Guild Wars 2

^ Oh, the “opinion” argument, again.

Let’s not go there, shall we?

No, I did some HC (equivalent of the current Mythic) in MoP.

I’m no great raider, but that is what I did with two different guilds I was in.

My character is still in one of the guilds, as far as I know, even though I left the game in January.

Not really sure how you think you can tell, from me writing, whether I raided or not?

Or at what level.

I can only assume you’re just trying to be offensive, at this point.

Maybe you were all along?

Would explain a lot, frankly.

I’m genuinely glad to hear that you are so utterly enamoured of the game.

Good for you.

By the way, if you think you come across as more intelligent than everyone else here, you’re sorely mistaken.

Lovely, totally professional-looking forum bug.

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.

I bought the expansion. Now give me my content. Where are the dungeons? Where are the fractals? Am I seriously supposed to just go through the story line then quit out of boredom?

What’s funny is the people saying this xpac is great because in WoW you’d have tons of stuff to do to get the best gear. Then get to do more of it every 6 months as they release new content. WoW may have issues but the sheer volume of group content is not one of them. In GW2 they’ve basically made all group content obsolete and pointless while adding nothing with the “expansion”. So now it’s some kind of solo story following adventure until you finish the story then it’s game over I guess?

Raids and their rewards are going to have to be absolutely epic to make up for all those nerfs and lack of content.

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 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..

Sure because every other mmo raising the levelcap, wich basicly totally removed pvp from their “core game”playerbase doesn’t count…

Devata.6589:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

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.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

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.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

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..

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

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.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

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.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

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.

I am sorry I never meant that you did actually say ‘I want it now’, I meant that iether you can enjoy the game and it’s content and eventually you get what you want or you farm for gold to more quickly get your hands on what you want.

Also first statement you say only works on paper? Well it works for me, thats how I have played GW2 since it was released and I still enjoy it and I have never farmed for gold in the game. And I have also bought most stuff for real cash and I have a few dollars put aside to be used on MMO’s. I don’t put money on other MMO’s just to be able to play them now and I can buy lots of gems instead.

After this has been said I am going to leave it at that as you want. I beleave we won’t get anywhere with this.

Yaki.9563:

What’s funny is the people saying this xpac is great because in WoW you’d have tons of stuff to do to get the best gear. Then get to do more of it every 6 months as they release new content. WoW may have issues but the sheer volume of group content is not one of them. In GW2 they’ve basically made all group content obsolete and pointless while adding nothing with the “expansion”. So now it’s some kind of solo story following adventure until you finish the story then it’s game over I guess?

You literally do the same thing over and over again to get the best gear. Don’t get me wrong, I play both games and like them both (been playing WoW for almost 11 years, but I’m just pointing out the obvious flaws brought up in the comparisons. Especially seeing as how WoW (like it or not) has and still sets the threshold by which fantasy MMOs are judged.

Dovienya.6597:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Dinks.2478:

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.

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.

Can you point me to where this tells me it is not a bug? Actually what I understand out of this it is even more clear that it is a bug. I am not saying it is and I am agreeing that if this is not a bug it is a really bad move of Anet.

I agree with OP about all the stuff we had from core now being locked behind HoT, this including the fractal part if it really is not a bug.

DarcShriek.5829:

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.

No it doesn’t, it simply makes it no longer BiS when character levels go up, which doesn’t apply here due to level scaling and the fact HoT didn’t increase the level cap.

So your WOW comment really has no real relevance here I’d suggest.

Jayllyfish.3489:

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.

Well your opinion is clearly from a grinders perspective. All your solutions are based on grinding gold so no wonder you like that better in GW2 as that is a good way to get most interesting rewards, in many a cases even the only one.

If grinding gold is a solution to you (what it is for a group of people) then there is not a problem with GW2 at all. But when you are in the group of people that likes to go directly for the items its different.

In WoW you could get most companions, mounts and skins by working directly towards them. Yes that sometimes means doing 1 dungeon for one mount 100 times. But then the next mount it’s a quest, the next one it’s defeating some boss, the next one is another dungeon. In GW2 in most cases it’s just grind gold, and there are a few ways to best grind gold.

Sure your example of ashes of al’ar is a bad one where the drop-rate might be way to low, especially for content that is time-gated. But that does not mean locking items this way (with better RNG) is a bad thing.

