Guild Wars 2

Devildoc.6721:

I missed the Memo where HoT is going to be free. How about you give me a source on that.

Yes there’s a grace period for Living Story Season 2 questlines but after that grace period they sell that content piecemeal too.

I don’t have a problem with the game selling new zones/content.

In fact, if that’s what it’d take to get Arenanet to push for new content, I’d gladly pay for new content.

I never considered them under an obligation to deliver free content on a regular basis when I was not paying a sub.

HoT is an expansion. Whether you are paying a sub in a sub game or not, you still have to buy expansions separately. I wasn’t here for like 8 months. When I came back I still got like 2 zones to play for free and living story I could buy with gold. If I was here originally I would have gotten living story for free too. While in ESO I could only have gotten it for “free” if I was paying a sub.

One could argue whether it’s good or bad, but one thing is certain, the model is not exactly the same as Guild Wars 2’s. Which is what you said. Which is why I posted that.

FrizzFreston.5290:

The story is so typically cliché at the start and the quests really don’t come to life with the instancing and didn’t grasp me with a good sense of story.

Which makes it no different from any other video game, including this one where the plot, dialogue, etc, are beyond poor, packed full of clichés and at the level that is of a bad children’s book.

Mirta.5029:

Devildoc.6721:

and manual aim

that’s an outright lie now. While it’s true that you can’t tab target, your shots will hone in on whatever was in the middle of your screen, which means that you’re still locked onto a player, rather than aiming yourself. And what I mean by “was” – if you shot and your target moved, your arrow, or magic spell, or whatever will make a turn mid air to still land on target. Some of those are quite sharp turns too.

Hit boxes are big but you must still aim within the hitbox. If you hit tab, it’ll put brackets around the enemy indicating the hitbox (it’s not the same as tab targetting in the more familiar sense, in this case, it picks a target to prefer if your attack would possibly hit many targets. Without a bracketed target, your attack will hit the nearest target you’re aiming at, with brackets it’ll hit the bracketed target, this is for instances like PVP where multiple targets may be dogpiled on each other)

In a practical sense, you have about a 15-30 degree angle you need to be aiming in (depending on distance), where in an MMO like GW2, or FFXIV or WoW, you just have to not have them behind you, that’s like a 180 degree arc no matter the distance. In fact the further away they are the more likely you’ll have them in front of you to be hit. In ESO, the further away they are, the narrower the arc becomes in which you have to aim to be able to hit.

It’s not quite FPS, in which there is no hitBOX around the target, but it’s more of a manual aim than a traditional tab target system where they just have to be not behind you, that and once you’ve targetted them they stay targetted. ESO if they circle around you you have to spin around to try and re target them, and if you aim outside the brackets you will miss.

Devildoc.6721:

ESO if they circle around you you have to spin around to try and re target them, and if you aim outside the brackets you will miss.

actually that’s true even for tab targetting MMOs.

Want action combat? See Wildstar, Tera and Blade and Soul. ESO’s aiming is not even close to the amount of effort you actually had to put into aiming in their RPGs and might as well be tab target with the amount of space for error you’re giving. And it really really breaks immersion when you see your arrows turn mid air.

C’mon, ESO is not a bad game. It misses a few key things that GW2 does just right, but the complaints I’m seeing here are not entirely accurate.

Phasing: Yes, it’s a problem to just casually run around with friends who aren’t at the exact same stage as you, but you can at least all group up and see each other much more easily than at launch.

Switch from Sub to B2P: Here I have some inside info. Back when the game was first publicly announced, I questioned my friend who was working there as to why it would have a sub fee. He said that model had been put in place early on before the B2P model had proven itself in other games and was “baked in” too much to change by intended launch, but they would eventually switch. So it wasn’t sudden, it just was harder work than the buying public thought.

Muddy Brown: Yes, especially if you start in the Pact. Stonefalls is horrifically dull. But other zones are green and sunny (when not dynamically raining), and now there are dyes — not nearly as good as GW2 dyes — to brighten up the armor.

And the quests are wonderfully immersive, the stories much better told and holding more depth than in GW2, your choices really impact your future experience with no do-overs.

GW2 still works better as a whole. In TESO I can feel like I’m fighting the game to try to get things done, whereas GW2 gameplay and movement is smooth and intuitive. GW2 is more social, has a better TP (well, TESO doesn’t have one at all, just individual guild traders so you have to get lucky to run into one and have it selling what you seek), and is easier on the eyes.

But that’s no reason to bash TESO as being far more horrible than it is.

Well, it’s not exactly that ESO brought me back to GW2, since I never decided to leave the game forgood. I did, however, take a 3 month hiatus from GW2, due to various personal and ingame (guild-related) issues. During those 3 months my best friend and I played the hell out of ESO with our early access and for a while I had fun. Thekittenn came from playing with my best friend. The game, however, came with lots of frustrations and in many ways it’s a much more limited and less socially constructed game. I came back to GW2 when LS Season 2 started and soon found myself not playing ESO at all anymore. Everything that frustrated me about ESO is not in GW2, and that’s something I’ve come across with more MMO’s if I compare them to GW2.

At first I decided to try ESO again a year after launch, at least just for a month. Then they announced they would drop the monthly fee, which I welcomed. But now that we’ve come to the point of ESO’s 1 year anniversary I can safely say there is not one fibre in my body that is even curious to see what ESO is now. Even now that I don’t have to pay anymore, I still don’t feel any motivation to take even a quick peek in Tamriel.

