself why they didn’t even bother to ask the 3 million players they claim to have.

Another example is the first-person camera. I would understand, eventhough I wouldn’t agree with them, if they would say that a first-person camera is just a minor tweak and therefore pretty far down on the to-do list.
Instead they say that they don’t want to implement the first-person camera because they want the player to be able to see their characters.
If that’s so important for ANet, why is stacking still possible?
Is that (see attachment) the intended way of keeping track of your character?

I have no problem with them making decisions I can’t agree with as long as they are honest why they’ve made them. And I don’t have the feeling that they are sometimes.

How does one “un-sub” or formally “quit” playing GW2 in such a way that ANet could survey such a demographic?

I mean, I “quit” for over 6 months after the Ascended Tier announcement…yet here I am. I even gave my opinion, freely, no survey required, right here on the forums…got infracted for it, but there it was for the world to see, well til it was deleted.

I suppose it wasn’t as pretty a metric as a survey result of yes or no questions…

The first person camera thing has always annoyed me….

…but now that I’m heavily into sPvP it REALLY annoys me.

Every time one of the ever-so-plentiful longbow rangers uses his 600 distance knockback, i get sent into a wall/fence/obstacle, and my camera goes straight into my butt and I can’t see anything but my character taking up the whole screen at point blank.

Really frustrating since Rangers have stealth at their disposal, and you need to retarget the Ranger mid battle……. Having the camera up your butt makes that a little challenge. You end up having to repeatedly tab through foes, since clicking on them is not immediately an option.

Kuldebar.1897:

How does one “un-sub” or formally “quit” playing GW2 in such a way that ANet could survey such a demographic?

You request a refund.

Healix.5819:

Kuldebar.1897:

How does one “un-sub” or formally “quit” playing GW2 in such a way that ANet could survey such a demographic?

You request a refund.

Pretty sure that ship has sailed for most players of the game and equally sure that it is not an applicable alternative to most players. Perversely, if you want to restructure your whole playing experience based on “10 thousand” players who quit somewhere before level 15 and ignore the supposed millions who stuck around until 80…well I question the sanity of the development team

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I notice ever so often that the ArenaNet staff uses flawed arguments.
One example are the NPE changes. They said the game losing new players becasue they don’t get it, they say they lost more than 10000 players due to this. They said that the NPE changes got developed based on a survey filled by those players.

And I’m just sitting here asking myself why they didn’t even bother to ask the 3 million players they claim to have.

Another example is the first-person camera. I would understand, eventhough I wouldn’t agree with them, if they would say that a first-person camera is just a minor tweak and therefore pretty far down on the to-do list.
Instead they say that they don’t want to implement the first-person camera because they want the player to be able to see their characters.
If that’s so important for ANet, why is stacking still possible?
Is that (see attachment) the intended way of keeping track of your character?

I have no problem with them making decisions I can’t agree with as long as they are honest why they’ve made them. And I don’t have the feeling that they are sometimes.

There are some flawed arguments here. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t actually claim to have 3 million active players…and it probably doesn’t. That would be a huge amount of retention from sales.

They didn’t say that they lost people just because people don’t get it. The included three reasons in the lack of early game retention. Part of it was understanding what was going on but part of it was pacing and rewards as well. It’s a flawed argument when you misquote something to try to make a point about flawed arguments.

As for asking people, you don’t ask 3 million people a question, you watch what 3 million people do (assuming there were 3 million people to ask). People don’t even always think about or realize what they do. The same small percentage of people who post on forums are the same small percentage who would answer relatively accurately. Anet knows what we want from the forums. A lot of people don’t even know what they want. A lot of people don’t think deeply about their gaming experience.

I agree with you completely on the first person camera. However, the person answering the question about it wasn’t Anet. He was a single Anet employee answering a question in an interview he wasn’t prepared to give, from a completely different department.

So yes, I’d say there’s a lot of flawed arguments here. The OP for example, is filled with them.

Vayne.8563:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I notice ever so often that the ArenaNet staff uses flawed arguments.
One example are the NPE changes. They said the game losing new players becasue they don’t get it, they say they lost more than 10000 players due to this. They said that the NPE changes got developed based on a survey filled by those players.

And I’m just sitting here asking myself why they didn’t even bother to ask the 3 million players they claim to have.

Another example is the first-person camera. I would understand, eventhough I wouldn’t agree with them, if they would say that a first-person camera is just a minor tweak and therefore pretty far down on the to-do list.
Instead they say that they don’t want to implement the first-person camera because they want the player to be able to see their characters.
If that’s so important for ANet, why is stacking still possible?
Is that (see attachment) the intended way of keeping track of your character?

I have no problem with them making decisions I can’t agree with as long as they are honest why they’ve made them. And I don’t have the feeling that they are sometimes.

There are some flawed arguments here. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t actually claim to have 3 million active players…and it probably doesn’t. That would be a huge amount of retention from sales.

They didn’t say that they lost people just because people don’t get it. The included three reasons in the lack of early game retention. Part of it was understanding what was going on but part of it was pacing and rewards as well. It’s a flawed argument when you misquote something to try to make a point about flawed arguments.

As for asking people, you don’t ask 3 million people a question, you watch what 3 million people do (assuming there were 3 million people to ask). People don’t even always think about or realize what they do. The same small percentage of people who post on forums are the same small percentage who would answer relatively accurately. Anet knows what we want from the forums. A lot of people don’t even know what they want. A lot of people don’t think deeply about their gaming experience.

