Guild Wars 2

The ideas are good, but it’s the execution that remains to be seen. This has always been ArenaNet’s main issue.

I’m really curious to see how are they going to make people play in the open world. Unless the daily achievements are very specific (“Do X events in map Y” or “Do X events in region Z!”), players are just going to find the most effective place to do a given task, and flock there leaving the rest of the world empty. For example, if there’s an achievement for “Do x dynamic events!”, people will find the single map with the highest concentration of events and farm it once a day, instead of spreading through the entire world. This kind of thing would hardly benefit the game as a whole.

I’m also not exactly happy with the “Guardian Gear” and similar boxes. We don’t know what they are yet; I am strongly hoping, though, that they are not something we open to get random pieces of equipment useable for a given profession. The game already has waaaaay too much RNG as it is, for ArenaNet to introduce an achievement tokens lottery in the game.

Wobbles.6408:

How does the Achievement system work. Does this count for daily achievements? I mean do u get tokens for doing the dailies cause if we don’t, at some point we are going to run out of achievements lol to get them

Sorry i am new so I don’t know the in’s and out’s of the game yet.

Daily Achievement so yeah it’s an Achievement and this new system will give you tokens for completing Achievements and later on Achievement paths so it counts. It’s all in the blog post though.

Regards

As the title states, this is all my own opinion having just read the blog post for today. So this post will have a lot of that “stream of conscious thought” structure to it, as I type my replies to individual aspects of the blog.

We’ll add tokens for your achievement you can turn in to select from a list of rewards, including new reward types like ascended gear and infusions.

YES, THANK YOU! Finally, all of those points will feel like they hold some significant value. Very pleased with this. My only concern is if that screenie is any indication….then WOW, that will be so much more rewarding than the open-world. Please make sure to increase the quality and quantity of in-game drops too, so that the achievements system doesn’t just end up replacing drops entirely in terms of rewarding players!

We’ll add support so daily achievements will be different each day of the week, which will help drive players to different areas of the world and play together. Later, we’ll also be adding a system that lets you complete a subgroup of achievements to fulfill your daily. For example, if there are 6 daily achievements available, you’ll only need to do 4 of the 6. So you can choose the achievements that you’re most interested in.

A little worried here. The dailies were honestly just about perfect, allowing a player to complete content in any area of the game and feel rewarded for doing so. It’s the monthlies that were the problem area, in that they were shuffling players towards content they didn’t want to do. I’m a bit concerned about the possibility that, in the future, I won’t be able to just hop onto the game, play whereever I want, and get the daily achievement reward, especially with my now-limited time commitments. Hopefully the fact that we’ll only need to perform a handful of those achievements will make the requirements more fair, but I’m a bit worried that this may be more problematic rather than less. But am willing to wait and see how it goes first, and what sort of achievements you’re going to add.

Our reward systems need to be exciting, and include things you want to earn over time, but we don’t want to force our players on endless gear treadmills for new tiers of gear we add every 6 months. You won’t see another tier between ascended and legendary in 2013 for example.

Good to hear! Though I’d have preferred it if you said “You won’t see another tier between ascended and legendary, period”, as people like me are going to take that very literally and get all panicky. Missed opportunity there, Colin.

To that end, we’re working on adding new types of content to the game in early 2013 that will allow guilds to go on missions together. Some of these missions may be content designed specifically for the guild to accomplish within certain constraints or time requirements while others see the creation of new content by a guild/s everyone in the world can experience.

Sounds fun, but need more info before I can get hyped.

Firstly, we’ll be adding paid server transfers, with time limitations and WvW restrictions, and guestingability, which allows players to visit friends on other servers in every part of the game except for WvW. To encourage players to stick with a single server for WvW and fight for the pride of that server, server changes will incur a fee and have time limitations.

Not thrilled about server transfers but can’t really blame you, either. And thank goodness for guesting. Guesting has been needed since forever and I’m glad to hear it’ll finally happen, but it makes me wonder: if my friend joins my guild, and guests onto my server, will his effort playing on my server with me result in him adding guild points to HIS server or to mine? If the latter, this could be a great way to encourage players in larger guilds to play on multiple servers, as they could quickly acquire guild points via guesting. That may be preferable, honestly.

Second, we’ll make improvements to culling. We recently ran small tests on Live to help us move towards eliminating as much culling from WvW as possible. The results have been promising, and we have a number of additional culling features in development. If all goes well, our hope is 2013 is the year culling ceases to exist, or is as minimal as possible in the WvW experience.

Kill the culling. Kill it with a rusty spoon.

(to be continued)

We’re adding new features as well. We’ll introduce a system of prestige and advancement specifically designed for WvW. This will give players a progression path where they earn new WvW-only abilities and bonuses, and with them gain prestige and visible titles/recognition. Also, we’ll add a new motivation to the WvW domain that goes beyond the overall weekly score to give more short term reasons to be winning in WvW as well. We’ll discuss all these features in more detail as we get closer to release!

Some degree of worry here. I don’t play WvW super often, and don’t want to end up in a system whereby I fall significantly behind the WvW’s most hardcore players as that will shun me away from playing it. Please be careful in how you balance these things.

Hey, What About the PvP!?

