Guild Wars 2

Here’s a nice article on the feedback from The Lost Shores and the upcoming content.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/chris-whiteside-on-the-lost-shores-and-beyond/

What do you think? I’m a bit disappointed because it doesn’t answer our complaints about new gears but I’m excited for the future content. I just hope that they’ll do an event like Shadow of the Mad King for Christmas!

Yes.. it was nice. I was disturbed that it didn’t mention any of the controversy over the new gear. But, I’m hoping that’s just PR-spin and not necessarily ANET ignoring the issue.

In regards to scaling, copied over from the redundant thread:

I think they just mean the calculations for their scaling are not tweaked properly and that encounters need to scale in more interesting ways. That’s just my take on it though.

For example, there exist many complaints about the Reinforcement segment of the final Lost Shore event, and I had heard that the scaling was crazy for this part. It was indeed the slowest and most boring part of the event. When I redid the finale Event on an alt, there were less players and the whole process was cut in half. This leads me to believe that when things get to critical zerg levels, the scaling is still totally out of sorts.

More dungeons. I hate dungeons. It would have nice to acknowledge the near universal disgust at the gear grind.

It was nice, but I do think that saying there were “certain aspects of the event that could have worked better than they did” was a massive understatement.

“We’ve seen people saying that they really liked the principle of using events to unveil new content, but we need to tighten up the methods by which they are deployed.”

I think that the principle of using events is more than fine, but not one-time, missable events. I just hope that their next events are a bit more inclusive, enabling all their players to partake on their own, varied schedules rather than three one-time only events over three days. I think improving accessibility of these events will be hugely important. As ArenaNet themselves said about night-capping, no players time should be more important than anyone else.

(For the record, I played on all three nights because in the time-zone I’m in I could, but many couldn’t).

Nice to hear some news/plans. However, I’m not buying a word that comes from ANet until I see it in action. The Ascended gear fiasco was enough for me. Not to mention the epic fail that was Lost Shores.

Columba.9730:

More dungeons. I hate dungeons. It would have nice to acknowledge the near universal disgust at the gear grind.

You don’t have to run dungeons for the gear. You can run it for you know, actually see all the content

I’m looking forward for the changes in WvW as it got pretty boring lately.

Edit: What’s the “Ascended gear fiasco”? Anyone care to explain?

Nothing on extra material storage, which is probably never going to happen. I have a feeling that even if I bought every bank tab, I’d still run out of room because there’s a lot of armor/weapon skins I like….and being able to put my rare crafting mats in the collection tab would allow me to put 2 full sets of armor in my bank currently.

Adding new dungeons to the Fractal of the Mists.
I like to here that i love all 9 as is and i find them all fun and very skill base so more of this is welcomed in this event.
They may want to think about giving players who are not level 80 a set def buff ontop of stat buff. In some ways the new zone is a level free zone every one is level 80 but not having level 80 gear means your a glass caion most of the time.

Mif.3471:

Completely ignored the huge amount of feedback from Oceanic players about being unable to participate…

They have been talking about “problems”. That probably included “Lag, bugs and not being able to participate”. I’m sure that they’ll find a way to extend such events later, don’t give up yet!

Here are the bullet points to discuss.

Revamping all of our existing dungeons (Story and Explorable versions) through rebalance and overhauled encounters.

Adding new dungeons to the Fractal of the Mists.

Adding more variation to creatures, enhancing our open world scaling system, as well as evolving many events and experiences across Tyria.

Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.

Building on the Southsun Cove’s persistent content.

Adding new Guild content and Guild progression features.

Continuing to evolve PvP into an E-sport as outlined here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/structured-pvp-iceberg/

Adding brand new content to World vs. World as well as adding new reward progression.

Continuing to build upon the story and adventures of Guild Wars 2.

“Continuing to evolve PvP into an E-sport as outlined here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/structured-pvp-iceberg/ "

This is what’s wrong with the spvp content in the first place. Please Anet stop trying to force this E-sport title onto us. All it does is alienate the already dwindling population in spvp and creates boring, repetitive content.

Make pvp for fun and not for some tacked on E-sport title. If this is done right, the E-sport crowd will come to you. Not the other way around.

Yeah I was pretty ambivalent towards everything. But the attitude being portrayed now is pretty appalling.

GW1 PvP was varied and great fun in my opinion. What we have in GW2 lacks any need for real skill and has no depth. It’s basically dumbed down. The one game mode at the moment is by far the weakest they could have chosen.

Decent write up

It doesn’t say a whole lot though

Would really like to hear a lot more about the PVP side of things

PVEers have had their big update, now it should be the turn of the sPVP and tPVP players.

