Guild Wars 2

I’m just baffled by what was so confusing about rallying that they had to make it a level 5 unlock and how making it a level 5 unlock will magically teach people how to rally; if they didn’t understand what it was when it’s first presented to them, covering their eyes and telling them to ignore it for five levels isn’t going to help.

If you want people to learn what a feature is, you explain it to them.

Have a tutorial where a Rally Trainer NPC jumps out of nowhere, downs you with a sucker punch, starts screaming at you to hit #4 if you want to get back up, kicks you to interrupt your rally, screams at you that you’re a yutz for trying to rally while under attack, then jumps back into nowhere before you can get back up to retaliate.

Maybe have him voiced by Ronald Lee Ermey.

Edit: oh wait, rally, not bandage. Okay, have Rally Trainer NPC kick the player whenever they try to bandage, have him scream at the player to destroy a target if they want to get back up, then jump back to nowhere just as they finish rallying. There, done. Simple, straightforward, and irritating enough that people will remember it.

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

DiogoSilva.7089:

All those changes are important because they fix the several flaws that GW2 has early game: the lack of a sense of progression, poor tutorials, directionless, forgottable rewards and jumpy story instances that forced you to level up midway, interrupting the flow of the story.

So far, this feature patch is great for new players, but, what about the veteran players? It doesn’t seems to offer much to make us stick to the game.

More information will be released next week about features that are more suited to veteran players.

Yeah, Yeah…we already hear this. Relax, we don`t believe you anymore=)

Pandaman.4758:

I’m just baffled by what was so confusing about rallying that they had to make it a level 5 unlock and how making it a level 5 unlock will magically teach people how to rally; if they didn’t understand what it was when it’s first presented to them, covering their eyes and telling them to ignore it for five levels isn’t going to help.

If you want people to learn what a feature is, you explain it to them.

Have a tutorial where a Rally Trainer NPC jumps out of nowhere, downs you with a sucker punch, starts screaming at you to hit #4 if you want to get back up, kicks you to interrupt your rally, screams at you that you’re a yutz for trying to rally while under attack, then jumps back into nowhere before you can get back up to retaliate.

Maybe have him voiced by Ronald Lee Ermey.

It’s really interesting. If you present too many things at one time to people, they don’t get all of them. So, you’re in the game new. Maybe even it’s your first MMO. You get a bunch of weapons and new skills. You go down in a fight. In most games you just die. You don’t even really know a downed state exists.

Level 5 is pretty fast to get to. What’s the big deal?

Regina: Please excuse me if i reserve and potential praise for the coming news until I actually read the coming news. As of right now these updates are leaving a fairly bad taste in my mouth, and seemingly in the mouths of many other veteran players that are feeling ignored.

Vayne.8563:

It’s really interesting. If you present too many things at one time to people, they don’t get all of them. So, you’re in the game new. Maybe even it’s your first MMO. You get a bunch of weapons and new skills. You go down in a fight. In most games you just die. You don’t even really know a downed state exists.

Level 5 is pretty fast to get to. What’s the big deal?

Well, like I said, how does pushing it to level 5 make it easier to understand rallying? At worst it’s five levels (granted five fast levels, as you pointed out) teaching players that killing mobs while you’re in a downed state does nothing, which is counterproductive.

Vayne.8563:

But a lot of those changes were made to the China release due to research from the American release. They knew more when they made the Chinese release.

I agree with this. It’s GW2 V2.0. From Global Guilds to a more guided tutorial/help for new players who are accustom to be led from area to area. Making leveling a big thing rather than a muted “oh look, I have skill points to spend”. Yes it’s skinner boxish but other than a flash along the XP bar as it resets leveling in this game is fairly uneventful. There’s no “gratz” because nobody quite notices, even you.

I also like skewing drops more toward your profession. Do you want players to buy what they need or do you just want them to sell what’s not wanted.

And yes it’s not all good. I’ll hate it if weapon swap is moved to a higher level unlock and while I agree that the downed skills menu is confusing for a newbie, was to me, pushing it off to level 5 feels is a little late for me.

The OP has a solid point.

One of GW2 strongest features was the leveling system. Fun, not repeteable and filled with tedious quests, gear was never an issue, etc… while probably one of the weakest is the endgame content.

This feature pack is like getting to manage any poor country on Africa and start by putting resources on implementing free Wifi for everyone instead of taking care of the basic needs…

Mesket.5728:

The OP has a solid point.

One of GW2 strongest features was the leveling system. Fun, not repeteable and filled with tedious quests, gear was never an issue, etc… while probably one of the weakest is the endgame content.

This feature pack is like getting to manage any poor country on Africa and start by putting resources on implementing free Wifi for everyone instead of taking care of the basic needs…

Some of the game’s strongest points are the combat and the seamless and highly detailed game exploration (before it gets repetitive), which carried the game’s quality a lot early game.

Leveling was never anything “special”, and gear and customisation much less so. It was not an “issue”, but it didn’t stand out either. The lack of interesting gear/ loot rewards is a general problem that has been discussed and accepted by the community since a long time ago, and everyone also complained about how fast it is to unlock all the “needed” skills. The only thing that the leveling experience had of interest, by itself, after the first few levels, was the (old) trait system, and even then, it was only meaningful every 5 levels.

