Guild Wars 2: Heart of Paywalls

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Posted by: Tigaseye.2047

Tigaseye.2047

Forum bug……

“Turns out when people play the game, they don’t admire your feet at all.” sephiroth

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Posted by: BrotherBelial.3094

BrotherBelial.3094

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.

Nothing said here is good business sense. the game has gone free to play, with restrictions. The idea being to let people get a feel for the game then buy HoT. Crippling the core game will make people think one of two ways.

1) Hummmm, rewards are kind of thin on the ground. probably better in HoT.
2) Hummmm, rewards are kind of thin on the ground. probably the same in HoT.

ANets cash shop relies on people logging in to the game and playing. If you are playing there is more of a chance you’ll look at the gem store and buy stuff. up setting your player base is never a smart move. they are the life blood of your product. It’s been clear in the past GW2 had problems with player retention, that’s why we had the NPE. HoT in it’s current state is just making people angary. The fact that maps are empty when you log in to them and have to actively look for a populated map is a point of contention for me. I should not have to look for a map to have fun on. I should be logging on and be able to have fun from the start.

this is why I find my self logging in, running around for a few minuets, while I wait to get taxied in to a map, get board of waiting, and log off. We are a little over 2 weeks after launch of HoT, and people are struggling to find a map to play on.

So far, my impression, as many other people have also an opinion in alignment with my own, feel that thus far HoT is not a good business move for the player base, thus not being a good move for them. I know you can’t keep everyone happy, but all I’m asking for is the ability to play HoT. not waste my play time trying to play HoT.

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Posted by: Einlanzer.1627

Einlanzer.1627

It isn’t smart at all and is actually self-destructive, as can be seen by how quickly the game hemorrhages players and loses revenue after every major release. In addition to everything BrotherBelial said above, this is because people are more likely to become invested and spend money the less of an apparent divide there is between what they want and what they’re able to get by simply playing the game in a fairly normal way. Real world economics work the same way, which is why rising inequality is terrible for society.

The more real money you try to “force” people to spend, the opposite effect it’s going to have. Almost no one is willing to pay hundreds of dollars or grind for countless hours for some cosmetic collection, so those people will end up spending nothing instead and will often end up just quitting the game.

(edited by Einlanzer.1627)

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Posted by: Dashingsteel.3410

Dashingsteel.3410

- Dungeon rewards nuked( was only bad for the economy once the expansion showed up)
- Fractal rewards nuked for those who can’t get fractals mastery(only provided through expansion)
- Non HoT players can’t access guild boons( guild boons were part of the core game)

Anet, I am disgusted by your cowardly attempts to coerce players to buy HoT. There are many people who payed 60 dollars for the core game and you repay them by gutting key features out of the game. You are punishing customers for not being repeat customers. Why not let HoT stand on its own merits????

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Posted by: Jski.6180

Jski.6180

- Dungeon rewards nuked( was only bad for the economy once the expansion showed up)
- Fractal rewards nuked for those who can’t get fractals mastery(only provided through expansion)
- Non HoT players can’t access guild boons( guild boons were part of the core game)

Anet, I am disgusted by your cowardly attempts to coerce players to buy HoT. There are many people who payed 60 dollars for the core game and you repay them by gutting key features out of the game. You are punishing customers for not being repeat customers. Why not let HoT stand on its own merits????

Did ppl realy live and die off Dungeon rewards?

Fractals have been mostly non played for some time by a lot of ppl.

Guild banners are the main guild boons i am not sure why you though they where core to the game becuse they where never that strong lol.

How is that cowardly its like your just picking random worlds to say that you think sound bad to call some one lol.
This is what non Living story (that ppl seemed to hate so much) looks like. Its payed expansion or Living story take your chose.

Main : Jski Imaginary ELE (Necromancer)
Guild : OBEY (The Legacy) I call it Obay , TLC (WvW) , UNIV (other)
Server : FA

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Posted by: One Prarie Outpost.4860

One Prarie Outpost.4860

17 days people… it’s been 17 days since HoT released and apparently the world has devolved into a paywall apocalypse.

When was the last time anyone saw any substantial change that worked without any need for testing and made everyone so happy they (insert vulgarity) rainbows?!

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Posted by: jeezlaweez.6810

jeezlaweez.6810

I wanna put here that I completely agree with OP, with some restrictions.

The best items on this game were gold-locked from the beginning, OR you could farm everything and craft the best items. Then you hunt down your favorite skins and Bang, you had your character done to enjoy the content. BUT there was almost no endgame content.
Now the endgame is here and it’s a grindy one. Yes, there are content. And a glorious one is. But that’s it. The 4 maps and it’s over. The fractals were there already, the new ones are locked behind the levels. And they give only 10% of the old rewards, NOW that we need ascended to do Legendaries. Let’s talk about the rest then.

The guild halls cripple my guild in half. The ones with, and the ones without the expansion. I can’t even give them cool stuff anymore, because I need gold (lots) to put on my upgrades (even if my guild was a helluva upgraded one before), and they won’t even get the benefits for that. Well, kitten , because they said they would take off the influence because you could purchase it and that did benefit the larger guilds. Hohoho, but the new System needs lots more gold than before! What in the name of Grenth is this? Not even a medium guild is cripple to the basics (from everything level 5 to a mere level 3 guild, not to mention my Guild Bounties stored and such), but this same guild is now losing players because they can’t buy the expansion and they are losing the will to play. Yeah, it started already.

Legendary Journey. Yeah. 1 hour journey. I mean, of course, if it’s not bugged, right? What Journey? Where’s the journey? The fun things according to each weapon lore is drowned into 200-500 gold-worth of craft stuff for tier that if you sum all the tiers you can buy the precursor on trading post (or 2, sometimes 3 times) and unlock the same stuff. And they are getting cheaper! How can you trade the money you’d needed to spend, to the time you would do the journey to craft, if you can only do the farm and sell the stuff to buy the precursor? It’s not “Hard” to do it, really. Just cost more for the same thing. Economy problem or not, the prices won’t low with the coming of raids.
How they could handle? Well a godkitten quest, if I may say. Time-gated.
Step one: unlock the mastery.
Step two: buy one of the books. Each book opens a Quest on Story Journal. 14 steps each tier. You can only do 1 step per daily reset. You unlock the recipe for the tier at the end. You can either replay each step to get the craft materials or buy the stuff. THERE YOU ARE, a Journey.
Step three: have fun doing an actual quest that adds to the lore of the precursor.

