Guild Wars 2

“Hey, guys. We released Heart of Thorns. Heard about it? Don’t worry, we nerfed a variety of things, including Fractals, Silverwastes, Dungeons, thus partially rendering bits of the core content useless, to make sure you buy Heart of Thorns, because gold farms and other things are more effective there, now. What’s that over there? Buy Heart of Thorns to unlock it.”

“Hey, guys. Remember Guild Boons and other features that had always been in the core content? We don’t. We remember Heart of Thorns. Buy it”

“Hey, guys. We implemented Precursor crafting, so that Precursor weapons are now just slightly more accessible. Don’t worry, you’ll still have to spend ludicrous amounts of money in order to get them. Some players will even resort to buying Gems and exchange those for gold, because they simply don’t have enough time to put into the game as much as others do, which turns these “journeys” into virtual grind/endless farm fests, so it’s all very profitable for us as well.And that’s only Part I of the collections! The other two Parts are even harder!"

“Hey, guys. Heard about the new Legendary Backpiece? You won’t have to spend a lot of money to get it. We promise. Don’t worry, we nerfed Ascended Chests’ drop rates to death, to the point where it’s virtually impossible to get Ascended pieces from the Fractals, so you’ll have no choice but to spend more money in order to craft Ascended Armor/Weapons, so you can get a Ball of Dark Energy. Just one? Of course not, silly. You’ll need 6 total for all three parts’ item collection phases, as well as 1 for Finite Result, another for Upper Bound, and another for Unbound, so that makes it 9! What’s that over there? An item you can’t have unless you have Masteries enabled? Buy Heart of Thorns to unlock it.”

“Hey, guys. We feel that certain items shouldn’t be up for grabs on the Trading Post, so we’re making those account-bound. They must be “earned”. It’s a “journey”. Don’t worry, the process of acquiring them is so off-putting, you’ll have no choice but to spend more money in order to get mats and other items needed. It’s basically the same thing as things being on the Trading Post, since players are still pouring gold/real money into the game, so, ultimately, it looks like we changed things, but we changed nothing. But you don’t mind, do you? Also, buy Heart of Thorns."

“Hey, guys. What’s that? There’s a middle ground to things? You mean things can be challenging, yet enjoyable and not ridiculously lengthy? Pfft, don’t be silly.”

“Hey, guys. You like [insert content here]? Then you'll love Heart of Thorns.”

I know.

As I said before, I think HoT is as much a contraction, as it is an expansion.

Honestly, I think the problem is that there are (at least) two main types of players:

One type that happily spends real money on the game, assuming they enjoy it, even if they make some gold and get decent drops ingame and another type that never, ever, spends any real money on anything.

…and because Anet are so desperate to monetise the latter, almost impossible to monetise, type; we all (apparently) have to be made to suffer, along with them.

That would seem like a massive mistake, to me, but what would I know?

As I also said before, I get why they nerfed dungeon rewards – they were excessive, compared with other parts of the game, especially as people were, almost exclusively, speedrun-cheesing them.

However, why they took the decision to also take the nerf bat to everything, including things that could have done with a buff if anything, God only knows?

I happen to be of the opinion that you catch more flies with honey, than you do with vinegar and that people who are treated too badly ingame, will just end up withholding cash they would have, otherwise, spent.

But, again, what would I know?

I must have missed the paywall. I didn’t realize I was forced to use real money in order to gain ANYTHING in game that I wanted. The legendary I made, as well as multiple sets of ascended, fully geared out 6 characters, completed various collections, etc.

Oh that’s right because it never happened!!!

It was designed that way to encourage you to buy the game (which is HoT and the Core game. The free version is a glorified demo). Also part of the design is to promote the games longevity and re-playability. The masteries, legendary “journey”, backpacks, etc. Make sure that A) You can’t just do it all in a couple of weeks, then complain that the game doesn’t have anything to offer, It encourages you to do a variety of different things instead of just farm gold by doing the same things over and over and just buy what you want from the TP, and C) it encourages people to buy the game and not just forever play the “demo”.

Plus I would recommend revisiting “paywall”…it might help you out.

OP, that’s a completely unfair characterization of the expansion, because buy Heart of Thorns read the rest of this comment.

I can’t believe ANet made us pay for an expansion. I mean who does that? No one makes people pay for expansions, what makes Anet think they’re so special that they think we should have to pay for an expansion.

pdavis.8031:

I must have missed the paywall. I didn’t realize I was forced to use real money in order to gain ANYTHING in game that I wanted. The legendary I made, as well as multiple sets of ascended, fully geared out 6 characters, completed various collections, etc.

Oh that’s right because it never happened!!!

It was designed that way to encourage you to buy the game (which is HoT and the Core game. The free version is a glorified demo). Also part of the design is to promote the games longevity and re-playability. The masteries, legendary “journey”, backpacks, etc. Make sure that A) You can’t just do it all in a couple of weeks, then complain that the game doesn’t have anything to offer, It encourages you to do a variety of different things instead of just farm gold by doing the same things over and over and just buy what you want from the TP, and C) it encourages people to buy the game and not just forever play the “demo”.

Plus I would recommend revisiting “paywall”…it might help you out.

Are you in a guild? Simple question. Yes or no answer will suffice.

DarcShriek.5829:

I can’t believe ANet made us pay for an expansion. I mean who does that? No one makes people pay for expansions, what makes Anet think they’re so special that they think we should have to pay for an expansion.

It’s not paying for the expansion that is making people angry. It’s the fact that they crippled and outright removed vanilla content and put it back in the expansion (which you have to pay for) that is making people angry.

fellyn.5083:

It’s not paying for the expansion that is making people angry. It’s the fact that they crippled and outright removed vanilla content and put it back in the expansion (which you have to pay for) that is making people angry.

That’s my read on the OP as well. It’s not a complaint that they’d have to pay for new stuff, but that drop rates and functionality were reduced or removed from the product players had already bought and re-invented/re-purposed as part of the XPac. Then again, I’m not surprised that people on a forum fail to understand what’s being posted.