Although I agree that GW2’s endgame is one of its weakest points (coupled with content that becomes highly repetitive after a while, and in addition to the underwhelming reward & progression structure), and although the changes to the trait system were poorly executed and backfired, it’s not like the leveling system was something that much better before.

If anything, this new change gives a lot more emphasis on leveling. Higher and more visible rewards and unlocks, more impactful stat buffs, and a vehicle to slowly introduce tutorials into the game. The new leveling system pretty much becomes the skeleton for tutorials and for the early game structure, which in a way, that’s what it was already before this change, just not that good at previously.

It’s a good improvement, as long as we are willing to adapt to the changes. Let’s imagine the opposite scenario: If the new system was there right at launch, and if the old system was suddenly implemented in this new feature patch, people would be criticizing the old system heavily: What, less tutorials? What, generic stat buffs like other mmorpgs? What, no loot on leveling anymore? Story episodes are now going to be spread apart? – Yeah, not very interesting.

It’s like “drawing legs on a snake”.

People are having hard time unlocking those traits that was introduced in April. Why can’t they address that problem first? to give new players more freedom and less tedious work when leveling. I’m pretty sure majority of the players will not whine or complain if all these new features are not implemented right away.

beastie.4536:

It’s like “drawing legs on a snake”.

People are having hard time unlocking those traits that was introduced in April. Why can’t they address that problem first? to give new players more freedom and less tedious work when leveling. I’m pretty sure majority of the players will not whine or complain if all these new features are not implemented right away.

Sure a lot of people want everythig for free, I call them lazy. Personally I enjoy having to do some gameplay to unlock new traits. Gives me tons of incentives to go out in the world.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Sure a lot of people want everythig for free, I call them lazy. Personally I enjoy having to do some gameplay to unlock new traits. Gives me tons of incentives to go out in the world.

We are not saying that unlocking new traits via gameplay is bad. It’s bad in the way it’s been implemented. By the time you have 2 trait points (level 36) there are still Adept level traits you really have no way of unlocking since they are almost 2 dozen points above your level. It doesn’t matter how much “incentive” you have, that’s just ridiculous. I mean, as a developer, I would think any feature change like that would at least have had a few people asking “What are you thinking?”.

Yeah, I have to agree that April’s Trait Fiasco was horrid. Having leveled some characters to 80 in the original system, and now trying to level a character in the new trait system…holy mother of all things sloggy, the new system is the suck. There’s no way to try different traits easily, there’s no way to try and figure out how you want to play the character…from what I can tell, people go see what the “meta” for the class is, and then just go get those traits as they can, but are mostly powerleveling just so they can go get traits. This change didn’t make anyone want to go explore new stuff; it’s just locked away a big part of being able to play a character unless you have 400 gold and a zillion skill points to buy your way into a full character. I mean seriously guys, events that may take days to spawn? Adept skills in lvl 50 zones? It’s just madness. Frustrating, frustrating madness.

If it hadn’t been for Living Story, and playing Barbie with my characters, I think I probably would have moved on already, and I’m not seeing much in this patch that makes me want to keep buying gem cards. (Which I admit, I buy with shocking regularity.)

From how I read the announcements so far, they’re dumbing down the beginning experience, they’re gating story content behind level locks, they’re giving the entire dungeon lfg experience over to the griefers and trolls, and they’ve told us to wait with baited breath to see what else they have planned. Oh boy!

I mean, to be fair, we’re also getting candy colored commander tags, and backpacks…ya know, so there’s that.

Agree with the changes to leveling in that you get better loot suited to your class and in that leveling will include rewards. Disagree in that they are delaying progress just to make that progress feel more important.

If you’re going to change the LS to start at level 10 and downed state to level 5, then better make that opening instance every character has level me 10 levels (with a tutorial on being downed for level 5). I really think, that if more tutorial is needed, then they could better make it fit in that opening instance. Currently the opening instance is nothing but “follow me to a boss and somehow kill it”. They could inject an enemy that instantly downs a player then taunts you, while your NPC guide tells you about your options to get rallied. They could even extend this instance and break it apart for an optional (I’d say optional after one character on an account completes it) plot that leads to the Personal Story at level 10.

As for the stat progression, larger chunks every few levels doesn’t make them feel any more special. In fact, it makes those levels in between infuriating as you’re not getting any stronger and have to wait. Are they going to dumb down the mobs to only get stronger every few levels too? Are going to be able to kill things several level above us with the same effort as those at the same level?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

beastie.4536:

It’s like “drawing legs on a snake”.

People are having hard time unlocking those traits that was introduced in April. Why can’t they address that problem first? to give new players more freedom and less tedious work when leveling. I’m pretty sure majority of the players will not whine or complain if all these new features are not implemented right away.

Sure a lot of people want everythig for free, I call them lazy. Personally I enjoy having to do some gameplay to unlock new traits. Gives me tons of incentives to go out in the world.