Pft, what about it? I’ve never liked PvP, not even in GW1 (save for occasional runs of Jade Quarry, which has that same hectic feel as WvW on a much smaller scale), Colin….so I’m sorry, but I probably won’t play this very much no matter what carrot you dangle in front of me here. :p

Expanded and re-designed encounters for bosses in dungeons and the open world.

Good and….wait, just the bosses in dungeons? You’re tearing me apart, Colin! Please look over the dungeons from top to bottom, there are so many aspects that need to be addressed, such as the severe overuse of OHKO mechanics.

Improving the “looking for group” tool to make it easier to find other players to play with in the game.

Thank goodness. The existing tool is just awful, to be blunt, it needs a real fixer-upper.

Overall Impressions: Good blog post. I’m pretty satisfied with what I see, but there are areas I’d like to see improvements in that didn’t make the list (like Legendaries), which disappoints me. Hopefully these next few months deliver some much-needed improvements. I really want to see this game get better and I’m hoping we can start taking steps towards that.

I got some questions regarding the latest news about months ahead.

When are we getting a proper LFG tool? and what type will it be?
I know this was mentioned in the news but i was kinda hoping for a bit more specific info…
Im not talking about an Auto Dungeon finder like those found in ‘other’ western MMO’s (since they ruin social interactions). I just mean a tool/window that u can post a start up group for people to search for and join that is server wide, an example that comes immediatly to mind is Tera’s original LFG tool, similar to Aion’s original one iirc.

Will the tweek/changes to bosses in dungeons and open world be such that tactics matter more than how hard the boss hits or how much hp it has to make said boss ‘hard’ ?
By that i mean, atm a bunch of bosses are arguably ‘hard’ simply becouse they hit like trucks, have unavoidable mechanics, and/or have tons of HP. I think we would all prefer bosses that end up being just as hard, or harder in fact, due to proper mechanics that requir tactics instead of spam reviving after being 1shot, burning boss down as quik as possible, and/or using unintended tactics like geting some other npc to fight it whilst every1 sits and watches. etc etc

You mention loot; will bosses,veterans,champions, actually have worthwhile loot that drops always instead of a small increased chance ?
ATM its still not worth taking down champions since they dont drop anything worth while. Veterans are no better than normals ether.

Will you ever be increasing the number of skills that each weapon/weapon type has to choose between ? as currently there is next to no customizaion
Currently main hand has 3, off hand 2, 2hand 5. meaning if u see som1 as X class with Y 2hander, u know exactly what primary skills they have, and will likely also know what secondary/utility skills they have also.

I will wait till I see it in game. Their credibility is 0 right now and frankly dont care. I cant trust what they say to happen if it even happens at all.
Just keep putting new gear in new dungeons and let the rest of us play without that thanks.
3 million is nice but what is the retention rate 10-15%? slight of hand?

OP, my impression pretty much mirrors yours. Overall it’s positive. I especially like the emphasis on the living/open world as that is both the strength of GW2 as well as the area with the most potential in an MMO, imo. I’m generally optimistic that we will see improvements in areas especially where the community has expressed concern. I too wished they gave a more detailed scope around ‘re-design’ issues in terms of both bosses, champs, and entire zones. But, they are looking at ‘re-design’ and they are looking at reward, and they even specifically mentioned rewards that don’t confer more power—I’m largely pleased with the post.

Issues not mentioned despite community interest:

*Dungeon bugs that take months to fix.
*Continuing inflation of legendary precursor prices when T6 mats have stabilized.
*Champ/Vet vs. normal mob loot improvement and normalization.
*Transparency on how magic find and diminishing returns actually works.
*Allowing third party addons.
*Premium monthly accounts that boost karma/xp instead of gem store purchases.
*More skill based PVE content with tangible rewards. Getting 10,000 killing blows with a dagger or farming 500 blueberries takes no skill and should not have a tangible reward. Soloing a champ does take skill and should be rewarded.

The general malaise felt by people who have been at 80 for months and aren’t interested in world events is tangible in the game now every time I log on. The same crowd farming DE’s in Orr, the same gags about the odds of fractals crashing midway through the set have gotten old. Transparency in the game mechanics and increased reliability in the game itself would be more appreciated than any achievement farming scheme that Anet could devise.

Cirroq.2531:

Issues not mentioned despite community interest:

Open world loot drop rates and the broken DR system.

I see no mention at all about any Optimizations to come at all in 2013, you guys really like to only appeal to Intel + NVIDIA don’t you.

Iyeru.5240:

I see no mention at all about any Optimizations to come at all in 2013, you guys really like to only appeal to Intel + NVIDIA don’t you.

I hate to break it to you, but Guild wars 2 is CPU bound there is very little NVIDIA can do. Secondly, unfortunately for you, Arenanet can’t really do much about how crappy AMD crappy processors are. Lastly, guild wars 2 runs really well if you know your computers and not one of those ppl that seem to compare single player/multi player games to an MMO.

tl;dr
AMD processor and graphics are subpar to intel and nvidia. Since gw2 is cpu bound the graphics card don’t play as big of a role.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Gombar.7324:

Excursion.9752:

Paid Transfers is not such a good idea. Why not just not allow people who transfer servers to play in WvW for one week. This would stop people from transferring for WvW purposes.