I agree with you completely on the first person camera. However, the person answering the question about it wasn’t Anet. He was a single Anet employee answering a question in an interview he wasn’t prepared to give, from a completely different department.

So yes, I’d say there’s a lot of flawed arguments here. The OP for example, is filled with them.

They said they have 3 million players. I don’t have the link but they said it on an interview with another magazine.

They said they lost 10000 players in 3 or 4 months.

They said that the “flaws” they “fixed” were identified based on a survey that got filled by those 10000 players.

I don’t have the links for all that, I don’t save those every time someone at ANet says something, sorry for that. Other than this, I can remember all of it because it did upset me and it still does.

The first-person camera is yet another example. The employee could’ve just said that he personally has no clue why it isn’t in the game because that’s not in his range of tasks. Yet he claimed otherwise. The GuildMag interview is another example of this. They just shirk from almost all questions.

Off the record: If they have to reward players to play through even the first ten levels, then the problems is way bigger than just missing rewards.

Kuldebar.1897:

Healix.5819:

Kuldebar.1897:

How does one “un-sub” or formally “quit” playing GW2 in such a way that ANet could survey such a demographic?

You request a refund.

Pretty sure that ship has sailed for most players of the game and equally sure that it is not an applicable alternative to most players. Perversely, if you want to restructure your whole playing experience based on “10 thousand” players who quit somewhere before level 15 and ignore the supposed millions who stuck around until 80…well I question the sanity of the development team

Welcome to Guild Wars 2!

I didn’t mind the NPE changes, still don’t. It’s a better experience for new players and will likely have better retention – people who argue against it seem either lazy, disingenuous or crazy – or any combination of the three.

But the development team does seem to spend quite some time “fixing what ain’t broke” so to speak. Or their ideas don’t go through enough ringers and internal testing and what is provided is no different than what was there earlier except, well, it’s something different with the same results. It seems a bit crazy and wasteful but I won’t bother questioning their business practices.

Cuddy.6247:

Welcome to Guild Wars 2!

I didn’t mind the NPE changes, still don’t. It’s a better experience for new players and will likely have better retention – people who argue against it seem either lazy, disingenuous or crazy – or any combination of the three.

But the development team does seem to spend quite some time “fixing what ain’t broke” so to speak. Or their ideas don’t go through enough ringers and internal testing and what is provided is no different than what was there earlier except, well, it’s something different with the same results. It seems a bit crazy and wasteful but I won’t bother questioning their business practices.

I see you like to ride the fence, not rock the boat and not choose sides, how very daring and ultimately equivocating of you!

Curiously, you “notice” that “fixing what ain’t broke” is something ANet has been prone to do,;yet you discount such concerns and even go as far as pronouncing players who took issue with such changes as being “either lazy, disingenuous or crazy”…

You seem to have reached in the span of two paragraphs a conclusion that flies in the face of consistency and logic! Congratulations!

Another argument I really hate is the “we couldn’t do better” argument they used to justify townclothes being transformed into tonics or outfits.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I notice ever so often that the ArenaNet staff uses flawed arguments.
One example are the NPE changes. They said the game losing new players becasue they don’t get it, they say they lost more than 10000 players due to this. They said that the NPE changes got developed based on a survey filled by those players.

And I’m just sitting here asking myself why they didn’t even bother to ask the 3 million players they claim to have.

This isn’t a flawed argument. They obviously didn’t ask the players they have because those players are playing the game. The NPE is about player retention, i.e. retaining players who would otherwise quit part way into the leveling process. Asking people who they have already retained makes little sense for retaining the people who they didn’t retain.

That said, you should keep in mind that in the case of a company like Anet, where they invariably have more information about the game than we do, a poor argument doesn’t necessarily mean that they are wrong.

It of course can mean that they are wrong, but they can just as easily be limited in the amount of information they can share with us (making it difficult to correctly convey the reasoning behind certain decisions) or the reasons can be too complex to sum up into something that doesn’t look like a college essay.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Vayne.8563:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I notice ever so often that the ArenaNet staff uses flawed arguments.
One example are the NPE changes. They said the game losing new players becasue they don’t get it, they say they lost more than 10000 players due to this. They said that the NPE changes got developed based on a survey filled by those players.

And I’m just sitting here asking myself why they didn’t even bother to ask the 3 million players they claim to have.

Another example is the first-person camera. I would understand, eventhough I wouldn’t agree with them, if they would say that a first-person camera is just a minor tweak and therefore pretty far down on the to-do list.
Instead they say that they don’t want to implement the first-person camera because they want the player to be able to see their characters.
If that’s so important for ANet, why is stacking still possible?
Is that (see attachment) the intended way of keeping track of your character?

I have no problem with them making decisions I can’t agree with as long as they are honest why they’ve made them. And I don’t have the feeling that they are sometimes.

There are some flawed arguments here. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t actually claim to have 3 million active players…and it probably doesn’t. That would be a huge amount of retention from sales.

They didn’t say that they lost people just because people don’t get it. The included three reasons in the lack of early game retention. Part of it was understanding what was going on but part of it was pacing and rewards as well. It’s a flawed argument when you misquote something to try to make a point about flawed arguments.