Anet is employing cynical business practices and the op is calling them on it. I think the op has a point. People actually paid for the core game before Anet decided to make it f2p. Now Anet is gutting content out of the core game. It is punishment for those who decided not to buy their expansion.

Don’t worry, in a few months all the really disgruntled people will have left and all that will remain is shiny-faced newcomers and star-spangled vets, who love love love the game no matter what (until a new set of changes happens that upsets some of them and the cycle continues).

IndigoSundown.5419:

fellyn.5083:

It’s not paying for the expansion that is making people angry. It’s the fact that they crippled and outright removed vanilla content and put it back in the expansion (which you have to pay for) that is making people angry.

That’s my read on the OP as well. It’s not a complaint that they’d have to pay for new stuff, but that drop rates and functionality were reduced or removed from the product players had already bought and re-invented/re-purposed as part of the XPac. Then again, I’m not surprised that people on a forum fail to understand what’s being posted.

They do it intentionally because if they admit that much is true then maybe Anet isn’t the company the white knights make them out to be.

Willfully ignorant people usually tend to be happy people. Whatever works for them I guess. And they would have to be purposefully overlooking these issues to not see them because it’s blatantly obvious what Anet is doing.

At least that’s the conclusion I’ve come to.

Please note I’m not saying I don’t like or enjoy the expansion. For what it is and how little it actually offers, and despite how they intentionally crippled vanilla content I’m enjoying it and I don’t regret my decision to buy it.

DarcShriek.5829:

I can’t believe ANet made us pay for an expansion. I mean who does that? No one makes people pay for expansions, what makes Anet think they’re so special that they think we should have to pay for an expansion.

I believe it issue is making people pay for some thing they’ve already had being repackaged as new.

Whether Heart of Thorns expansion is value for money is quite a valid question.

But of course, if you continue to support shady business practices. You deserve to be exploited.

Very sarcastic but very funny…And depressingly true. Every thing mentioned there is a big point of “why would you ever do this?” for me.

Not to mention that I don’t think rewards in the new maps are super great anyway. 2 hrs approx for Dragon Stand? Well you get bags within bags with blues and greens which you may have to toss into the forge to try and get them to become rares so you can sell them for like 13 gold.

If HoT had equitable rewards and all of the things mentioned in the OP were fixed I would be again willing to spend real money on items in the shop. As it is right now, I don’t want to spend more real money on what is an obvious cash grab for the ingame shop.

Anet, Create good content with equitable rewards and a fun game to play. If you do that people will naturally want to support your game. If you make everything grindy with no rewards you can bet the opposite will happen.

Yeah, I kinda wish people would stop trying to be witty when they throw a fit (and that rarely works out well), also kinda makes it hard to know what the core of the complaints are. The title seems to indicate that HoT is putting content behind a paywall? But then the OP goes on about things not locked behind HoT at all. Seems the issue is that ANet has altered how you get certain content? But most of things being brought up don’t really need HoT to get, like the ascended backpiece or precursors. So I’m not sure how to respond.

Yes, it is really bad that Guild Bonuses is locked behind HoT expansion now.

This game is not about grinding (you may think so but it is not), you can choose to grind your gold if it is better in HoT or not is just stupid. I dislike grinding so I don’t do that and I have been playing since release and still have things to do.

The fractals Legendary stuff and all mastery stuff is Expansion content and why should it not be locked behind the Expansion? This is nothing you had before the expac.

Samething here it is HoT content, nothing that was there before why should it be available to people who won’t buy the expac? Also I know a few who have gotten a realy long way in Legendary crafting and havent bought anything, I have helped them doing content to have them aquire specific pieces they need and then they have saved mats so they have pretty much enough. I havent done these things yet so I can not say for a fact in even my opinion that it is totally fine. But still it is HoT content, people have said on forums that it is cheaper to buy yourself the old stuff on TP so why cry about it?

How wierd? They make an expansion and they make it locked to people who don’t by it!? Anet are horrible!

Call me a White Knight or whatever that argument won’t make people sound better. People can look at my post history and see that I am not all loving to everything in GW2.

How did they nerf SW? Yesterday I did a run and it was like always.

Dungeon rewards were broken, get over it, they should’ve nerfed that years ago. You make money by simply playing the game.

I don’t mind precursors being grind and all, but I agree with the rest, nerfing all the old content wit obvious intent to make you want to buy HoT. I would also like to add “gemstore bullkitten” to OP. Looks like they have bunch of stuff ready to throw into gemstore every few days to make extra money on top of 50$ xpac. Now I don’t mind gemstore getting stuff, that’s cool, the more the better, but I don’t like when ALL the stuff goes there. Seriously, stuff like exalted glider could totally be a reward for story/achievement or maxing mastery line or something.
Stuff that Actually came with Hot, that you play and get by playing is good and fun, but that’s just not enough for 50 $ I’m afraid. Once you complete that short story and explore maps, unlock your specialization and get those few skins, then what? Start grinding for money to buy stuff from gemstore or just throw your credit card at it? Yeah, that’s fun for sure.

Like it or not, it’s smart business and it works. You all should know as well as I do that some people will get what they can for free for as long as they can. It’s the companies job to keep dollars rolling in. Not to give away everything for free. I don’t think that’s reasonable.

If Anet didn’t do this and did push people to buy the game, a lot of people wouldn’t buy it. But there are things in the game to “encourage” the purchase of the expansion.

Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game. And I assume some people might even leave the game over it.

But the game has gone free to play and probably for each person who leaves, another few will buy the new game. It’s good business sense.

Vayne.8563:

Like it or not, it’s smart business and it works. You all should know as well as I do that some people will get what they can for free for as long as they can. It’s the companies job to keep dollars rolling in. Not to give away everything for free. I don’t think that’s reasonable.

If Anet didn’t do this and did push people to buy the game, a lot of people wouldn’t buy it. But there are things in the game to “encourage” the purchase of the expansion.

Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game. And I assume some people might even leave the game over it.

But the game has gone free to play and probably for each person who leaves, another few will buy the new game. It’s good business sense.

All that’s nonsense. I’ve played a lot of mmos and appart from Anet and GW2 I’ve never seen one intentionally cripple, or in the case of guild halls completely remove their older content to get people to buy their next expansion.

“Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game”

You clearly don’t see because that’s not what people are upset about..

Although I do enjoy the expansion to an extent, I have to say Guild Wars 2 seems to be going on a downward slope ever since its release. I admire and hate Arenanet’s “evolutionary” mechanic when it comes to MMORPGs, but the game has significantly declined in quality since I first got it near its release. Certainly the game has introduced some interesting mechanics since its inception, but in my opinion, Guild Wars 2 is definitely not a 9/10 MMO anymore.

The Living Story is behind a gem paywall. Dungeons and fractals have completely been stripped of their rewards to ensure players will not feel rewarded in items or gold when they complete them; they also leave players with no real way to earn money to buy armor or weapons. Items that could have been released via gemstore or as a new mechanic in-game are very RNG based and near-unobtainable unless gold or converted gems are used to purchase them. The game’s expansion seems to focus more on a grinding philosophy to progress through the story, urging players to earn a full mastery level before they can progress. Arenanet no longer listens to player requests for gemstore items that they want back in for holiday or special events. It’s interesting that a multitude of players request a specific item or skin which is a prospective way of earning money for Arenanet, and yet they choose to ignore the requests and wonder why players aren’t buying things from the gemstore. The Guild Wars 2 Third Anniversary Sales were a huge disappointment, as well as the tedious Mordrem Invasion event the following weekend which was a huge embarrassment in the history of Guild Wars 2. There were several pointless changes to audio, idle poses, hearts, and a multitude of other things within the game that never made any sense to be messed with. There have been more outfits released than armor skins which hinder players’ desire to customize their own character. Several PVE-based armor skins have been removed for little to no reason. Arenanet chooses to remove instead of add, which to me sounds like a puzzling choice.

In my opinion, the game has taken a turn for the worse, and definitely is no longer a 9/10 grade MMORPG anymore. There are plenty of disappointments Arenanet has delivered over the past year, but it’s still not enough to take me out of the game yet. I still remain somewhat hopeful for what Arenanet chooses to introduce in the future.

fellyn.5083:

Vayne.8563:

Like it or not, it’s smart business and it works. You all should know as well as I do that some people will get what they can for free for as long as they can. It’s the companies job to keep dollars rolling in. Not to give away everything for free. I don’t think that’s reasonable.

If Anet didn’t do this and did push people to buy the game, a lot of people wouldn’t buy it. But there are things in the game to “encourage” the purchase of the expansion.

Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game. And I assume some people might even leave the game over it.

But the game has gone free to play and probably for each person who leaves, another few will buy the new game. It’s good business sense.

All that’s nonsense. I’ve played a lot of mmos and I’ve never seen one cripple (or in the case of guild halls completely remove) their older content to get people to buy their next expansion.

“Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game”

You clearly don’t see because that’s not what people are upset about..

The title of this post is that Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns is a pay wall. Well yeah, that’s sort of the point.

Because you know, if you WvW you get the maps for free and if you SPvP you get that for free, and not everyone loves harder content or raids, so Anet would end up giving Guild Wars 2 away for free without getting some people to buy the expansion. Which makes it a pay wall.

Now, there aren’t really a lot of ways to do this. One way is to make it so that the best places to farm are in the new areas. This makes sense.

If people aren’t willing to support the game, that’s okay, but to suggest that a company is wrong for trying to push the expansion?

Shrugs. I suppose they could have locked SPvP and WvW behind the paywall, instead. Maybe I’m not a glass is half empty kind of guy.

Oblivion.9032:

Although I do enjoy the expansion to an extent, I have to say Guild Wars 2 seems to be going on a downward slope ever since its release. I admire and hate Arenanet’s “evolutionary” mechanic when it comes to MMORPGs, but the game has significantly declined in quality since I first got it near its release. Certainly the game has introduced some interesting mechanics since its inception, but in my opinion, Guild Wars 2 is definitely not a 9/10 MMO anymore.

The Living Story is behind a gem paywall. Dungeons and fractals have completely been stripped of their rewards to ensure players will not feel rewarded in items or gold when they complete them; they also leave players with no real way to earn money to buy armor or weapons. Items that could have been released via gemstore or as a new mechanic in-game are very RNG based and near-unobtainable unless gold or converted gems are used to purchase them. The game’s expansion seems to focus more on a grinding philosophy to progress through the story, urging players to earn a full mastery level before they can progress. Arenanet no longer listens to player requests for gemstore items that they want back in for holiday or special events. It’s interesting that a multitude of players request a specific item or skin which is a prospective way of earning money for Arenanet, and yet they choose to ignore the requests and wonder why players aren’t buying things from the gemstore. The Guild Wars 2 Third Anniversary Sales were a huge disappointment, as well as the tedious Mordrem Invasion event the following weekend which was a huge embarrassment in the history of Guild Wars 2. There were several pointless changes to audio, idle poses, hearts, and a multitude of other things within the game that never made any sense to be messed with. There have been more outfits released than armor skins which hinder players’ desire to customize their own character. Several PVE-based armor skins have been removed for little to no reason. Arenanet chooses to remove instead of add, which to me sounds like a puzzling choice.

In my opinion, the game has taken a turn for the worse, and definitely is no longer a 9/10 grade MMORPG anymore. There are plenty of disappointments Arenanet has delivered over the past year, but it’s still not enough to take me out of the game yet. I still remain somewhat hopeful for what Arenanet chooses to introduce in the future.

If you’ll look what’s standing behind Anet, then you’ll realize that Quality went down the toilet quite a while ago.

Answer is: NCSoft.

Vayne.8563:

fellyn.5083:

Vayne.8563:

Like it or not, it’s smart business and it works. You all should know as well as I do that some people will get what they can for free for as long as they can. It’s the companies job to keep dollars rolling in. Not to give away everything for free. I don’t think that’s reasonable.

If Anet didn’t do this and did push people to buy the game, a lot of people wouldn’t buy it. But there are things in the game to “encourage” the purchase of the expansion.

Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game. And I assume some people might even leave the game over it.

But the game has gone free to play and probably for each person who leaves, another few will buy the new game. It’s good business sense.