The OP and ppl here told the rest no need to repeat them.

Samuel Hart – lvl 80 Necro and 20 more toons… well. Yeah.

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Posted by: EdgarMTanaka.7291

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.

It’ pretty clear yes… thats sad but on the other hand the current tab has only 573 chests and none have over 100 except for veterans. From when I worked with datacollecting I learned that we needed 200# from each part not more and not less. On the pre Pre 23/10/2015 it is over 7706 chests and on both level 40 and 50 it is around 50% more opened chests that on level 20 and 30.

What about the other thing that you can now only get the stuff from the Masteries? It’s sad that they have made it this way so that non-HoT owners can not get the “good” stuff… It’s fractals after all and you are supposed to get your ascended gear there that’s how I understands it.

Anyhow with the Masteries how big are the chances for a “good” drop?

In the end, I hope this is just not inteded that it is just a bug that will get fixed soon and if it is not I hope they make ascended drops come back again.

Member of Alpha Swedish Gaming Community – http://www.alphas.se/
Guild Leader of Alpha Sgc [ASGC]

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Posted by: Dashingsteel.3410

Dashingsteel.3410

Repackaging and reselling what a customer already paid for is cowardly.

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Posted by: Dashingsteel.3410

Dashingsteel.3410

I prepurchased HoT but that doesn’t mean that I agree with what Anet is doing to those non HoT players that bought the original game.

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Posted by: Tigaseye.2047

Tigaseye.2047

I prepurchased HoT but that doesn’t mean that I agree with what Anet is doing to those non HoT players that bought the original game.

Me too.

I also spent as much (or more) on this game, in nine months, than I did on WoW in 3 and a half whole years…

I know some people never spend more than they absolutely have to.

But it would be wrong to assume that everyone, who is unhappy about at least some aspects of the current situation, is like that.

“Turns out when people play the game, they don’t admire your feet at all.” sephiroth

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Posted by: Neural.1824

Neural.1824

If it is legal, Anet will use it to their advantage.

However, there is a vast amount of space between “legal” and “ethical”

Where are my gem sales? I want gem sales! Nerf EVERYTHING!

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Posted by: Skyline Crash.6254

Skyline Crash.6254

I’m not saying what they did was right, nerfing core and putting the rewards in HoT. But since I bought HoT, its kind of hard for me to care because it doesn’t affect me. I too was one of those people who bought it at launch. I’ve probably spent around 120 bucks on guild wars 2 since the 3 years it came out. That’s 3 dollars and 33 cents a month. Compared to subscription based models (looking at you WoW) that are 15 bucks a month, that’s nothing.

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Posted by: Sicarius.4639

Sicarius.4639

This is what non Living story (that ppl seemed to hate so much) looks like. Its payed expansion or Living story take your chose.

No this is what Living Story as an expansion looks like.

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Posted by: pdavis.8031

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, B ) 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.

Yes I am in a guild.

“You know what the chain of command is?
It’s the chain I beat you with until you
recognize my command!”

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Posted by: fixit.7189

fixit.7189

Honestly, I wish this game was sub based so I could cancel it. I am done buying gems here with RL money since this is the only real way to show my disappointment in this supposed ‘expansion’; no it’s a larger than usual DLC that recycles old content and calls it new. GW2 is now just another f2p now. Case in point, if you happened to miss LS2; you now have to BUY it since it is mandatory to get mastery points. It’s not enough I paid 80 bucks for vanilla, 200+ bucks in gems, and now 140 bucks for HoT pre-order…no I gotta pay even more on top that since there is no choice in the matter. All in all, GW2 is resembling the typical cash shop centric Korean F2P model every day. But each their own, many cash shopper players love this so it’s all good; Anet is now catering to that crowd and making sure to punish filthy ‘f2p’ players like me.

(edited by fixit.7189)

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Posted by: Celtic Lady.3729

Celtic Lady.3729

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’m positive that whatever their reasoning is, it has something to do with maintaining their chokehold on the game’s economy.

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Posted by: Doobachoo.5712

Doobachoo.5712

you guys are ridiculous.. Its been 3 years and now they selling a paid expac how dare they add content / classes and what not and not just do it for free… Get over it people we need anet to make money or they cant continue to develope the game after 3 years 1 xpac is hardly any ask for our cash. If 1 game purchase every 3 years is 2 much money for you then go play f2p or get a job cause your being silly.

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Posted by: BrotherBelial.3094

BrotherBelial.3094

you guys are ridiculous.. Its been 3 years and now they selling a paid expac how dare they add content / classes and what not and not just do it for free… Get over it people we need anet to make money or they cant continue to develope the game after 3 years 1 xpac is hardly any ask for our cash. If 1 game purchase every 3 years is 2 much money for you then go play f2p or get a job cause being silly.

If you had bothered to read any of the thread, you would see that no one is complaining about paying for the xpac, but complaining about content from the core game being locked behind HoT or being nerffed in to the ground to “force” them in to buying HoT. Such as guild bonuses. Remember when a guild leader/officer could activate guild wide boons for all members of the guild? Well now you can only have them if you have HoT.

Now tell me that was a good thing to do. It’s not a question of how dare they charge for content, but more a case of how dare they lock things that where in the game from day one behind HoT. That is what this thread is about.

I’m not defending anyone or attacking ANet for doing so, I just think it was a silly thing to do. As I said already. Keep your players happy. With out them, you have no game.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

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

I am afraid you don’t remember correctly. I said if they continue to keep the grind (and may I repeat they did make progress, so we are going in the good direction with th precursor-crafting and the legendary armor from raids and the mats for map-events and this years Halloween skins being in-game rewards, Guild-hall giving long-term rewards) the second expansion will not sell well because those who left after GW2 and HoT will then not come back for the second expansion.