It means money for the company and share holders….that’s why.

This isn’t some new evil plot to make more money. This was the way it was in Beta and as it was always planned to be. They have been very kind and allowed free transfers for significantly longer then they originally planned. From what I remember the original plan was to stop free transfers 1 month after launch.

It is a way to make money though, but a reasonable one given they will be implementing guesting. Unless you want to change servers for WvW purposes you can just simply guest on another server. God knows I’ve got my complaints about anet but this isn’t one of them except the length of time its taken to implement.

silvermember.8941:

AMD processor and graphics are subpar to intel and nvidia. Since gw2 is cpu bound the graphics card don’t play as big of a role.

In GW2, these are only AMD Radeon Issues:

• Flashing (Disappearing, not shiny / white flashing) textures at various distances, usually the landscape.

• Game engine grid appearing in random flat areas.

• When on “Small” GUI size, the trading post is almost unreadable (this is due to how AMD Anti-aliases, etc.) Turn on Morphological Filtering if you want to see it happen on Steam’s Overlay for all games, as well as Skyrim’s HUD Menus.

NVIDIA doesn’t have these problems. So yeah, it has something to do with the GPU too. As for the CPU, Intel makes a new socket type for every major processor line (don’t count die shrinks, which get a name change as well). I don’t like that about Intel, nor do I like how Intel’s newer motherboards are starting to lock out Linux from booting.

Is anet ever going to clean up the TP? So many illegal orders (like 17k 1 c mithril ordered) still exist even if they are buried under the latest economic projections for stuff.

Also so many illegal sales still exist on some very common things. You just need to know where to look.

Lot of negativity here, let’s see how the first half of the year goes first. Then see if there are reasons to complain…

The info on guilds is not detailed at all basically consisting of motherhood statements. Rather than stuff like guild missions anet should focus first on guild tools such as guild alliance chat (for guilds over the 500 limit) and guild management tools eg. showing when players last logged on.

In an effort to not use this thread as an attempt to debate non-existent facts, I will say that I am very much looking forward to the beginning of 2013, and very appreciative that you put the blog post up. Looking forward to seeing the more detailed blogs month over month, when some real debate can start

Having made the decision to stop playing at the start of January, this month’s blog post was always going to play a major role in whether I would return. I’m sorry to say that I saw nothing that would entice me back to the world of Tyria, which is a real shame, since I played from release and had a fantastic time.

The first two sections are just PR spin. “This is why we’re so great”.

We will accomplish this is by building a world that has truly unique storylines and event experiences that play out over extended periods of time, that shape the future and world of Tyria, creating stories for everyone to tell about the game for years to come.

We attempted to do this with varying degrees of success with our Halloween, Lost Shores, and Wintersday events. Thanks to each of these events and your feedback, we’ve learned an incredible amount about how to ensure big events like this are successful moving forward.

I highly doubt anyone would be talking about the “storylines” in the events thusfar. The storylines were virtually non-existent. “Shape the world of Tyria”? This seems to harken back to the claims that the Lost Shores would “Change Tyria forever”. What we got was a new island no-one had heard of, and since then, no-one cares about, and a lighthouse and a statue destroyed. Truly epic changes!

Frankly, this is just more promises with no substance. If “truly unique storylines and event experiences” are the goal, why on earth aren’t they present in the game already? There’s hundreds of events already out there, as well as quite possibly the worst storyline I’ve ever experienced in a computer game.

Systems and Rewards. Ah, some concrete info! Oh, more RNG. Prove me wrong Anet! Tell us what’s in those boxes! Because right now, it looks like they’re going to include a random item for the class in question.

but we don’t want to force our players on endless gear treadmills for new tiers of gear we add every 6 months. You won’t see another tier between Ascended and Legendary in 2013 for example.

No, we’ll just force our players on endless gear treadmills for new tiers of gear we add every 12 months. If you dislike Ascended gear my fellow gamers, be very, very afraid of that quote.

Honestly, this is all sound and fury signifying nothing. We received concrete info on one thing, the achievement rewards system (which is why that’s the only thing people are discussing). Everything else is promises without any substance or details.

“Trust us, it’s gonna be awesome!”. Fool me once, shame on me.

Not to be mean, it’s a cheerful video and all, but at the end the phrase~

“Sumarizes in detail”

~is getting added to my permanent list of oxymorons.

I also have to point out this new “crowns” currency is nothing more than duplicate Mystic Coins…

…minus the abject foolishness of Mystic Coins not having been account bound on day 1.

Wesley.4590:

Lot of negativity here, let’s see how the first half of the year goes first. Then see if there are reasons to complain…

For real…rather than seeing cautious optimism or mild pessimism, a lot of posts are down right negative with out any constructivism.

Vorch.2985:

For real…rather than seeing cautious optimism or mild pessimism, a lot of posts are down right negative with out any constructivism.

Treat that as a sign lots of the millions of boxes sold are in the hands of players who have used up all the one-use story content, have not found the endless repetition of PvP and WvWvW to their liking, and are disgusted at the unmitigated Grind-o-rama required to pursue most of the endgame cosmetic goals (100-350 lodestones in many, many cases).