You probably haven’t unlocked all the traits through gameplay. I suggest you to do that first and make 7 more toons with each profession and unlocking them again through the gameplay and you can call us lazy. FYI, the old system still require players to pay gold to unlock them. They are not free.

Totally agree with OP and 2nd poster!

Draknar.5748:

As someone who has lurked the forums basically since release I can say that there was definitely a community of players that felt leveling was difficult, a “grind” as they call it and very un-rewarding. While most people feel this wasn’t needed, there are people who will find it useful.

Plenty of new players have come on the forums, or have messaged in /map, about what do to, where to go; that their personal story mission is too high a level for them and they don’t know what to do to level up.

I’ve seen this too, and if you /dared/ to have the audacity to ask that question on /m, people would flame the heck out of you. One of my friends asked about a system on /m and was told, en masse, to go kitten himself because “Google it you stupid noob.” He was level 15 or something, and just about quit the game right there.

Hybrid.7059:

You guys, downed state is overwhelming. It scares new players away. Also, people get lost, they need more directions. This feature pack is absolutely vital and the slow release of announcing these changes (even though all this stuff already came out in China) was totally necessary. Anet pls.

This. So much this. I really hope you weren’t being sarcastic.

This is my first MMO. Every player I’ve brought to the game, myself included, when downed for the first time went “WTF IS THIS?! WHY IS THE WORLD RED AND ON FIRE?!” All the screen says is “Fight to survive!” and your only skills not on cooldown are 1 and 2. So, jam 1 repeatedly, notice your life dropping quite dramatically, flail, die. There’s no explanation about what’s going on, and it’s not clear that “fighting” actually means “kill something else immediately.”

It took me a long time to figure out what my skills were because often I would die before they were off CD and there was just too much going on to hover over the skills and process them. It also doesn’t tell you that you don’t need to jam 4 for it to work, and that doing anything else while waiting for 4 to rally you will end the skill.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Maybe someone can help me out here, because I just don’t understand this “feature” patch.

Since the game launched 2 years ago, it was touted as having a great leveling system, where you could go anywhere, didn’t have to do quests and could level doing pretty much anything.

The game has always had one major complaint, the lack of endgame content. There were no raids, no new areas, no endgame progression, and no new ingame skins being released.

These two things have been pretty much the two constants of the game since launch… leveling good… endgame bad…

Yet we now have spent the last 2 “feature” patches revamping the leveling system from the ground up and not introducing a single bit of endgame. I literally just spent the last 20 minutes looking for a SINGLE thread that said they should revamp leveling and I couldn’t find one person complaining about it. The biggest complaint related to leveling I could find was to undo the changes to leveling the last “feature” patch brought.

So what exactly is the point of revamping the only part of the game people almost unanimously loved and completely ignoring the areas of the game people think need the most work? It just seems like a terrible business strategy to me.

I don’t think any update to a game is “pointless” especially a better guide for new players. Don’t be so selfish!

I remember way back reading many reviews of gw2 and many posts all over the internet how gw2 doesn’t introduce and teach their new players how to play, or guide them through the game.

Sure, this feature may be late in coming, but it’s better late than never. You also got to bear in mind the game is still very new in China, where this feature was introduced, so it makes sense to put it in for us too.

To you and me, GW2 may seem easy to figure out now, but this game is so different to many others out there, to new players not familiar with it, it may appear very strange and directionless. So a good solid intro/guide is always a good thing, especially an optional one, so older players can disable this feature.

Ultimately, i really don’t see why you had to complain about it.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Ultimately, i really don’t see why you had to complain about it.

Nobody is saying that more is less (at least not for this particular case). We are simply implying that while having so much to do on one side, resources were spent on another area. Unless of course, next week’s communications reveals something on the same level of impact for the vast majority of players (those who already bought the game and have being playing for 2 years already waiting for new content ¬¬ )

Tiger Ashante.1792:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Maybe someone can help me out here, because I just don’t understand this “feature” patch.

Since the game launched 2 years ago, it was touted as having a great leveling system, where you could go anywhere, didn’t have to do quests and could level doing pretty much anything.

The game has always had one major complaint, the lack of endgame content. There were no raids, no new areas, no endgame progression, and no new ingame skins being released.

These two things have been pretty much the two constants of the game since launch… leveling good… endgame bad…

Yet we now have spent the last 2 “feature” patches revamping the leveling system from the ground up and not introducing a single bit of endgame. I literally just spent the last 20 minutes looking for a SINGLE thread that said they should revamp leveling and I couldn’t find one person complaining about it. The biggest complaint related to leveling I could find was to undo the changes to leveling the last “feature” patch brought.

So what exactly is the point of revamping the only part of the game people almost unanimously loved and completely ignoring the areas of the game people think need the most work? It just seems like a terrible business strategy to me.

I don’t think any update to a game is “pointless” especially a better guide for new players. Don’t be so selfish!

I remember way back reading many reviews of gw2 and many posts all over the internet how gw2 doesn’t introduce and teach their new players how to play, or guide them through the game.

[snip]

Ultimately, i really don’t see why you had to complain about it.

At last, somebody to bring logic and facts in this house of madness.

Anet always had trouble setting up decent tutorials in their games. About time they took this matter seriously.