In fact. “Well the main reason people run old raids are for account bound mounts”. My point.. chasing these type of items is very important in an MMO and it’s something that keeps many people busy. Not if the way to get them is almost always by grinding gold, you will scare off many people. Not the grinders but others.

So yeah, if you take the ashes of al’ar example where you still not have it after consistently doing that raid for 3 years it’s a step back. But if you take that extremely bad RNG / time-gate out of the loop it’s a step forward. It lets people go over the world, do all kinds of content and keeps them playing for a long time. While the grind-way is fine for the grinders, but not for many other players.

fellyn.5083:

Jayllyfish.3489:

fellyn.5083:

Jayllyfish.3489:

Tigaseye.2047:

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.

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.

Mythic raiding or collecting mounts (or other cosmetics) is the preferred game-play (play time) for many MMO-players.

Edit: and to> or

Substatic.6958:

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.

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.

Well, they also make those rewards not account-bound anymore if I am correct? So then it makes a lot of sense because else the TP would be flooded with them and they would lose their value. Especially because Fractals is supposed to be one of the core things GW2 players do.

That is what I said before. When you make items more accessible with gold, you also reduce the ability to work for them directly (like by doing fractals). Those things are related.

That is why I said you have to put specific items behind specific content. And when that content is being farmed a lot (like also with World-bosses) you will need to make them account-bound so you can keep having accessible drop-rates while keeping the item rare.

Not doing that will mean working directly becomes impossible because you will have to make the drop-rate to low or will remove the rarity of the items.

If I would answer this problem as how it was answered to me when I complained about not being able to work directly towards many of the rewards. You want those rewards? Just play the game as you like, you will earn gold that way and then you can buy them. No need for these items to be best accessible with Fractals.

Just for the record, I do not agree with that last paragraph, but it shows the mentality and how things are related.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I am sorry I never meant that you did actually say ‘I want it now’, I meant that iether you can enjoy the game and it’s content and eventually you get what you want or you farm for gold to more quickly get your hands on what you want.

Also first statement you say only works on paper? Well it works for me, thats how I have played GW2 since it was released and I still enjoy it and I have never farmed for gold in the game. And I have also bought most stuff for real cash and I have a few dollars put aside to be used on MMO’s. I don’t put money on other MMO’s just to be able to play them now and I can buy lots of gems instead.

After this has been said I am going to leave it at that as you want. I beleave we won’t get anywhere with this.

“I meant that iether you can enjoy the game” There are many things in this game that I do enjoy, however one big element I enjoy doing in MMO’s is hunting down all those items. Special mounts, mini’ s, skins, toys, ranger pets. But not by grinding gold for them all, no by them giving me many different challenges.
However that part is for the biggest part grind gold (or some other currency). So that would for a big part be enjoying the game, and that is true for many people. Look at the guy who was talking about WoW and how many people were doing raids for special mounts.

“Also first statement you say only works on paper? ~ And I have also bought most stuff for real cash”
So it did not work for you. The content of hunting those items was removed from you and you payed your way out of the grind. You were not able to get them by playing the game or by directly hunting them down. We are talking here about playing right. Buying items with cash does not count as playing to me.

“I don’t put money on other MMO’s just to be able to play them now and I can buy lots of gems instead.”
Well that’s why it’s designed as it is, to get people to buy gems. I however look at it from a game-play perspective.

Fox.3469:

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 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..

Sure because every other mmo raising the levelcap, wich basicly totally removed pvp from their “core game”playerbase doesn’t count…

I have no idea what you are referring to there. You’re going to have to elaborate.

Devata.6589:

fellyn.5083:

Jayllyfish.3489:

fellyn.5083:

Jayllyfish.3489:

Tigaseye.2047:

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.

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.

Mythic raiding and collecting mounts (or other cosmetics) is the preferred game-play (play time) for many MMO-players.

Okay? I’m still not sure what that has to do with the point I was making.

It was pretty simple. Older content gives gold. Gold buys play time. That’s it and that’s all. The person I was replying to said that older content served no purpose once it had been consumed, and by consumed I mean updates released.