So yes, I took a break from GW2 and played ESO in the meantime. I didn’t plan on leaving ESO behind entirely but that is still what happened pretty quickly after I went back to Tyria. All I can say is GW2 just has what it takes to keep me coming back, even in these new content-less times. In short, GW2 trumps ESO in every regard, in my honest opinion.

Vayne.8563:

It’s very rare a game gets a second chance. I mean it has happened, but there are many MMOs that have made huge improvements after launch that people gave up on anyway.

Final Fantasy XIV was an exception but most MMOs don’t get that luxury. ESO has the console advantage, but even with that, I think for many that ship has sailed. It doesn’t really help that Archeage and Wildstar both had bad launches. I’m always going to play an MMO, but that’s not true for most people. Many people walk away from the genre.

FF14 was kind of an aberration, I’ll agree. A sub game that reinvented itself as a better-received sub game is certainly not an every year occurrence. However, that’s not what ESO has done. It’s gone B2P w/ store. Going B2P or F2p plus store has to some extent revitalized several sub MMO’s that were considered to be failing, ToR, TSW and AoC as examples. They will never be top of the heap — but that wasn’t going to happen regardless. Heck, even CO is still limping along. Now maybe these are examples of developers milking what profit they can off their investment — but that’s kind of what the entire MMO genre is these days with 1-2 exceptions.

As to GW2 as the cure to what ails one in ESO… I’ve been thinking that I might try ESO as something to do since ANet seems headed in a direction I’m not sure I want to follow — at least until the WvW meta sorts itself out over the stab changes.

Wyn.5724:

Just a note ESO is made by ZeniMax Online Studios, it’s only published by Bethesda.

Make sure to add the -Streamingclient command for the GW2 launcher, then you don’t have to wait for the whole thing to download.

I hate to ask, but how should this look? I have the link shortcut as:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2.exe” -StreamingClient

but it doesn’t do as advertised. If I put the -StreamingClient inside the quotes then it tells me the path is invalid. Same if I remove the quotes, add or remove whitespace, etc, so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong here.

It should work if you put one space between the quotes and the dash

I got “invalid path” repeatedly until I did that. Right click on your desktop shortcut, select Properties, select the Shortcut tab if it’s not highlighted already, and add spacedashStreamingClient — it should accept that.

the only good thing about elder scroll online is everything is dialoged and voiced:) thats amazing for who cares about lores and stories, i love this in gw 2 altho we dont have that much dialog but events r dialoged also personal story.. i wish when we talk to any npc instead of seeing a note we could hear theyr voice it would be amazing

Donari.5237:

Switch from Sub to B2P: Here I have some inside info. Back when the game was first publicly announced, I questioned my friend who was working there as to why it would have a sub fee. He said that model had been put in place early on before the B2P model had proven itself in other games and was “baked in” too much to change by intended launch, but they would eventually switch. So it wasn’t sudden, it just was harder work than the buying public thought.

If that’s true then they should have been more honest with their players, or at least less vocal about the situation. When it was first announced that the game would charge a subscription many potential players and reviewers saw it as a controversial decision because apparently subscription games had been steadily losing popularity to buy-to-play and free-to-play games.

Zenimax really went all-out to defend it, saying they felt it was the only business model that would allow them to make the game they wanted to make and they would rather close the game down than drop the subscription.

Less than a year later they dropped the sub and didn’t really explain why.

I have to admit I was really happy, I’d actually been hoping it would happen because I really don’t like subscription games (until I found out about GW1 I thought I just wouldn’t get to play MMOs), but I do feel bad for some of the people who got into it because they wanted a new, purely subscription based game.

I have no idea if it’s accurate or not, but if ESO’s new business model works (and based on the number of people I’m seeing in Daggerfall right now it seems to be) I’d actually say it’s kind of a win for Anet too since they were very much pioneers of the buy-to-play model.

Coalwhite.2571:

This has to be said.

I haven’t played GW2 for about a year, maybe a bit more. I reached end-game back then, played around and after a while gave up because I got bored and lag was pretty bad back then (this was also around the time the trading shop was down for a few days for Mac users only). Then ESO was announced and I was like: suck it ArenaNet, Bethesda is going to take all your players.

Believing in pre-release hype is bad. Really bad. You got suckered in by the hype from a studio you had very little knowledge of.

In any case, fast forward almost a year and despite seeing tons of new and exciting GW2 news I decide to buy ESO Online now that it’s finally B2P. This thing costs 60$, and there’s no refund – but I think: hey, how bad can it be – it’s from the guys that made Skyrim.

No, it’s not by the same guys who made Skyrim. That’s a very common mistake and I think ZeniMax was hoping people would associate ESO with the single player elder scrolls games. It was made by a studio that is part of ZeniMax, the parent publisher, but it is by no means made entirely by the same team that made the the single player elder scrolls games. I’m pretty sure Todd Howard, the brains behind Skyrim, wasn’t personally overseeing anything about ESO but I could be wrong on that part.

ESO is so darn uninspired it made me upset! I’ve logged 25 hours in the game, around 13 of those are install hours o_O

Battle is a drag, the in-game world is boring to explore and the skills are not adding to the battle at all yet. Lore is great though, I’ll give them that. But really, there’s no strategy and hitboxes are deplorably bad. After about three days of frustration and boredom I can no longer force myself to play it, and am downloading GW2 as I type this.

Maybe because I’m older or have just played more games, but I look back on my time with GW2 and I remember excitement, mystery and great, challenging combat. Glad to be back, let’s hope the magic hasn’t faded (…. and that they didn’t stop working on the Mac client!!!!)

Anyone else come here from ESO?