As for asking people, you don’t ask 3 million people a question, you watch what 3 million people do (assuming there were 3 million people to ask). People don’t even always think about or realize what they do. The same small percentage of people who post on forums are the same small percentage who would answer relatively accurately. Anet knows what we want from the forums. A lot of people don’t even know what they want. A lot of people don’t think deeply about their gaming experience.

I agree with you completely on the first person camera. However, the person answering the question about it wasn’t Anet. He was a single Anet employee answering a question in an interview he wasn’t prepared to give, from a completely different department.

So yes, I’d say there’s a lot of flawed arguments here. The OP for example, is filled with them.

They said they have 3 million players. I don’t have the link but they said it on an interview with another magazine.

They said they lost 10000 players in 3 or 4 months.

They said that the “flaws” they “fixed” were identified based on a survey that got filled by those 10000 players.

I don’t have the links for all that, I don’t save those every time someone at ANet says something, sorry for that. Other than this, I can remember all of it because it did upset me and it still does.

The first-person camera is yet another example. The employee could’ve just said that he personally has no clue why it isn’t in the game because that’s not in his range of tasks. Yet he claimed otherwise. The GuildMag interview is another example of this. They just shirk from almost all questions.

Off the record: If they have to reward players to play through even the first ten levels, then the problems is way bigger than just missing rewards.

First of all…as far as I know they didn’t say the stuff you’re saying. They didn’t actually have a survey that people filled out. They had people actually testing the game and testing variations on it. That’s a big difference from a survey. I’m pretty sure I read as much about the game as most people and I never saw this quote.

How old is the magazine quote you’re referring to. If it’s very old it has nothing to do with how many players are playing when they made these choices.

And yes, the employee could have done anything, but judging the company answer on one thing one employee said out of his area of expertise is just a bit misleading. That interview they gave was in fact one they were completely unqualified to give. I’m pretty sure Anet didn’t get the questions before hand and they expected to be talking about something else completely. So they tried. It’s human. Sue him.

The stuff you don’t have links for, I suspect is old info no longer applicable, or completely misunderstood/misremembered.

If you’re going to make a post about flawed arguments, you need to factcheck first, or the post falls apart.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

One example are the NPE changes. They said the game losing new players becasue they don’t get it, they say they lost more than 10000 players due to this. They said that the NPE changes got developed based on a survey filled by those players.

I’m fine with this argument, but I think the bigger problem is that there are ways to approach being more helpful to new players without forcing other players to play on beginner mode who don’t need it. Sure, sell the bicycle with training wheels if you want to make it beginner-friendly, but don’t make them impossible to remove and force everyone to use them, even if they don’t need them.

Labjax.2465:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I notice ever so often that the ArenaNet staff uses flawed arguments.
One example are the NPE changes. They said the game losing new players becasue they don’t get it, they say they lost more than 10000 players due to this. They said that the NPE changes got developed based on a survey filled by those players.

And I’m just sitting here asking myself why they didn’t even bother to ask the 3 million players they claim to have.

This isn’t a flawed argument. They obviously didn’t ask the players they have because those players are playing the game. The NPE is about player retention, i.e. retaining players who would otherwise quit part way into the leveling process. Asking people who they have already retained makes little sense for retaining the people who they didn’t retain.

That said, you should keep in mind that in the case of a company like Anet, where they invariably have more information about the game than we do, a poor argument doesn’t necessarily mean that they are wrong.

It of course can mean that they are wrong, but they can just as easily be limited in the amount of information they can share with us (making it difficult to correctly convey the reasoning behind certain decisions) or the reasons can be too complex to sum up into something that doesn’t look like a college essay.

This argument is not flawed, that’s right. But it’s a pretextual argument, used to justify the NPE. 10000 players who quit may know why they quit but 3 million players may know better solutions than dancing in front of cows. Not to mention that those survey results are much likely flawed because the quitting players aren’t interested in GW2, therefore they don’t care what those changes are.

And I’m not denying that ANet has all the data they need to have but I doubt that they used all the data they have to come up with the best possible design.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Another argument I really hate is the “we couldn’t do better” argument they used to justify townclothes being transformed into tonics or outfits.

They probably can’t do better.

That is, without ripping the whole system apart and starting over from the conception point. I can . . . almost see why it could have been impossible for them to handle Town Clothes in any other way if they wanted to add the Wardrobe. It all depends on how the game saw Town Clothing when they went to switch it over.

But consider the following:

- Classes are restricted to “Heavy/Medium/Light” armor so they are easier to identify on the battlefield. If you see someone charging your way with scalemail or platemail on, it’s likely they’re a guardian or warrior (probably warrior, and you should dodge that Hundred Blades now). In times of culling issues, now there is a simplified model which is put in place which is stylized into those three appearances for easy reference.

- Town Clothes break that rule subtly since anyone can wear them until they enter combat. I forget if you could use them in WvW or sPvP, but I doubt it. Basically, anyone in Town Clothing could be any class.

- Town Clothing was also one of the few systems which was severely under-utilized except through the Gem Store. It was, to be blunt, terrible.

Hence, the simplest way of dealing with it? Just remove it, and leave in a tonic for people who want to use the basic kind and add some way of costuming yourself otherwise.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Another argument I really hate is the “we couldn’t do better” argument they used to justify townclothes being transformed into tonics or outfits.

They probably can’t do better.

That is, without ripping the whole system apart and starting over from the conception point. I can . . . almost see why it could have been impossible for them to handle Town Clothes in any other way if they wanted to add the Wardrobe. It all depends on how the game saw Town Clothing when they went to switch it over.