I STILL see people that played for A YEAR in this game and hve NO CLUE about performing a combo. Something has to be done to “enlighten” these people.

Some of the problem stems from the fact that if you use the right build, armor and weapon package, you can do most of the content without having to really worry about things like combos. You can get it done using 1 or 2 skills.

Making the game noob friendly is all well and good but where does it stop?

Just spent 3 hours doing a level 10 fractal run with players without AR. The guy who opened had 2 ascended rings and over 1,000 fractal relics but 0 AR. After the run I helped him get AR for future runs but should this be address in future updates before any more content is released for old players?

Then there’s Combos I had some1 with way more achievement points then me basically calling me noob the other day for picking up banners all the time on my warrior. Had no idea that I was picking them up to blast combo fields. How about spending another few months coming up with a way to teach people about combos and how to use them?

felessan.9587:

Hybrid.7059:

You guys, downed state is overwhelming. It scares new players away. Also, people get lost, they need more directions. This feature pack is absolutely vital and the slow release of announcing these changes (even though all this stuff already came out in China) was totally necessary. Anet pls.

This. So much this. I really hope you weren’t being sarcastic.

This is my first MMO. Every player I’ve brought to the game, myself included, when downed for the first time went “WTF IS THIS?! WHY IS THE WORLD RED AND ON FIRE?!” All the screen says is “Fight to survive!” and your only skills not on cooldown are 1 and 2. So, jam 1 repeatedly, notice your life dropping quite dramatically, flail, die. There’s no explanation about what’s going on, and it’s not clear that “fighting” actually means “kill something else immediately.”

It took me a long time to figure out what my skills were because often I would die before they were off CD and there was just too much going on to hover over the skills and process them. It also doesn’t tell you that you don’t need to jam 4 for it to work, and that doing anything else while waiting for 4 to rally you will end the skill.

Yeah, I remember this experience from when I first started playing. It wasn’t very fun. If they have arranged it so that more new players can understand the feature early on then great.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Maybe someone can help me out here, because I just don’t understand this “feature” patch.

Since the game launched 2 years ago, it was touted as having a great leveling system, where you could go anywhere, didn’t have to do quests and could level doing pretty much anything.

The game has always had one major complaint, the lack of endgame content. There were no raids, no new areas, no endgame progression, and no new ingame skins being released.

These two things have been pretty much the two constants of the game since launch… leveling good… endgame bad…

Yet we now have spent the last 2 “feature” patches revamping the leveling system from the ground up and not introducing a single bit of endgame. I literally just spent the last 20 minutes looking for a SINGLE thread that said they should revamp leveling and I couldn’t find one person complaining about it. The biggest complaint related to leveling I could find was to undo the changes to leveling the last “feature” patch brought.

So what exactly is the point of revamping the only part of the game people almost unanimously loved and completely ignoring the areas of the game people think need the most work? It just seems like a terrible business strategy to me.

Development is often like trying to turn a battleship in open sea, it just takes a long time, during which time the focus is on the required execution, which inhibits responding to other issues.

Having said that…..

….I’ve been saying that ANet has been churning for quite some time now.

Add in the potential new market in Asia (looking at Korea) and you will find that some developers respond to that market and their customers by “dumbing down the game”.

Example: Trion/ RIFT: Korean customers could not get past the “complicated” character creation screen during a preview session behind closed doors, so just sat there in front of the computers doing nothing until the allotted time ran out. Trion then changed the character creation process, setting up templates/defaults which none of their “veteran” customers at that time had requested. The game at that point, had already driven off a large number of customers that could not/would not research specs, etcetera, and the “dumbing down” changes confused / angered some of the remaining customer base.

Speculation: this set of changes in GW2 is probably not aimed at veteran players. It could be aimed at box sales/new customers. I don’t know if ANet believes the veterans will hang around on the hopes of more content coming, or if they don’t care and are concentrating on expanding their market for least amount of reinvestment, or a little bit of both. They have shown repeatedly that they appear to be out of touch with their customers and their customer’s experiences with the game.

As a business strategy, we can only speculate. Without transparent communication, we actually have no clue. I might add that SONY was relatively successful despite attriting 50% of their playerbase at the height of their success. /shrug

Personally, I’m done trying to guess, second-guess, or make any heads or tails of any semblance of logic regarding management at ANet, their vision, style, content, communication and lack thereof of all of the above.

I’m focused on results. Not futures.

-Here for WvW Season 3 only and that’s not looking promising at the moment either

PS: For those saying that players have no right to complain:

I am not going to complain about these changes. I will say this: the thousands of dollars I have spent on gems have netted me no significant positive changes to the kind of gameplay that I enjoy, and have instead been “spent” on content that is of no use to me, with no communication regarding new content I could use.

I am glad others are benefitting from my previous “investment”.

At this point, the correct thing for me to do, since I am not running a charity, is to invest that elsewhere.

While i’ll admit that many features can be difficult to understand at first and making it easier on new players to understand these features is a good thing, I believe they’re going about it the wrong way. The old leveling system was fine it just needed “a coat of paint” to add better text and tutorials to explain them to the new players. But what does Anet do, they tear down the “house” that is the leveling system and builds a new one instead of fixing whats all ready there.