Also blaming the grind for a big part on the focus of the cash-shop. Not saying they would have to remove it completely.

Crysis was about Crytec possibly alienating PC-gamers (and what many did see as no problem because it was the smaller community anyway. But they didn’t see the PC-gamers where basically the billboard for Crysis 2) with Crysis 2. So I said, if you do this Crysis 3 will sell bad and we won’t have a Crysis 4. Exactly as happened. What was a response of me on somebody who was basically saying Anet knew what they did because they where the a big company and we where just gamers. So I showed that example to show that companies can make mistakes and sometimes gamers are correct while the big company is not. Not really relevant in this thread, but anyway, just to fresh up your memory.

I have no problem you trying to keep me on my words, but it helps if you then also remember the things as they where said.

Anyway yes I still stand with what I said. I am fine if they solving this grind problem without moving away from focusing on the cash-shop, instead of the focusing on yearly to 1,5 year expansions (as I suggested). But so far I do not see it happening enough.

What happens when 6 months from now everybody has completed most content and the new things being added is basically (as it was, as that was the situation I was referring to) some story with most cool items themed around that story being in the cash-shop? So if people want to get any of those new items it means, grind grind grind.. No expansion on the horizon and not many interesting things (like skins) to work towards other then grind?
Will the guild-hall decorations keep incoming and will that keep most people busy.
Idk, I hope so as the people who like skins will also like that sort of things but idk. You tell me.

HoT made clear steps trying to reduce this “grind for gold for everything” mentality. So it shows ArenaNet also see it as a problem themselves (finally and luckily). But there are still steps to take because if things will keep grindy I do indeed fear for the sales of the next expansion.

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Posted by: Devata.6589

Devata.6589

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

Works on paper, but not in reality as there are always multiple mounts you want to go for. The hunt for those items in general is game-play. That is how many enjoy playing an MMO. They said them self a goal (like a mount) and go do whatever they need to do to get that. In these examples that is always grind instead of different quest lines.

Now you say But I want that thing now!,

I should basically stop this debate with you right now, as you are saying I said something I did completely did not say. Heck I would hate it to just get items now as that completely removes the game-play value of them (just as the ability to get them by brainlessly grinding gold btw). Not only you act as if I said something I did not, you even make it bold.

My friend, if you try to win an argument by using a quote that never has been said you did lose the argument already as you show you can not make your point without making up things.

Will react on your other comments anyway.

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.

We where talking about mounts, not about horizontal vs vertical progression. So not really relevant. But thanks for sharing..

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.

You are absolutely right about a game having spikes. I was more referring to the longer trend. So just after the ‘hype’ has ended. Lets say 6 months from now. You would still want to have a certain numbers of players.. not the amount you have now but still. So when I refer to people walking away I basically the number of players dropping under that what you want (after the hype).

I am also not really referring to WoW players but to players who like to hunt cosmetics. What might be a big part of the player-base for a game that is focused on cosmetics, you know like GW2.

Very few is actually complaining about any grind at all at this game.

There is this thread, there are multiple threads about the pre-cursor crafting being to grindy there are indeed people complaining about guild-hall being to grindy. And thats just now that HoT is just new and people have many more things to go for.

Again, grind is not the problem with OP’s post it is about so called Paywalls.

With many of these topics where grind is an element, the topic itself is not “stop the grind”. If you however look at the post he clearly states multiple times how you can buy the gold you need.. You see, there is a paywall to get rid of the grind.

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Posted by: Killthehealersffs.8940

Killthehealersffs.8940

I am sory again but you dont remember correctly again

You are a WvWvW player with limited time that :

a) dont want to grind gold>gems

b) wanted the removal of of the cash shop in order GW2 to like a TRUE B2P game with Yearly x-packs …because it was the reason that MORE THAN MANY PPL HAS STOPPED GW2

c) You are Collector WvWvW player with limited time that hated the idea that the Tentraquil MinI could be sold in the Trading Post … and that forces you to grind gold …. just like the Precursor hunting a while ago (but you dont have either) ….
….rather as you said > strive to collect it by doing the actual events (friendly farm)

There are 2 things that really kitten me off:
a) You keep repeating ‘’*i told them so*’’
b) I dont really care about about using circular comments with other monekys …. but i really hate the phrase ‘’*just look how many ppl hate it , that why this thread is alive*’’ when the 25-30% of the comments have been made by you and on other 25% by ppl that dont understand your viewpoints and argue with you
c) (minor) with every posts dont create a bloody mini story that has the same context

If you do these 3 things then i can avert my atttention to the other ppls :P

(where is darkface ? …. hes 90% ’’ready’’ to accept that you can play GW2 with other games ,, rather than creating a monolugue when every WoW x-pack is near..)

(I think that i am most inteligend and beautiful person in GW2 (under Lord Hellesth ofc) and the rest of ’’DPSer’’ shouldnt question a ’’Healer’’ and there should some ‘’harmony in the forums’’ about :
a) play any other game along with GW2 (MMO Champions 4 years ago …)
b) dont any1 be a @ in the forums)

*dont you dare to boycot games with a more kittenty engine (warhammer online) and reduce jobs , otherwise i will go and cry on Reddit ( -_-) ..

(edited by Killthehealersffs.8940)

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Posted by: Celtic Lady.3729

Celtic Lady.3729

The sheer amount of items needed to craft legendary precursors (including a goodly amount of ascended ones ie. Deldrimor ingots, etc.) means that a large number of players are going to grind gold and outright buy the materials for these items or buy the items themselves.

I seriously doubt that the vast majority of players are going to farm every single piece of ore for every single ingot for every single part of the precursor along with all the other things needed besides ore.

Most people are going to buy anything from the collections that can actually be bought.