I did not come from ESO, but I will say that when I found out about the reveal of ESO, I personally found it generic from the beginning—especially when prerelease, it was revealed it would all be in third person but due to fan demand, first person mode was added in.

That and having played Oblivion and Skyrim, I could tell that while the universe was deep, the setting felt pretty generic. An MMO relies pretty heavily on the setting and another high fantasy, swords/sorcery with relatively low level technology MMO wasn’t something that I think was necessary.

Oh, and don’t forget that there are plenty of reviews. I generally check out a few reviews not to see the final scores, but to see what parts were disliked by the reviewer and consider if I would dislike it.

HawkMeister.4758:

The ONLY thing really superior is the WuwWuw part of ESO. It´s an awesomely humongous continuous map that actually feels like war, including PvE where you can get jumped by the enemy.
Compared to the tiny Zerg racetracks GW2 offers.

The only thing is… GW2 is 100x more fun because those “tiny zerg racetracks”.

ESO WvW is technically superior to GW2 WvW sure, but its not fun. Its was huge and impressive that way, but there was no organisation support, broken respawns and horrible lag (yeah, actually far worse than GW2 for EU peeps). An average 1 hour play time consisted of 50 minutes running and 10 minutes fighting 10+ people alone. Heaven forbid you want to go outside the zerg – you’re limited to sculking about in the PvE dungeons because you sure as kitten cant take a lousy camp without having 20 people. Soooooooo booooooooring. It was just too big. You could probably cut down Cyrodiil to half size and it would still be too big. Hell it was even reflected in the graphics design, scaling was totally off and it seemed like some producer had just looked at the art and said “This is supposed to be a 1:1 realistic bridge?! kitten that, scale it up to 1.4 so that its epic! No wait, we need more epic! 1.8, that’s better. Brilliant!”

We all want WvW to be just a little bit bigger, but definetly not like that. Bigger is not always better.

Devildoc.6721:

Vayne.8563:

ckotoc.5421:

Eso is buy to play now like gw2.

Not quite exactly like Guild Wars 2, there’s still an optional subscription.

The “subscription” is more or less an automatic purchase of cash shop currency every month. You pay $15 a month, you get $15 worth of “crowns”, and there are some perks on top of that. It’s a little different than other MMO’s with optional “freemium” subs that I’ve encountered where you pay $15, they temporarily uncripple the client (the F2P accounts are often extremely crippled), and give you $5 worth of cash shop currency per month. Here your entire subscription payment is exchanged for the value of crowns you would have purchased if you weren’t subbing but just buying crowns. It’s like if Arenanet were to add an option to automatically buy 800 gems a month for $10 a month, and then added some minor bonuses to it like 10% increased xp from kills.

Whether you subscribe or decide for yourself without subscription to spend $10, you get 800 gems, just the recurring subscription adds a bonus on top I guess.

Still, wholly unnecessary, as the game client and accounts, like GW2, are not crippled and requiring a freemium subscription to have full functionality.

The game isn’t going to be to anyone’s tastes, I hear a lot of complaints about the combat, which I like since it’s more action oriented (plays like Oblivion, with right mouse blocking left mouse attacking, holding down to power attack, and manual aim no tab targetting), and it does not play much like a standard MMO at all, so if you go in expecting an MMO like experience being able to tab target and autoattack your way through, prepare for disappointment, but the business model is fair.

I encourage more MMO’s to go B2P, as it’s honest.

B2P is a store saying “we made this product, would you like to buy it?” you buy the product, you enjoy the product free of future obligations.

Subscription is like mafia, they sell you some property, and then charge you “protection fees” every month. They might promise other things to go with the protection fees, like landscaping or other amenities, but you’re still handing them money hand over fist on a regular basis and they can decide whether or not to deliver on those “promises”

F2P is like an auto-shop/used car dealership, where they GIVE you a car for free but it breaks down in the lot, they tell you they can fix it, but it’s going to cost you, then it breaks down again a few feet down the road, they tell you they can fix it, but it’ll cost even more, so then they sell you on a “service plan” to pay money on a regular basis and fixing the car is “covered”, until you stop paying, then the car will mysteriously break down again.

But it was a sub for a year. It wasn’t ready, they knew it wasn’t ready, and they charged monthly for it. People talk about Anet making cash grabs all time, but if they ended up with half a million players paying for that time, they’ve made a whole lot of money at $15 a month, knowing they were likely to go free to play before the game launched on console anyway. I’m absolutely convinced that was the plan. And that, unfortunately, does not make me want to support that company.

You can say that you like about Anet but they were buy to play from day 1 and until the Living Story Season 2, you didn’t have to pay for content at all. I don’t know about you,. but I played a lot of the season 1 content and had a ball with some of it.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

It’s very rare a game gets a second chance. I mean it has happened, but there are many MMOs that have made huge improvements after launch that people gave up on anyway.

Final Fantasy XIV was an exception but most MMOs don’t get that luxury. ESO has the console advantage, but even with that, I think for many that ship has sailed. It doesn’t really help that Archeage and Wildstar both had bad launches. I’m always going to play an MMO, but that’s not true for most people. Many people walk away from the genre.

FF14 was kind of an aberration, I’ll agree. A sub game that reinvented itself as a better-received sub game is certainly not an every year occurrence. However, that’s not what ESO has done. It’s gone B2P w/ store. Going B2P or F2p plus store has to some extent revitalized several sub MMO’s that were considered to be failing, ToR, TSW and AoC as examples. They will never be top of the heap — but that wasn’t going to happen regardless. Heck, even CO is still limping along. Now maybe these are examples of developers milking what profit they can off their investment — but that’s kind of what the entire MMO genre is these days with 1-2 exceptions.