All that’s nonsense. I’ve played a lot of mmos and I’ve never seen one cripple (or in the case of guild halls completely remove) their older content to get people to buy their next expansion.

“Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game”

You clearly don’t see because that’s not what people are upset about..

The title of this post is that Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns is a pay wall. Well yeah, that’s sort of the point.

Because you know, if you WvW you get the maps for free and if you SPvP you get that for free, and not everyone loves harder content or raids, so Anet would end up giving Guild Wars 2 away for free without getting some people to buy the expansion. Which makes it a pay wall.

Now, there aren’t really a lot of ways to do this. One way is to make it so that the best places to farm are in the new areas. This makes sense.

If people aren’t willing to support the game, that’s okay, but to suggest that a company is wrong for trying to push the expansion?

Shrugs. I suppose they could have locked SPvP and WvW behind the paywall, instead. Maybe I’m not a glass is half empty kind of guy.

Nowhere did I suggest they were wrong for trying to sell their expansion. Strawman much?

I said people are upset because Anet intentionally crippled older content and in the case of guilds removed it, repackaged it, and put it back in the expansion which we obviously have to pay for.

That’s why people are upset.

And you honestly think the best way to get people to buy expansions is to cripple older content instead of having the new stuff stand on it’s own merits? That’s some backwards logic, shared, unfortunately by Anet staff.

The OP has some valid points. Can’t say I agree with all of them, but I do agree with some of them.

The locking of guild boons behind the expansion when they were originally core content is not ‘smart business.’ It is a cheap kick in the teeth.

Reducing core fractal loot drops and locking that loot behind the new masteries is also not “smart business.”

Nerfing the hell out of dungeons (not just the gold rewards, but all rewards) after being explicitly told it was just the liquid rewards that were being ‘redistributed.’

To make the extremely bold claim that they are comfortable making the core game “free to play” because they are confident people will love it enough to buy it, and then follow up by nerfing the hell out of the core game…yeah, not good.

None of this screams ‘confidence.’ That screams “we have to make this like every other free to play where you have to pay to progress.”

We understand that Anet is a business, and that they need to make money. We understand that everything cannot be free. Many of us had no issue paying for, or with the price of, the expansion. We do; however, take issue with some of the questionable decisions that are starting to come about.

Avectius.3271:

“Hey, guys. We released Heart of Thorns. Heard about it? Don’t worry, we nerfed a variety of things, including Fractals, Silverwastes, Dungeons, thus partially rendering bits of the core content useless, to make sure you buy Heart of Thorns, because gold farms and other things are more effective there, now. What’s that over there? Buy Heart of Thorns to unlock it.”

“Hey, guys. Remember Guild Boons and other features that had always been in the core content? We don’t. We remember Heart of Thorns. Buy it”

I completely agree with fractals and guild buffs and imo, your post should be about that, because after you lost me.

- Silverwaste? What happen there? What did they nerfed in it? Prices changed yes, so you get less gold for the Tier 5 you get, you also get less from salvaging gear, but you also get around 3-5 gold of coarse sand per hours. It is a little bit more or a little bit less profitable, I’m not sure, but it’s very close to what it used to be. Now shovel are needed in guild hall, but the droprate seem to had been buffed.

- Dungeon. Yup, the reward nerf wasn’t great. But some people need to stop talking like dungeon are a waste of time now. With gold, loots and tokens, you usually get around 1,2 and 1,5 worth of gold at the end of a path. 1,7-2 gold for AC. Since most of them take 10-15min to complete, they usually yield you a profit between 4 and 8 gold per hours. It’s less than the 7-12 gold per hours we used to have, but it’s not that bad either. They nerfed it like idiot, not balancing properly the length/difficulty of the dungeon better, but that doesn’t mean that someone doing dungeon can’t have a good reward out of it. True, right now it’s hard to play dungeon because not that many people are doing them. But we just got an expansion, people wanna play the new content. But I already start to see LFM in my guild chat and over time, I bet that a lot more people gonna want to get back to dungeon a little.

- Precursor Crafting. What did you expect? That they will be easy and not really any effort? It’s another way to get precursor, not a easier way.

- Legendary Back Item. It’s a new feature. Of course you gonna need HoT for that. Like I said first, i agree with you about guild buff and fractals. They were part of the core game, they nerfed it and placed them behind the expansion. But that’s not the same thing as placing new thing behind HoT. That’s the whole point of the expansion. To give us new things. If they put everything new part of the core game, then nobody buy the expansion and they don’t get back their investment in manpower to create the expansion. As for the price? It’s a freaking legendary. What did you except? To spend 2 copper on it? I don’t think anyone is at the third collection yet so we don’t really know what will be the precise recipe. We don’t what we will need after the 3rd collection. Do we need to craft finite, upper and unbound and put them in the mystic forge at the end? I have no idea. What I agree with, it that the nerf for ascended box was stupid from Anet. At the moment we might need more ascended, they nerf it even if they said that fractal was one of their main focus in PvE. Personally, i want more ways to get ascended armor/weapons, not less. I don’t want easier way, I just want diversity.

- I don’t get this complain about account bound item? Can you give exemple of that. Do you talk about the item they changed to account bound later? I think it’s a nice thing to put some stuff account bound. Especially for legendary crafting. It give value to different content and spread people around the world instead of regrouping them into the 5-6 best place to make gold/rewards. What the point of having 20 overflow on Silverewaste, while so many maps are completely deserted. Now if they do that to push people into a bad designed map or content, it’s one thing. But for now, VB and AB are awesome with some very good content and I heard a lot of good thing about the last map.

“Hey, guys. We implemented Precursor crafting, so that Precursor weapons are now just slightly more accessible. Don’t worry, you’ll still have to spend ludicrous amounts of money in order to get them. Some players will even resort to buying Gems and exchange those for gold, because they simply don’t have enough time to put into the game as much as others do, which turns these “journeys” into virtual grind/endless farm fests, so it’s all very profitable for us as well.And that’s only Part I of the collections! The other two Parts are even harder!"

The precursor journeys actually made precursors more accessible for everyone. If you don’t have HoT, you can still sell Ascended materials for big profitsssssssss to help afford your own Precursor.

