Guild Wars 2

I think Anet is looking at this from the flip side. It will encourage people to experiment more. Say someone has never tried a zerk build before, but is afraid to do it because they know that at first they will die all of the time. As you mentioned, that can get expensive. So now someone who didn’t want to spend the money to see if they could run x or y build, can now try it out without any real harm.

But ultimately I don’t think this was done because of level 80 players. This was done for people who are brand new to the game. They would pay high costs because they are still learning, and are poor. Honestly this change doesn’t affect me much because even if I failed miserably on an Arah run, the 11s I pay is nothing compared to the reward I received. I don’t even pay attention to the cost.

Plus if you look at this from a WvW perspective, it will encourage people to roam around and split up more, because it isn’t going to start costing you quite a bit from accidentally getting rolled by a passing zerg as you wander.

Bad players are probably not wanting to get better by default that is what makes them bad. Armor repair fee or not isn’t going to change that much. If anything I see the removal of the fee beneficial to those that do harder content. I know when I have done higher level content I have a tendency to get beat up a bit. Waiving the fee will simply save me a handful of silver and not change my attitude about how I play. I’m not going to go running around like a maniac smashing buttons all over the place just because I won’t have to pay repair fees.

Hwk.6987:

So… the armour won’t be broken?. If that’s the case, i still have hope for the feature pack. Otherwise. Big slap in the face (Well.. Mostly things are going to be negative. lol)

takes a drink

Armor will still be broken… really, with the true cost of teleporting out and fixing armor being a setback to your current progress, I can only see this being a big benefit on a large map without easy waypoint access to and/or from wherever you died. In PvE, this has little impact anywhere except some of the new minidungeons. In Fractals and WvW, it’s more significant; you have to give up on your instance to repair armor in Fractals, and you can seriously separate yourself from your group if you do the same in WvW.

Ultimately, I agree with the other poster that this is really more of a menial concession to players while they take gold from champions off the table. ArenaNet has access to the data regarding drops and the influx of gold from kills to back up their reasoning, but seriously, has kill-gold ever been all that much? Reducing dungeon rewards on the easier paths while slightly boosting gold from trash mobs might have a better effect on the economy as a whole.

StinVec.3621:

• The delay in unlocking the ‘Removing Restrictions’ blog after the ‘Account Bound’ blog had been unlocked
• The odd nature of the contents to where they would be more appropriately mentioned in patch notes and not in a features blog
• Repeating the trait reset change after it had already been outlined in detail in the Trait Changes blog

…Sounds to me like the blog was supposed to be about something else that was actually relating to ‘Removing Restrictions’ that got delayed or scrapped at the last minute and these few footnotes were thrown together.

We would notice if a hotly speculated on topic just disappeared. Suddenly removing the ‘Removing Restrictions’ blog from the list shortly before it was meant to be revealed would cause a lot of people to wonder what it was going to be about. But replacing it with scrap patch note changes and even repeating a change that had already been revealed and discussed seems like the less damaging way of scrapping an idea without anyone being the wiser.

Probably the case. Was wondering why both weren’t release at the same time, like the other batch. And since they won’t tell us about stuff not fully complete, we’ll never know (at least till the feature is done, if it wasn’t scrapped).

The repair cost was practically nothing anyway. The only time it ever acted as a deterrant was if you recently blew all your money on something (crafting? legendary? take your pick) and someone asked you to join them in difficult content where you will probably end up wiping a couple of times. Even then that doesn’t actually occur. Your repair costs would still have no perceivable impact on you.

Btw, ofc Anet is gonna cater to casuals as they make up the vast bulk.

eleshazar.6902:

I think Anet is looking at this from the flip side. It will encourage people to experiment more. Say someone has never tried a zerk build before, but is afraid to do it because they know that at first they will die all of the time. As you mentioned, that can get expensive. So now someone who didn’t want to spend the money to see if they could run x or y build, can now try it out without any real harm.

But ultimately I don’t think this was done because of level 80 players. This was done for people who are brand new to the game. They would pay high costs because they are still learning, and are poor. Honestly this change doesn’t affect me much because even if I failed miserably on an Arah run, the 11s I pay is nothing compared to the reward I received. I don’t even pay attention to the cost.

