Guild Wars 2

Hello,

So let me first start out by saying Gw2 is probably the first major casual MMO I have seen. From a business standpoint, it is very successful. The game is also very casual and caters to that crowd. Now many will jump up to arms over why this isn’t true, but consider the following. This doesn’t mean the game is bad, nor good. It just means it caters to a certain audience, which is smart. More revenue, wider audience, etc.

-There have been many time gate activities. What this means is that things are regulated by time, as if the developers want to slow people down. Example: Daily/monthly system. Diminished rewards/things being reset such as dungeons, fractals, etc. Guild merrits and the guild mission system. This is by far the biggest flag for a casual game, they actually force their players to slow down

-Little to no hardcore content. Content that takes time to do. Not grinding, but planning tactics and skill. Fractals and somewhat WvW.

-Anything that is “hard” or takes skill has been nerfed or ignored. Take for example, world bosses. In beta they were hard. People actuallly died. Then people complained about them being too hard and they were nerfed into the ground. Now I can kill a Champion of an ELDER DRAGON while sleeping on my keyboard. There needs to be 100% scalling to make things a challenge for max level. If the endgame is supposed to be the open world, make it so we can’t just one shot this stuff. I mean watching these boss fights in beta, espcially SB, they looked hard and fun. When SB would drop those shadow pillars, people would actually take a lot of damage and die. Now with zergs and AoE caps, you can just stand in it and either take no damage, or very little damage. Then the portals spawn and you just one shot any mobs that steps out.

-Living Story. I appreciate what they are doing. Its a cool concept. However, it is not for hardcore players at all. These things are up for 2 weeks – 4 weeks at a time, and any player who plays for more than 3 hours a day can complete the entire thing. It is not like it is hard or anything, it is just time consuming. I sent 3 hours walking around push #2 for samples and auto attacking enemies with entire zergs.

-In terms of new content, a majority of it has been cash shop items. The best release of content we have gotten are fractals and southsun (which considering how quickly they were released, I expect they were supposed to be in the final product). New patch? Awesome! New weapon skins? I can’t wait! Ohh look, its from an RNG chest. The following weeks I see post after post about people spending 30$ + for this stuff and not getting it. Then you get things you get in game (most recent was molten things like jetpack and what not) and have an absurd drop rate. I had a guildy run it 2-3 times a day for the entire month the dungeon was up and never got it while it cost 150g + on the Trading Post.

Now then, I think Guild Wars 2 is headed in a pretty money grab direction. Now I understand, from a business standpoint, why this is smart. However, you’re kind of killing your loyal fans. I’ve got guildies quitting the game everyday, some are even going back to gw1. We keep getting living story updates which gives us enough things to do for about 3-4 days while the main problems of the game are left untouched. PvP is in a terrible situation (the fact that most competitive teams have quit and overall competitiveness in the PvP area is servery lacking). Overall Guild support is still bad and Guilds continue to feel like being in an LFG channel (nothing involves more than 5 people besides missions, which we can only once a week less we get regular DE rewards). Guild Halls, GvG, Dungeons or instances that require more than 5 people, etc. I just lately feel like this game is still trying its best to cater to the casual crowd while doing nothing to regain the hardcore crowd and competitive PvP crowd that it lost within the first 3 months. If you anet is afraid to stop the living story for fear of more people leaving, that is fine, but least you can do is start putting more resources to address the lack of hardcore things to do. If this game had more support for the gamer who likes to play every day and longer for 1-2 hours, and even if the game had more support for PvPers , it would be the perfect game. Instead anet seems to have just focused purely on the casual crowd.

That is just my stance on it. I know that this game may take a huge hit when all these announced MMOs come out in the next year/2 years. I don’t want the game to die, but the direction it is heading it seems like it will be dead, then become active a couple of days in a month for the living story and then on the holidays.

Ill finish it off by saying I do not think Gw2 sucks. It has its problems. I just feel like we’re heading in the wrong direction and catering to the casual crowd as much as they have is bad for the game. I got my 60$ worth of it, I like the free content with no sub fee, and I love the game. It was a huge success as an RPG and from a business standpoint. I just feel like it is failing in the MMO aspect.