As to GW2 as the cure to what ails one in ESO… I’ve been thinking that I might try ESO as something to do since ANet seems headed in a direction I’m not sure I want to follow — at least until the WvW meta sorts itself out over the stab changes.

No real reason not try ESO…except that for me, I can’t really play it for very long without want to tear my eyes out, but that’s just me. When the price is cheaper, I’ll buy it myself. But I suspect that the game won’t do as well as the makers think it will, even with console coming out.

Considering this is the week they’ve gone free to play there’s been a lot less going on on their reddit than I thought there’d be.

Mirta.5029:

Devildoc.6721:

ESO if they circle around you you have to spin around to try and re target them, and if you aim outside the brackets you will miss.

actually that’s true even for tab targetting MMOs.

Want action combat? See Wildstar, Tera and Blade and Soul. ESO’s aiming is not even close to the amount of effort you actually had to put into aiming in their RPGs and might as well be tab target with the amount of space for error you’re giving. And it really really breaks immersion when you see your arrows turn mid air.

Tera had great combat (great art too but aside from that nothing was great about it), never played Blade and Soul.. Wildstar…

from what I remember about it every attack was like a 90 degree frontal cone with range. I don’t think it deserves to be mentioned in the company you mentioned it with. Nothing was great about Wildstar except its pre launch viral marketing. I call it Viralstar for that reason.

ESO’s aiming is not a perfect recreation of the single player TPS/FPS combat, but I still prefer it over sticky targetting.

Vayne.8563:

Devildoc.6721:

Vayne.8563:

ckotoc.5421:

Eso is buy to play now like gw2.

Not quite exactly like Guild Wars 2, there’s still an optional subscription.

The “subscription” is more or less an automatic purchase of cash shop currency every month. You pay $15 a month, you get $15 worth of “crowns”, and there are some perks on top of that. It’s a little different than other MMO’s with optional “freemium” subs that I’ve encountered where you pay $15, they temporarily uncripple the client (the F2P accounts are often extremely crippled), and give you $5 worth of cash shop currency per month. Here your entire subscription payment is exchanged for the value of crowns you would have purchased if you weren’t subbing but just buying crowns. It’s like if Arenanet were to add an option to automatically buy 800 gems a month for $10 a month, and then added some minor bonuses to it like 10% increased xp from kills.

Whether you subscribe or decide for yourself without subscription to spend $10, you get 800 gems, just the recurring subscription adds a bonus on top I guess.

Still, wholly unnecessary, as the game client and accounts, like GW2, are not crippled and requiring a freemium subscription to have full functionality.

The game isn’t going to be to anyone’s tastes, I hear a lot of complaints about the combat, which I like since it’s more action oriented (plays like Oblivion, with right mouse blocking left mouse attacking, holding down to power attack, and manual aim no tab targetting), and it does not play much like a standard MMO at all, so if you go in expecting an MMO like experience being able to tab target and autoattack your way through, prepare for disappointment, but the business model is fair.

I encourage more MMO’s to go B2P, as it’s honest.

B2P is a store saying “we made this product, would you like to buy it?” you buy the product, you enjoy the product free of future obligations.

Subscription is like mafia, they sell you some property, and then charge you “protection fees” every month. They might promise other things to go with the protection fees, like landscaping or other amenities, but you’re still handing them money hand over fist on a regular basis and they can decide whether or not to deliver on those “promises”

F2P is like an auto-shop/used car dealership, where they GIVE you a car for free but it breaks down in the lot, they tell you they can fix it, but it’s going to cost you, then it breaks down again a few feet down the road, they tell you they can fix it, but it’ll cost even more, so then they sell you on a “service plan” to pay money on a regular basis and fixing the car is “covered”, until you stop paying, then the car will mysteriously break down again.

But it was a sub for a year. It wasn’t ready, they knew it wasn’t ready, and they charged monthly for it. People talk about Anet making cash grabs all time, but if they ended up with half a million players paying for that time, they’ve made a whole lot of money at $15 a month, knowing they were likely to go free to play before the game launched on console anyway. I’m absolutely convinced that was the plan. And that, unfortunately, does not make me want to support that company.

You can say that you like about Anet but they were buy to play from day 1 and until the Living Story Season 2, you didn’t have to pay for content at all. I don’t know about you,. but I played a lot of the season 1 content and had a ball with some of it.

They probably never should have gone sub, I agree fully. They should have delayed launch and gone B2P from the getgo

Vayne.8563:

But it was a sub for a year. It wasn’t ready, they knew it wasn’t ready, and they charged monthly for it.

And for every month that a player was subbed, Zenimax has granted that player an equivalent amount of crowns. Even people that came in all of two weeks ahead of time (and possibly up to the day before the shift to free play) have recieved a base number of crowns, plus bonus crowns based on how long they’ve been subbed. I’m sitting on 2k crowns just because I joined a week or so before it went to its new structure, and thus far? A number of things in their crown store are actually cheaper than ANet’s gem store (and other things are also more expensive, to be fair).

It’s not ideal, no. And having been a part of the beta, yeah, I can confirm you’re right about them launching too early. Rather, they should have never launched as a sub game. The writing on the wall was there since the beta. ESO couldn’t survive as a sub game.

But you know what? Having been a part of the beta, and now a part of the game as it is now? It has changed. A LOT. I would argue it’s improved a whole hell of a lot. Enough to certainly warrant checking it out if it can be bought for cheap. And at least Zenimax is trying to recompense people who subbed and paid money for the game. It’s a lot more than can be said for how ANet has treated anyone that bought an Infinite Continue Coin.