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Posted by: Iason Evan.3806

Iason Evan.3806

A lot of the things we are seeing were my concerns heading into this expansion. I didn’t pre-order. I wanted to see how it was going to play out. Locking old content(guild buffs) or partially locking(high-level fractals)it or just flat out nerfing(dungeons) the impetus behind doing core game content caught me off guard.

I’m gonna keep doing my daily logins in the hopes that they change things up in the future, but the design direction for this expansion isn’t my thing. I don’t think it’s a quality thing. Everyone seems to be raving about that and ArenaNet has always produced quality, but it’s the way they handled communicating it and the lack of quantity. This x-pac seems light on content. I’m not saying it’s poor quality. Everything I hear makes it sound great, but many(not all)of the people I have talked to have said the story isn’t that great, it ends abruptly, and it feels like the price was high for what they got. I think I’d rather wait til the next x-pac and get HoT thrown in for the price and get to play the next season of the LW as well. Maybe both x-pacs for the price of one will feel like the right amount of content.

I feel like for $50 there should have been 50-100 new dye colors added, a multitude of earnable armor, weapon, glider, and backpiece sets and so much more.

Like I said, I’ll keep logging in and running a fractal here and there and play a pvp match a week or so, but this game is going on the “daily login/logout” list until their communication gets better and they start treating the “best community in gaming” a lil better than they are right now.

Leader of The Guernsey Milking Coalition [MiLk] Sanctum of Rall

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Posted by: alain.1659

alain.1659

I would buy HoT in an instant if Anet;

-Fixed the bug about ranger pet names (it’s been there for 3 years. Any programmers?)
-Fixed the ranger pets (they still suck so much)
- Gave a crap about “core” rangers and archery archetype

I already paid 60 bucks for the GW2. And I still suffer many bugs. So it is very logical for me to not to trust them.

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Posted by: fellyn.5083

fellyn.5083

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, B ) 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.

Yes I am in a guild.

Then you are already past the pay wall.

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Posted by: Yaki.9563

Yaki.9563

I basically bought HoT so I could grind a mastery (fractals) to get inferior rewards in the same content there was before the “expansion”. Literally the only thing the expansion offered was some new zones, but they butchered all the original content so badly that you’re forced to buy it.

What exactly are they expecting us to do? Dungeons? Nope. Fractals? Nope. Run through new zones? For like a week I guess, what then?

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Posted by: Stand The Wall.6987

Stand The Wall.6987

The game is f2p. If there was a sub then this sort of thing wouldnt be as bad, but then “omg I have to pay each month lol noty”.

Team Deathmatch for PvP – Raise the AoE cap for WvW – More unique events for PvE

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Posted by: Crapgame.6519

Crapgame.6519

I don’t have any data on this, Arena Net does however. But….they won’t post any of it.

The startling statistic I’d like to know is the the number of hours people are playing pre and post HoT. Basically speaking, if you have a character since the head start how many hours would you say you are playing today after the expansion pack compared to before?

That is the money question. My answer is simple, less than 30% if that of pre expansion. WvW is in a rut. New maps are beautiful but too big to be borderlands. Server populations are still borked and wall clock coverage wins the day. There is no skill in the top tier no matter how much they say otherwise, we all know it. sPvP is in a funky state due to guild halls or whatever the coin phrase of the day is.

I’ll go so far to also say that the new maps in PvE world are confusing. I don’t care much about mastery system but when they are not clearly identified on the map (upper, lower, completed, not completed, not tried, etc) it wastes a lot of time. Ok, so don’t hand it to me. But if/when I visit the NPC who then shows me some of the map…for Pete’s sake, clearly call out areas of interest.

Bottom line for the play style I’m into, mostly WvW and sPvP, the expansion was a miss. Add to the fact I’m a PvE newb and I find the maps confusing or wasteful with regards to time vs. accomplishment; well, it isn’t fun.

So to me it is really a matter of me logging in for say an hour or two and feeling like I accomplished something. With HoT that isn’t the case anymore.

Main – Laaz Rocket – Guardian (Ehmry Bay)
Johnny Johnny – Ranger (Ehmry Bay)
Hárvey Wallbanger – Alt Warrior (Ehmry Bay)

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Posted by: fellyn.5083

fellyn.5083

1700~ hours pre HoTs played. About 75 played post HoTs so far. Even with raids I can’t see the game holding my interest past 1900 played, and definitely not anywhere near another 1700 hours.

Pre HoTs that comes out to about an hour and a half a day every day for 3 years. Obviously some days I played more and others less.

I’m not complaining that I haven’t gotten my monies worth out of HoTs because I feel like I have. But that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed with how little there actually is in the expansion that by all rights arrived about 2 years later than it should have.

Fallout 4 is out today/tonight.

(edited by fellyn.5083)

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Posted by: Daddicus.6128

Daddicus.6128

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.

You must be joking. WoW makes you pay every month. So, the ANet charging $100 (for the most expensive version) every 3 years pales next to paying ~$100 twice a year.

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Posted by: Pandaman.4758

Pandaman.4758

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.

You must be joking. WoW makes you pay every month. So, the ANet charging $100 (for the most expensive version) every 3 years pales next to paying ~$100 twice a year.

He is joking. He thinks he’s being witty by mocking what he thinks is the OP’s point, but is instead demonstrating an inability to read.

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Posted by: pupi.2465

pupi.2465

You know what this game needs? Interaction within its players, making money for efforts done, and how you do that? War!!!! Make Guilds go onto War!!!! Make events on the maps, to controll an area, the one (guild or whatever ppl who joins the cause) earn rewards, money, mats and itens, this is like a “dungeon where players are the enemies”

I know, now you reply to me “No! there are PvP/WvW for this, Pve should stay Pve”, but im not talking about forcing you to do PvP on Pve maps, im offering options for stuff to people do in the game, more options to make gold. If Anet takes what was from core and put into the Expac, then make it worth, for ppl “entertain” themselves, and not feel like they’re grinding.

There are always options, if we have more of them, people will be happy. (pvers and pvpers).