You forget that the temples in Orr and in fact Orr itself has recently been made harder. And all you hear are the farmers complaining they can’t farm it anymore. Farmers aren’t necessarily casual players. They’re players with a particular play style. They don’t care about or particularly want challenge. They want faceroll content that they can farm. The new changes kitten them off.

It’s not casuals who are necessarily the ones insisting content be easier. There are many different demographics that contribute to this.

Vayne.8563:

You forget that the temples in Orr and in fact Orr itself has recently been made harder. And all you hear are the farmers complaining they can’t farm it anymore. Farmers aren’t necessarily casual players. They’re players with a particular play style. They don’t care about or particularly want challenge. They want faceroll content that they can farm. The new changes kitten them off.

It’s not casuals who are necessarily the ones insisting content be easier. There are many different demographics that contribute to this.

Now don’t get me wrong, those are fun. But there is little to nothing to show for completing them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ran those, and I’ve maybe gotten 3 exotics from the temples (since release). The most expensive one was 5g? Give players who actually do these for the servers titles at the very least. Any items that drop from them only can easily be bought on the TP for less than 10g, and they have very low drop rates (for me at least).

The temples are great, though they should find a way to better reward players for doing them.

When I do them right now, my biggest issue is finding players that want to listen. None of the “hardcore” PvErs want to do them because they feel it is pointless.

It is just the temples are in Orr which as a pretty boring look, and after doing them countless times they get really boring. I’d love to find events of the same difficulty in the shiverpeaks, or perhaps the maguuma jungle, maybe event kryta, etc.

Deified.7520:

Vayne.8563:

You forget that the temples in Orr and in fact Orr itself has recently been made harder. And all you hear are the farmers complaining they can’t farm it anymore. Farmers aren’t necessarily casual players. They’re players with a particular play style. They don’t care about or particularly want challenge. They want faceroll content that they can farm. The new changes kitten them off.

It’s not casuals who are necessarily the ones insisting content be easier. There are many different demographics that contribute to this.

Now don’t get me wrong, those are fun. But there is little to nothing to show for completing them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ran those, and I’ve maybe gotten 3 exotics from the temples (since release). The most expensive one was 5g? Give players who actually do these for the servers titles at the very least. Any items that drop from them only can easily be bought on the TP for less than 10g, and they have very low drop rates (for me at least).

The temples are great, though they should find a way to better reward players for doing them.

When I do them right now, my biggest issue is finding players that want to listen. None of the “hardcore” PvErs want to do them because they feel it is pointless.

It is just the temples are in Orr which as a pretty boring look, and after doing them countless times they get really boring. I’d love to find events of the same difficulty in the shiverpeaks, or perhaps the maguuma jungle, maybe event kryta, etc.

So what you’re in sense saying is that with better rewards you’d be happier doing that content more. In which case hard content is reward dependent and not challenge dependent.

I agree this game is more geared toward casual players, though. I just think hard core stuff is a large waste of time and money, at least while the game needs this much work. Not even people do that content,. and not enough people want it.

Look at how many people run AC since they made it more challenging.

Vayne.8563:

Deified.7520:

Vayne.8563:

You forget that the temples in Orr and in fact Orr itself has recently been made harder. And all you hear are the farmers complaining they can’t farm it anymore. Farmers aren’t necessarily casual players. They’re players with a particular play style. They don’t care about or particularly want challenge. They want faceroll content that they can farm. The new changes kitten them off.

It’s not casuals who are necessarily the ones insisting content be easier. There are many different demographics that contribute to this.

Now don’t get me wrong, those are fun. But there is little to nothing to show for completing them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ran those, and I’ve maybe gotten 3 exotics from the temples (since release). The most expensive one was 5g? Give players who actually do these for the servers titles at the very least. Any items that drop from them only can easily be bought on the TP for less than 10g, and they have very low drop rates (for me at least).

The temples are great, though they should find a way to better reward players for doing them.

When I do them right now, my biggest issue is finding players that want to listen. None of the “hardcore” PvErs want to do them because they feel it is pointless.

It is just the temples are in Orr which as a pretty boring look, and after doing them countless times they get really boring. I’d love to find events of the same difficulty in the shiverpeaks, or perhaps the maguuma jungle, maybe event kryta, etc.

So what you’re in sense saying is that with better rewards you’d be happier doing that content more. In which case hard content is reward dependent and not challenge dependent.