If the final crown vendor list includes the 7 Lodestones even at 10 crowns a pop, this game has legs for me. If ANet thinks it clever to have me out farming 250 Charged Lodestones over the course of 600 hours of mind-numbing boredom, well, there are other ways to spend my time that will never lead me to browse the gem store during the quiet gaps.

I like where they are going with the ideas in the future, but right now the endgame can be agonizingly grindy if I’m not in the mood to pug fractals that day.

Levetty.1279:

Sounds great, can’t wait to find out more about the achievement/tokens system, hopefully new skins include new armours too. Guesting means I can finally start doing dungeons regularly.

If I had to make one complaint it is no talk of PvE/PvP skill split to stop the PvP whiners from ruining the fun in thee rest of the game but everything else sounds great.

You can already group up and do dungeons cross server.

CrimmsonWind.1475:

Meia.6907:

Will the guesting work with any region of the world? (guest in EU someone in NA and the opposite)

This is what I need to know. I’ve been dying for Guesting since they first mentioned it and I thought it was a great idea. It was a perfect solution for my friend and I, but I’m getting nervous that we won’t be able to play together via guesting because I’m on an NA server and she’s on an EU server.

I don’t want to have to transfer over to her EU world, because I have other friends on mine, but she can’t transfer to my NA world because she lags like hell (not ANet’s fault, she has pretty terrible internet connection).

I’m psyched for the rewards though, if it means I can have some control over what I actually earn (as opposed to getting gear I can’t even use XD).

I don’t have a link but I read before launch that Guesting would work cross region if they were on your friends list.

You can’t enter dungeons cross region so I’m not sure.

I have to say, I literally get angry reading and watching that… the amount of non-information and marketing-spin is so thick it’s sickening.

Seem to be lost in their own reality distortion field….

I was interested in the Titles that show…I would be so happy if we could display our names/guild/titles over our heads. It would be so much fun to be able to pick what titles you wanted to display also.

Zeldain.5710:

I have to say, I literally get angry reading and watching that… the amount of non-information and marketing-spin is so thick it’s sickening.

Seem to be lost in their own reality distortion field….

• Storylines and events that play out over a period of time. In order to achieve this they need to strengthen the open world.
• A reward system that encourages players to go to different areas. Rewards will include Ascended and Infusions
• Daily Achievements will have different requirements each day, with a choice of 6, you only need to do 4 (from the given example)
• Introduction of guild missions and guild created content.
• WvW reward systems and possibly storylines in WvW.
• Paid transfers and guesting being introduced.
• Culling being worked on.
• WvW player progression, including prestige and WvW only abilities, as well as short term encouragements to do well.

I’m not going to bother copypasting the bulletpoint list.

So yeah, no information whatsoever, given that it was an overview, and not a detailed insight into individual parts.

A lot of this sounds very promising. We’ll have to wait and see how well it’s executed, but I like a lot of what I read. I like the fact that Arena Net seems very involved and active in continuing to develop this game as time goes on to keep it fresh and exciting. So far I have really enjoyed the game, it’s not perfect.. nothing is.. but they do most things better then any other MMO I have ever tried. I’m looking forward to seeing how things develop and see how these changes work in game.

I’m just wondering. They said:
We’ll add tokens for your achievements that you can turn in to select from a list of rewards
Does that mean that we will get tokens for all already completed achievements? Or just for the ones we achieve after patch? Or only for few? Or what?

Nike.2631:

“Sumarizes in detail”

~is getting added to my permanent list of oxymorons.

This part made me laugh too, it had no sense at all

But really the post was fantastic. BRINT IT ON !

Acid.9410:

What about people already completed 100% world map?

Will receive that tokens for free or i need create new character to get that? =P

i starter a new character few days ago, maybe should wait.

I question this as well. My other question: will we be able so get ascended jewels outside Fractals? I really hope so.

This latest blog post has me very excited! I’m still enjoying the game and don’t plan to go anywhere, so I’ll be happily waiting for all these improvements, changes and new content, etc. this year will bring.

Wow, i never thought someone so dedicated to make his game “right” (different) ends up taking every step back and become more and more the mold they claimed they don’t want to be.

How is the introduction of more DAILYGRINDQUEST with another TOKEN system different than your average themepark clone with 3 zones a 5 daily Quest for trade in tokens? Sure i got the choice of not doing it, but that’s not a choice of freedom on what content i do.

What’s wrong with the Karma system? Why does it not get expanded with those rewards? Why do we have karma again? Yeah i know why Karma isn’t used.:

If Anet would use Karma we wouldn’t have yet another “daily content gate and time sink”. Funny how a game that didn’t need gating and grinding the same stuff over and over now suddently desperatly tries to stretch content and lock rewards with daily limits. The new tokens should never exist and be tied to certain “Daily Archievements”.

All those people who do not want to grind Daily /Weekly / Monthly are left with nothing. I guess, thanks for nothing then.

The worst decision along Ascended Gear being exclusive to Fractals.

If you want people to do Events in lower zones:

1. Create said Dynamic-Events which are outside of a 5 minute escort quest, the lower zones are way behind Orr.

2. Reward people the same ammount of karma. Currently i get 2xx karma for a 10 minute fighting event in queensdale and 38x for a 2 minute slap on the wrist for “clearing” a staging point in orr.