And it even not a full new world like Cantha in GW1 for example. It’s just six, s-i-x, new locations that just vital require amount of players!
Are event-organised map is full for you – finish. Are you in empty map – finish. Are you in event map but disconnected without patry – finish. Are you in map with players but noone can organise you – finish. Why would my decision to do something (successfull grind that new staff) depends on such a large number of players and situations I can’t manage anyhow? And considering this, there is almost nothing to do in core game, they transfer all actions in HoT.
It’s just unfair to take our money for it. Absoluteley agreed with TS. It’s just a topic on forum which probably noone would read, but what a shame that my lovely GW becomes so.

Of course there is not much in core game, that’s what expansions do. Where do you guys come from. First MMO or what?

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

This game is not about grinding (you may think so but it is not), you can choose to grind your gold if it is better in HoT or not is just stupid. I dislike grinding so I don’t do that and I have been playing since release and still have things to do.

Let’s do a comparison with WoW. Let’s say that you want some epic mount in GW2. Most of them are locked behind quest (not at all grindy) or behind a RNG drop from a dungeon (that might mean farming that dungeon).

Now let’s take GW2’s mounts next to that. The toy mounts, or the gliders. What is the in-game method to get them?

This grind (for a big part because of the gem-store) being a problem is what I have been talking about a lot in the forums for the last 2 years. By putting (the best) items (in a horizontal progression game that includes skins) in the gem-store or making it general drops you effectively remove part of the game-play and (the hunt for those items) and replace it by grind.

With the number of players dropping you did also see the numbers of complains about this dropping. Likely because those not affected by it where left.

Now with HoT here, many old players have returned (including those that left because of the grind) so you now see once again an increase in threads complaining about the grind (directly or indirectly). And honestly, I think HoT did make steps in the right direction here. Just not enough I guess.

It’s now up to Anet to make sure they make the steps needed to solve this grind or they will leave again within the upcoming 6 months. And they will not come back for the second expansion.

Avectius.3271:

“Hey, guys. You like [insert content here]? Then you'll love Heart of Thorns.”

This does not apply to Underwater Content.

Devata.6589:

Let’s do a comparison with WoW. Let’s say that you want some epic mount in GW2. Most of them are locked behind quest (not at all grindy) or behind a RNG drop from a dungeon (that might mean farming that dungeon).

Now let’s take GW2’s mounts next to that. The toy mounts, or the gliders. What is the in-game method to get them?

This grind (for a big part because of the gem-store) being a problem is what I have been talking about a lot in the forums for the last 2 years.

a) In January of 2015 we had 3 Devate Megathreads where ’’he’’* WAS SPEAKING IN BEHALF OF THE COMMUNITY , and she asking to remove the CashShop and implanted more yearly x-packs .
We had a riot about yearly x-packs …. and ohh well the EMBASINDOT OF THE COMMUNITY FLOPPED

if i remember correclty he said :
‘’If the game dont sell many copies , myself and many others wont come back and i will come back to say I TOLD YOU SO’’

b)Learn to read 6 months now ….not 2 years that you proclaim …. that WoW and other games sells Cashop items too , without the ability to gold>gems

BrB see in 2 houirs :p
Got work :P
Let remember the pasts …my Crysis 2 player …. and they didnt make Crysis 4 because they didnt catter to the hardcore :P

There are two types of players
Players who are casual and are fine playing the FREE core game. And then there are more hardcore players who have bought heart of thorns.

The free players shouldn’t care about getting the BEST gear and the COOLEST skins. They play for fun because they are casuals. The hardcore players do care about that stuff. And they have it available to them more effectively in HoT.

The problem is, there are still people who refuse to buy the expansion yet are hardcore players because they feel like they’re getting gyped/don’t have the money/feel like since they already bought the game, shouldn’t have to pay for the expansion. They are in a limbo between casual and hardcore. They expect all the niceties like ascended gear and legendary weapons but dont want to upgrade to the expansion.

While 50 bucks I’d a bit overpriced for what we got, people spend 50 bucks are stupider crap everyday.

Skyline Crash.6254:

There are two types of players
Players who are casual and are fine playing the FREE core game. And then there are more hardcore players who have bought heart of thorns.

The free players shouldn’t care about getting the BEST gear and the COOLEST skins. They play for fun because they are casuals. The hardcore players do care about that stuff. And they have it available to them more effectively in HoT.

The problem is, there are still people who refuse to buy the expansion yet are hardcore players because they feel like they’re getting gyped/don’t have the money/feel like since they already bought the game, shouldn’t have to pay for the expansion. They are in a limbo between casual and hardcore. They expect all the niceties like ascended gear and legendary weapons but dont want to upgrade to the expansion.

While 50 bucks I’d a bit overpriced for what we got, people spend 50 bucks are stupider crap everyday.

I’m not a “Free” player. I, like millions of others back in launch day, bought the game for 60$ dollars. Why should I have to buy an expansion to gain access to content that was already in the core game in the first place?

I’m not mad because they want us to buy Heart of Thorns in order to gain access to content that’s part of Heart of Thorns. I’m mad because they want us to buy Heart of Thorns in order to gain access to content that has always been a part of the core game, and that they intentionally nerfed and/or removed and added into HoT.

How would you feel if I sold you a product, then came back and took several features off of it? I’m not even talking about nerfs, anymore. Granted, it’s a kitten move to do them, but I digress. I’m talking about removing things from the core game and locking it to the expansion.

“Hey, you want those things you already had, and which we took from you? Buy this and you’ll get them back”

Also, on a slightly different, yet related topic:

Do you have any idea how profitable the Gem Store is? Getting gold is hard as it is, let alone amounts big enough to get a full set of ascended gear, and/or a Legendary Weapon. Players know that they can get whatever gold they want through currency exchange. It’s definitely a tempting thing. They know this. You don’t think they do? You think all these dungeons, gold farm, and ascended chests’ drop rate nerfs were all just a coincidence? They know they’ll push more people into buying Gems that way. It’s a business strategy.

“Oh, but companies need to make money. They need to have profit roll in. It’s only natural”

Yeah, no kitten. Except there’s a kittening limit. There’s a line between the acceptable and outright kittenting on your consumers, and they’re beginning to cross it.