Ever think that they have metrics showing what people are doing in game and what they have gear wise that led to the decision of the new fractal dungeon? Also, he says that according to some kinda source (maybe metrics) that the dungeons with the gear is a huge hit. The hyperbole on forums doesn’t necessarily represent the majority. I’m sure they read your posts and complains here and there, but I am also sure like any MMO company they look at numbers and metrics quite a bit as well.

you cant yet… but there are plans for that to change. good freaking lord people this stuff takes time

also if you dont like Dungeons why is the gear manditory…. the only effect it realy has is that of the Fractals

Perseus Ithikus.5483:

GW1 PvP was varied and great fun in my opinion. What we have in GW2 lacks any need for real skill and has no depth. It’s basically dumbed down. The one game mode at the moment is by far the weakest they could have chosen.

I would love to see more things along the lines of GvG from GW1 or even the diff types they had in the Hall of Heroes for sPvP it would do a lot more for being competitive than king of the hill type stuff ever does.

Come on you introduce new gear you introduce the crafting of it at the same time. Surely it’s not rocket science.

Did anyone miss this on the WvW portion?

“new reward progression”

That’s right, new reward PROGRESSION in WvW. More tread mill please.

Also changing up PvP, I bet with MORE Progression. Can’t get enough tread mill in this non-tediouis, no tread mill game.

Will they ever face the fact no matter how much they try, how much pressure is put on them to do so, they will NEVER take WoW gear tread mill enthuasiasts away from WoW?

Solquidsnake.4386:

“Continuing to evolve PvP into an E-sport as outlined here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/structured-pvp-iceberg/ "

This is what’s wrong with the spvp content in the first place. Please Anet stop trying to force this E-sport title onto us. All it does is alienate the already dwindling population in spvp and creates boring, repetitive content.

Make pvp for fun and not for some tacked on E-sport title. If this is done right, the E-sport crowd will come to you. Not the other way around.

This is something I see them kidding themselves on. Games like LoL will be where the e-sport is, simply because that is all they do. Not 10 others things in game and SPvP. I just don’t see this game ever being considered some type of professional PvP stop. So so many games have said they wanted, only a very few have ever been.

Nice article, looking forward to the dungeon overhaul, because right now they are not enjoyable and it feels frustrating having to skip them.

Rest sounds good as well, can’t wait for future content! Thanks Arena Net!

Gw1 did that not have a strong PvP e-sports scene for a long time?

JumblyJebus.5903:

man you are all so dumb xD you guys WANT to complain.

lol I know right, the article was vague but people are already trying to get mad over it. This thread made me smile

People love the fractals, I know I do but please don’t take that as an acceptance of what the problems are.

Fractals are going to be the be all and end all of endgame content, adding another stat increase is helping that a long nicely, but from where I’m sitting it’s to the detriment of the rest of the game. Pumping effort in to creating more is all well and good but it’s going to be practically impossible to pull the min-maxers out of there now, let alone the gates to participation we are going to continue to get, encouraged by your mechanics. Late comers aren’t going to have a hope in hell of getting in a PUG.

I feel really sad about whats happening now. I wish you luck on improving the rest of the game but I find it hard to believe you’ll be able to get people away from the fractals now that you’ve implemented it.

Rest of the game is great, love it, such a shame a fundamental change happened to the detriment of that (mostly) great content.

This post really isn’t to get under the nerves of the devs and really isn’t intended on starting a flame war I’m just a concerned player trying to find out a bit more information or understand exactly what they mean.

The post about the future upcoming changes could be a bit more specific or am I just missing something? Specifically:

“Adding more variation to creatures, enhancing our open world scaling system, as well as evolving many events and experiences across Tyria.”

“Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.”

did he mean fixing drops? fixing the gear gap to make it horizontal once more or making the rest of the dungeons drop the same gear or making a version of ascended without infusion available via open world?

I know it’s the holidays and people want to eat thanksgiving dinner with their families(in America I mean) so I’m not demanding an immediate explanation because that would be pointless and rude.

What i would request is better explanation on what they mean by scaling. and what they mean by improving the overall sense of player progression sometime next week

See you when you get back. Happy Turkey Day.

This is why i love a-net and guild wars. THANK YOU!! i am very greatfull for the stuff you all do. my daily peace of rest lays in tyria!

From the article:

After the holiday we’ll be doing a number of community Q&As and live community conferences where you can ask us questions and get the down-low on how we are evolving the world of Tyria.