But consider the following:

- Classes are restricted to “Heavy/Medium/Light” armor so they are easier to identify on the battlefield. If you see someone charging your way with scalemail or platemail on, it’s likely they’re a guardian or warrior (probably warrior, and you should dodge that Hundred Blades now). In times of culling issues, now there is a simplified model which is put in place which is stylized into those three appearances for easy reference.

- Town Clothes break that rule subtly since anyone can wear them until they enter combat. I forget if you could use them in WvW or sPvP, but I doubt it. Basically, anyone in Town Clothing could be any class.

- Town Clothing was also one of the few systems which was severely under-utilized except through the Gem Store. It was, to be blunt, terrible.

Hence, the simplest way of dealing with it? Just remove it, and leave in a tonic for people who want to use the basic kind and add some way of costuming yourself otherwise.

So you want to tell me they can’t create armor models for the stuff they already had implemented as town clothes?
Do you want to tell me that they can’t implement those things because you couldn’t identify the armorwheights, while they add things like outfits or the lawless skins?

Or do you want to tell me that they hadn’t the resources to pull that off in time?
Because that’s what happened. And instead of saying “we couldn’t do better” they could’ve said that they’re going back to those things in the future when they have a little bit more time.

It really can’t be that hard to create 40 new armorpieces which use the skin of preexisting townclothes.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Another argument I really hate is the “we couldn’t do better” argument they used to justify townclothes being transformed into tonics or outfits.

They probably can’t do better.

That is, without ripping the whole system apart and starting over from the conception point. I can . . . almost see why it could have been impossible for them to handle Town Clothes in any other way if they wanted to add the Wardrobe. It all depends on how the game saw Town Clothing when they went to switch it over.

But consider the following:

- Classes are restricted to “Heavy/Medium/Light” armor so they are easier to identify on the battlefield. If you see someone charging your way with scalemail or platemail on, it’s likely they’re a guardian or warrior (probably warrior, and you should dodge that Hundred Blades now). In times of culling issues, now there is a simplified model which is put in place which is stylized into those three appearances for easy reference.

- Town Clothes break that rule subtly since anyone can wear them until they enter combat. I forget if you could use them in WvW or sPvP, but I doubt it. Basically, anyone in Town Clothing could be any class.

- Town Clothing was also one of the few systems which was severely under-utilized except through the Gem Store. It was, to be blunt, terrible.

Hence, the simplest way of dealing with it? Just remove it, and leave in a tonic for people who want to use the basic kind and add some way of costuming yourself otherwise.

So you want to tell me they can’t create armor models for the stuff they already had implemented as town clothes?
Do you want to tell me that they can’t implement those things because you couldn’t identify the armorwheights, while they add things like outfits or the lawless skins?

Or do you want to tell me that they hadn’t the resources to pull that off in time?
Because that’s what happened. And instead of saying “we couldn’t do better” they could’ve said that they’re going back to those things in the future when they have a little bit more time.

It really can’t be that hard to create 10 new armorpieces which use the skin of preexisting townclothes.

When a game developer says, “we can’t do X,” it often (if not usually) means, "we can’t do X with the current budget (time and money) assigned to that aspect of the product.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

So you want to tell me they can’t create armor models for the stuff they already had implemented as town clothes?
Do you want to tell me that they can’t implement those things because you couldn’t identify the armorweights, while they add things like outfits or the lawless skins?

No, I didn’t tell you they couldn’t do that first thing, only that they didn’t want to. I can/did conceive of a solid reason they can’t, and lead off with it – “it depends on how the wardrobe would see the Town Clothes”.

Or do you want to tell me that they hadn’t the resources to pull that off in time?
Because that’s what happened. And instead of saying “we couldn’t do better” they could’ve said that they’re going back to those things in the future when they have a little bit more time.

The game is full of things they “could have done better if they had more time”. I honestly would rather see those things ripped out rather than just left with a promise of “we’ll get to it someday”.

It really can’t be that hard to create 10 new armorpieces which use the skin of preexisting townclothes.

No? Even if you’re right on that score, I pointed out reasons not to do that thing.

Ashen.2907:

When a game developer says, “we can’t do X,” it often (if not usually) means, "we can’t do X with the current budget (time and money) assigned to that aspect of the product.

Or:

“The engine and database freaks out when we tried to do it so we decided not to do that thing until such time as we can figure out why and how to get around it. Since we don’t have time to revise the engine and/or database system and rebuild the game a la Starbound . . . we’re not doing it.”

Or in shorthand:

“Why Rangers can’t have pets smarter than a fifth grader.”

GW2 Myth-busters Episode 1

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, I didn’t tell you they couldn’t do that first thing, only that they didn’t want to. I can/did conceive of a solid reason they can’t, and lead off with it – “it depends on how the wardrobe would see the Town Clothes”.

The game is full of things they “could have done better if they had more time”. I honestly would rather see those things ripped out rather than just left with a promise of “we’ll get to it someday”.

No? Even if you’re right on that score, I pointed out reasons not to do that thing.

They do have not the resources. Otherwise they would’ve found a better solution than dancing in front of cows. That however doesn’t take away the fact that they destroyed something working. And while you say you want it removed rather than improved later on, I don’t buy into destroying something you can’t fix immediately.
Town clothes did work, they were fine. They hadn’t great use but they weren’t broken. They just didn’t fit into the wardrobe, so they had to go.
And your point of recognizing each class based on their armor gets undermined by ANet itself by releasing outfits.