Your upcoming changes and additions to the game do not fix broken and underperforming systems and add undesired grind systems.

Yeah I really don’t understand where ArenaNet thinks they are going with this. It looks like they are panicking with nothing new or innovative to solve the problem of players ignoring the open world content so they are back tracking to the old and stale MMO design of dailies. There is nothing particularly immersiveor fun about grinding out daily quests (achivements in this case) for tokens to buy things from a menu. It makes no lore sense (rather than adding new items and rewards to karma vendors who spawn after difficult chain events, or individual pieces of crafted recipes which spawn from karma vendors after difficult chain events, or a combination of that with a scavenger hunt which trades items bought from these – encouraging playing in the world, gaining karma and completing events) they just have a token systems with a generic requirement and what appears to be RNG loot.

The design of GW2 boils down to grind and RNG, there is very little creativity used to integrate the rewards into the game, they are tacked on with intense grind and RNG recipes or they are traded for tokens awarded for generic daily tasks. So much of the itemisation and rewards of GW2 just feels souless (that’s before you look at the poor implementation of legendaries, another mindless grind with no story, lore or journey behind them). Honestly, exotic loot from WoW bosses in dungeons has more soul and story behind it, and they aren’t even the most creative ones – look at items awarded from long quest chains and real in-game journeys. GW2 offers insane grinds, lots of TP farming and painful RNG gambling to suck any remaining fun out.

I like the idea of bringing people back into the rest of the open world, but the proposed implementation is incredibly ordinary, unoriginal, underwhelming and completely lacking in any evidence of someone attempting to be creative. ArenaNet used to have big ideas, the reality is looking more and more disappointing.

I was refreshed to read Colin’s vision for the game, and impressed by some of the courageous and honest statements he made. I am really heartened to see so much passion and belief in what has given me nearly 400 hours of play time, and I am still excited to think of what’s ahead.

Below is a dot point summary of Colin’s post. My intention for making this is so I could more clearly see what he was saying.
But this is also more than a dot point list. I loosely and subjectively separated out what I thought were the general Vision statements Colin was making from the specific details and Plans he was telling us. I understand any summarising or cherry-picking quotes carries risks, and it’s not my intent to misrepresent Colin in any way. If I have done so please let me know where and how. You may also find the difference between Vision and Plan as I’ve categorised here rather thin , but I’ve hoped that the benefits of this exercise is clear overall.
I also hope that this abridged version helps other players focus their problem-solving brilliance around the principles Colin and the team are pursuing, and to shape and communicate their feedback in ways that make easy sense to the devs.
Ultimately our own communication helps make the most of what we get from this amazing development team and their incredible game, so summarising his words is my way of helping achieve that.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/
Uniqueness and Success
Vision:

• build on the areas of the game that were successful in 2012
• to learn and apply lessons from things that didn’t work as well
• community and player relationships…will be a massive part of the game as we evolve it further.
• players are encouraged and rewarded to interact as a community, to support each other
• the flow of the game ushers players to go places where they run into other players across all levels and have shared experiences
• Special events and living stories : Since launch, we’ve shown our capacity to really build and expand on this system of dynamic events with more unique events that are a living story

Living World
Vision:

• building a world that has truly unique storylines and event experiences that play out over extended periods of time, that shape the future and world of Tyria, creating stories for everyone to tell about the game for years to come
• ensure we create content that is inclusive, community driven, and most importantly fun
• build on and strengthen our existing open world and its persistent content
• to give reasons for players at all levels to explore these areas, to reward them for their time, and to encourage them to play in locations where they will run into each other and experience the community-driven features that make Guild Wars 2 shine
• make sure our existing world is as strong as possible gives reasons for people at all levels to go back and play and explore in the entire game

Plans:

• The more persistent events we can provide in a specific area, the less often each of the events in that area needs to occur, which in turn adds to the sense of an ever-evolving open world

Systems and Rewards
Vision:

• you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards
• help drive players to different areas of the world and play together
• to develop systems that are uniquely Guild Wars 2
• Our reward systems need to be exciting, and include things you want to earn over time
• use our existing reward systems and build new ones that are fun and exciting that step away from the stale gear grind reward systems you see elsewhere
• expanding and leveraging our achievement system
• progressing down achievement paths that take advantage of the open world experience

Plans:

• … we don’t want to force our players on endless gear treadmills for new tiers of gear we add every 6 months
• make it rewarding enough for players to spend their time there across all levels
• allow players to earn new rewards for achievements
• add tokens for your achievements that you can turn in to select from a list of rewards, including new reward types like Ascended gear and Infusions
• add support so daily achievements will be different each day of the week
• adding a system that lets you complete a subgroup of achievements to fulfill your daily. For example, if there are 6 daily achievements available, you’ll only need to do 4 of the 6, so you can choose the achievements that you’re most interested in
• You won’t see another tier between Ascended and Legendary in 2013 for example
• Later in 2013, we’ll begin to introduce more of these [reward] systems once we’ve finished rolling out the remaining Ascended gear and Infusions

Guilds
Vision:

• Guilds are extremely important to the game: …need to ensure there is a volume of content to foster this strong community/social bond

Plans:

• adding new types of content to the game in early 2013 that will allow guilds to go on missions together
• …missions may be content designed specifically for the guild to accomplish within certain constraints or time requirements, while others will see the creation of new content by a guild/s everyone in the world can experience
• new guild rewards, missions, and tools to allow guilds of all sizes to play a stronger part in solidifying the communities

WvW
Vision:

• to ensure [the existing WvW experience] shines in every way possible is a major goal for us which requires addressing major areas we know need a lot of attention
• encourage players to stick with a single server for WvW and fight for the pride of that server

Plans:

• adding paid server transfers, with time limitations and WvW restrictions, and guesting ability, which allows players to visit friends on other servers in every part of the game except for WvW… server changes will incur a fee and have time limitations
• make improvements to culling… move towards eliminating as much culling from WvW as possible… our hope is 2013 is the year culling ceases to exist, or is as minimal as possible in the WvW experience
• introduce a system of prestige and advancement specifically designed for WvW… give players a progression path where they earn new WvW-only abilities and bonuses, and with them gain prestige and visible titles/recognition
• add a new motivation to the WvW domain that goes beyond the overall weekly score to give more short term reasons to be winning in WvW as well
• discuss all these features in more detail as we get closer to release!

PVP
Vision:

• adding systems that make it easier for players who are less competitive to get matched only against people with similar skill sets, and stronger methods for players learning PvP to do so in a safe and fun environment with more information to help their skills grow
• make it easier to play games against good opponents
• more to help drive the growth of this competitive PvP community alongside our less hardcore PvP players
• make it feel more rewarding and exciting and to give you reasons to log in and compete every day
• adding the core features required to truly make Guild Wars 2 shine as a competitive game

Plans:

• evaluating our PvP reward systems
• overhauling the way PvP operates
• being able to watch other competitors and see major ranked matches to learn how to play better
• the ability to host your own custom arenas to set up your own rules and host your own team practices
• visible places for everyone to see rankings of the best teams/players in the world
• give the ability to compete in games where ranking matters quickly and easily
• have major tournaments, prizes

Anything Else?
Vision:

• identifying existing parts of the game that can be improved and made more fun/exciting, and investing the time to ensure everything we’ve built really shines as we move forward
• improving the new player experience to make it easier for new players to learn how to play GW2, enter the game world, and more quickly learn the game without being overwhelmed

Plans:

• leaderboards on our website where you can compare your abilities with other players to find out who is the best in the world
• expanded and re-designed encounters for bosses in dungeons and the open world.
• new types of achievements which tie into the new systems of achievement rewards
• continuing to improve the security of the game fighting botters and hackers, as well as improving the games stability by addressing bugs as quickly as possible when they are reported
• improving the “looking for group” tool to make it easier to find other players to play with in the game
• the improvements and fixes to the Fractal dungeons, detailed in Isaiah Cartwright’s blog post here

Closing
Vision:

• with your feedback and support, we’ll learn from those mistakes, grow from them, and be as transparent about them as possible

Plans:

• January release will be a relatively small one, setting the stage for the story that will play out in February and March
• the January release will also provide the groundwork for the major feature additions you’ll see in the larger February and March releases

Oglaf.1074:

“Firstly, we’ll be adding paid server transfers, with time limitations and WvW restrictions, and guestingability, which allows players to visit friends on other servers in every part of the game except for WvW. To encourage players to stick with a single server for WvW and fight for the pride of that server, server changes will incur a fee and have time limitations. Second, we’ll make improvements to culling.”

This, I do not like. Everyone who is on a horrible server will be much worse of if you clamp down on server transfers. I expect to see lots and lots of people fleeing these servers now “before it is too late” and the transfers both become paid for and incur some sort of penalty to boot!

Jump ship while you can!

Even crushing is the fact that I don’t find anything in that blog post discussing server imbalance. I expect servers like Fissure of Woe will be empty very soon if you go through with this.

Yes agreed, this is a worry with the state of Stormbluff Isle atm and I would strongly advise against such charges.
Our guild has been contemplating moving to a more Oceanic friendly server for some time now since on AEST times, the server is dead now the initial influx of players has dropped off.
Otherwise it is some encouragement toward continuing to play, a move back towards what made Gw1 unique for so many years rather than an attempt to imitate other gear progression and shop based Mmo’s that are a dime a dozen out there.
I hope that Guild Halls are also on the agenda.

Mala.3861:

“It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.”

This one sentence gives me hope for my future with this game.

Until I can play and NOT look like I bought my armour at Reggie’s Discount Trenchcoat Bazaar, then I can’t play the way I want

The reason this brings up such a lot of negativity is because it rings VERY strongly of a certain company a lot of people were very happy to be shot of in a recent game, where everything was ‘soon’ or ‘coming soon’. We were told of a huge update in January with tonnes of whatnot including Fractals fixes. Then, early January were told there’d be a ‘small’ update in January, mostly paving the way for patches in February. Now we’re being told all this is stuff they’d ‘like’ to put in ‘in the first half of 2013’.

Everything is made to sound very exciting and imminent and edge of your seat but when you cut through the PR spin you’ll realise there is very little info, very vague hints of things that might come to pass at an undisclosed time.

UNDERpromise, OVERdeliver guys, you’re doing it the other way round. Don’t tell us something’s coming January unless you’re going to have it ready in December!