Hopefully we’ll get our questions answered and more during these events.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Two things from me:
- We will talk in more detail about the things Chris outlined when we get closer to releasing them.
- If this thread becomes another one where people bicker back and forth about Ascended gear, I will close it down. Please continue discussion about Ascended gear in the existing threads on that topic and do not derail every thread that pops up.

Thank you.

It’s a closed thread so they couldn’t complain there.

Yes it’s a PR statement so hence you will see a positive spin. What more would you expect? Honestly guys that won’t be the place to address things. You do not expect anything but positive spins during PR.

I am looking forward to the Q and A with customers as that is where we can hope to get something more than just a positive spin. I am hopeful but at the same time doubtful to hear what we hope to hear.

Natural.7013:

Ever think that they have metrics showing what people are doing in game and what they have gear wise that led to the decision of the new fractal dungeon? Also, he says that according to some kinda source (maybe metrics) that the dungeons with the gear is a huge hit. The hyperbole on forums doesn’t necessarily represent the majority. I’m sure they read your posts and complains here and there, but I am also sure like any MMO company they look at numbers and metrics quite a bit as well.

Anet often makes cryptic references to their data mining and other techniques to dervive what they think the players want.

However, this sort of information is very tricky to interpret. It can tell you what the players are doing, but not why. It doesn’t tell you if they are enjoying a particular activity or merely doing it because its viewed as a means to some other end.

I mean, a 100% of players that sell stuff use the trading post. Doesn’t mean they like the way the TP works, but its the only option. Obviously, that a bit extreme of an example, but I think it illustrates one of the flaws of merely using metrics mined from player actions to determine if players actually enjoy certain aspects of the game.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Two things from me:
- We will talk in more detail about the things Chris outlined when we get closer to releasing them.

Are you sure that’s a wise thing to do? You made that mistake with the lost shores patch and it was like a punch in the face to many people. No wonder they are angry. You should give people plenty of time to digest new material before its released. A more open approach would go along way.[/quote]

If I may suggest, how about a solo mode for the storyline dungeon ? Often I play during odd hours due to work and often it’s impossible to find anyone to do the dungeons with. I love the storyline and I’m a lore junkie and would love it if I can experience the storyline.

Could you please provide proof that the vast majority of players are unhappy. Something that shows a total playerbase taken into account, not just those on the forums. There is no real way to know without information like this what percentage of a games population feels at any given time. While the forums can be viewed and used as a tool the “mega thread” that was closed and expressed a overwhelming dis-satisfaction with this content change was what actual percentage of the total playerbase of the game. I suppose what my point is without this information any claims that a vast majority or minority of players feel a certain way is simply just opinion. Please keep that in consideration when posting.

This is a typical expectation that they don’t want to spoil anything. I’m looking forward to the Q&A sessions. It is something I’ve personally asked for.

If they are revamping all of the dungeons and adding more… awesome. I’m all about that. But I will continue to NOT play this game until there is a proper LFG/dungeon finder in place.

I’m very glad to see a public statement like this from ArenaNet. It has all the standard press-release phrasing but it does acknowledge that there were issues and it’s pretty clear the last phase of the Lost Shores event were what was being referenced.

It may be a cliche but acknowledging the issues is the first step toward fixing them. Those of us who have been playing MMOs for a while can probably think of other developers in the past who would have been saying something like the Lost Shores lag party was nothing but an unbridled success.

ArenaNet has shown they know how to fix their mistakes. Hearing that they will be taking a hard look at all the things that went wrong last Sunday makes me feel much better about the future of GW2.

Twomix.5384:

If I may suggest, how about a solo mode for the storyline dungeon ? Often I play during odd hours due to work and often it’s impossible to find anyone to do the dungeons with. I love the storyline and I’m a lore junkie and would love it if I can experience the storyline.

I like this suggestion! It doesn’t even have to give any rewards (well, except the standard mob XP and drops). I would like to just see the dungeons for the lore but my friends on other servers and guesting is not implemented (Hint*hint* Any word on it ArenaNet?)

Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.

This one scares me, ANET.

Please make Ascended gear as easy to obtain as exotic. Thank you!

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Two things from me:
- We will talk in more detail about the things Chris outlined when we get closer to releasing them.
- If this thread becomes another one where people bicker back and forth about Ascended gear, I will close it down. Please continue discussion about Ascended gear in the existing threads on that topic and do not derail every thread that pops up.

Thank you.

I welcome a lot of what was talked about and I am able to wait for a lot of positive changes to the game. There are a lot of things that I may look forward to, depending on the communication from Anet. I personally want to see the dinosaurs come back! Where did they go?! Hopefully, that is one of those things about variations to creatures.