Mesket.5728:

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Ultimately, i really don’t see why you had to complain about it.

Nobody is saying that more is less (at least not for this particular case). We are simply implying that while having so much to do on one side, resources were spent on another area. Unless of course, next week’s communications reveals something on the same level of impact for the vast majority of players (those who already bought the game and have being playing for 2 years already waiting for new content ¬¬ )

I want to address this point, if you don’t mind.

A lot of this seems to be from the China release, meaning that most of the work had already been done. The cost to bring it to our side was minimal (in MMO dev terms).

Now, they could have not done this, but then you run into a problem. The more differences there are between the Western and China versions of GW2, the more chances you have for bugs to pop up due to the difference. I’m sure that to make sure the next update didn’t run into any type conflicts is a very small cost, but it’s there.

And it’s there for the next update as well.

And the one after that.

And the one after that.

By making this change NOW, they’re preventing more problems in the future. This is the stitch in time that will save them the effort of 9 such stitches down the road. If you’re hoping to be in this game for the long haul, then this is a good thing.

Basically, bringing the China stuff over is prep-work for making it easier to make updates for the game as a whole.

From a player that hops around and comes back to this game every 4-5 months and stays for a couple before getting bored again, this is my opinion.

They took the most interesting part of the game that stood out compared to other games, i.e leveling and trait system(it’s phenomenally better than any mmo out there), deconstructed it, turned it into garbage and handed it back calling it a new system.

Then they did absolutely nothing to what players spend the most time on, i.e end game. Instead every few months, I return, run a few fractrals, run around Orr banging my head and getting pure garbage from bosses that are just zerged hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year.

Done.

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

It’s really interesting. If you present too many things at one time to people, they don’t get all of them. So, you’re in the game new. Maybe even it’s your first MMO. You get a bunch of weapons and new skills. You go down in a fight. In most games you just die. You don’t even really know a downed state exists.

Level 5 is pretty fast to get to. What’s the big deal?

Well, like I said, how does pushing it to level 5 make it easier to understand rallying? At worst it’s five levels (granted five fast levels, as you pointed out) teaching players that killing mobs while you’re in a downed state does nothing, which is counterproductive.

Go back and read the Colin quote about it, where he says they TESTED it extensively on all sorts of variations. With like, you know, players.

I don’t really care what one person things or five people think. Anet did the labwork, it’s why they made the changes.

Anet actually has one of the BEST playerbase out there for a MMO.
The players of GW2 are actually willing to be patient and toyed around with, in order to somehow save the game, because the players -love- this game.

Any other game, the community would have freaked out and nothing could stop the damage done. People would have left long ago and the game would bleed to death.

With GW2 though, we have a community, active, motivated and strong willed to make this game a success again and pull it away from the edge. But now we have a publisher who seems to be all to eager to push it off again. Why?

Novalitus.7382:

Anet actually has one of the BEST playerbase out there for a MMO.
The players of GW2 are actually willing to be patient and toyed around with, in order to somehow save the game, because the players -love- this game.

Any other game, the community would have freaked out and nothing could stop the damage done. People would have left long ago and the game would bleed to death.

With GW2 though, we have a community, active, motivated and strong willed to make this game a success again and pull it away from the edge. But now we have a publisher who seems to be all to eager to push it off again. Why?

because, we don1t pay subscription fee. If this game be “pay to play”(WoW style) I would pay only for first fractal update, first future patch and may be some festivals that were at 2012…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Sirjbenson.7298:

Define what “endgame” really is. Other mmo’s “endgame” is usually just grinding the same raids over and over for a chance at better gear. I do not find that fun at all.

No other MMO’s endgame is:

1. Hardmode dungeons
2. Raids with 12-14 unique bosses with special mechanics and a unique storyline with access to the best gear in the game.
3. Endgame zones that provide good rewards with repeatable content
4. Unique mounts and cosmetic items that are acquired through long quests, and achieving difficult objectives.
5. Crafting with special bonuses

GW2 endgame is:
1. Repeating the same dungeons every day that you have since launch
2. Grinding mobs for 10000’s of hours in the hopes you can make money faster than the price of precursors rise
3. buying stuff in the gem store
4. Living story

Right now the only thing GW2 has going for it is living story, which provides the story aspect of raids, but does not provide anything else. The complaints over the past two years have mostly focused on the other aspects of endgame that are missing. Challenging content, long quests to acquire unique items, new dungeons, new zones.

I especially like 4 and sort of 5. Crafting not so much with special bonuses but fun crafts. Making fun items and so on and just like 4 having to go all over the world to gather recipe’s and materials and so on.

And 4 yeah exactly also include mini’s and special looking ranger pet’s and so on. Sadly as far as we have that it’s mainly cash-shop related. Not going into the world do special task, quest and so on. No buy it with cash or grind gold and buy it with gold.