For paid server transfers: they should only be paid from low to high population for a while (also add some guild transfer option with a gold cost and/or a way longer transfer cd for everyone involved if you choose to move the whole guild).

Also – I WANT CHARACTER SPECIFIC KEY BINDS implemented (I haven’t see any info or questions about this anywhere, not that I looked very hard, but, if there is any can someone tell me where).

adamaknight.9237:

Until I can play and NOT look like I bought my armour at Reggie’s Discount Trenchcoat Bazaar, then I can’t play the way I want

I kinda gotta agree here.

We need the GW1 “Medium” armor back besides Rangers.

Anton T3:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/6/64/Anton_Deldrimor_armor.jpg

Assassin Shing Jea:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/e/e5/Assassin_Shing_Jea_armor_m.jpg

Zenmai T3
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/02/Zenmai_Primeval_armor.jpg

Dervish Primeval
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/09/Dervish_Primeval_armor_m.jpg

I hope achievements (not necessarily dailies, mind you) go the direction of Zaishen missions. Where every time you log into the game you have the option of a certain specific set of tasks. Each day you will go to specific areas and complete these tasks, then you’re rewarded in kind. There can even be a “Zaishen” achievement rank associated with it, whereby you unlock more items to buy the higher your “Zaishen” achievement points are.

I’ve read the Announcement and there is a lot of nice information there with these new ways to get stuff.

But there are some serious (what i’d call game breaking) omissions in the write up, i’m talking about DR (Diminishing Returns), loot drops and Magic Find issues, these to me are what is making many people angry and having a detrimental effect on our game play and populations all over.

So i’m wondering are these things going to be addressed or is open world going to stay barren as players have less and less loot out in the open world.

And will T5-6 mats be added to these new crowns etc as they are very important to crafting as well as making money and legends, even day to day crafting requires these..

I’m sorry if this sounds overly negative, i do like the ideas Anet has put forward from what i’ve seen, it’s just these things not talked about are very important to many gamers currently in Guildwars 2..

ASB.4295:

Rin.1046:

That to me reads ‘We will not add new tiers in 2013, but may add more from 2014 onwards.’.

What’s the problem with that? … snip …. Do you think they can pull a sudden “nope, no new gear” in 2014 when everybody has gotten used to the pace at which ascended gear pieces have been released?

Yes they absolutely can say, no more new gear WITH STATS. When they were frantically spinning PR statements during their announcement of Ascended gear they said Oh we meant for this tier to be here from the start and it needs to be there for the game to work as intended.

They still lost some customers despite the epic spin they put out. If they then further announce that they’ve re-evaluated again and decided that their original philosophy of no gear treadmills means doesn’t mean they are prevented from adding new tiers of gear with better stats, it just means they’ll do it on a slow time frame they are going to deal with a second backlash and subsequent user exodus.

I’m not trying to live in a rosy world where I don’t think this will happen, they’ve already mentioned raising the level cap through an expansion. I’m having fun playing the game with friends, but they’ve opened the door. This makes it less likely for me to buy gems, and I’m not as committed to the game when I know the devs are making design choices I don’t agree with and that they previously stated they didn’t agree with either. This is just them making the decision that it’s better business to cater to the the fans of vertical progression. Sad news for someone who thinks this game is awesome.

I’m still having fun and I’ll be keeping my ears open, but based on ANet’s style of press release, we’re not going to get hard answers in advance.

Character progression via WvW is awesome, as long as it isn’t gained by player vs door.

Hi everyone,

I have a few question for community and Dev
The first one is about the recent increase in WvWvW of guild using metaphoric potion like those one, Fiery tonic, Ghostly Tonic.

Does it has any use in WvWvW ?

The only one I can think is:
Because at the moment there is no real assist tools, group tools (see last ¶) in the game and with all the particle effect storming everywhere in a fight, It becomes very confusing to see anything and find someone.
So I guess is used as an anchor for the group. Isn’t it ?

Ps: I may be wrong but I use in my thread
-Culling: for Gathering of players
-Clipping: for the effect not to see other players

But I Think it also generate a greater clipping with the rendering effect of those potion, I may be wrong, but I like the point of view of Gw2 Developer.
Also, Little or minimum config RAM makes the rendering of the character insane for the clipping, it takes longer as “normal” clipping to appear on the screen…

One other thing, with the culling, people can be down in the flash of a second.
Is it intended by ANET ?

I know there is no bodyblock but it may be a solution against culling/gathering of 50-100 people on 2 squares meters.
I think it was a mistake to make the effect of AOE and Healing have a threshold of 5 while other like share of Boon, Invisibility are unlimited.
I also suspect the Invisibility to generate a longer clipping. Can you confirm this ?
Is even more difficult, nearly impossible for little group of player 5-15 to fight in WvWvW against larger gathering(culling)of people 30-40 and over.
I said to fight no to win and by fight, I mean the condition of fighting.

I am not sure about the following but if you scale down the limit of AOE why not also scale down the limit of hit/s to 5. I think it would make it more balanced and even.
Because at the moment my life expectancy in a WvWvW fight is 1s/2s due to Culling, clipping and being hit sometimes at most 44 times in a seconde…

I would like to share some video for the dev and ask them if they are planning to leave it untouched or they thinking of something.