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Posted by: Crapgame.6519

Crapgame.6519

Fallout 4 is out today/tonight.

That is true. I was also all excited about the new Tomb Raider…until I saw it was a Xbox exclusive

Main – Laaz Rocket – Guardian (Ehmry Bay)
Johnny Johnny – Ranger (Ehmry Bay)
Hárvey Wallbanger – Alt Warrior (Ehmry Bay)

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Posted by: Jayllyfish.3489

Jayllyfish.3489

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.

First of all, it takes months and months of VERY hardcore raiding in a great guild to acquire the best gear in WoW, and when every expansion is released, the gear becomes worse than quest greens and is useless. That’s much worse than getting a few less gold for content than you got a month and a half ago.

Sure you can go back and solo old raids, but if you think that is a significant way to gain anything of substance outside of achievement rewards then you are sorely mistaken. The items like mounts have an atrociously low drop rate (I would know, I have 259 mounts) and are almost always account bound, and the pets you get were only very valuable for a short time in MoP. On a high pop server you are lucky to see 2 people while leveling through a zone, look at WoD right now, even the “current” content is barren and mounts in the xpack are a dime a dozen.

The only thing that sets you apart is your gear, and guess what, not only do they make it useless to 99% of the players each expansion, they make it useless almost every patch.

Frankly, if everything in gw2 was as it is now, minus the cash shop, I would feel like things are a little too accessible. it takes maybe 60 hours to level to 80 with only the boosts they GIVE you, and it took me maybe an hour and a half after hitting 80 to get masteries and gliding unlocked. Not to mention just from salvaging and harvesting nodes I was able to level two crafting profs to kitten near max.

This game has a lot of things going for it, I truly believe people just get hung up on minutiae when there are ways to get things that involves paying real life money. Because honestly, take away the cash shop, and in my opinion, it’s too easy to get really good stuff.

I can’t imagine how badly people would rage if they couldn’t even touch the best stuff in the game without 19 other incredible players and hundreds of thousands of gold.

All of the complaints here aren’t invalid, they just come off to people who have been playing MMOs for years as the incoherent ramblings of people who either haven’t played an MMO before, or someone who dabbled in the past and never stuck with one long enough to see the nature of MMO end game.

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Posted by: Algaron.8459

Algaron.8459

These threads are ridiculous. MMO developers normally force players to buy new expansions by raising the level cap and introducing more powerful gear, which makes core game obsolete. Anet did not raise level cap so they had to make core game obsolete in other ways.

You are not supposed to continue play and fully enjoy the game if you do not buy expansion. Anet needs you to buy the expansion because developing and maintaining the game is not free, it costs money.

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Posted by: fellyn.5083

fellyn.5083

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.

First of all, it takes months and months of VERY hardcore raiding in a great guild to acquire the best gear in WoW, and when every expansion is released, the gear becomes worse than quest greens and is useless. That’s much worse than getting a few less gold for content than you got a month and a half ago.

Sure you can go back and solo old raids, but if you think that is a significant way to gain anything of substance outside of achievement rewards then you are sorely mistaken. The items like mounts have an atrociously low drop rate (I would know, I have 259 mounts) and are almost always account bound, and the pets you get were only very valuable for a short time in MoP. On a high pop server you are lucky to see 2 people while leveling through a zone, look at WoD right now, even the “current” content is barren and mounts in the xpack are a dime a dozen.

The only thing that sets you apart is your gear, and guess what, not only do they make it useless to 99% of the players each expansion, they make it useless almost every patch.

Frankly, if everything in gw2 was as it is now, minus the cash shop, I would feel like things are a little too accessible. it takes maybe 60 hours to level to 80 with only the boosts they GIVE you, and it took me maybe an hour and a half after hitting 80 to get masteries and gliding unlocked. Not to mention just from salvaging and harvesting nodes I was able to level two crafting profs to kitten near max.

This game has a lot of things going for it, I truly believe people just get hung up on minutiae when there are ways to get things that involves paying real life money. Because honestly, take away the cash shop, and in my opinion, it’s too easy to get really good stuff.

I can’t imagine how badly people would rage if they couldn’t even touch the best stuff in the game without 19 other incredible players and hundreds of thousands of gold.

All of the complaints here aren’t invalid, they just come off to people who have been playing MMOs for years as the incoherent ramblings of people who either haven’t played an MMO before, or someone who dabbled in the past and never stuck with one long enough to see the nature of MMO end game.

Unless they’ve changed it in the last 6 months you can get a lot of gold from doing older raids in WoW.

And as you know, you can now buy play time with gold in WoW. So it’s wrong saying you don’t get anything out of playing older content in that particular game.

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Posted by: Jayllyfish.3489

Jayllyfish.3489

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.

First of all, it takes months and months of VERY hardcore raiding in a great guild to acquire the best gear in WoW, and when every expansion is released, the gear becomes worse than quest greens and is useless. That’s much worse than getting a few less gold for content than you got a month and a half ago.

Sure you can go back and solo old raids, but if you think that is a significant way to gain anything of substance outside of achievement rewards then you are sorely mistaken. The items like mounts have an atrociously low drop rate (I would know, I have 259 mounts) and are almost always account bound, and the pets you get were only very valuable for a short time in MoP. On a high pop server you are lucky to see 2 people while leveling through a zone, look at WoD right now, even the “current” content is barren and mounts in the xpack are a dime a dozen.

The only thing that sets you apart is your gear, and guess what, not only do they make it useless to 99% of the players each expansion, they make it useless almost every patch.

Frankly, if everything in gw2 was as it is now, minus the cash shop, I would feel like things are a little too accessible. it takes maybe 60 hours to level to 80 with only the boosts they GIVE you, and it took me maybe an hour and a half after hitting 80 to get masteries and gliding unlocked. Not to mention just from salvaging and harvesting nodes I was able to level two crafting profs to kitten near max.

This game has a lot of things going for it, I truly believe people just get hung up on minutiae when there are ways to get things that involves paying real life money. Because honestly, take away the cash shop, and in my opinion, it’s too easy to get really good stuff.