In the end, I’m not against their arguments but against their attitude. They accept flaws for the sake of change. They improve aspects without making sure it wont hinder other aspects. We can see that everywhere in the game. They want to do the Living Story, so the game feels alive and changing but they discount dungeons and PvP for doing so. They implement the Megaservers and streamline the worldbosses in order to do so. They implement the wardrobe and kill off town clothes doing so.
All changes look like the staff is too small. Maybe they can’t do something about that but I question their attitude to progress at any price. If their staff is that small, they should first of all make sure that the quality isn’t suffering. Right now it is.

Edit: Used this post as new OP.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

That however doesn’t take away the fact that they destroyed something working. And while you say you want it removed rather than improved later on, I don’t buy into destroying something you can’t fix immediately.
.

^
And that is the underlying point which I find important and relevant.

If you are going to take a working, functional system or element out of the game, some assurance should be made that it will be replaced with something as equally functional, or just don’t do it! Don’t be in a rush push it to the ’live" server.

Rushing such things out hurts the game and appears to have a particularly bad track record when it comes to community acceptance.

• Ascended Gear…has never been finished or rounded out, it was pushed out two months after game release.

• Fractals: this dungeon treadmill was pushed out and then later “rethought”, resulting in a Fractal Reset which hit some players rather hard.

• Traits Acquisition Changes in April 2014: What many players were hoping to be a new line of Elite Traits that could be hunted in various challenges throughout the game world became a complete hijacking of the Core Traits into a messy, out of sync bizarre system we currently have.

• NPE: Talk about using a sledge hammer to kill a fly! A total and clunky revision of the entire level progression experience of the game, the one area which from DAY ONE was vaunted as the game’s strong suit by players and reviewers alike.

Unless individual players each bought multiple copies of GW2, there has been at the very least 3 million players at one time or another taking into account sales from the China release. Whether or not there were ever 3 million active players concurrently is another question.

It would seem there would also have to be some sort of exit survey for players who had left the game, otherwise they would have no information on why they left the game in order to craft a NPE to better retain players who had left. Unless they are employing psychics…which could be entirely possible I suppose. It is also likely they gleaned some information from the forums from exit posts (which some forum posters dislike for some reason). I would also guess they had play testers who they asked questions of and who may have filled out surveys. It’s just easier to quantify results by using some form of standardized feedback.

There is no evidence of a quantifiable amount of players that were asked, or who left because of an unpleasant early experience, that was released by Anet. Just that player retention was not where they wanted it to be. An assumption would be that new player retention was lower than veteran player attrition, which would cause a shrinking player base. To be fair, it is easier to rework current systems with available resources than to add swathes of new content for veteran players and that it is more profitable to attract new players than to retain veteran players… although I am fairly certain they would like to do both. Or not, who knows.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

They do have not the resources. Otherwise they would’ve found a better solution than dancing in front of cows. That however doesn’t take away the fact that they destroyed something working. And while you say you want it removed rather than improved later on, I don’t buy into destroying something you can’t fix immediately.

I’m an engineer by learning, and in spirit. When I see something which doesn’t work and I can’t fix it, it comes out and isn’t used until I can devote time to it. If my chair develops a shaking noise when I sit down in it, I get another chair until I can figure out what happened – I don’t keep using it until it breaks on me.

I agree that you don’t destroy something . . . but neither do you leave it in, especially when we’re talking about stuff which literally has no effect at all. Remove it, leave a note “we’re pulling this feature until such time as we can do it justice” and budget time later down the line for it.

Or better yet, don’t do something halfway and leave it in due to time constraints. Dummy it out.

Town clothes did work, they were fine. They hadn’t great use but they weren’t broken. They just didn’t fit into the wardrobe, so they had to go.

That’s what I was getting at. Twice.

And your point of reqognizing each class based on their armor gets undermined by ANet itself by releasing outfits.

It comes from a comment I recall hearing based on the idea that in Team Fortress 2 you can instantly recognize a person’s class based on their appearance (well, except for the Spy but he’s a special case). In GW1, if you devoted time, you could do the same for classes based on recognizing what armor skin they were wearing, since each class and armor set had its own look.

So the idea is, with a glance you can tell who is what. Or at the least . . . guess easily.

Why Outfits don’t conform to the same standard as Toys (as in not in sPvP/WvW) I’ll never grasp. I have assumed thus far it’s another classic oversight.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Town clothes did work, they were fine. They hadn’t great use but they weren’t broken. They just didn’t fit into the wardrobe, so they had to go.

That’s what I was getting at. Twice.

And that’s wrong. Removing something that worked just because it deosn’t fit your needs is the easy but messy way. A way I can’t agree with. Town clothes were fine. But their role would’ve to be altered to work with the new system. Something they didn’t want to do.

And your point of reqognizing each class based on their armor gets undermined by ANet itself by releasing outfits.

It comes from a comment I recall hearing based on the idea that in Team Fortress 2 you can instantly recognize a person’s class based on their appearance (well, except for the Spy but he’s a special case). In GW1, if you devoted time, you could do the same for classes based on recognizing what armor skin they were wearing, since each class and armor set had its own look.

So the idea is, with a glance you can tell who is what. Or at the least . . . guess easily.

Why Outfits don’t conform to the same standard as Toys (as in not in sPvP/WvW) I’ll never grasp. I have assumed thus far it’s another classic oversight.