Skyline Crash.6254:

There are two types of players
Players who are casual and are fine playing the FREE core game. And then there are more hardcore players who have bought heart of thorns.

The free players shouldn’t care about getting the BEST gear and the COOLEST skins. They play for fun because they are casuals. The hardcore players do care about that stuff. And they have it available to them more effectively in HoT.

The problem is, there are still people who refuse to buy the expansion yet are hardcore players because they feel like they’re getting gyped/don’t have the money/feel like since they already bought the game, shouldn’t have to pay for the expansion. They are in a limbo between casual and hardcore. They expect all the niceties like ascended gear and legendary weapons but dont want to upgrade to the expansion.

While 50 bucks I’d a bit overpriced for what we got, people spend 50 bucks are stupider crap everyday.

Ascended gear has been in the game for years. It is part of the core game. An expansion should stand on it’s own merit. You don’t nerf and remove stuff from the core game to make the expansion more appetizing.

fellyn.5083:

DarcShriek.5829:

I can’t believe ANet made us pay for an expansion. I mean who does that? No one makes people pay for expansions, what makes Anet think they’re so special that they think we should have to pay for an expansion.

It’s not paying for the expansion that is making people angry. It’s the fact that they crippled and outright removed vanilla content and put it back in the expansion (which you have to pay for) that is making people angry.

Exactly. I paid for vanilla stuff, why take it away from me now? If you want me to buy the expansion, actually make something NEW that is worth the 50 euro and I will buy it. Don’t force me to pay 50 euro to have something that I already paid for with 40 euro that I gave for vanilla. Expansions should be expanding the content, not limiting it. At the moment, I don’t see HoT being worth more than 20 euro, sorry. It brought way too little content for such a big price.

Skyline Crash.6254:

There are two types of players
Players who are casual and are fine playing the FREE core game. And then there are more hardcore players who have bought heart of thorns.

The free players shouldn’t care about getting the BEST gear and the COOLEST skins. They play for fun because they are casuals. The hardcore players do care about that stuff. And they have it available to them more effectively in HoT.

I seem to be a third type of player .. a ‘casual’ who doesn’t bother about the BiS stuff but who bought HoT.

Does that make me a softcore player?

fellyn.5083:

It’s not paying for the expansion that is making people angry. It’s the fact that they crippled and outright removed vanilla content and put it back in the expansion (which you have to pay for) that is making people angry.

Dinks.2478:

Ascended gear has been in the game for years. It is part of the core game. An expansion should stand on it’s own merit. You don’t nerf and remove stuff from the core game to make the expansion more appetizing.

Nevermore.5487:

Exactly. I paid for vanilla stuff, why take it away from me now? If you want me to buy the expansion, actually make something NEW that is worth the 50 euro and I will buy it. Don’t force me to pay 50 euro to have something that I already paid for with 40 euro that I gave for vanilla. Expansions should be expanding the content, not limiting it. At the moment, I don’t see HoT being worth more than 20 euro, sorry. It brought way too little content for such a big price.

This

Devata.6589:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

This game is not about grinding (you may think so but it is not), you can choose to grind your gold if it is better in HoT or not is just stupid. I dislike grinding so I don’t do that and I have been playing since release and still have things to do.

Let’s do a comparison with WoW. Let’s say that you want some epic mount in GW2. Most of them are locked behind quest (not at all grindy) or behind a RNG drop from a dungeon (that might mean farming that dungeon).

Now let’s take GW2’s mounts next to that. The toy mounts, or the gliders. What is the in-game method to get them?

This grind (for a big part because of the gem-store) being a problem is what I have been talking about a lot in the forums for the last 2 years. By putting (the best) items (in a horizontal progression game that includes skins) in the gem-store or making it general drops you effectively remove part of the game-play and (the hunt for those items) and replace it by grind.

Well in my opinion you are totally thinking alot wrong and playing the game in a wrong way. Let’s compare WoW with GW2, in WoW you pay money to be able to play each month in GW2 you don’t. If you want these fluffy mounts in GW2 can pay a one time cost and then you have that mount or you can play the game and enjoy it save your gold that you get during your journey and then Buy gems for Gold and never have to repeat any content at all. Now you say But I want that thing now!, well then you have the option to grind to maby get your stuff earlier and that is your choice. In WoW and many other MMOrpg’s you are forced to do one or a few different instances or places to get an RNG drop and this drop is crusial to have to be able to enjoy the next bit of content.
[/quote]

Devata.6589:

With the number of players dropping you did also see the numbers of complains about this dropping. Likely because those not affected by it where left.

With every game there is Hype and when the Hype dies so leaves the bad eggs also. I doubt GW2 has been in any danger of dying and I have seen constant updates and new story for GW2. So yes, less WoW players complaining that GW2 isn’t WoW is a good thing for me even if it means that GW2 looses alot of players back to WoW. It’s not a good thing to listen to Hype trains.

Devata.6589:

Now with HoT here, many old players have returned (including those that left because of the grind) so you now see once again an increase in threads complaining about the grind (directly or indirectly). And honestly, I think HoT did make steps in the right direction here. Just not enough I guess.

Very few is actually complaining about any grind at all at this game. But even I am complaining about the ammount of grind for Small Guilds and Scribe now and how bad it is implemented and I hope for a change. And also again the Hype train is back and people who left and are back to try out HoT will be gone again becouse GW2 is GW2 and not WoW.

Devata.6589:

It’s now up to Anet to make sure they make the steps needed to solve this grind or they will leave again within the upcoming 6 months. And they will not come back for the second expansion.

[/quote]

Again, grind is not the problem with OP’s post it is about so called Paywalls. OP abviusly want’s to grind but complains that Grinding has been moved to HoT. Sooooo… I dunno, GW2 is an MMOrpg and you can’t get away from grinding but GW2 is the game i have ever played with least grinding and I have played alot of MMO’s Most of the grinding in GW2 is for iether fluff or not even needed, you can play the game and someday you get what you need. Season 1 is gone so temporary content is of the past.