I can’t imagine how badly people would rage if they couldn’t even touch the best stuff in the game without 19 other incredible players and hundreds of thousands of gold.

All of the complaints here aren’t invalid, they just come off to people who have been playing MMOs for years as the incoherent ramblings of people who either haven’t played an MMO before, or someone who dabbled in the past and never stuck with one long enough to see the nature of MMO end game.

Unless they’ve changed it in the last 6 months you can get a lot of gold from doing older raids in WoW.

And as you know, you can now buy play time with gold in WoW. So it’s wrong saying you don’t get anything out of playing older content in that particular game.

I’m not sure you know what “a lot of gold is” in that game. making the ~25k it takes to buy a token (which is, by the way, a system that literally allows the buying of gold) is silly easy. But if you think you’re going to make enough money to buy rare mounts or fund what it takes to make a strong push in Mythic content by running DS, ICC, or Sunwell once a week then you obviously played a different game. Running old raids for gold in WoW is one of the most inefficient ways to make gold. The only real gold reward of significance from doing those was pets, but now that doing pet battles is just an achievement dump pet prices have dropped immensely.

I also hear a lot of mention about how “grindy” GW2 is for rewards. Well the main reason people run old raids are for account bound mounts, and as someone who has run sunwell every week for 3 years and still doesn’t have ashes of al’ar all I have to say is take a step back and stop getting caught in the “grass is always greener” trap.

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Posted by: Tigaseye.2047

Tigaseye.2047

So, the ANet charging $100 (for the most expensive version) every 3 years pales next to paying ~$100 twice a year.

Only if that is all you ever buy with real money…

In my case, I was (financially) far better off with WoW.

“Turns out when people play the game, they don’t admire your feet at all.” sephiroth

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Posted by: fellyn.5083

fellyn.5083

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.

First of all, it takes months and months of VERY hardcore raiding in a great guild to acquire the best gear in WoW, and when every expansion is released, the gear becomes worse than quest greens and is useless. That’s much worse than getting a few less gold for content than you got a month and a half ago.

Sure you can go back and solo old raids, but if you think that is a significant way to gain anything of substance outside of achievement rewards then you are sorely mistaken. The items like mounts have an atrociously low drop rate (I would know, I have 259 mounts) and are almost always account bound, and the pets you get were only very valuable for a short time in MoP. On a high pop server you are lucky to see 2 people while leveling through a zone, look at WoD right now, even the “current” content is barren and mounts in the xpack are a dime a dozen.

The only thing that sets you apart is your gear, and guess what, not only do they make it useless to 99% of the players each expansion, they make it useless almost every patch.

Frankly, if everything in gw2 was as it is now, minus the cash shop, I would feel like things are a little too accessible. it takes maybe 60 hours to level to 80 with only the boosts they GIVE you, and it took me maybe an hour and a half after hitting 80 to get masteries and gliding unlocked. Not to mention just from salvaging and harvesting nodes I was able to level two crafting profs to kitten near max.

This game has a lot of things going for it, I truly believe people just get hung up on minutiae when there are ways to get things that involves paying real life money. Because honestly, take away the cash shop, and in my opinion, it’s too easy to get really good stuff.

I can’t imagine how badly people would rage if they couldn’t even touch the best stuff in the game without 19 other incredible players and hundreds of thousands of gold.

All of the complaints here aren’t invalid, they just come off to people who have been playing MMOs for years as the incoherent ramblings of people who either haven’t played an MMO before, or someone who dabbled in the past and never stuck with one long enough to see the nature of MMO end game.

Unless they’ve changed it in the last 6 months you can get a lot of gold from doing older raids in WoW.

And as you know, you can now buy play time with gold in WoW. So it’s wrong saying you don’t get anything out of playing older content in that particular game.

I’m not sure you know what “a lot of gold is” in that game. making the ~25k it takes to buy a token (which is, by the way, a system that literally allows the buying of gold) is silly easy. But if you think you’re going to make enough money to buy rare mounts or fund what it takes to make a strong push in Mythic content by running DS, ICC, or Sunwell once a week then you obviously played a different game. Running old raids for gold in WoW is one of the most inefficient ways to make gold. The only real gold reward of significance from doing those was pets, but now that doing pet battles is just an achievement dump pet prices have dropped immensely.

I also hear a lot of mention about how “grindy” GW2 is for rewards. Well the main reason people run old raids are for account bound mounts, and as someone who has run sunwell every week for 3 years and still doesn’t have ashes of al’ar all I have to say is take a step back and stop getting caught in the “grass is always greener” trap.

I never said it would fund a mythic raider or a mount collector. I said it would fund play time and that’s it.

Like, were my words not clear or something? I’m genuinely confused.

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Posted by: pdavis.8031

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, B ) 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.

Yes I am in a guild.

Then you are already past the pay wall.

What does being in a guild or not have anything to do with a pay wall?

“You know what the chain of command is?
It’s the chain I beat you with until you
recognize my command!”

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Posted by: Substatic.6958

Substatic.6958

These threads are ridiculous. MMO developers normally force players to buy new expansions by raising the level cap and introducing more powerful gear, which makes core game obsolete. Anet did not raise level cap so they had to make core game obsolete in other ways.

You are not supposed to continue play and fully enjoy the game if you do not buy expansion. Anet needs you to buy the expansion because developing and maintaining the game is not free, it costs money.

The issue is one of the core game things they substantially nerfed (probably more than dungeons) was Fractals, which is currently the main PVE end-game for HoT as well.

It really makes no sense.

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Posted by: Tigaseye.2047

Tigaseye.2047

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.

First of all, it takes months and months of VERY hardcore raiding in a great guild to acquire the best gear in WoW, and when every expansion is released, the gear becomes worse than quest greens and is useless. That’s much worse than getting a few less gold for content than you got a month and a half ago.