I agree this game is more geared toward casual players, though. I just think hard core stuff is a large waste of time and money, at least while the game needs this much work. Not even people do that content,. and not enough people want it.

Look at how many people run AC since they made it more challenging.

Well hard content is both geared towards reward and skill. No body would do Naxx in WoW if you could get the same amount of gear by doing a lower Tier dungeon. Not only could you get gear that looked awesome, but it also gave you a large amount of bragging rights. Plus people wanted to do them. Doing Ogre wars, Temple of Grenth, and Claw of jormag all rewards you pretty much the same. A rare with a chance of more rares or an exotic. Content can be hard, but if there is not a suitable reward for it, no one will want to work at it. This is what is happening with the temples. My solution would probably be giving world event reward chest with a 100% chance for an exotic. Once per reset if you do every single temple, not onyl do you get the rewards you get right now, but also 100% chance for an exotic via a chest. Then you could do the same for dragons, then world bosses that aren’t dragons/temples (flame shamman, zho’qafar catacombs, etc). Then you could do the same for mini dungeons. One once per account per reset. Even though I hate content based around resets, its the best way to salvage this situation. Not only that, but make the way you start events more creative. I hate this whole cooldown thing and waiting for chains to start. Make them short cooldowns, but have special ways to start it. There was one event in Malchors leap where you had to do /kneel to start it, another where you had to throw items into a lava pit. It was awesome. Why there aren’t more events that are started in a creative manner baffles me.

So to answer your question tl;dr, yes hardcore content is decided by rewards and skill. If content takes a lot of skill but has little to no rewards, then no one will want to do it. If content has great rewards, but little to no skill it is considered casual and will ruin those rewards in the economy.

Anet, in my opinion, won’t offer better gear for significantly harder challenges. The amount of work it takes to program something like that, compared to the percentage of the population that will actually see it is not high enough.

Ghost Crawler said only 5% of the WoW population ever sees the hardest content. I can’t see Anet make that kind of investment in time and resources. They’re not nearly as large a company as Blizzard, and don’t have the same resources.

For my friends and I, the “Hard” content in GW2 is too hard. Even the new southsun cove story line has us fighting Karka, which we simply hate. We like content that 2 or 3 of us can actually have fun playing, without dieing all the time. If we die all the time, it just makes us not want to play. If we don’t play , we don’t spend money.

Diva.4706:

For my friends and I, the “Hard” content in GW2 is too hard. Even the new southsun cove story line has us fighting Karka, which we simply hate. We like content that 2 or 3 of us can actually have fun playing, without dieing all the time. If we die all the time, it just makes us not want to play. If we don’t play , we don’t spend money.

Three of you together should generally be able to survive on Southsun. Just make sure you run away from the big Karka and target the little ones. And when your’e fighting stuff like the Reef drakes, stop attacking when you get confusion on you. You’ll enjoy the zone a lot more.

Anet has had much experience with hardcore players. Not that gw1 was made for those players but hard content got nerfed and nerfed because people were asking for it. hardcore crowd will always be smaller than the casual or “normal” players.
Same for the harder to get items, casual is more money. And I dont think its a bad thing, HC players are among the most annoying people online.

Thanks Vayne for the advice

People will complain about any change, then they’ll adapt and a few weeks later the situation is back to normal. I welcome making the raid content in game more difficult when many players are present. It doesnt have to be impossible but the current state of most of the bonus events is just hilariously lame. Orr temples might be ok now or too hard, I couldnt tell (only done Lyssa and Dwayna recently, Dwayna seemed unchanged and Lyssa was with very few players so nicely difficult anyway).

But Shadow Behemoth or The Maw? They die within two minutes of the pre concluding, a real newbie wouldnt even have time to run there because they dont have all the waypoints or know the way. These events, although in low level zones are pure high level farm content right now.

Vayne.8563:

You forget that the temples in Orr and in fact Orr itself has recently been made harder. And all you hear are the farmers complaining they can’t farm it anymore. Farmers aren’t necessarily casual players. They’re players with a particular play style. They don’t care about or particularly want challenge. They want faceroll content that they can farm. The new changes kitten them off.

It’s not casuals who are necessarily the ones insisting content be easier. There are many different demographics that contribute to this.

Farmers are just as much players as anyone else. We bought the game like everyone else. Now that that’s said….The people who farm events aren’t the same calibor as the type of farmer I am.