Plus if you look at this from a WvW perspective, it will encourage people to roam around and split up more, because it isn’t going to start costing you quite a bit from accidentally getting rolled by a passing zerg as you wander.

Repairing was never a limiting factor in testing out builds, it only costed a few silver to repair.

The biggest limiting factor is the armor itself, even if you were to buy just rares you are still looking at about 6 gold for an entire set.

If they really wanted to remove restrictions, they could have added rare armors to the dungeon vendors at a much more reduced cost, such as like 20 marks per piece. That would definitely encourage trying new builds.

Arenanet again proves that they’re a pretty weird company. They’re starting to compete with Nintendo in regards of “I don’t understand them anymore”. As I’m lazy, I’m copy&paste my view on this from reddit:

Arenanet has extremely weird views on things in their game. Like, very weird. I can’t believe that anybody in the world would be EVER bothering with repair costs or re-trait costs as they’re just that low. I mean … I can keep wipe over and over again in fractals or whatever and pay maybe 11 silvers or so lol. There always should be SOME consequence when dying. There is nearly none in this game.
But I guess they have much more data than I have with my assumptions here …
Champ box gold nerf is fine I guess. I think Anet wants to get champ farmers into other areas of the game to make gold.

I really don’t like the fact that there is no consequence for dying anymore. I mean, why bother trying to survive if it doesn’t change anything?

You’re looking for a hardcore MMO like Hello Kitty Online. Here at GW2 we like casuals, swipe the credit card, roll in the loot.

repair costs aren’t the way to penalize bad players. Releasing content that is actually hard and requires skill / coordination / a brain is plenty. But so far I can count the encounters that require those things on one maybe two hands.

The repair cost may not be much to some players, but it is to others. I’ve seen people quit dungeon runs after one mistake wipe because they don’t want to keep paying for a repair bill they feel that they shouldn’t have to if they were with a “better” group.

I myself have been taking some friends into dungeon runs to help them learn them, and the no repair costs sure takes a load off for me since I’m in the process of crafting a few legendaries myself, and we know how much that can bleed you dry. :x

Zepidel.5349:

repair costs aren’t the way to penalize bad players. Releasing content that is actually hard and requires skill / coordination / a brain is plenty. But so far I can count the encounters that require those things on one maybe two hands.

They weren’t a huge one no. But it was a small thing to incentive better play.
A penny saved is a penny earned, right?

The problem I have here is that they took away that incentive and replaced it with nothing else.

There was never a penalty for bad players.

The downed system removed that at launch.

Failing is enough punishment for failing. You lose time, you don’t get the thing you were trying for. You don’t need to associate a cost to it.

And what is wrong with the word casual? Like we can’t be casual in a game we bought for our off time? Whenever someone trots out the word hardcore I just always imagine some PvE WoW nub goin on about how good he is at gear grind. It don’t mean anything.

When someone’s shootin hoops in their driveway and they miss, do we ask them to take $5 out of their wallet and burn it? It’s nonsense, get over it.

Acerola.6407:

I really don’t like the fact that there is no consequence for dying anymore. I mean, why bother trying to survive if it doesn’t change anything?

So you’re not called out by a dev? (not sure why first quote isn’t showing John’s name as the top link)

Meglobob.8620:

Meglobob.8620:

Cheers John!

I virtually never died, so with nerf to champion loot/events I will be considerably worse off gold wise.

Cheers again John, thanks very much!

You’ve died 895 times.

John Smith.4610:

Meglobob.8620:

Elrey.5472:

Meglobob.8620:

I virtually never died

John Smith.4610:

You’ve died 895 times.

and

But I die a lot less now…

Don’t try to fix it, that was a burn on the face hahaha.

I was not expecting my deaths to be quoted back to me, correct.