It is also one of the reasons I am so against the cash-shop focus (those who know me from the forum know that) and am so in favor of a true B2P model. Those defending it are telling the cahs-shop is purely optional. Yeah you don’t ‘need’ a mini but I sure would like the end-came around it (mini being an example here) but it’s gone in favor of the kitten cash-shop focus. Obviously they have to make money but they should have use yearly expansion for that purpose in stead of a cash-shop that harms the game for this sort of game-play.

About what is end-game in GW2.
Well I do JP’s multiple times. WvW is also something I keep doing but it’s getting old, really needs some new interesting stuff. (like build guild halls in WvW for example and then defend that so you are fighting for moore then just numbers.)
and guild missions but this also needs some new stuff.

Vayne.8563:

Go back and read the Colin quote about it, where he says they TESTED it extensively on all sorts of variations. With like, you know, players.

I don’t really care what one person things or five people think. Anet did the labwork, it’s why they made the changes.

Well, then call me cynical, but I don’t assume that testing something means it’ll work; ANet tests plenty of features and updates before they implement them, it didn’t guarantee a perfect track record and I don’t see why I should believe that’s any different now.

Now if by “test” Colin meant they monitored how Chinese players reacted to the system, which would provide a much more sizable and reliable sample size, then I would be more inclined to believe it’ll work; however if it’s just cycling through a handful of new playtesters every time they tried a new build (because they need to test it with people who aren’t aware of rallying), then I’ll remain highly skeptical until it’s implemented.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Maybe someone can help me out here, because I just don’t understand this “feature” patch.

Since the game launched 2 years ago, it was touted as having a great leveling system, where you could go anywhere, didn’t have to do quests and could level doing pretty much anything.

The game has always had one major complaint, the lack of endgame content. There were no raids, no new areas, no endgame progression, and no new ingame skins being released.

These two things have been pretty much the two constants of the game since launch… leveling good… endgame bad…

Yet we now have spent the last 2 “feature” patches revamping the leveling system from the ground up and not introducing a single bit of endgame. I literally just spent the last 20 minutes looking for a SINGLE thread that said they should revamp leveling and I couldn’t find one person complaining about it. The biggest complaint related to leveling I could find was to undo the changes to leveling the last “feature” patch brought.

So what exactly is the point of revamping the only part of the game people almost unanimously loved and completely ignoring the areas of the game people think need the most work? It just seems like a terrible business strategy to me.

A lot of it is just porting the chinese client differences to our client which kind of highlights these “features” were developed quite a while ago. If there aren’t any significant changes mentioned this week (ie veteran appropriate changes) then then feature patch is pretty hollow given how much of it is a port from the chinese client.

The funny (not haha) part is that they realised the chinese market is different from the western market but have now seemingly decided to implement these specific chinese market changes into the western market rather than sticking to the realisation that the markets are very different, it’s a little sad how fickle the decision making has been with this game it’s not done any favours for the arena net brand (especially with the recent inner office dramas spilling out onto the inter webs)

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

Go back and read the Colin quote about it, where he says they TESTED it extensively on all sorts of variations. With like, you know, players.

I don’t really care what one person things or five people think. Anet did the labwork, it’s why they made the changes.

Well, then call me cynical, but I don’t assume that testing something means it’ll work; ANet tests plenty of features and updates before they implement them, it didn’t guarantee a perfect track record and I don’t see why I should believe that’s any different now.

Now if by “test” Colin meant they monitored how Chinese players reacted to the system, which would provide a much more sizable and reliable sample size, then I would be more inclined to believe it’ll work; however if it’s just cycling through a handful of new playtesters every time they tried a new build (because they need to test it with people who aren’t aware of rallying), then I’ll remain highly skeptical until it’s implemented.

The quote says they didn’t just test on on Chinese, but on European and American testers as well. It says the test was quite extensive and what they tried to do that didn’t work before they decided on this.

At least read the quote before trying to win an argument.

Vayne.8563:

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

Go back and read the Colin quote about it, where he says they TESTED it extensively on all sorts of variations. With like, you know, players.

I don’t really care what one person things or five people think. Anet did the labwork, it’s why they made the changes.

Well, then call me cynical, but I don’t assume that testing something means it’ll work; ANet tests plenty of features and updates before they implement them, it didn’t guarantee a perfect track record and I don’t see why I should believe that’s any different now.

Now if by “test” Colin meant they monitored how Chinese players reacted to the system, which would provide a much more sizable and reliable sample size, then I would be more inclined to believe it’ll work; however if it’s just cycling through a handful of new playtesters every time they tried a new build (because they need to test it with people who aren’t aware of rallying), then I’ll remain highly skeptical until it’s implemented.

The quote says they didn’t just test on on Chinese, but on European and American testers as well. It says the test was quite extensive and what they tried to do that didn’t work before they decided on this.

At least read the quote before trying to win an argument.

How about you read the quote and read my post before trying to “win” an argument?

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

That’s not testing anything, that was the discovery process to find out what was wrong.

We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above.

Doesn’t say anything about who the “numerous different groups” were or what the tests entailed.

And how does me explaining why I’ll remain skeptical constitute trying to “win” an argument?

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

Go back and read the Colin quote about it, where he says they TESTED it extensively on all sorts of variations. With like, you know, players.