I farm mats so that I can craft or sell the mats so I can actually make some money, but with DR and the problems that it imposes it makes it impossible to farm even events not because they made them harder but because after only a few kills suddenly the event enemies put us into DR without any way of knowing how long it will last, how to get out of it, and in some cases it’s account wide.

I can see why now you are so against threads about loot, makes sense to me now, bigotry is not pretty.

As far as OP, it’s not casual man. It’s the most casual you’ve played I’m sure, but it’s far far far from casual and by not being so, by now delivering what they told us open world would be post launch, the game hasn’t become casual either. Living story doesn’t cutit. They need to put into the game the permanent DE’s and metas monthly like we were told they’d do before they changed direction completely in Nov 2012. Between that and adding the activities we were expecting in our home zone, and in cities across Tyria complete with non-store cosmetic and pet rewards would MAKE this game casual, it hasn’t reached that stage yet.

Not to mention the threat of an agony filled open world experience ( until they say otherwise ) for new future content.

I wrote a thread asking about new cosmetics. There’s only one new set since launch, apparently that one can achieve in game without spending a dime (keeping in mind loot issues many of us still have) and that’s guild events items. That says alot! That means they are churning out shop only cosmetics. That’s also not honest in my eyes considering other games who are F2P allow for the acquisition of the currency needed for these items easily. There is no DR and loot manipulation in these other titles, you do something easy and directly and bam you get your currency, you save your currency long enough and bam you get your item, and these other games have boxes too mind you they aren’t stupid they do the whole gambling thing and the items in the boxes are separate from the ones in the game but, there are fewer of them in boxes and they aren’t necessary for cosmetics for armor/weapons. The look of the character can totally be gained in these other titles without paying money. That’s not the case for GW2 I’m afraid.

So I guess I’m agreeing with part of your assessment there OP.

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

You forget that the temples in Orr and in fact Orr itself has recently been made harder. And all you hear are the farmers complaining they can’t farm it anymore. Farmers aren’t necessarily casual players. They’re players with a particular play style. They don’t care about or particularly want challenge. They want faceroll content that they can farm. The new changes kitten them off.

It’s not casuals who are necessarily the ones insisting content be easier. There are many different demographics that contribute to this.

Farmers are just as much players as anyone else. We bought the game like everyone else. Now that that’s said….The people who farm events aren’t the same calibor as the type of farmer I am.

I farm mats so that I can craft or sell the mats so I can actually make some money, but with DR and the problems that it imposes it makes it impossible to farm even events not because they made them harder but because after only a few kills suddenly the event enemies put us into DR without any way of knowing how long it will last, how to get out of it, and in some cases it’s account wide.

I can see why now you are so against threads about loot, makes sense to me now, misanthropy is not pretty.

SNIP

I’m not using the term farmers for people who just gather stuff. I’m talking about people who find the most profitable thing to do in the game and just do that over and over and over again,. because that is the entire game to them.

While that may be fine and dandy because they bought the game too, the truth is, Anet has always had a love/hate relationship with farmers. They’ve always added things to stop speed clearing for example.

On one hand, yeah it’s great, they own the game they can do what they want…on the other hand, if you remember what Orr was like until recently, none of those events could really be enjoyed because of people farming them constantly. That’s all they did, over and over.

So you follow this game, you get to Orr, and all you see are walls of players taking stuff down so fast you can’t even tag it. You have to learn how to do these events so that you can get some credit. Is this the best use of the game? Is this great for new players getting to Orr, where Orr was simply a walk in the park because there were so many people there? Where is the challenge or drama?

So Anet makes Orr harder, because it is supposed to be the hardest content in the game. It’s supposed to be Zhaitan’s undead domain. And as soon as Anet makes it what it was supposed to be (and wasn’t), who starts complaining? The farmers. I can’t have my fast gold! I can’t have my easy run! I can’t make as much money an hour as I used to.

But Anet didn’t put Orr there just for you to make money. It had a purpose within the design of the game that was trivialized by the farmers. So yeah, I’m glad they made Orr harder and I hope that it remains hard. Not because I don’t like farmers, but because that’s what Orr was always supposed to be and that’s how I’d like to experience it. And like it or not, I think that’s how Anet wants people to experience it too.