Vayne.8563:

Like it or not, it’s smart business and it works. You all should know as well as I do that some people will get what they can for free for as long as they can. It’s the companies job to keep dollars rolling in. Not to give away everything for free. I don’t think that’s reasonable.

If Anet didn’t do this and did push people to buy the game, a lot of people wouldn’t buy it. But there are things in the game to “encourage” the purchase of the expansion.

Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game. And I assume some people might even leave the game over it.

But the game has gone free to play and probably for each person who leaves, another few will buy the new game. It’s good business sense.

Yes, but has a problem, once we finish HoT content,we will only have HoT proffitable options. If not fixed we will get less options to play and get proportionate rewards at the same time.

It toke them a lot of time to fix dungeons rewards (they werent perfectionated more since the paths gold rewards acording to difficulty werent finished, they said they were going to do it but didnt in the end), they just destroyed part of their previews advance and as alredy said, limitate players options in the long run for HoT players and inmediatly for core players.

Its smart bussines for inmediate proffit, in the long term the loss of image they get for it and the lower in the welfare of the general population, plus the lack of improved welfare for HoT users (they changed old prenerfed core options for HoT options) will not make the game grow.

What you give as an example its exactly the typical Sales departament vs Marketing departament problems you have in companies when the bussines strategy isnt ruled for long term porpouse, Sales push for inmediate profit in detremint of future rents.

Its a fairly common problem, but history, experts and theory have probed that long term its the way to go for sucefull companies.

Its sad they did it, what they needed to do its make HoT so good that core users want to buy it more, not risk their long term image and players population.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

The fractals Legendary stuff and all mastery stuff is Expansion content and why should it not be locked behind the Expansion? This is nothing you had before the expac.GW2.

Fractals Mastery you require to increase fractal rewards. Base rewards for content that was already in the game. They did not add to fractals content AT ALL. They did change features and interface, and destroy any and all challenge there was to fractals at all, which was what kept the fractal community playing despite a dearth of rewards all along (that’s not a new thing)
.
They re-color the weapons (the golden weapons have less effects than the old ones), add a legendary back pack*, and made it so that we could choose our islands- added a new fractal daily system. The last two are great changes- but these are features being added to the BASE GAME CONTENT. This was not maguuma or heart of thorns content.

*The legendary back piece should perhaps have required something from fractals’ collections but been part of legendary crafting mastery which perhaps should have been its own separate mastery category that gained XP from both tyria and HoT perhaps gained double XP in HoT- but that everyone had access to whether they bought or not.

I bought HoT, maxed my fractal mastery. I am not complaining because I do not want to spend money on the game. I just do not think this is the way to treat your veterans who aren’t interested in HoT, keep the “undecided” players- the ones who have not bought HoT yet, playing- nor a good impression to make on people who are new to the game.

Wait what, a video game COSTS MONEY??!!?

Please go play WoW then come back.

Ice.5162:

Wait what, a video game COSTS MONEY??!!?

Please go play WoW then come back.

And why should we accept anything that Blizzard’s playerbase does?

fellyn.5083:

Vayne.8563:

fellyn.5083:

Vayne.8563:

Like it or not, it’s smart business and it works. You all should know as well as I do that some people will get what they can for free for as long as they can. It’s the companies job to keep dollars rolling in. Not to give away everything for free. I don’t think that’s reasonable.

If Anet didn’t do this and did push people to buy the game, a lot of people wouldn’t buy it. But there are things in the game to “encourage” the purchase of the expansion.

Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game. And I assume some people might even leave the game over it.

But the game has gone free to play and probably for each person who leaves, another few will buy the new game. It’s good business sense.

All that’s nonsense. I’ve played a lot of mmos and I’ve never seen one cripple (or in the case of guild halls completely remove) their older content to get people to buy their next expansion.

“Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game”

You clearly don’t see because that’s not what people are upset about..

The title of this post is that Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns is a pay wall. Well yeah, that’s sort of the point.

Because you know, if you WvW you get the maps for free and if you SPvP you get that for free, and not everyone loves harder content or raids, so Anet would end up giving Guild Wars 2 away for free without getting some people to buy the expansion. Which makes it a pay wall.

Now, there aren’t really a lot of ways to do this. One way is to make it so that the best places to farm are in the new areas. This makes sense.

If people aren’t willing to support the game, that’s okay, but to suggest that a company is wrong for trying to push the expansion?

Shrugs. I suppose they could have locked SPvP and WvW behind the paywall, instead. Maybe I’m not a glass is half empty kind of guy.

Nowhere did I suggest they were wrong for trying to sell their expansion. Strawman much?

I said people are upset because Anet intentionally crippled older content and in the case of guilds removed it, repackaged it, and put it back in the expansion which we obviously have to pay for.

That’s why people are upset.

And you honestly think the best way to get people to buy expansions is to cripple older content instead of having the new stuff stand on it’s own merits? That’s some backwards logic, shared, unfortunately by Anet staff.

Yup, by anet nerfing all the old content it shows what they thought of the new content in the expansion. When a company doesn’t have faith in their own product there is something wrong.

Lucius.2140:

Vayne.8563:

Like it or not, it’s smart business and it works. You all should know as well as I do that some people will get what they can for free for as long as they can. It’s the companies job to keep dollars rolling in. Not to give away everything for free. I don’t think that’s reasonable.

If Anet didn’t do this and did push people to buy the game, a lot of people wouldn’t buy it. But there are things in the game to “encourage” the purchase of the expansion.

Now, I can see why it would annoy someone that they would have to pay after 3 years to keep up with the current game. And I assume some people might even leave the game over it.

But the game has gone free to play and probably for each person who leaves, another few will buy the new game. It’s good business sense.

Yes, but has a problem, once we finish HoT content,we will only have HoT proffitable options. If not fixed we will get less options to play and get proportionate rewards at the same time.

It toke them a lot of time to fix dungeons rewards (they werent perfectionated more since the paths gold rewards acording to difficulty werent finished, they said they were going to do it but didnt in the end), they just destroyed part of their previews advance and as alredy said, limitate players options in the long run for HoT players and inmediatly for core players.

Its smart bussines for inmediate proffit, in the long term the loss of image they get for it and the lower in the welfare of the general population, plus the lack of improved welfare for HoT users (they changed old prenerfed core options for HoT options) will not make the game grow.