I don’t really care what one person things or five people think. Anet did the labwork, it’s why they made the changes.

Well, then call me cynical, but I don’t assume that testing something means it’ll work; ANet tests plenty of features and updates before they implement them, it didn’t guarantee a perfect track record and I don’t see why I should believe that’s any different now.

Now if by “test” Colin meant they monitored how Chinese players reacted to the system, which would provide a much more sizable and reliable sample size, then I would be more inclined to believe it’ll work; however if it’s just cycling through a handful of new playtesters every time they tried a new build (because they need to test it with people who aren’t aware of rallying), then I’ll remain highly skeptical until it’s implemented.

The quote says they didn’t just test on on Chinese, but on European and American testers as well. It says the test was quite extensive and what they tried to do that didn’t work before they decided on this.

At least read the quote before trying to win an argument.

How about you read the quote and read my post before trying to “win” an argument?

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

That’s not testing anything, that was the discovery process to find out what was wrong.

We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above.

Doesn’t say anything about who the “numerous different groups” were or what the tests entailed.

And how does me explaining why I’ll remain skeptical constitute trying to “win” an argument?

Look Anet said we went and tested this stuff it’s why we made the changes we did. Whether that was late or not late, it’s just not relevant. What is relevant is they tested stuff and made decisions based on that testing which is all I’m saying.

Vayne.8563:

Look Anet said we went and tested this stuff it’s why we made the changes we did. Whether that was late or not late, it’s just not relevant. What is relevant is they tested stuff and made decisions based on that testing which is all I’m saying.

Which is fair enough, I never said you weren’t entitled to that opinion or that you were wrong in any way, nor did I (intend to) imply that I thought ANet was jumping in blind; I just felt it didn’t make sense, which is actually something even Colin touched upon when he said “Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially” – it’s the initial phase for me as well and I don’t have the benefit of the data that Colin had, so I’m going to be stuck in the “initial” phase until it’s implemented.

So, like I said, feel free to call me cynical.

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

Look Anet said we went and tested this stuff it’s why we made the changes we did. Whether that was late or not late, it’s just not relevant. What is relevant is they tested stuff and made decisions based on that testing which is all I’m saying.

Which is fair enough, I never said you weren’t entitled to that opinion or that you were wrong in any way, nor did I (intend to) imply that I thought ANet was jumping in blind; I just felt it didn’t make sense, which is actually something even Colin touched upon when he said “Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially” – it’s the initial phase for me as well and I don’t have the benefit of the data that Colin had, so I’m going to be stuck in the “initial” phase until it’s implemented.

So, like I said, feel free to call me cynical.

I’m just saying, all I’m seeing is people say over and over again, this stuff isn’t needed. Obviously someone, somehow thought it was.

Vayne.8563:

I’m just saying, all I’m seeing is people say over and over again, this stuff isn’t needed. Obviously someone, somehow thought it was.

Would you consider it a fair concern that, in the process of making the game “easier” to understand, they’re doing damage to it in other ways that they’ve not measured?

Palador.2170:

Vayne.8563:

I’m just saying, all I’m seeing is people say over and over again, this stuff isn’t needed. Obviously someone, somehow thought it was.

Would you consider it a fair concern that, in the process of making the game “easier” to understand, they’re doing damage to it in other ways that they’ve not measured?

Making leveling easier to understand I have no problem with. It’s not going to affect how I play the game either way. That’s what they’re trying to do. Make it so that people who know how to play can jump into PvP at any level, people who don’t won’t unlock it till X level.

Vayne.8563:

Palador.2170:

Vayne.8563:

I’m just saying, all I’m seeing is people say over and over again, this stuff isn’t needed. Obviously someone, somehow thought it was.

Would you consider it a fair concern that, in the process of making the game “easier” to understand, they’re doing damage to it in other ways that they’ve not measured?

Making leveling easier to understand I have no problem with. It’s not going to affect how I play the game either way. That’s what they’re trying to do. Make it so that people who know how to play can jump into PvP at any level, people who don’t won’t unlock it till X level.

That doesn’t really answer my question, though.

I see why they’d want to bring the changes to leveling from China to the Western game. It makes things a lot easier for them if they have only one version of any system to deal with. And yes, some of these improvements may seem good (opinions vary). Given that they won’t undo the mess they made of the trait system, I think that these changes are a good thing.

BUT, I think it’s a fair concern that in making these improvements, they’re costing themselves in other areas that they’ve not noticed yet. Areas that they can’t measure as easily. From what I’ve read, this is basically what a few others are worried about as well.

You can take an interesting rock and polish it to make it more enjoyable. But polish it too much and you can lose the characteristics that made it so interesting to begin with.