I would rather see armor wheights removed than what you’re suggesting. First of all, I would love to have some heavy looking armor for my ranger. Not to mention that you’re still able to tell which class you face by simply clicking at them or by paying attention to their weapon combo.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Town clothes did work, they were fine. They hadn’t great use but they weren’t broken. They just didn’t fit into the wardrobe, so they had to go.

That’s what I was getting at. Twice.

And that’s wrong. Removing something that worked just because it deosn’t fit your needs is the easy but messy way. A way I can’t agree with. Town clothes were fine. But their role would’ve to be altered to work with the new system. Something they didn’t want to do.

Or could not do within the time frame they had to work with, which is what my opinion of this is.

Mostly because it fits with everything else which could be brought into question. And the allusions in Beta to how they were still working on things, the admission the Zhaitan Fight was rushed . . . signs that the developers aren’t giving themselves enough time . . .

Or, well, are using it inefficiently if you want to be charitable with words.

I would rather see armor wheights removed than what you’re suggesting. First of all, I would love to have some heavy looking armor for my ranger. Not to mention that you’re still able to tell which class you face by simply clicking at them or by paying attention to their weapon combo.

That’s not removing armor weights, that’s giving them different skins. I’d not really mind at all if they expanded the selection.

Also, if you can please tell me how to figure out what six people running across a WvW Borderland field are by clicking them, before they run me over? That’d be super I prefer seeing the low-detail models and going “okay, medium with daggers, that’s a thief, heavy with greatsword . . . probably warrior, light with staff and dropping purple walls . . .”

. . . I do scouting more than actual fighting, some nights. Being able to quickly identify enemies without having to target is more useful to me.

Kuldebar.1897:

Cuddy.6247:

Welcome to Guild Wars 2!

I didn’t mind the NPE changes, still don’t. It’s a better experience for new players and will likely have better retention – people who argue against it seem either lazy, disingenuous or crazy – or any combination of the three.

But the development team does seem to spend quite some time “fixing what ain’t broke” so to speak. Or their ideas don’t go through enough ringers and internal testing and what is provided is no different than what was there earlier except, well, it’s something different with the same results. It seems a bit crazy and wasteful but I won’t bother questioning their business practices.

I see you like to ride the fence, not rock the boat and not choose sides, how very daring and ultimately equivocating of you!

Curiously, you “notice” that “fixing what ain’t broke” is something ANet has been prone to do,;yet you discount such concerns and even go as far as pronouncing players who took issue with such changes as being “either lazy, disingenuous or crazy”…

You seem to have reached in the span of two paragraphs a conclusion that flies in the face of consistency and logic! Congratulations!

Indifference and negation are not the same thing. Congratulations, you made a fool of yourself!

I don’t have any respect for Anet anymore for a few reasons:

Like when I deleted my infinite gathering tool because there was no way to transfer it to another character of mine (after spending a lot of real life money to afford one). It was soulbound in those days and I knew that even if something changed I would still probably have to KEEP the character in order to turn in my infinite gathering tool. I didn’t know IF anet was gonna change it, let alone WHEN, and I didn’t want to wait another 2 years to find out (AND the possibility of them being account bound was not even on the radar) – and now, of course we have them. I sent in a ticket about it a while back and they basically told me they don’t refund deleted items. Well they do with other players. They probably just hate me. Double standards I guess.

Lesson learnt: Don’t spend any more real life money supporting them knowing they won’t return your hard earned gemstore items (and I’ve spent at least $800 on them, so they lost a valuable customer)

Then came the multiple threads over the months of the homophobic abuse I suffered in the game, with countless suggestions and pleas to get something done about it. Nothing has been done, and on my 3rd attempt, even sent in a ticket about it. They pointed me to the forums (surprise, surprise), where I will be ignored once more.

Lesson learnt: Anet just want to point you to the forums where you’ll be ignored yet again, so don’t even bother posting your problems.

I have zero respect for them.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

And that’s wrong. Removing something that worked just because it deosn’t fit your needs is the easy but messy way. A way I can’t agree with. Town clothes were fine. But their role would’ve to be altered to work with the new system. Something they didn’t want to do.

Or could not do within the time frame they had to work with, which is what my opinion of this is.

Mostly because it fits with everything else which could be brought into question. And the allusions in Beta to how they were still working on things, the admission the Zhaitan Fight was rushed . . . signs that the developers aren’t giving themselves enough time . . .

Or, well, are using it inefficiently if you want to be charitable with words.

Which brings us back to their attitude. They start the next project before they’ve finished their former project.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Which brings us back to their attitude. They start the next project before they’ve finished their former project.

I wouldn’t care about that, I’d care about them just underestimating the time to get things done, or not planning for snags along the way. If, at work, someone tells me a job should take me only three hours, I plan to use the whole shift to handle interruptions (bathroom, lunch, requests to help out, holding the register for someone to use the restroom or take lunch . . . needing to hunt down tools . . . ) rather than assume “three hours” is a legit timeframe.

Kuldebar.1897:

Cuddy.6247:

Indifference and negation are not the same thing. Congratulations, you made a fool of yourself!

There ya go, Cuddly, you are improving, you might just come close to having an opinion yet!

Mm, stop baiting him and ignore him if you got a problem with him. Belittling him is not gentlemanly of you

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, I didn’t tell you they couldn’t do that first thing, only that they didn’t want to. I can/did conceive of a solid reason they can’t, and lead off with it – “it depends on how the wardrobe would see the Town Clothes”.