Sure you can go back and solo old raids, but if you think that is a significant way to gain anything of substance outside of achievement rewards then you are sorely mistaken. The items like mounts have an atrociously low drop rate (I would know, I have 259 mounts) and are almost always account bound, and the pets you get were only very valuable for a short time in MoP. On a high pop server you are lucky to see 2 people while leveling through a zone, look at WoD right now, even the “current” content is barren and mounts in the xpack are a dime a dozen.

The only thing that sets you apart is your gear, and guess what, not only do they make it useless to 99% of the players each expansion, they make it useless almost every patch.

Frankly, if everything in gw2 was as it is now, minus the cash shop, I would feel like things are a little too accessible. it takes maybe 60 hours to level to 80 with only the boosts they GIVE you, and it took me maybe an hour and a half after hitting 80 to get masteries and gliding unlocked. Not to mention just from salvaging and harvesting nodes I was able to level two crafting profs to kitten near max.

This game has a lot of things going for it, I truly believe people just get hung up on minutiae when there are ways to get things that involves paying real life money. Because honestly, take away the cash shop, and in my opinion, it’s too easy to get really good stuff.

I can’t imagine how badly people would rage if they couldn’t even touch the best stuff in the game without 19 other incredible players and hundreds of thousands of gold.

All of the complaints here aren’t invalid, they just come off to people who have been playing MMOs for years as the incoherent ramblings of people who either haven’t played an MMO before, or someone who dabbled in the past and never stuck with one long enough to see the nature of MMO end game.

Is that really how they “come off”, or are you just assuming?

I’ve done some “real” raiding in WoW – I know how it works.

It’s not worse, at all, IMO.

The gear gets old, but you just go get some more.

No biggy.

You get it either from the new tier of raids, or from whatever new content comes with the new xpac.

So what?

You’re, hopefully, raiding (and playing) for more than just gear, anyway.

You’re, hopefully, raiding (and playing) because you enjoy it.

Yeah, the gear treadmill can seem a little pointless, but it’s not like they’re actually, physically, taking anything away (most of the time).

(Well, I say that, but of course they did take stuff away from [or didn’t add it, as normal to] LFR, which was a huge mistake; but that was only a recent development and is also a very specific case.)

Whereas, if you’re running a certain type of content, in this game, because you enjoy it and then, suddenly, you’re getting fewer rewards for doing that content, what are you supposed to do?

Just suck it up? Or abandon that type of content entirely?

Especially as it’s still supposed to be current content and there is nothing new added, of the same type of content , that gives you the same or better rewards.

As I’ve said before, I think there was some justification for doing it to dungeons, as people were saying they were getting 60g per day from them.

But, that wasn’t the case with most things.

Yes, the mounts in old content WoW tend to have low drop rates, but I only mentioned mounts as an aside.

What we’re really talking about here is ingame “living expenses”; not very specific things, like mounts.

You can make a very decent amount of gold from running older raids.

That was my main point about that.

Plus, they may have a low droprate, but most mounts are still there – you can still get them, with enough effort.

It’s not ideal, IMO and I’m not a mount collector, so I haven’t bothered with most of them, but still.

Oh and WoD is a pile of pants and they have made some very, very stupid decisions lately, but that is not really relevant to this topic, either.

I’m not sure you know what “a lot of gold is” in that game. making the ~25k it takes to buy a token (which is, by the way, a system that literally allows the buying of gold) is silly easy. But if you think you’re going to make enough money to buy rare mounts or fund what it takes to make a strong push in Mythic content by running DS, ICC, or Sunwell once a week then you obviously played a different game. Running old raids for gold in WoW is one of the most inefficient ways to make gold. The only real gold reward of significance from doing those was pets, but now that doing pet battles is just an achievement dump pet prices have dropped immensely.

I also hear a lot of mention about how “grindy” GW2 is for rewards. Well the main reason people run old raids are for account bound mounts, and as someone who has run sunwell every week for 3 years and still doesn’t have ashes of al’ar all I have to say is take a step back and stop getting caught in the “grass is always greener” trap.

Whenever people, on the WoW forum, have said they are struggling for gold, in WoD, one of the main things they are advised to do is solo Firelands.

Of course Sunwell isn’t going to net you much, at this point – it’s ancient content.

…and why you’re bringing up buying rare mounts, I can’t imagine?

We’re not talking about being allowed to make enough gold, in a week or two, to buy the GW2 equivalent of a rare mount, here.

(What that would be, IDK? A legendary, maybe?).

We’re just talking about simple stuff, like being able to make the same amount as we did before, doing the same things and being “allowed” to level our little guilds, in the same way as we always could.

Is that really too much to ask?

…and as for “grass is always greener”, I’m seriously thinking that the only, even vaguely, green patch of grass is as far away from these types of games as is humanly possible.

“Turns out when people play the game, they don’t admire your feet at all.” sephiroth

(edited by Tigaseye.2047)

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Posted by: fellyn.5083

fellyn.5083

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, B ) 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.

Yes I am in a guild.

Then you are already past the pay wall.

What does being in a guild or not have anything to do with a pay wall?

They removed guild features from the core game, repackaged them, and put them in HoTs exclusively.

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Posted by: Reanne.5462

Reanne.5462

Its Posts like this one.
I don’t have expac.
I log in and see many aspects of the game that I bought 3 years ago, have been removed and re branded with a new price tag, Higher than what I paid the first time.

Before the expac, my small guild could earn enough influence running in WvW to maintain some of the buffs, claiming camps for supply +5 bonus etc.

Now my small guild has been gutted, serving no purpose but as a place holder while I rep a larger guild -

I really hope this company does an about face,
Hey just go steal some stuff from guildwars 1, that game was amazingly fun to play.

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Posted by: Dovienya.6597

Dovienya.6597

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.

It’ pretty clear yes… thats sad but on the other hand the current tab has only 573 chests and none have over 100 except for veterans. From when I worked with datacollecting I learned that we needed 200# from each part not more and not less. On the pre Pre 23/10/2015 it is over 7706 chests and on both level 40 and 50 it is around 50% more opened chests that on level 20 and 30.