I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.

Investors want to start seeing a return on their investment and so the game goes live whether the actual devs thinks its good to go or not. Every MMO company, that I have seen, starts accepting money when they know their product is not ready. GW2 was no exception.

Ashen.2907:

I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.

Investors want to start seeing a return on their investment and so the game goes live whether the actual devs thinks its good to go or not. Every MMO company, that I have seen, starts accepting money when they know their product is not ready. GW2 was no exception.

I’m not sure you can compare the Guild Wars 2 launch with the ESO launch. There’s not being ready and there’s not being ready.

Guild Wars 2 had issues for sure, but at least the combat worked. ESO was far more deeply flawed at launch that Guild Wars 2 was and most people you ask would say that Guild Wars 2 had a relatively good launch.

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.

Investors want to start seeing a return on their investment and so the game goes live whether the actual devs thinks its good to go or not. Every MMO company, that I have seen, starts accepting money when they know their product is not ready. GW2 was no exception.

I’m not sure you can compare the Guild Wars 2 launch with the ESO launch. There’s not being ready and there’s not being ready.

Guild Wars 2 had issues for sure, but at least the combat worked. ESO was far more deeply flawed at launch that Guild Wars 2 was and most people you ask would say that Guild Wars 2 had a relatively good launch.

The only really negative thing I remember from GW2 launch was the TP was down for the first few weeks.

Otherwise, relatively smooth.

ESO launch was a disaster, duping bugs bank wiping bugs, etc. The first impression was so bad that it poisoned people’s opinions of the game to this day.

See this thread a majority of the negative remarks are based on beta/launch experience.

But anyway I’m rather frustrated with Anet right now because they’re literally expecting to hold our attention with Esports tournaments until HoT.

Different games, different worlds. Why are you bashing ESO here?

I was so put off by the eso beta that I couldn’t imagine giving it another shot unless it was for something like $10.

In reality gw2 had a great launch compared to the stories I’ve heard about other mmos. The only big issue I can think of with gw2’s launch was the trading post not working.

Devildoc.6721:

But anyway I’m rather frustrated with Anet right now because they’re literally expecting to hold our attention with Esports tournaments until HoT.

having played other MMOs I kind of expected it… The closer you are to an expansion, the less updates there will be as your main working force is focused on the expansion. The way that I see it, it’s a prime opportunity to get all the achievements that you haven’t, or play some other games

Mirta.5029:

Devildoc.6721:

But anyway I’m rather frustrated with Anet right now because they’re literally expecting to hold our attention with Esports tournaments until HoT.

having played other MMOs I kind of expected it… The closer you are to an expansion, the less updates there will be as your main working force is focused on the expansion. The way that I see it, it’s a prime opportunity to get all the achievements that you haven’t, or play some other games

yeah, as I said before I’ve mostly been using this time to play ESO.

Devildoc.6721:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.

Investors want to start seeing a return on their investment and so the game goes live whether the actual devs thinks its good to go or not. Every MMO company, that I have seen, starts accepting money when they know their product is not ready. GW2 was no exception.

I’m not sure you can compare the Guild Wars 2 launch with the ESO launch. There’s not being ready and there’s not being ready.

Guild Wars 2 had issues for sure, but at least the combat worked. ESO was far more deeply flawed at launch that Guild Wars 2 was and most people you ask would say that Guild Wars 2 had a relatively good launch.

The only really negative thing I remember from GW2 launch was the TP was down for the first few weeks.

Otherwise, relatively smooth.

ESO launch was a disaster, duping bugs bank wiping bugs, etc. The first impression was so bad that it poisoned people’s opinions of the game to this day.

See this thread a majority of the negative remarks are based on beta/launch experience.

There were bugs and broken events too, but the game itself was playable. Most people consider it a smooth launch, however.

Devildoc.6721:

Tera had great combat (great art too but aside from that nothing was great about it), never played Blade and Soul.. Wildstar…

from what I remember about it every attack was like a 90 degree frontal cone with range. I don’t think it deserves to be mentioned in the company you mentioned it with. Nothing was great about Wildstar except its pre launch viral marketing. I call it Viralstar for that reason.

ESO’s aiming is not a perfect recreation of the single player TPS/FPS combat, but I still prefer it over sticky targetting.

Wildstars dungeon mechanics where actually miles ahead of the dungeons in GW2. Proper difficulty aswell.

Rest of the game was mediocre tho. But so is GW2.

Devildoc.6721:

Mirta.5029:

Devildoc.6721:

But anyway I’m rather frustrated with Anet right now because they’re literally expecting to hold our attention with Esports tournaments until HoT.

having played other MMOs I kind of expected it… The closer you are to an expansion, the less updates there will be as your main working force is focused on the expansion. The way that I see it, it’s a prime opportunity to get all the achievements that you haven’t, or play some other games

yeah, as I said before I’ve mostly been using this time to play ESO.

I can understand that as I have been playing HoMMVI alot now, but I have a guild to manage too so am pretty active in GW2 anyway. But what you say about updates is not very true.

Since Expac announcement we have had:
- Dragon New year festival ( Worst festival ever ).
- The removal of Dragon New year festival ( Not a very fun update as it was more all about the removal of the Festival and nothing more ).
- Delayed Feature patch ( Buggiest GW2 update ever ).

So in 7 weeks that should have been six weeks there has been 3 updates and that is no different to what they have had before. An update every 2 weeks. Sure I am a little sad that there are no more new story until the expac but they havent put everything on hold just becouse of the expac compaired to other games. Other games that announces an expac usually goes totally silent with only minor bug fixes here and there. I still hope for a SAB run before the expac but thats way to much to hope for.