This thread reminded me of this song (with appropriate modifications):

Today is gonna be the day
That they’re gonna throw it back to you
By now you should’ve somehow
Realized what you gotta do
I don’t believe that anybody
Feels the way I do about you now

Back beat, the word is on the street
That the thorns in your heart is out
I’m sure you’ve heard it all before
But you never really had a doubt
I believe that everybody feels
The way I do about you now

And all the roads we have to walk are grinding
And all the rewards that lead us there are misleading
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
But I don’t know how

Because maybe
You’re gonna be the one that irks me
And after all
You’re my paywall

Today was gonna be the day
But they’ll never throw it back to you
By now you should’ve somehow
Realized what you’re not to do
I believe that everybody
Feels the way I do
About you now

And all the roads we have to walk are grinding
And all the rewards that lead us there are misleading
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
But I don’t know how

Because maybe
You’re gonna be the one that irks me
And after all
You’re my paywall

Because maybe
You’re gonna be the one that irks me
And after all
You’re my paywall

I said maybe
You’re gonna be the one that irks me
You’re gonna be the one that irks me
You’re gonna be the one that irks me

Haha, I love it, slamfunction!

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.

We’ll how much of it we finish when raids come out and the living story starts up again. It’s not just HoT. It’s HoT and everything that comes out from this point on.

Devata.6589:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I am sorry I never meant that you did actually say ‘I want it now’, I meant that iether you can enjoy the game and it’s content and eventually you get what you want or you farm for gold to more quickly get your hands on what you want.

Also first statement you say only works on paper? Well it works for me, thats how I have played GW2 since it was released and I still enjoy it and I have never farmed for gold in the game. And I have also bought most stuff for real cash and I have a few dollars put aside to be used on MMO’s. I don’t put money on other MMO’s just to be able to play them now and I can buy lots of gems instead.

After this has been said I am going to leave it at that as you want. I beleave we won’t get anywhere with this.

“I meant that iether you can enjoy the game” There are many things in this game that I do enjoy, however one big element I enjoy doing in MMO’s is hunting down all those items. Special mounts, mini’ s, skins, toys, ranger pets. But not by grinding gold for them all, no by them giving me many different challenges.
However that part is for the biggest part grind gold (or some other currency). So that would for a big part be enjoying the game, and that is true for many people. Look at the guy who was talking about WoW and how many people were doing raids for special mounts.

“Also first statement you say only works on paper? ~ And I have also bought most stuff for real cash”
So it did not work for you. The content of hunting those items was removed from you and you payed your way out of the grind. You were not able to get them by playing the game or by directly hunting them down. We are talking here about playing right. Buying items with cash does not count as playing to me.

“I don’t put money on other MMO’s just to be able to play them now and I can buy lots of gems instead.”
Well that’s why it’s designed as it is, to get people to buy gems. I however look at it from a game-play perspective.

Wow you really refuse to understand anything I am saying.

If you need it now you grind, if you want to hunt it down while you play and enjoy the content of the game you will get it someday, you don’t need to grind anything. Most of the places gives you what you need just by playing everywhere in the game but there is an exception with Dungeon tokens and a few (sadly) new places like Flax Seeds and Coarse sand. You get gold from just playing the game.

It worked out very well for me, instead of spending my real cash on a monthly sub I rather pay real cash for gems now and then and as I but aside saved money to just this I am not loosing money like this I rather have money over as it’s not every month I pay for gems. I also rather spend my Gold i earn by enjoying the game on stuff I need to get the stuff that is outside the gemshop. If I didn’t have any real cash to spend on gems then I maby would have spent gold for Gems but I still wouldn’t had boore myself to tears by farming becouse I really don’t like farming. So the difference between GW2 and wow is that you can play GW2 and in the future you will have gold enough to buy what you want but in WoW you have to grind an Instance or whatever to hopefully get the stuff you need.

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.

Right?!

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.

Although I can hear the sarcasm in your strawman, they did paint themselves into a corner with their Living Story content which was free, it does take the shine of an expansion, especially one that looks like a few months of Living Story packaged up and sold to us, whilst taking things we already paid for in the base game and putting them behind HoT paywalls.

Devata.6589:

Well your opinion is clearly from a grinders perspective. All your solutions are based on grinding gold so no wonder you like that better in GW2 as that is a good way to get most interesting rewards, in many a cases even the only one.

If grinding gold is a solution to you (what it is for a group of people) then there is not a problem with GW2 at all. But when you are in the group of people that likes to go directly for the items its different.