What you give as an example its exactly the typical Sales departament vs Marketing departament problems you have in companies when the bussines strategy isnt ruled for long term porpouse, Sales push for inmediate profit in detremint of future rents.

Its a fairly common problem, but history, experts and theory have probed that long term its the way to go for sucefull companies.

Its sad they did it, what they needed to do its make HoT so good that core users want to buy it more, not risk their long term image and players population.

Exactly, with guild wars 1 anet never needed to nerf anything in a previous version to make the new one worth buying. Which led to anet getting such a positive reputation and why GW2 was such a success at launch. It is awful what anet has become and what they are doing to this game.

Ice.5162:

Wait what, a video game COSTS MONEY??!!?

Please go play WoW then come back.

Go back and read the thread. The issue is not the cost of the expansion.

Dinks.2478:

Skyline Crash.6254:

There are two types of players
Players who are casual and are fine playing the FREE core game. And then there are more hardcore players who have bought heart of thorns.

The free players shouldn’t care about getting the BEST gear and the COOLEST skins. They play for fun because they are casuals. The hardcore players do care about that stuff. And they have it available to them more effectively in HoT.

The problem is, there are still people who refuse to buy the expansion yet are hardcore players because they feel like they’re getting gyped/don’t have the money/feel like since they already bought the game, shouldn’t have to pay for the expansion. They are in a limbo between casual and hardcore. They expect all the niceties like ascended gear and legendary weapons but dont want to upgrade to the expansion.

While 50 bucks I’d a bit overpriced for what we got, people spend 50 bucks are stupider crap everyday.

Ascended gear has been in the game for years. It is part of the core game. An expansion should stand on it’s own merit. You don’t nerf and remove stuff from the core game to make the expansion more appetizing.

WOW nerfs existing gear with every new expansion.

Dovienya.6597:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

The fractals Legendary stuff and all mastery stuff is Expansion content and why should it not be locked behind the Expansion? This is nothing you had before the expac.GW2.

Fractals Mastery you require to increase fractal rewards. Base rewards for content that was already in the game. They did not add to fractals content AT ALL. They did change features and interface, and destroy any and all challenge there was to fractals at all, which was what kept the fractal community playing despite a dearth of rewards all along (that’s not a new thing)
.
They re-color the weapons (the golden weapons have less effects than the old ones), add a legendary back pack*, and made it so that we could choose our islands- added a new fractal daily system. The last two are great changes- but these are features being added to the BASE GAME CONTENT. This was not maguuma or heart of thorns content.

*The legendary back piece should perhaps have required something from fractals’ collections but been part of legendary crafting mastery which perhaps should have been its own separate mastery category that gained XP from both tyria and HoT perhaps gained double XP in HoT- but that everyone had access to whether they bought or not.

I bought HoT, maxed my fractal mastery. I am not complaining because I do not want to spend money on the game. I just do not think this is the way to treat your veterans who aren’t interested in HoT, keep the “undecided” players- the ones who have not bought HoT yet, playing- nor a good impression to make on people who are new to the game.

I have heard alot about this on the forums that rewards are nerfed and put behind masteries… That is actually bad but I want to see the facts that it is so. I am no regular fractal player but I have gotten more interesting loot + a few Ascended rings just as I usally got when I did the low level fractals… I bet it is the random drop weapon skins on higher fractals we are talking about or what?

I’ve yet to see someone logically defend the big nerf to ascended-box drop rates.

That was just brutal considering they said HoT would have increased Fractal rewards.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Dovienya.6597:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

The fractals Legendary stuff and all mastery stuff is Expansion content and why should it not be locked behind the Expansion? This is nothing you had before the expac.GW2.

Fractals Mastery you require to increase fractal rewards. Base rewards for content that was already in the game. They did not add to fractals content AT ALL. They did change features and interface, and destroy any and all challenge there was to fractals at all, which was what kept the fractal community playing despite a dearth of rewards all along (that’s not a new thing)
.
They re-color the weapons (the golden weapons have less effects than the old ones), add a legendary back pack*, and made it so that we could choose our islands- added a new fractal daily system. The last two are great changes- but these are features being added to the BASE GAME CONTENT. This was not maguuma or heart of thorns content.

*The legendary back piece should perhaps have required something from fractals’ collections but been part of legendary crafting mastery which perhaps should have been its own separate mastery category that gained XP from both tyria and HoT perhaps gained double XP in HoT- but that everyone had access to whether they bought or not.

I bought HoT, maxed my fractal mastery. I am not complaining because I do not want to spend money on the game. I just do not think this is the way to treat your veterans who aren’t interested in HoT, keep the “undecided” players- the ones who have not bought HoT yet, playing- nor a good impression to make on people who are new to the game.

I have heard alot about this on the forums that rewards are nerfed and put behind masteries… That is actually bad but I want to see the facts that it is so. I am no regular fractal player but I have gotten more interesting loot + a few Ascended rings just as I usally got when I did the low level fractals… I bet it is the random drop weapon skins on higher fractals we are talking about or what?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml

Here is some fractal drop research. This is significantly lower than it was pre-HoT.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Of course there is not much in core game, that’s what expansions do. Where do you guys come from. First MMO or what?

I come from WoW.

Expansions don’t, generally, strip the content/rewards from the core game, there.

OK, admittedly, they have recently been going down the shady path of removing mounts and stuff from old content.

Which I don’t approve of, either – even (especially) in the case of mounts I managed to get in current content.

Everyone should have a chance to get everything, in an MMO, sooner or later.

But, overall, WoW doesn’t remove stuff.

What happens there is that stuff eventually gets outlevelled/outgeared and the rewards seem less, due to inflation.

But, actually, as people are soloing old content, rather than doing it in a large group, they are generally getting more rewards than they can in current content and certainly more than they were previously, when that older content was current.

In this game, you don’t outlevel stuff, so everything is supposed to be current and yet, almost all older/existing content’s rewards have been nerfed.

Including things that were never particularly rewarding and simple things, like levelling guilds, which are now impossible to level on your own.

This is not normal, typical, or good.