That’s why John Smith is Legendary

Even when he makes me poor and takes gold from my poor 8×80th lvl characters mouths…

To be fair, you do die less now

(From https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Thanks-John/first#post3821962)

Well, not yet.
I don’t think /deaths means that much. I died over 4k times on my main. Sometimes being dumb as kitty and sometimes doing bullkitten (jumping off of cliffs) lol. Mostly because I’m a very bad player of course (sigh PUGs)

I start to feel a lil bit uneasy about how kitten much data they collect lul

styx.7294:

Failing is enough punishment for failing. You lose time, you don’t get the thing you were trying for. You don’t need to associate a cost to it.

And what is wrong with the word casual? Like we can’t be casual in a game we bought for our off time? Whenever someone trots out the word hardcore I just always imagine some PvE WoW nub goin on about how good he is at gear grind. It don’t mean anything.

When someone’s shootin hoops in their driveway and they miss, do we ask them to take $5 out of their wallet and burn it? It’s nonsense, get over it.

Not many things in this world cost only ‘time’ anymore if you fail. Very few things do.

Nothing is wrong with the word casual itself, but the gap between what separates players in such categories. Most of them are what I’d borderline being ‘noob’. However its not even the proper term since most know better, just choose not to. I could also use lazy too if that suits it.
These are people who prefer no risk for their reward. The path of least resistance.

It’s amazing how much that gap has changed in the first two years of this game. You could practically never leave Queensdale and still manage to obtain everything you could ever need.

If the person shooting the baskets never learns to actually learn to control the ball rather than dumbly throwing it against the board hoping it will sink into the net, nothing is ever going to change. Nor should he be falsely rewarded for no effort.

I’m not going to give you $5 for playing crap b-ball.

like I said in the other post about armor repairs:

Honestly I would like to see the old GW1 death penalty system return. I thought it was fairly well implemented. It would have to be adjusted a bit for this game so it would be a tad easier to clear the dp, but I think it would promote skilled play overall. Not to mention it would make an incentive to actually kill trash mobs in dungeons (to clear some DP)
^ all of that rather than removing armor repair fees

Xhax.5306:

Not good bye repairs. Just the cost. Your armor will still break.

What sense does it make to leave that mechanic into the game, when you remove the costs?? Makes no sense, so I think the whole mechanic together with the costs get removed.
I at least would hope so…

It would give ANet a chance to come up with a better thought out Malus-System, that doesn’t punish new players, but punishes in general players for thoughless playing, without that we need to pay for our failures. There is already a cost mechnism, that of the return, where you have to pay for the WP..

so I found it always stupid, that the game punishes us by letting us to have pay basically twice for each death, when once is absolutely enough.

it would make playing Dungeons also alot more relaxing, if that braindead repair-mechanism would get finally completely removed, if players wouldn’t have to stupidly worry about it anymore, if their armors could break and they have to run around naked …

And if ANet why so ever thinks, the repair mechanic needs to stay, then it would be finally awesome, if Anet could give us something in the game to counter that stupid mechanic, like using special infusions for our equipment, that make our equipment unbreakable.

Example:

Infusion of Sturdiness
The Equipment that is unfused with this, becomes unbreakable.

At leat with such an infusion, we would have also finalyl an infusion, that is in overall very useful and interesting besides of those for WvW for a tiny stat boost or naturally the AR ones for Fractals, which are naturally only useful for that area of the game.

Awbee.8405:

Reducing the gold drop from Champions and Events will not help new and casual players.

Play the game as intended. As I have always been saying the Champion Train is not playing the game as intended.

What the game needs is a way for new and non-hardcore players to make enough gold to get around in the game and get some of the stuff they want. 90% of the gold I have was made during Queen’s Gauntlet and Scarlet’s first invasions, and it’s really not much still, and I don’t spend much (don’t own a single set of exotic armor).

Walk. Like I did. If you walk everywhere you benefit two ways. The first is, No wp costs. the second is…. the opportunity of running into dynamic events, nodes to mine etc, … Mobs that happen to be around you can kill for drops… try it… I can sometimes get really good drops that sell well…just walking from one place to another.

I’m glad repair costs are being removed, removing waypoint costs would be awesome as well.

this is basically getting rid of the train and i for one approve of the idea !!!

anet !!!! you do sterling work i adore it !!! thank youuuuuuu

Logos.1306:

It’s obvious that they just wanted to nerf chemp trains. Removing repair cost is a smokescreen.
How much we spend on repairs? 10 s top? And people make gold on chemp trains.