I never claimed to have a “solution” because the game doesn’t need one, am I wrong or have raids/other content not even been released yet? C’mon.. That being said, I still don’t think that the strongest craftable weapons/armor should be easy to obtain. What is your solution? If it is any easier people will complain that everyone has said items, that is just the nature of the vocal minority that looks to complain.

Devata.6589:

In WoW you could get most companions, mounts and skins by working directly towards them. Yes that sometimes means doing 1 dungeon for one mount 100 times. But then the next mount it’s a quest, the next one it’s defeating some boss, the next one is another dungeon. In GW2 in most cases it’s just grind gold, and there are a few ways to best grind gold.

Sure your example of ashes of al’ar is a bad one where the drop-rate might be way to low, especially for content that is time-gated. But that does not mean locking items this way (with better RNG) is a bad thing.

Grinding is grinding is grinding, no matter how you look at it, the only reason I responded to the WoW comparison posts is they seemed to be based on false truths. The fact is, gearing up in this game without converting gems (buying gold) takes much less time than in WoW, and you can do it alone. [/quote]

Devata.6589:

In fact. “Well the main reason people run old raids are for account bound mounts”. My point.. chasing these type of items is very important in an MMO and it’s something that keeps many people busy. Not if the way to get them is almost always by grinding gold, you will scare off many people. Not the grinders but others.

So yeah, if you take the ashes of al’ar example where you still not have it after consistently doing that raid for 3 years it’s a step back. But if you take that extremely bad RNG / time-gate out of the loop it’s a step forward. It lets people go over the world, do all kinds of content and keeps them playing for a long time. While the grind-way is fine for the grinders, but not for many other players.

This argument makes no sense. WoW is constantly adding time gates for nearly everything.

Also, I will say this once again, comparing this game to WoW in terms of access is just silly in general. This game doesn’t have 10+ years of 10 million players paying a sub to fall back on, and even with that, expansions are still full price, most of the truly “new” mounts outside of the handful that come along with buying a new 60 dollar expansion are sold in the cash shop.

If you compare this game to it’s peers, it is head and shoulders above the rest, and IMO after playing WoW since launch (and I still do, for the record), this game gives it a run for it’s money.

Would you rather it be like ESO? Where a level 30 who just hung on to the right white items with stats can craft the best gear in the game and you literally get NOTHING from doing dungeons or their sad excuse for raids? Where you have to stay subbed or shell out 20 bucks every other month for DLC’s that are so laughably underwhelming its hard to tell if they are serious? Where the post level cap character progression system is so broken that if you open up your wallet and pay for xp boosts your character can unlock permanent stats that make your character tremendously strong and makes PvP pointless unless you have the real life cash to spend along with the time to grind?

My only point with these posts is to say, nothing is perfect in the MMO environment, and frankly, this one is pretty kitten good. We still don’t have the raids yet, and I have a feeling there is other stuff in the works as well.

I bought HoT and I like the expansion but I cannot say Im glad with the amount of content. It really doesnt look like 60 dollars worth. As people said it expands some things but destroy others like dungeons. I think at 20 it would be a great deal.

Jayllyfish.3489:

Yaki.9563:

What’s funny is the people saying this xpac is great because in WoW you’d have tons of stuff to do to get the best gear. Then get to do more of it every 6 months as they release new content. WoW may have issues but the sheer volume of group content is not one of them. In GW2 they’ve basically made all group content obsolete and pointless while adding nothing with the “expansion”. So now it’s some kind of solo story following adventure until you finish the story then it’s game over I guess?

You literally do the same thing over and over again to get the best gear. Don’t get me wrong, I play both games and like them both (been playing WoW for almost 11 years, but I’m just pointing out the obvious flaws brought up in the comparisons. Especially seeing as how WoW (like it or not) has and still sets the threshold by which fantasy MMOs are judged.

You do the same thing for 6 months. Then another raid comes out. In GW2 you do the same thing for 3 years, then they effectively remove all group content and the new stuff you get to do is solo storyline for a week. Nice expansion.

AXEL.8362:

I bought HoT and I like the expansion but I cannot say Im glad with the amount of content. It really doesnt look like 60 dollars worth. As people said it expands some things but destroy others like dungeons. I think at 20 it would be a great deal.

See what you say six months from now. With a game like Guild Wars 2, the content will start to grow but you won’t be paying more. Those who haven’t bought the expansion won’t have access to that content.