Locuz.2651:

Devildoc.6721:

Tera had great combat (great art too but aside from that nothing was great about it), never played Blade and Soul.. Wildstar…

from what I remember about it every attack was like a 90 degree frontal cone with range. I don’t think it deserves to be mentioned in the company you mentioned it with. Nothing was great about Wildstar except its pre launch viral marketing. I call it Viralstar for that reason.

ESO’s aiming is not a perfect recreation of the single player TPS/FPS combat, but I still prefer it over sticky targetting.

Wildstars dungeon mechanics where actually miles ahead of the dungeons in GW2. Proper difficulty aswell.

Rest of the game was mediocre tho. But so is GW2.

Depends on what you like. I don’t think dungeon mechanics being ahead would make a game any less or more mediocre for some of us. And I think the number of people who play MMOs focused on instances is smaller than many think. I can’t prove it, but I truly believe it.

zinkz.7045:

FrizzFreston.5290:

The story is so typically cliché at the start and the quests really don’t come to life with the instancing and didn’t grasp me with a good sense of story.

Which makes it no different from any other video game, including this one where the plot, dialogue, etc, are beyond poor, packed full of clichés and at the level that is of a bad children’s book.

Yea I suppose there are many in gw2 as well, I guess that wasn’t the actual reason it was so boring to me. I think.. it was more that it starts with evil bad guy needs stopping and you’re the one to stop him makes for a non engaging starting experience, whereas in GW2 your character is introduced as an actual character with an actual background of their own. (And in the end you’re not even the one who did it all which to me was better than being the single Hero type. Tbh more realistic.)

Devildoc.6721:

But anyway I’m rather frustrated with Anet right now because they’re literally expecting to hold our attention with Esports tournaments until HoT.

Thats what we got because of people always crying : give us an expack .. LS is crap
i’d rather have an expack every x years instead of that.

Would be interesting what happens if ANet stops LS also after the release of HoT
and when the first people have rushed through it in 2 weeks, and we get no
more updates for the next two years ^^

Beldin.5498:

Devildoc.6721:

But anyway I’m rather frustrated with Anet right now because they’re literally expecting to hold our attention with Esports tournaments until HoT.

Thats what we got because of people always crying : give us an expack .. LS is crap
i’d rather have an expack every x years instead of that.

Would be interesting what happens if ANet stops LS also after the release of HoT
and when the first people have rushed through it in 2 weeks, and we get no
more updates for the next two years ^^

It’s a matter of bad timing really, according to what the devs themselves say, the expansion was under development for a very long time and the LS team(s) weren’t working on it, but rather the rest of the company.

I doubt they will scrap the LS concept completely. Although lots of players were crying about it “we want expansions, not LS”, there were loads of players who actually preferred the LS system. I think we will get a new LS a month after HoT is released.

I think the better way they could’ve done this would’ve been to announce HoT BEFORE LS S2 even started. Announce the expansion, then start releasing LS S2 to bridge the main game with the expansion. Players would buy the game (or return to it) to play the bridge storyline of S2, then once the LS S2 is over, they would jump on the expansion.

I hope they follow this tactic with future expansions, it leads to less gaps in their release schedule.

maddoctor.2738:

I doubt they will scrap the LS concept completely. Although lots of players were crying about it “we want expansions, not LS”, there were loads of players who actually preferred the LS system.

They scrapped already the original LS concept, that i much prefered over getting some
solo dungeons with bossmobs that take longer than a whole dungeonrun in this game.

Also beside some tendrils and destroyed WPs there was not much “living” in the world
in episode 2 in my opinion. In the end they scrapped living world already with LS2.

Locuz.2651:

Devildoc.6721:

Tera had great combat (great art too but aside from that nothing was great about it), never played Blade and Soul.. Wildstar…

from what I remember about it every attack was like a 90 degree frontal cone with range. I don’t think it deserves to be mentioned in the company you mentioned it with. Nothing was great about Wildstar except its pre launch viral marketing. I call it Viralstar for that reason.

ESO’s aiming is not a perfect recreation of the single player TPS/FPS combat, but I still prefer it over sticky targetting.

Wildstars dungeon mechanics where actually miles ahead of the dungeons in GW2. Proper difficulty aswell.

Rest of the game was mediocre tho. But so is GW2.

What made those dungeons so good compared to gw2, or gw1? I only tried wildstar for a short while and the whole pve part did not get me.

aspirine.6852:

What made those dungeons so good compared to gw2, or gw1? I only tried wildstar for a short while and the whole pve part did not get me.

the incredible amount of teamwork required. I wish that guild wars was like that. For one thing know the stacks on not crowd controllable bosses? Where you need to crowd control them like 5 times before you can interrupt them? Wildstar enforces that mechanic by making some boss abilities almost straight up dead. So before every boss people used to stop and plan. Then there’s the fact that if you stepped on red, (or worse, got stunned in red), you’re dead. So everyone was 100 times more careful.

The best way I can explain it is taking Living Story Season 2 Episode 7, the centaur camp boss fight after you’ve eaten the challenge mote. Making that boss fight for 5 people. That’s every Wildstar dungeon. I really wholeheartedly wish that let’s say fractals level 50 was like this. Or there was a new hardmode dungeon somewhere like that in Guild Wars 2.

Sure, people don’t all like punishing content. They want to relax. However that’s not a reason for not making some new instances like that.