The game is full of things they “could have done better if they had more time”. I honestly would rather see those things ripped out rather than just left with a promise of “we’ll get to it someday”.

No? Even if you’re right on that score, I pointed out reasons not to do that thing.

They do have not the resources. Otherwise they would’ve found a better solution than dancing in front of cows. That however doesn’t take away the fact that they destroyed something working. And while you say you want it removed rather than improved later on, I don’t buy into destroying something you can’t fix immediately.
Town clothes did work, they were fine. They hadn’t great use but they weren’t broken. They just didn’t fit into the wardrobe, so they had to go.
And your point of recognizing each class based on their armor gets undermined by ANet itself by releasing outfits.

Town clothes didn’t work, in fact. They worked for YOU. I’d never ever EVER buy a piece of towns clothing because I would never ever EVER buy a piece of clothing I could pretty much only use in a city. I don’t play games to stand around in the city.

So RPers may have liked them them but I can tell you if people were buying them in any kind of quantity they’d have kept them. Therefore they weren’t working.

If you consider offering a product most people wouldn’t touch working, there’s definitely a problem.

Again, why if it was successful would Anet have changed it. They changed it because people wanted clothes they could fight in.

I believe that a public test server will solve perhaps up yo 70% of the current thread outcry in the forums. Or w/e there is a discussion about GW2.
Untill then let’s go back ingame.

Kuldebar.1897:

How does one “un-sub” or formally “quit” playing GW2 in such a way that ANet could survey such a demographic?

I mean, I “quit” for over 6 months after the Ascended Tier announcement…yet here I am. I even gave my opinion, freely, no survey required, right here on the forums…got infracted for it, but there it was for the world to see, well til it was deleted.

I suppose it wasn’t as pretty a metric as a survey result of yes or no questions…

It’s true they don’t have that system of reporting. When I dropped the game during the series of blunders that were put forth with kit refinement, DR and the 9 month drop drought we had, I posted to their support team page so that they could forward it to the devs as to why I was leaving. I did so because there was no formal “why are you leaving” unsub request for information on their game or their website. I came back for feature patch to see what had changed but I gotta say as an Engineer in PVE they have a long long way to go baby and before I spend a permanent amount of time they’ve gotta lot to fix. So I come here waiting watching the patch notes and announcements to see if things will get better. If no I’ve already moved on to a more permanent status in other titles so that I can at least have fun with developers that care that I login and play.

Despite how negative that sounded I’m hopeful that they are on the right track and will first before anything else rebalance PVE back to where it was for Engineers because just like Hunters in WoW, These devs have nerfed Engineers into the ground in PVE and it’s time for a fix. Combat balance in PVE is first step imo, the second is fixing their trinity so that condition damage builds, CC and support actually matter, and the third fix in the series imo would be the rewards revamp I’ve been waiting for for 8 months now particularly in the open world.

There are some minor things I’d love to see but those three are priority to get this game back on track imo.

As I understand this thread, turning the entire thing into a “TL;DR” single sentence:

“What happened to ‘when it’s ready’?”

Vayne.8563:

Town clothes didn’t work, in fact. They worked for YOU. I’d never ever EVER buy a piece of towns clothing because I would never ever EVER buy a piece of clothing I could pretty much only use in a city. I don’t play games to stand around in the city.

So RPers may have liked them them but I can tell you if people were buying them in any kind of quantity they’d have kept them. Therefore they weren’t working.

If you consider offering a product most people wouldn’t touch working, there’s definitely a problem.

Again, why if it was successful would Anet have changed it. They changed it because people wanted clothes they could fight in.

The fact that some people wont buy a product does not mean that the product does not work. The vast majority of people will not but GW2, that does not mean that ANet should spend resources to remove the game from the market because it does not work.

Some people want clothes they can fight in. Sure. A responsible business decision would be to add an option to the product line for those who want it. Taking something that has already been paid for, and which is currently being happily used, away from existing customers so that you can sell something else to someone else is not a responsible or ethical business decision.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Another argument I really hate is the “we couldn’t do better” argument they used to justify townclothes being transformed into tonics or outfits.

They probably can’t do better.

I fail to see how adding Town Clothing into the new costume mechanic would be impossible. Even if they just were extremely lazy about it, and turned them into one piece outfits (obviously it would be far, far better to be able to mix and match, but this gets in the way of the “quantity over quality” approach Anet is starting to like more and more).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

- Town Clothes break that rule subtly since anyone can wear them until they enter combat. I forget if you could use them in WvW or sPvP, but I doubt it. Basically, anyone in Town Clothing could be any class.

You’ve never fought a team of five minimum height Asura all in Mad King outfits see. This wasn’t that good of an argument before, and it is clearly not the reason for the changes, as the changes were moving in the opposite direction. Town Clothing also removed your skills, any sort of tiny advantage here was coming at a heavy price.

- Town Clothing was also one of the few systems which was severely under-utilized except through the Gem Store. It was, to be blunt, terrible.

Anet are the ones that restricted Town Clothing mainly to the gemshop. Anet are also the ones that created, but then withheld very popular Town Clothing such as swimware and school uniforms. This was just a case of Anet shooting themselves in the foot, then treating that gunshot wound by amputating the leg above the knee.