I understand the rage n agree to some point.

I agree on ascended drop. Armor and weapon boxes should be more frequently droped for everyone, as everything is spinning around it now. If not, make one set obtainable through not-so-hard archivs.

Gold farm is overkill. I farmed 50g in 3days in sw. Too low. Not everyone can grind 12h a day. I have job and have toearn for living.

arenta.2953:

Yaki.9563:

arenta.2953:

i smell a kitten person who is also spoiled after the 3 years of FREE CONTENT UPDATES.

how much would ANY OTHER GAME have charged u for all those FREE content updates?

like $300?

and now the first paid expansion comes and u CRY?!

spoiled, buthurt. should i add more to that?

What free content upgrades? If you log into the game now, it’s literally exactly the same as it was at release in terms of content. Actually I guess it’s less because dungeons and fractals are now pointless.

And clearly it hasn’t been free. They are making money off of selling gems. Enough to make it as good or better than a subscription would have been.

Not to mention, what does previous free content have to do with the expansion? The expansion is terrible. It takes away and adds nothing. Perhaps you see the expansion as some sort of bill they are sending you for the last 3 years you played?

oh?
so halloween, winter’s day
dry top
silverwastes
the new stronghold mode
the guild halls

the new WvW maps
the changes to lion’s arch
the changes to world bosses

the ENTIRTY of Living world season 1.
and living world season 2(if u were on when it was going on. it was free)

the land with the karka
the new path in Twilight arbor

fractals(all fractals. NONE WERE IN GAME AT LAUNCH)

the adventurebox

SO MUCH NEW STUFF. SO MUCH CHANGED STUFF. AND ON TOP OF THAT THEY BALANCING CLASSES SO OFTEN.

so the same as launch? HA

Well I’d say that’s what you get with the box price, great value.

Now should I expect the same level of addition with the expansion or just Living Story?

If it’s the latter, it pales in comparison doesn’t…. it?

(Had to add dots due to the fact it thinks I want to put slang for breast, seriously?!)

Sicarius.4639:

arenta.2953:

Yaki.9563:

arenta.2953:

i smell a kitten person who is also spoiled after the 3 years of FREE CONTENT UPDATES.

how much would ANY OTHER GAME have charged u for all those FREE content updates?

like $300?

and now the first paid expansion comes and u CRY?!

spoiled, buthurt. should i add more to that?

What free content upgrades? If you log into the game now, it’s literally exactly the same as it was at release in terms of content. Actually I guess it’s less because dungeons and fractals are now pointless.

And clearly it hasn’t been free. They are making money off of selling gems. Enough to make it as good or better than a subscription would have been.

Not to mention, what does previous free content have to do with the expansion? The expansion is terrible. It takes away and adds nothing. Perhaps you see the expansion as some sort of bill they are sending you for the last 3 years you played?

oh?
so halloween, winter’s day
dry top
silverwastes
the new stronghold mode
the guild halls

the new WvW maps
the changes to lion’s arch
the changes to world bosses

the ENTIRTY of Living world season 1.
and living world season 2(if u were on when it was going on. it was free)

the land with the karka
the new path in Twilight arbor

fractals(all fractals. NONE WERE IN GAME AT LAUNCH)

the adventurebox

SO MUCH NEW STUFF. SO MUCH CHANGED STUFF. AND ON TOP OF THAT THEY BALANCING CLASSES SO OFTEN.

so the same as launch? HA

Well I’d say that’s what you get with the box price, great value.

Now should I expect the same level of addition with the expansion or just Living Story?

If it’s the latter, it pales in comparison doesn’t…. it?

(Had to add dots due to the fact it thinks I want to put slang for breast, seriously?!)

uh no

the box price was the game when first launched. which lets face it, was worth WAY MORE than $60. the ammount of content it came with was easily 2-3x that.

as for this expansion, if you don’t want to pay, you still getting stronghold pvp, guild halls, new WvW maps.

so you are still getting free content.

and the living world season 3 (when it comes. which it is) will be free like always

the thing people need to realize is if you buy HoT. then good for you. if you don’t, you still getting more free content that a company like Blizzard would charge you $60 for.

heck, each living world season would have been a WoW expansion for $60.

and Anet balances classes extremely often. compare this to games like WoT whose had OP tanks like the IS-3 for THREE YEARS. or WoW who balances classes 1/3 as often as GW2

even SWTOR doesn’t give as much free content, or balances.

so if u don’t want to buy HoT. be happy you still gettign free content like stronghold, new WvW map(and Anet did say they NO WHERE near done with WvW.)

heck, think of GW1. GW2 is REALLY giving u alot more. specially since GW2 base game is now f2p

Tigaseye.2047:

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.