What about the other thing that you can now only get the stuff from the Masteries? It’s sad that they have made it this way so that non-HoT owners can not get the “good” stuff… It’s fractals after all and you are supposed to get your ascended gear there that’s how I understands it.

Anyhow with the Masteries how big are the chances for a “good” drop?

In the end, I hope this is just not inteded that it is just a bug that will get fixed soon and if it is not I hope they make ascended drops come back again.

Read Here:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Central_Tyria_mastery_tracks

Not a bug. Even with the masteries the chances are not good- but the loot table is increased and you have access to more daily chests/achieves/merchants- but less daily chests tiers than before HoT.

(edited by Dovienya.6597)

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Posted by: Substatic.6958

Substatic.6958

The fractal situation is so absolutely ludicrous it almost seems like it HAS to be a bug and not intended.

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Posted by: nepeta.6870

nepeta.6870

I’m disappointed that HoT has had such an impact on players who do not have the expansion (like myself). I remember the GW1 expansions that were fabulous and had good take up but did not impact on the original/core game. Players were drawn to purchase the expansions because they wanted to, not because certain elements of the original game had been changed to the extent that players felt pushed to purchase these expansions. The expansion content stood on its own and was really enjoyable.

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Posted by: Tigaseye.2047

Tigaseye.2047

I’m disappointed that HoT has had such an impact on players who do not have the expansion (like myself). I remember the GW1 expansions that were fabulous and had good take up but did not impact on the original/core game. Players were drawn to purchase the expansions because they wanted to, not because certain elements of the original game had been changed to the extent that players felt pushed to purchase these expansions. The expansion content stood on its own and was really enjoyable.

ITA.

Although, even worse than that, is that it has also had a negative impact on those of us who have bought it…

Even we are not left unscathed.

“Turns out when people play the game, they don’t admire your feet at all.” sephiroth

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Posted by: Jayllyfish.3489

Jayllyfish.3489

Is that really how they “come off”, or are you just assuming?

How they come off is an opinion. In my opinion that’s how they sound.

I’ve done some “real” raiding in WoW – I know how it works.

I doubt it. Maybe flex/normal. Maybe.

It’s not worse, at all, IMO.

Then you’re just nit-picking, or trying to justify a return to WoW. Only the blind would make the comparison to WoW as you did without seeing or acknowledging the obvious.

The gear gets old, but you just go get some more.

People whine about how the best gear in the game is hard to get. The fact is, anyone can get it in this game by playing alone. It just takes time. In WoW 99% of the player base will never even see Mythic content, let alone get full BiS gear. Even if you get into the raids you have a once a week shot at a chance for a piece of gear to drop. Like I said before, people are just upset that someone can circumvent parts of the game by whipping out a credit card. Show me a piece of gear that isn’t attainable by a decent semi-knowledgeable player who just puts time in.

This is akin to the “You can’t do masteries without grinding a level!!11one!11!! They’re tricking us into buying the expansion and put this limitation in to make us play moar!1!!1!” type of gripe. It’s the nature of MMOs.

Could you imagine if the group of vocal dissenters had to deal with the RNG fest that was the legendary cloak quest? Where you could run everyrthing you needed every week and get one titan runestone and someone in LFR could get four from one LFR wing of a raid? Having to wait possibly months to get the dropped mats?

You get it either from the new tier of raids, or from whatever new content comes with the new xpac.

Even though this response is a hilarious response that addressing nothing, it still takes a long time to get the gear, and like I’ve said before, in GW2 you can get the gear in-game.

You’re, hopefully, raiding (and playing) for more than just gear, anyway.

You’re, hopefully, raiding (and playing) because you enjoy it.

Some people enjoy character optimization and being good at their class. I don’t quite see how someone chooses to play pertains to this discussion.

Yeah, the gear treadmill can seem a little pointless, but it’s not like they’re actually, physically, taking anything away (most of the time).

(Well, I say that, but of course they did take stuff away from [or didn’t add it, as normal to] LFR, which was a huge mistake; but that was only a recent development and is also a very specific case.)

They’ve taken stuff away in many cases, the drop rates on craftable items is always being adjusted, and usually not in the player’s favor. From the days of Benediction in vanilla to the green fire warlock tomes in mists. In fact, many of the coolest old weapons/armor are no longer available or are behind and impossible gold wall, like Benediction, all of Tier 3 gear, and tons of other very rare items.

Whereas, if you’re running a certain type of content, in this game, because you enjoy it and then, suddenly, you’re getting fewer rewards for doing that content, what are you supposed to do?

Just suck it up? Or abandon that type of content entirely?

Yes. Suck it up. A marginal decrease in rewards should cause people to lose their minds and create thread after thread describing in detail how getting less gold from dungeons or whatever signals the demise of the game. I mean, for god’s sake there is even a thread that uses in-game examples of what you guys are talking about to describe in detail the eventual end of MMOs in general. Melodrama at it’s finest, but that’s to be expected from official forum communities.

I put it this way to a guildie today, no one has ever been enjoying an MMO. be it EQ, WoW, GW or whatever, and while playing the game stopped and thought to themself, “Hey, I’m going to go make a post about how much I am enjoying things!”

Especially as it’s still supposed to be current content and there is nothing new added, of the same type of content , that gives you the same or better rewards.

Look at GW2’s peers in the b2p environment that has come from games living in the shadow of WoW. The “expansion” content from those games (ESO, Wildstar, etc) is laughable in comparison to HoT.

“living expenses”

There are none. Unless you need instant gratification or want to keep up with the moron who shells out tons of money to get something faster just to sit on it then come here and complain about having nothing to do in a couple of months.

You can make a very decent amount of gold from running older raids.

That was my main point about that.

Might cover your “real raiding” repair costs and an enchant or two.

Plus, they may have a low droprate, but most mounts are still there – you can still get them, with enough effort.

So you’re willing to put in the “effort” for what is, ostensibly, a mount skin but don’t want to do the same for a legendary weapon just because someone can convert gems to gold and buy mats? Okie dokie.