It is a free game after all so i’m not going to be demanding and entitled as the rest of you but i will say that i think their resources should go to PvP and end game dungeons more than anything else.

tigirius.9014:

Kuldebar.1897:

How does one “un-sub” or formally “quit” playing GW2 in such a way that ANet could survey such a demographic?

I mean, I “quit” for over 6 months after the Ascended Tier announcement…yet here I am. I even gave my opinion, freely, no survey required, right here on the forums…got infracted for it, but there it was for the world to see, well til it was deleted.

I suppose it wasn’t as pretty a metric as a survey result of yes or no questions…

It’s true they don’t have that system of reporting. When I dropped the game during the series of blunders that were put forth with kit refinement, DR and the 9 month drop drought we had, I posted to their support team page so that they could forward it to the devs as to why I was leaving. I did so because there was no formal “why are you leaving” unsub request for information on their game or their website. I came back for feature patch to see what had changed but I gotta say as an Engineer in PVE they have a long long way to go baby and before I spend a permanent amount of time they’ve gotta lot to fix. So I come here waiting watching the patch notes and announcements to see if things will get better. If no I’ve already moved on to a more permanent status in other titles so that I can at least have fun with developers that care that I login and play.

Despite how negative that sounded I’m hopeful that they are on the right track and will first before anything else rebalance PVE back to where it was for Engineers because just like Hunters in WoW, These devs have nerfed Engineers into the ground in PVE and it’s time for a fix. Combat balance in PVE is first step imo, the second is fixing their trinity so that condition damage builds, CC and support actually matter, and the third fix in the series imo would be the rewards revamp I’ve been waiting for for 8 months now particularly in the open world.

There are some minor things I’d love to see but those three are priority to get this game back on track imo.

What exactly is wrong with engie in PVE that makes them so weak? As far I can see they have one of the best dps, a lot of utility, and have received many buffs in the last patch and will receive more in the future ones.

So first step? how exctaly? what exactly is wrong?

Conditions really are a problem and a difficult one to fix. But they are working on it (Gaile actually told us that today too).

Support is very relevant in pve, especially offensive support like boons. CC is however an issue against bosses because of the defiant system (this too Anet once tried to get discussions on how to fix).

I don’t understand reward rework a lot especially in open world since well most of it is easy with little effort so it really shouldn’t very rewarding unless you are a new player. world bosses are rewarding, that’s why so many do them.

Kuldebar.1897:

How does one “un-sub” or formally “quit” playing GW2 in such a way that ANet could survey such a demographic?

I mean, I “quit” for over 6 months after the Ascended Tier announcement…yet here I am. I even gave my opinion, freely, no survey required, right here on the forums…got infracted for it, but there it was for the world to see, well til it was deleted.

I suppose it wasn’t as pretty a metric as a survey result of yes or no questions…

You’ve already answered your own question. Anything negative is infracted and deleted. For example, Remember all the reports and videos of hackers in game? never happened. Remember all the threads about gold seller spam, yeah someone would have posted if that was actually happening.

Even if they did actually do a demograph itd end up the same way as the consensus of skyhammer. “ok team people are reporting that players are afking during skyhammer because they dislike it, but our reports show that 100% of players playing skyhammer are playing gw2 thus nothing is wrong and skyhammer is a flawless map. good job map creator team”.

( if you haven’t figured it out, read everything above in a sarcastic tone)

If you want a truthful answer think about why they are switching to megaservers when players had 2 guest passes that reset daily.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Another argument I really hate is the “we couldn’t do better” argument they used to justify townclothes being transformed into tonics or outfits.

They probably can’t do better.

That is, without ripping the whole system apart and starting over from the conception point. I can . . . almost see why it could have been impossible for them to handle Town Clothes in any other way if they wanted to add the Wardrobe. It all depends on how the game saw Town Clothing when they went to switch it over.

But consider the following:

- Classes are restricted to “Heavy/Medium/Light” armor so they are easier to identify on the battlefield. If you see someone charging your way with scalemail or platemail on, it’s likely they’re a guardian or warrior (probably warrior, and you should dodge that Hundred Blades now). In times of culling issues, now there is a simplified model which is put in place which is stylized into those three appearances for easy reference.

- Town Clothes break that rule subtly since anyone can wear them until they enter combat. I forget if you could use them in WvW or sPvP, but I doubt it. Basically, anyone in Town Clothing could be any class.

- Town Clothing was also one of the few systems which was severely under-utilized except through the Gem Store. It was, to be blunt, terrible.

Hence, the simplest way of dealing with it? Just remove it, and leave in a tonic for people who want to use the basic kind and add some way of costuming yourself otherwise.

whatever town clothes were considered by the game isnt really relevant. your appearance in the game boils down to mapping UI to a designed model. Designing and correcting the model is the hard part.
It would have required little effort to turn all townclothes into armor.

The reasoning of identify your enemy by clothes also doesnt fly, since you can use outfits and tonics on any class.

the biggest problem would be that of organization, and monetization. But there were better, more simple to understand solutions for both, that would probably have satisfied more people.

I remember their explanations for why they did what they did what they did for the wardrobe/town clothes, and they were not self consistent and logical.

ontages.6542:

It is a free game after all so i’m not going to be demanding and entitled as the rest of you but i will say that i think their resources should go to PvP and end game dungeons more than anything else.

There have been some non conquest maps found through datamining and one dev slipped about a spvp release not too long ago (just after the spvp tournament). So that’s something to watch out for.