Every expansion that WoW ever put out nerfed the gear from the prior version. Every time it increase the max level, all the gear from the previous max level became useless.

DarcShriek.5829

Every expansion that WoW ever put out nerfed the gear from the prior version. Every time it increase the max level, all the gear from the previous max level became useless.

Technically speaking, adding a new tier that is superior to existing gear is not a nerf to the existing gear as the existing gear still has the exact same function as it did before.

A gear treadmill adds new tiers of gear and new tiers of content. You can still do all the old content in the old gear.

I can’t believe Anet took away guild features from the base game and made everyone pay for the expansion to gain access to them again, but also to make everyone pay 5000+ elder wood planks, 5000+ mithril ingots, 600 silverwaste shovels, 30000+ silky sand, tomes of knowledge, pvp potions, gems, lodestones, bunch of other stuff, oh and farm flax till you drop for linseed oils, linseed oils, linseed oils, linseed oils, linseed oils, linseed oils, linseed oils, linseed oils, linseed oils, to get those features back.

arenta.2953:

uh no

the box price was the game when first launched.

So HoT compared to base GW2 is very lacking then? Given the price point in particular.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Wow you really refuse to understand anything I am saying.

If you need it now you grind, if you want to hunt it down while you play and enjoy the content of the game you will get it someday,

No you refuse to understand it..

Hunting them down IS what some like to do.. that IS playing for them. It’s not something they do while they play and enjoy the game, it IS their preferred content.

In some games that do have this content they do a quest to get that item and that works both ways. The quest is more fun because it rewards better and getting the reward is more fun because it’s behind that quest.

If the quest would not reward that item they would not do the quest, and if they could get the item by just grinding for it they would not get that reward.

Because that hunt for that item IS the content they like.

Jayllyfish.3489:

I never claimed to have a “solution” because the game doesn’t need one

When you look at it from a (gold) grinders perspective.

3 years ago, I bought a game that wasn’t supposed to be like other MMO’s. I came back here to see if it was worth playing, and found the justification “Well, at least it’s not as bad as WoW!”

HoT = right to grind on the gear treadmill for another 3 years? Yay? I can grind in dozens of other FTP MMO’s for free.

RIP Guildwars.

Sicarius.4639:

arenta.2953:

uh no

the box price was the game when first launched.

So HoT compared to base GW2 is very lacking then? Given the price point in particular.

no, GW2’s box price was quoted as “beign worth 2-3x times the price”

that doesn’t mean the expansion will.

HoT is easily worth $60.

plus, how often do you go back through the lv 1-70 content?

HoT has a harder job of making it all lv 80.

arenta.2953:

Sicarius.4639:

arenta.2953:

uh no

the box price was the game when first launched.

So HoT compared to base GW2 is very lacking then? Given the price point in particular.

no, GW2’s box price was quoted as “beign worth 2-3x times the price”

that doesn’t mean the expansion will.

HoT is easily worth $60.

plus, how often do you go back through the lv 1-70 content?

HoT has a harder job of making it all lv 80.

Well now I’m understanding everything you said, it feels as if this is just a case of personal value. You feel HoT is worth it’s release price and I do not, which is perfectly fine.

Devata.6589:

fellyn.5083:

Jayllyfish.3489:

fellyn.5083:

Jayllyfish.3489:

Tigaseye.2047:

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.

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.

Mythic raiding and collecting mounts (or other cosmetics) is the preferred game-play (play time) for many MMO-players.

Well no, it’s not.

The vast majority of WoW players don’t raid, at all (past LFR, anyway); let alone Mythic raid.

A lot of people like collecting mounts, it’s true.

Although, not all of us.

I was far more of a pet collector.

I also liked transmog but, in terms of gear, I tend to like simpler things; so, greens were generally more my style.

WoW gear style is, generally, pretty flashy…

I liked mounts, too, but only some of them and very few enough to run old dungeons/raids repeatedly for.

DarcShriek.5829:

Tigaseye.2047:

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.