I agree on this post, when I was a new player and I was leveling, the game was very exciting for me with a lot of quests and stories to do. But after playing for thousands of hours(2 years), I’m having hard time to find a hardcore goal to play for. I have 18k+ap, PvP R80, WvW R1600+, Eternity and 4 other legendaries etc… Currently need some other hardcore end-game goals to keep playing. I mean, arenanet is a great company, but imo they should spend their time and efforts for permanent end-game revamps and features. Leveling and being a new player takes only 1-1.5 weeks.(maybe even lower for hardcore players)

Does NA/EU really have that many new players, I mean unique new players to the game that the levelling system had to be revamped, I can understand China where they apparently have 500k new players at the same time, but we are 2 years into the game, and now they are suddenly talking about new players come on, its pretty clear every update we are getting no matter what spin is put on it, is to make NA/EU fall directly into line with whatever China gets,

Its only a matter of time before we see VIP status on EU/NA like China has, and from reading this thread I can bet I know who the first person to buy it would be………

They talk about the levelling system, yet everyone who has played for the last 2 years made it to level 80 no problem, all the problems around levelling came in when they decided to restrict the trait system.

Agree with the topic, as I posted earlier about it in other thread, so pointless. Why did Anet spend the last two years revamping systems they didn’t exactly need to revamp? and in just the first two years after release. Streamline some things like the loot drops sure, but the revamping traits was not needed since it was made worse, and offering cookies on level ups now is not going to hide that fact.

Two years that could have been used to strengthen the end game or actual new content like a new race class or weapons. Even Wow did not rework their leveling zones and leveling systems until they did cataclysm six years later.

Now these feature blogs, separated to explain areas of changes, dragged out over a period of 3 weeks so they can hype up the features better, and yet even then they still can’t fully explain the changes. Like when is the personal story going to start now? level 1 or 10? Do the new loot changes affect level 80 after we’re done leveling?

Every other part of the game has been suffering because they went and focused on the part that needed the least amount of fixing. If you wanted to add a tutorial then add it around what you had, not completely revamp stuff around it. Leveling was not hard, in fact it was fun the first time around, it’s doing it multiple times that gets tedious and boring. You wanted to present a game of exploration, but at the same time now you’re just handing things to the player on a silver platter.

Week 3 announcements don’t look like they will blow my mind either.

I’m never ever going to criticize tutorials. I understand the need for them, but I wouldn’t call moving the level at which you get abilities a ‘tutorial’. Unless these little level-up summaries contain actual helpful tips about rallying, about weapon skills, etc, moving the level at which you get them won’t help much.

And further more.. this ’let’s layer the way in which you gain abilities’ sheds light on why we only get traits at level 30 now. But it’s terrible. For god’s sake, you can’t make a ‘teaching’ choice like that and let it punish your veteran players so bad. It makes leveling alts a freaking chore.

Does wow hold back their talent tree until level 20, level 30? Freak no. They realize that waiting so long before you get some say in how your character plays is a bad bad choice in an rpg.

Lheimroo.2947:

I’m never ever going to criticize tutorials.

I will. I will criticize the heck out of tutorials which are clunky and written in a way which pull the player out of the game and into “now you’re going to be forced to RTFM”. I also will criticize tutorials which cannot ever be skipped by choice.

It’s as terrible as putting a 30 minute cutscene before a difficult boss with no save states between the start of the cutscene and the boss being beaten. These things are #4 and #7 on my list of “great gaming sins”.

I’m holding out some hope that next week shows some significant features for veteran players. Collecting and trading items is very vague though. I’ll hold off making my final judgement until this final week is over. But if this last week doesn’t deliver in a big way I will make Anet aware of that fact and what needs to change.

To those that ‘do not understand why people don’t understand feature A or B or C…remember you are the top 2%. Congratulations on your elite skillz! Many players are ignorant of most gaming topics…whether it’s simply movement, actual mechanics, etc. This does not mean they are stupid, just that they have never considered these thing, or even crazier, have extremely limited experience with PC/console gaming at all.

Oh and if you believe that Massive Multiplayer means the 2% rule the game? Those days are over, I suggest you might consider going to play Dark Souls. You need to come down off the mountain and walk and teach the real people in your game…or leave them alone to learn at their own pace, hoping they don’t founder and quit before they figure it out.

If this is to improve the personal story, then fine. It needs it badly. If traits and skills or any other aspect of progression are going to be somehow tied to the personal story then that’s a huge mistake.

Whatever you do with it, please provide an option for us to eliminate any of it showing on our screen. No HUD items. I can’t express how much I hate Trehaernes personal story AND the forced content ending.

Even if you can set it up to create money in my wallet if I play part of it, I WONT. If I level a 5th character, it will never be through the personal story.

Those that keep trying to say its hard for new players to understand and learn the game need to stop. When I told my daughters, that started playing this game at ages 11 and 13, that they were making these changes they asked if they were talking about 4 yr olds trying to learn the game. This is one of simplest games to get into and does not need more dumbing down. Those that have a hard time picking it up should not be playing it, they probably shouldn’t even touch a computer.

When SWG launched it was a very hard and complex game to learn. I met children under 10 and people with autism and other mental challenges that spent a lot of time and learned how to play it. challenges may not be for everyone but this game is not challenging to learn.

These changes feel like they are made for people who will not be playing this game anyways. Like some guy in a suit that doesn’t play video games says he doesn’t get it and we should make these changes for him and people like him, but they won’t end up playing it anyways so why make these changes.

I understand they are just trying to slowly match the us/eu servers to what they did to china but china should have just cloned us.