Those video come from youtube and free to view from different people and guild.

This one is for the Clipping ( I know you are working on this one, but I put it just for fact and reference)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugVm3GAxw2Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEcqWyZhBIc

Ghostly/fiery Tonic + culling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mIqMPHrXDg8

Turtle Aka mega culling/clipping
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI2A5BZY2Yo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIxV9O8yJaU

Edit: I was looking for this one(they re like pillar they don’t even use dodge, w,a,s,d)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Oiy3Mh6Ow2w
In my opinion, the lack of group tool is a subject to BE PRIORITIZE in the developer Agenda.

Why: The way the group tools (Describe next)are dispatched make people gather in short space. It is call culling and the culling generate the clipping.

Heal/buff: Atm there are completely random in a short area and limited to 5 >> cause culling to be able to give/share healing/buff

If you can make it group only in a larger area lets says 600 it would be easier to share those and lesser culling may be( but in fact player always abuse the easy way I know, aka culling possible solution BODY BLOCK)

If you have watched the video.
GW2 is becoming " who has the bigger". 30+ peoples gather/stack on each other to be able to receive healing, buff in permanence.
They only use 2 skills per weapon because the 1 is spam able(no CD)and does more damage than the other skills. and all the tools because (the tools are the + of GW2

Finally the only option you have for 10/15 player en less in RvR is to avoid those gathering of player or is back Warcamp. But this style of game is becoming popular and find mostly( not only) group like those one in Open WvWvW nowadays and it becomes difficult to find attractive fight

Hs: Btw would it be possible in a near future to have more spell/action per weapon customizable.
Is good to want to add more weapon, but the fact that the weapon has its own 5 spells unmovable and unchangeable make it a bit boring after some time. If you add like 3 spell/action adjustable per slot 1(1,2,3)2(1,2,3)3(1,2,3), etc etc We will see a variety of people using the same weapon but different skill and may be the all 5 bouton ( I know is a lot for certain ppl)

Sleepcoma.9487:

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Yes they absolutely can say, no more new gear WITH STATS. When they were frantically spinning PR statements during their announcement of Ascended gear they said Oh we meant for this tier to be here from the start and it needs to be there for the game to work as intended.

They still lost some customers despite the epic spin they put out. If they then further announce that they’ve re-evaluated again and decided that their original philosophy of no gear treadmills means doesn’t mean they are prevented from adding new tiers of gear with better stats, it just means they’ll do it on a slow time frame they are going to deal with a second backlash and subsequent user exodus.

I’m not trying to live in a rosy world where I don’t think this will happen, they’ve already mentioned raising the level cap through an expansion. I’m having fun playing the game with friends, but they’ve opened the door. This makes it less likely for me to buy gems, and I’m not as committed to the game when I know the devs are making design choices I don’t agree with and that they previously stated they didn’t agree with either.

You may be right, but I am pretty much convinced that they have changed their course and are tying to make the transition(adapt or leave) for players of the old guard as smooth as they can, for the players’ sake and for the sake of not generating too much bad PR of course.

Sleepcoma.9487:

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This is just them making the decision that it’s better business to cater to the the fans of vertical progression. Sad news for someone who thinks this game is awesome.

FULLACK. ANet is a 300 man company, and changes like this must have been discussed ad infinitum before they decided to implement them. It most likely is a well thought trough business decision based on the observation and/or prediction that the player group of ye olde guard isn’t big enough and doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep a fully fledged MMORPG like GW2 alive. It’s sad for players that a part of this group, very sad, but if the livelyhoods of 300 employees are (potentially) at risk, I don’t know anyone who’d be that reckless.

Of course, that’s all speculation, like most things surrounding this subject have been. Just trying to look at if from different angles.

I hope they add Mystic Clovers and WvW Badges to that crown item list. keeps scrubbers like myself out of WvW and allowing people who actually want to fight to do so.

How are guilds very important in this game? I don’t see a point at all at the moment, all things that we do together i can do with random people…

I’m excited about guild missions.. but how about Guild vs Guild? Isn’t guild wars name came from that? Are you guys planing to give us back our fun? Because you took all away from us!

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Is anet ever going to clean up the TP? So many illegal orders (like 17k 1 c mithril ordered) still exist even if they are buried under the latest economic projections for stuff.

Also so many illegal sales still exist on some very common things. You just need to know where to look.

I’ve been wondering why those are still there as well. I work with databases every day and it seems like a quick UPDATE query should be able to get rid of all orders where its less than the vendor price. (I don’t know their database structure, so its most likely harder than I think, but it shouldn’t be that much harder).

Fozzik.1742:

It all sounds really good. The only thing that is a tiny bit frustrating is the TONS of achievements I’ve already completed and gotten nothing for. I wish I could do them over again once they are worth tokens. =\

Indeed. There better be a way to get rewards on previous achievements, because we can’t reset achievements and veteran players will really be at a pretty big disadvantage.

Either retroactive rewards, or a reset of completed achievements, with the current AP totals not being effected would be fine. I don’t mind having to revisit achievements I’ve already finished, but retroactive token rewards would be nice to have. (I’ve been focusing on achievements recently, now I have to wonder if I should stop that until there is some clarification on this).