This is a good thing. I’m happy the champion train is going bye bye. Maybe we can toss a party as the Champion Train is finally retired.

Celestina.2894:

I’m just confused as to why we will still have armor being damage, if repairing it costs nothing.

That being said……removing restrictions sound so much more….promising, even at it’s worst.

The idea is, that since it gets damaged you have a TIME only sink, by having to get it repaired even if it is for free. You also have a Transportation cost, of getting to a Repair NPC. They felt that there was no need to have two… gold costs.." WP + Repair bill" so they kept the need for you to transport TO a repair person…. and have it still cost you time going back to where you were. Now repair is a speed bump…not a stop sign.

Dastion.3106:

I dislike the concept of saying that they felt the trip to repair armor was enough of a penalty, so they removed the cost… And then in the next breath saying that because they removed that cost they need to lower event/loot bag drops.

Isn’t that just moving the penalty somewhere else?1

The Champ train nerf had nothing to do with the repair bill removal. Even if they had decided to keep the repair bills, the Champion train was going to be nerfed anyway. They Just decided to do both at the same time, and announced them both on the same Blog, since they are both related In the sense that they are about Gold sinks and faucetts.

As for me, I will be happy to see the Champion train go.

Talonblaze.3175:

styx.7294:

Failing is enough punishment for failing. You lose time, you don’t get the thing you were trying for. You don’t need to associate a cost to it.

And what is wrong with the word casual? Like we can’t be casual in a game we bought for our off time? Whenever someone trots out the word hardcore I just always imagine some PvE WoW nub goin on about how good he is at gear grind. It don’t mean anything.

When someone’s shootin hoops in their driveway and they miss, do we ask them to take $5 out of their wallet and burn it? It’s nonsense, get over it.

Not many things in this world cost only ‘time’ anymore if you fail. Very few things do.

Nothing is wrong with the word casual itself, but the gap between what separates players in such categories. Most of them are what I’d borderline being ‘noob’. However its not even the proper term since most know better, just choose not to. I could also use lazy too if that suits it.
These are people who prefer no risk for their reward. The path of least resistance.

It’s amazing how much that gap has changed in the first two years of this game. You could practically never leave Queensdale and still manage to obtain everything you could ever need.

If the person shooting the baskets never learns to actually learn to control the ball rather than dumbly throwing it against the board hoping it will sink into the net, nothing is ever going to change. Nor should he be falsely rewarded for no effort.

I’m not going to give you $5 for playing crap b-ball.

I think I’d rather playing the game should be its own reward.

Someone playing badly is going to get killed in the game and have to repeat content (PvE) or just get farmed (WvW). That’s already a drawback.

Right now safe things like champ farms, world bosses, zerging around in WvW aren’t even the skill testing exercises and they all pay really well. Hard content that will test and build skill is the content that kills you. If it’s not killing you, it’s routine. So what I think is that repair costs reward people for being bad because it punishes people for pushing themselves to get better.

Edit: For me, what’s been one of the most painful things to see in Guild Wars 2 is guildies who wanna do WvW do PvE so they can afford to do WvW later on (not just repair costs but ascended gear or whatever else expensive things you need). Alleviating repair costs will help WvW (and that’s the angle I know)

These changes along with the others are helping to renew my interest in playing again, I have to admit. Recently I have not been logging in much because it seemed like I would be locked in a fixed path of Ascended grinding just to get one set for one alt. And that single set of Ascended would keep me from ever really experimenting with different builds. I even felt stuck in my character’s appearance with no convenient way to improve it so I found myself losing interest.

Now I don’t have to completely repeat the Ascended grind for all of my characters, it makes the idea of getting the mats more tolerable. Free traits will make it more appealing to experiment with builds even when I don’t have matching gear. Removing the armor repair costs also helps since I’m not one of the hardcore players who is rolling in ridiculous amounts of cash. And it will even be much easier to play around with new looks with the Wardrobe.

Overall these changes are making me want to play the game more again, so ArenaNet has succeeded for me at least.