Every expansion that WoW ever put out nerfed the gear from the prior version. Every time it increase the max level, all the gear from the previous max level became useless.

No, it just becomes outlevelled.

Which is not the same as becoming “useless”.

It’s still of use for going into the next tier of raids (if you raid) within an xpac, or for entering the new xpac content.

…and in fact, if you “real” raid, your gear may be superior and/or still of use well into the new xpac.

It also remains of use for transmog.

No it’s not like this game, where ascended/legendary gear/weaps will (apparently) never be bettered.

However, that isn’t the same as nerfing the rewards from existing (still level appropriate/current) content, not replacing it with the same type of content for better rewards and calling that an expansion.

In other words, if you have no new content, to directly replace/add to older content (e.g. EotM), don’t nerf that content’s rewards.

fellyn.5083:

pdavis.8031:

fellyn.5083:

pdavis.8031:

fellyn.5083:

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?

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

Are you sure about that?

I haven’t seen anywhere that says any guild features have been removed from free accounts, and only available exclusively in HoT. The only things I found was free accounts are unable to access guild storage, but core game accounts (i.e. paid accounts that haven’t purchased HoT) can still access them.

Also Free accounts can access guild halls, as well core accounts, but HoT exclusive features will not be accessible.

You can get into the Guild Hall map if you do not have Heart of Thorns and hang out with people, but most of the HoT guild features in there will be disabled for you. For example you will not be able to enter the Arena. I’m not going to go into detail on which specific things will be accessible and which are not because I’ll probably get it wrong

However, such things were not removed from the core game, they were added in HoT.

Also: “Free Accounts receive identical benefits from Guild membership except they have no access to the Guild vault, regardless of how permissions are set.”
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild

Now can you be specific and give specific examples of features that have been removed from core game accounts in regards to guilds?

Edit: Also this: https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/97283837-Guilds-and-Guild-Halls
You’ll see that several of the guild buffs have been removed and reworked. However, as a member of the guild, you’ll still be able to receive the benefits of them.

arenta.2953:

Yaki.9563:

arenta.2953:

i smell a kitten person who is also spoiled after the 3 years of FREE CONTENT UPDATES.

how much would ANY OTHER GAME have charged u for all those FREE content updates?

like $300?

and now the first paid expansion comes and u CRY?!

spoiled, buthurt. should i add more to that?

What free content upgrades? If you log into the game now, it’s literally exactly the same as it was at release in terms of content. Actually I guess it’s less because dungeons and fractals are now pointless.

And clearly it hasn’t been free. They are making money off of selling gems. Enough to make it as good or better than a subscription would have been.

Not to mention, what does previous free content have to do with the expansion? The expansion is terrible. It takes away and adds nothing. Perhaps you see the expansion as some sort of bill they are sending you for the last 3 years you played?

oh?
so halloween, winter’s day
dry top
silverwastes
the new stronghold mode
the guild halls

the new WvW maps
the changes to lion’s arch
the changes to world bosses

the ENTIRTY of Living world season 1.
and living world season 2(if u were on when it was going on. it was free)

the land with the karka
the new path in Twilight arbor

fractals(all fractals. NONE WERE IN GAME AT LAUNCH)

the adventurebox

SO MUCH NEW STUFF. SO MUCH CHANGED STUFF. AND ON TOP OF THAT THEY BALANCING CLASSES SO OFTEN.

so the same as launch? HA

The only relevant thing I see on that list is Fractals, which are currently not relevant so they barely count either. Maybe the WvW maps if you do that.

arenta.2953:

Sicarius.4639:

arenta.2953:

uh no

the box price was the game when first launched.

So HoT compared to base GW2 is very lacking then? Given the price point in particular.

no, GW2’s box price was quoted as “beign worth 2-3x times the price”

that doesn’t mean the expansion will.

HoT is easily worth $60.

plus, how often do you go back through the lv 1-70 content?

HoT has a harder job of making it all lv 80.

What does HoT add that’s even worth $10? Seriously. And remember to count the nerfed dungeon rewards and fractals that came with it, for negative value.

“Expansion takes away and adds nothing”

What game are you playing?

Yaki.9563:

arenta.2953:

Sicarius.4639:

arenta.2953:

uh no

the box price was the game when first launched.