EDIT: the problem with the game is everything outside instances. The lore is great (in my opinion), but the world is tiny. There’s gear grind. Questing is oldschool. When you hit level 50 you enter a rep grind that lasts for months (in fact that’s the majority of endgame). The PvP and PvP servers were nice, but the developers let both of those die completely. Then the population shrunk beneath fixable. If they ever drop the sub fee, or both the sub and the box fee, I encourage you to try it again, because at least just doing dungeons and (if you ever get there) raids in that game is fun. Not something worth subbing over. But something most definitely worth a try if you didn’t have to.

aspirine.6852:

Rest of the game was mediocre tho. But so is GW2.

What made those dungeons so good compared to gw2, or gw1? I only tried wildstar for a short while and the whole pve part did not get me.

[/quote]

U tried the dungeons?

Comparing WS dungeons with GW2s is like comparing 3 star cuisine with catfood.

Ashen.2907:

I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.

Most MMORPGs are very poor games.

I remember reading a review of a MMORPG some time ago and the reviewer saying, “All quests are of the ‘kill ten rats’ variety, but that’s just part of the genre, right?”, and I think that’s exactly why MMORPGs are so bad.

Because they are not even trying to be good.

MMORPGs cater to the lowest denominator. You can see it here – when someone complains that GW2’s story is weak, the usual reply is, “if you want a good story, go play a single player MMORPG”. When someone complains that GW2 has too much grind, the usual reply is, “if you want a game without grind, don’t play MMORPGs”, and so on. MMORPGs are bad games because MMORPG players are willing to accept bad games.

The irony is that there aren’t that many players willing to accept bad games out there. Not nearly enough to sustain all the MMORPGs that currently exist. It’s little surprise that so many have failed, that very few of them manage to keep themselves as pay-to-play, and that the MMORPG fad – when every single developer claimed to be working on one – has passed.

I think they’re a lost cause by now. The current generation of MMORPG players is happy to swim in the cesspool we currently have. Only when they’re gone, AND players demand good content from MMORPG developers, AND the genre isn’t seen as intrinsically subpar when compared to other games, is that MMORPGs may become something good.

Locuz.2651:

aspirine.6852:

Rest of the game was mediocre tho. But so is GW2.

What made those dungeons so good compared to gw2, or gw1? I only tried wildstar for a short while and the whole pve part did not get me.

U tried the dungeons?

Comparing WS dungeons with GW2s is like comparing 3 star cuisine with catfood.
[/quote]

How often have you heared ANet talk about how great their dungeons are ?
Oh .. and how great they will be in HoT ..just look at Colins reactions when
Angry Joe asks him about that.

The thing is simply that GW2 never cared about dungeons and people who
wants to run dungeons all time are better in other games. GW2 is all about
open world. Dungeons are just there because .. yeah .. we have of course also
some dungeons .. because people expect them .. but there is not much more
to talk about ..

Test.8734:

Ashen.2907:

I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.

Most MMORPGs are very poor games.

I remember reading a review of a MMORPG some time ago and the reviewer saying, “All quests are of the ‘kill ten rats’ variety, but that’s just part of the genre, right?”, and I think that’s exactly why MMORPGs are so bad.

Because they are not even trying to be good.

MMORPGs cater to the lowest denominator. You can see it here – when someone complains that GW2’s story is weak, the usual reply is, “if you want a good story, go play a single player MMORPG”. When someone complains that GW2 has too much grind, the usual reply is, “if you want a game without grind, don’t play MMORPGs”, and so on. MMORPGs are bad games because MMORPG players are willing to accept bad games.

The irony is that there aren’t that many players willing to accept bad games out there. Not nearly enough to sustain all the MMORPGs that currently exist. It’s little surprise that so many have failed, that very few of them manage to keep themselves as pay-to-play, and that the MMORPG fad – when every single developer claimed to be working on one – has passed.

I think they’re a lost cause by now. The current generation of MMORPG players is happy to swim in the cesspool we currently have. Only when they’re gone, AND players demand good content from MMORPG developers, AND the genre isn’t seen as intrinsically subpar when compared to other games, is that MMORPGs may become something good.

So what you’re solution to a game people expect to spend thousands of hours in that has no grind? I’m truly curious.

You make the erroneous assumption that people accept grind because they’re settling. But since no one has created a game I can spend thousands of hours in without any kind of grind, I don’t see an alternative.

That’s not really called settling. That’s called being pragmatic.

Test.8734:

Most MMORPGs are very poor games.

I remember reading a review of a MMORPG some time ago and the reviewer saying, “All quests are of the ‘kill ten rats’ variety, but that’s just part of the genre, right?”, and I think that’s exactly why MMORPGs are so bad.

Because they are not even trying to be good.

MMORPGs cater to the lowest denominator. You can see it here – when someone complains that GW2’s story is weak, the usual reply is, “if you want a good story, go play a single player MMORPG”. When someone complains that GW2 has too much grind, the usual reply is, “if you want a game without grind, don’t play MMORPGs”, and so on. MMORPGs are bad games because MMORPG players are willing to accept bad games.

The irony is that there aren’t that many players willing to accept bad games out there. Not nearly enough to sustain all the MMORPGs that currently exist. It’s little surprise that so many have failed, that very few of them manage to keep themselves as pay-to-play, and that the MMORPG fad – when every single developer claimed to be working on one – has passed.

I think they’re a lost cause by now. The current generation of MMORPG players is happy to swim in the cesspool we currently have. Only when they’re gone, AND players demand good content from MMORPG developers, AND the genre isn’t seen as intrinsically subpar when compared to other games, is that MMORPGs may become something good.