The issue many of us have is with the addition of the ascended gear and FotM, we feel it has broken the core value of the game. Where is the ability to play this game casually and experience the content at our own leisure? This is what brought me personally to GW2. I was able to play almost everything in GW1 because there was no gating of content or a long road to acquire better gear/specific gear.

We are not trying to derail any threads (at least I am not) but we would like something to assuage the fears of where this game is going and if we want to get off the ride now.

All I have to say is.

Give us advance notice of these meeting and make sure it is good for all time zones. Since I now work 2nd shift EST & I want to be in on this

No matter what ANet does, there will someone on the forums who will not like it.

They should have added a general satisfaction question to the poll instead of focusing on the Lost Shores thing.

“tighten up the methods by which they are deployed”

my favorite line

Hint*hint* to Doc Overload: You already can dungeon with people on other servers.

Ah yes mob mentality, I suppose time will tell if the predictions of doom and gloom are correct here as well. What I do know is that there are players that are unhappy, I can base this off of the threads I see posted stating as such. However speculation and drawing conclusions from a relatively small sample size can and often does give skewed results. Will the unhappy players have a impact on the future of the game? Most assuredly so, but without the metrics to proof against a flawed population sample, it is still simply just opinion. Yes I know the predictive nature of forums and I know that in the past things worked a certain way, but as I am sure you realize things are not always as they can appear without all of the information to make a informed decision. Either way, please do not take my statements or disagreement with you as a personal attack I may even agree with you to a certain extent I just do not like claims without proof being offered. Have a great turkey day

Chris Whiteside’s post also said:
“After the holiday we’ll be doing a number of community Q&As and live community conferences where you can ask us questions and get the down-low on how we are evolving the world of Tyria.”

These live community conferences will give people an opportunity to bring up anything not already responded to or clarified. Hopefully.

Evil Geek.6904:

Fractals are going to be the be all and end all of endgame content, adding another stat increase is helping that a long nicely, but from where I’m sitting it’s to the detriment of the rest of the game.

Yeah, I think there is an argument to rid all the dungeons in the game and build heavily into open world. Face it, it’s open world is the games PvE strength and it’s uniqueness. By putting high-end in the dungeon you make the open world more and more a ghost town. That is the big argument against LFG system, people know that makes it easier to get in dungeons, aka open world becomes the old wild west, tumble weeds and all.

Make the open world even more awesome sauce, get everyone moving around out there in all the contents. Make all areas needed or wanted for max level players.

I also say invest in 100’s of new cosmetic outfits, make that the part people chase for, not stats. A little game known as City of Heroes is still legend over their get’ups. Since you can’t mess with stats, be the end all in loot look variation, not the leader in the least amount of looks. You got to have something.

I hope this isn’t considered bickering. I label it as forum talk and feedback.

Jeremy Winston.2165:

Yes.. it was nice. I was disturbed that it didn’t mention any of the controversy over the new gear. But, I’m hoping that’s just PR-spin and not necessarily ANET ignoring the issue.

I doubt the controversy over the new gear extends much past these forums. Most people simply don’t care what happens here.

After the holiday we’ll be doing a number of community Q&As and live community conferences where you can ask us questions and get the down-low on how we are evolving the world of Tyria

I am very much looking forward to this.

Here’s a general rundown of what we are working towards over the upcoming months:

Revamping all of our existing dungeons (Story and Explorable versions) through rebalance and overhauled encounters.

Meh. Okay.

Adding new dungeons to the Fractal of the Mists.

Meh.

Adding more variation to creatures, enhancing our open world scaling system, as well as evolving many events and experiences across Tyria.

Yay!

Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.

Yay!

Building on the Southsun Cove’s persistent content.

Ehhhh. Kay.

Adding new Guild content and Guild progression features.

Hooray! \o/

Continuing to evolve PvP into an E-sport

Meh.

Adding brand new content to World vs. World as well as adding new reward progression.

Yay!

Continuing to build upon the story and adventures of Guild Wars 2.

Hooray! \o/

Keiran.1896:

Here’s a nice article on the feedback from The Lost Shores and the upcoming content.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/chris-whiteside-on-the-lost-shores-and-beyond/

What do you think? I’m a bit disappointed because it doesn’t answer our complaints about new gears but I’m excited for the future content. I just hope that they’ll do an event like Shadow of the Mad King for Christmas!

Lol, its amazing how they ignore the massive complain about the gear treadmill….

About what they are planning to do…
Ok…. but it wont solve many class bug, the huge bad work on skill update, the huge problem of ascended gear grind, the limitation of the build creation… the locking down of many aspect of a class management.. etc

Maybe they should care about the CORE gameplay instead of adding new maps and basicly useless stuff who wont make the game more interesting if the core gameplay totaly fail.