I would disagree with a lot of what you said. I like the overall lore and story of many MMORPGs. Seeing someone create a whole world and insert as much backstory as they do impresses me. Because everything matters. Even how random NPCs interact between themselves in towns. As often that gives you insight into how exactly a race thinks and what’s their relationship with other races.
While Living Story and Personal Story were corny at moments, they also explained a lot and I enjoyed the complexity of both the world story and the social relations that it was hinting at.

And someone else already asked – how do you avoid grind in an MMO? How do you make sure that a player gets absolutely everything running content just once, but then stays to continue playing for years and will be patient enough to wait months until you produce more content?

Mirta.5029:

And someone else already asked – how do you avoid grind in an MMO? How do you make sure that a player gets absolutely everything running content just once, but then stays to continue playing for years and will be patient enough to wait months until you produce more content?

The only way to keep a game interesting without using grind is to allow the players to make content. Player made content can keep a game going for lots of years.

maddoctor.2738:

The only way to keep a game interesting without using grind is to allow the players to make content. Player made content can keep a game going for lots of years.

you either mean sandbox or something like other MMOS have done, for example player created dungeons.

Sandbox works. However those kind of games are not for everyone. Not to mention all grind is, is repetitiveness. Planetside 2 is repetitive. From someone’s point of view that would be considered grindy, as you just repeatedly take any keeps, get driven away by your enemies and take keeps again.

However some MMOs take the approach of allowing you to create instances. Then obviously those instances have to be rewarding, or nobody will do them. Now the question is – how do you approach moderation? There have already been problems in games like these where people created fast exp grinds. You enter a dungeon, kill a low level enemy, dungeon complete, you gain your exp, exit and do it again.

Making an MMO interesting for a long period of time will always be a complex problem that will require lots of thought to be invested into it.

I gave ESO a shot when it was in beta, but didn’t even bother picking it up afterwards, the whole game was boring to me, wanted to sell strange stuff via preordering AND tryied charging monthly back then, while not beeing a good game.

I like creating alts/twinks, but in most games the levelingprocess is a boring grind(WoW for example) and while others are a little better through improved combat, they only have 1 levelingpath for the whole faction(like wildstar) which is not much fun to me either.

So currently GW-2 is the only MMO I give a kitten about and this is most likely not going to change anytime soon, especially now that finally an expanison is going to be released ^^

Mirta.5029:

There have already been problems in games like these where people created fast exp grinds. You enter a dungeon, kill a low level enemy, dungeon complete, you gain your exp, exit and do it again.

Yepp .. and in that case its already a grind again .. because only that one player made
dungeon gives the best rewards .. and so people are “forced” to grind that one
over and over again.

Then the developer decided it is too good and closes it or makes it less rewarding
and suddenly the forums are full of post that the developer hates all gamers
because they don’t want them to earn money.

Once u go gw2 ull be always gw2. Gw2 wont let me havefun with othet mmos

maddoctor.2738:

Beldin.5498:

Devildoc.6721:

But anyway I’m rather frustrated with Anet right now because they’re literally expecting to hold our attention with Esports tournaments until HoT.

Thats what we got because of people always crying : give us an expack .. LS is crap
i’d rather have an expack every x years instead of that.

Would be interesting what happens if ANet stops LS also after the release of HoT
and when the first people have rushed through it in 2 weeks, and we get no
more updates for the next two years ^^

It’s a matter of bad timing really, according to what the devs themselves say, the expansion was under development for a very long time and the LS team(s) weren’t working on it, but rather the rest of the company.

I doubt they will scrap the LS concept completely. Although lots of players were crying about it “we want expansions, not LS”, there were loads of players who actually preferred the LS system. I think we will get a new LS a month after HoT is released.

I think the better way they could’ve done this would’ve been to announce HoT BEFORE LS S2 even started. Announce the expansion, then start releasing LS S2 to bridge the main game with the expansion. Players would buy the game (or return to it) to play the bridge storyline of S2, then once the LS S2 is over, they would jump on the expansion.

I hope they follow this tactic with future expansions, it leads to less gaps in their release schedule.

Yeah it was bad timing.

They waited until the end of LS season 2 to REVEAL the expac, great for hype, bad for the actual game.

They should have kept doing LS updates up until maybe a month before HoT because as I understand it the Living World team is a smaller team not actually working on HoT.

They could have interwoven things like SAB and WvW tournaments to help keep people occupied mixed with LS updates then.

Before someone calls me a hypocrite for wanting a wvw tournament while complaining about esports tournaments, let me clear this up:

WvW tournaments I get to participate in I get to do stuff.

Esports tournaments I’m just supposed to tune into Twitch and WATCH people do stuff.

Screw that.

maddoctor.2738:

Mirta.5029:

And someone else already asked – how do you avoid grind in an MMO? How do you make sure that a player gets absolutely everything running content just once, but then stays to continue playing for years and will be patient enough to wait months until you produce more content?

The only way to keep a game interesting without using grind is to allow the players to make content. Player made content can keep a game going for lots of years.

Problem with the “sandbox” arguement is 95% of the time that’s just open world PVP. There’s nothing to do in the world itself so people just PVP.

I just bought ESO because of B2P and, although I still believe Guild Wars 2 tops for MMOs on the market out there, ESO probably comes second.

It’s a nice break while I wait for HoT to come out. Then I’ll be stuck on that for months.

piano man.1672:

I just bought ESO because of B2P and, although I still believe Guild Wars 2 tops for MMOs on the market out there, ESO probably comes second.

It’s a nice break while I wait for HoT to come out. Then I’ll be stuck on that for months.

this is how I feel too. I think both games are worth playing and both games do some things better than each other but largely both do most things better than most games on the market