Horrorscope.7632:

Evil Geek.6904:

Fractals are going to be the be all and end all of endgame content, adding another stat increase is helping that a long nicely, but from where I’m sitting it’s to the detriment of the rest of the game.

Yeah, I think there is an argument to rid all the dungeons in the game and build heavily into open world. Face it, it’s open world is the games PvE strength and it’s uniqueness. By putting high-end in the dungeon you make the open world more and more a ghost town. That is the big argument against LFG system, people know that makes it easier to get in dungeons, aka open world becomes the old wild west, tumble weeds and all.

Make the open world even more awesome sauce, get everyone moving around out there in all the contents. Make all areas needed or wanted for max level players.

I also say invest in 100’s of new cosmetic outfits, make that the part people chase for, not stats. A little game known as City of Heroes is still legend over their get’ups. Since you can’t mess with stats, be the end all in loot look variation, not the leader in the least amount of looks. You got to have something.

I hope this isn’t considered bickering. I label it as forum talk and feedback.

ah now that would be beautiful. Get people out of the tiny boxes and into the fantastic world they created. Make parts of the world truly nasty where if you get caught with your pants down you are done for. Parts outside of the law where free for all pvp can happen…but make them a places you go to test yourself not because you have to e.g flaming jumping puzzles.

There are times you get a glimpse of what this game could have been but people trained to think mmo = dungeon and that’s it.

Faceless.7549:

However, ArenaNet’s failure to acknowledge, address and discuss hotly debated issues is insulting. “We’re very excited about the new content, and from the reactions we have seen, so are many of you”? Have you read the forums? Have you checked the map chat during the infamous reinforcement phases? “Having said that, we’re also aware that there were certain aspects of the event that could have worked better than they did”? Yes, that’s nice, but what issues are you taking into account?

It’s not even PR drivel, PR is casting a positive light on negative issues, but this is actively avoiding them, which is far worse.

I can only explain this article as a reaction to server demands without compairing it with the actual feedback. Sure, some people love the new dungeon. Other people have expressed that they feel forced to give up doing anything else but grinding that dungeon, which they may even passionately hate in some cases, because if they do not, they feel they will find it impossible to find a group without having the correct level access that others want them to have.

People have also stated they are only doing this dungeon because of the added treadmill gear. To those who ask if you hate dungeons, why do you care about the gear.. That is because the gear is absolutely not ‘Just for the dungeon’. It has been stated in many threads now that this gear has a significant stat boost that has nothing to do with the Agony condition. This means if a player who does nothing but WvW wishes to have the best stats on their gear, they must go grind dungeons, until they get around to giving us other means to get Ascended gear. Something we have no ETA on, I might add.

We were also told we would have such features as.. WvW not being ruined by free realm transfers. We were told cities would have minigames simular to keg toss. We were told we would be able to guest on others servers without transfering to them. Some of these features may be less important than others, but considering the waiting game on things that have already been talked about long prior to release? Assuming that Ascended gear for non dungeon grinders is just around the corner in light of all that is a bit much to ask of most people’s optimism.

Making something popular for all the wrong reasons does not automatically mean that people are enjoying content, something this article seems to fail to address at all.

As for the aspects not related to the dungeon, the extremely vague nature of refering to what did go wrong gives the whole thing a very evasive feel. Talking up the event like everyone loved it and not even addressing the fact that the majority of the event functioned so poorly people were actually not able to enjoy it, let alone have a grand time with it is just plain disappointing.

I didn’t see a single person talking about how great this event was while we all stood around unable to cast spells, being downed by attacks we could not even witness on the first day of the event. I would be pretty suspitious of anyone that did say they enjoyed that at all. How did I enjoy the event? Well.. let’s just say.. this attatched picture is my favorite screenshot from the event. The time where my character layed on the ground in downed mode animation for five minutes, while my spellbar reflected my non-downed state spells.

So please.. do not tell us we enjoyed the event you gave us when we clearly did not. It was broken. It was frustraiting. I was never more glad that my friends did not have the time to take advantage of those free trials. I would have been embaressed to show them the game at it’s absolute worst. To try to PR spin this around like it never happened is really distasteful.

A better business move would have been to at least be a little humble about the whole experience. Admiting the event didn’t really work out like was planned would have at least given us a sense of striving to do better, because we all sure hope this wasn’t ANet’s vision for this. But to read this, you’d think it all went to plan and we just loved every buggy second of it. Presented in this tone, it displays no intention to learn from the mistakes that were made, when the company is outright pretending that customers are happy with what transpired.