So HoT compared to base GW2 is very lacking then? Given the price point in particular.

no, GW2’s box price was quoted as “beign worth 2-3x times the price”

that doesn’t mean the expansion will.

HoT is easily worth $60.

plus, how often do you go back through the lv 1-70 content?

HoT has a harder job of making it all lv 80.

What does HoT add that’s even worth $10? Seriously. And remember to count the nerfed dungeon rewards and fractals that came with it, for negative value.

whats worth $10

lets see

1. elite professions
2. 4 GIANT areas with amazing meta quests that put silverwaste to shame.
3. gliding
4. a story better than in base game
5. masteries
6. a 9th class that is insanely fun with amazing visuals

the elite professions alone are worth $10
but add in the 4 areas, gliding, and story. and i’ve paid more for less in SWTOR, WoW, Archeage, and so on.

Expansionists got what they asked for.

Congrats for thinking inside the box.

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”

“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.”

1. I don’t even know if HoT has “more effective gold farming methods.”

2. Okay.

3. I’d actually be kittened if everyone was able to get a legendary 3 months into playing. I agree legendaries should be lengthy as they aren’t necessary.

4. See #3.

5. It was always like that.

6. I’m loving the challenging content actually.

Don’t really agree with any of your points except for #2, but still entertaining read. Funny af.

At the release of Guild Wars 2, players were promised free bi weekly content packages… Up until several months ago, that is how GW2 received all of its new content. The game’s content delivery and upkeep costs were funded exclusively through gem store purchases as well as the game’s sale price.

Many players enjoyed the release of new content, while some complained it just was not enough to keep their attention.

Anet decided it would be better off releasing those small packages all in a bundle in the form of an expansion. Anet also decided to put a price tag on the bundle… and what ended up happening was, players received less content (than what would have been expected in the same amount of time, had it been delivered through the Living World method), they paid for it, and the gem store still continues to support the game’s upkeep costs.

Neither method seems to work better than the other, and in switching between methods, what myself and many players have noticed is that Anet is simply stretching out the amount of down time between content releases, and is releasing less content than expected given a certain timeframe.

Method A is okay
Method B is sort of ok

A transition between methods A and B is nothing but down-time on content delivery.

Veteran players desire new content every so often to remain entertained, and what is Anet is delivering simply is not enough.

The Living world content delivery method was like breadcrumbs being fed to a hungry person at set intervals, just enough to keep the person from starving, but not enough to keep them satiated.

…while the expansion method was like letting a person starve almost to death, then giving them an entire piece of bread….. still not enough to make them feel satiated, but enough to put them back to the hungry level.

When are you going to give us a meal, Anet?

…and don’t tell us we are going to have to wait an exorbitant amount of time, because you are starving your community to death.

Are we going back to the Living Story updates every other week, or are you going to give them to us all at once labeled as an expansion?

If you plan on going back to the every 2 weeks thing, you are already behind…. since you are once again stuck in the transition between the A and B methods.

…and if you plan on bundling up more living world releases and putting a price tag on them, you may as well call it what it is….. a subscription fee.

You fooled myself and many others with the Heart of Thorns prepurchase.

…but you won’t be getting any more money from me until you eliminate all the smoke and mirrors and start being transparent with your intentions for the content delivery method.

I have no problem paying for content I feel is worth the price tag, and paying money is not the issue here.

I also have no problem paying every couple of months…. hell even EVERY MONTH…. if you delivered an appropriate amount of content associated with the price tag in return.

What IS an issue is deceiving your customers .. and tricking them into buying their way through a pay wall THEY ALREADY PAID FOR AT LAUNCH to continue playing the same old game they already had, (with a few minor additions) once the game went free to play.

The game was stale two years ago, and if you think reselling the game to us under false pretenses was a good idea, please think again for the next “expansion.”

Can we have a real expansion next time, instead of a glorified list of gated grindfest chores labeled as content?

pdavis.8031:

fellyn.5083:

pdavis.8031:

fellyn.5083:

pdavis.8031:

fellyn.5083:

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?

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

Are you sure about that?

I haven’t seen anywhere that says any guild features have been removed from free accounts, and only available exclusively in HoT.

It’s nothing to do with ‘free accounts’, the paywall applies to players who bought the base game.

They removed the old perk system allowed guilds to earn them via Influence and made the Scribe craft do the same thing, which they put behind the gate of Guild Halls which is behind the paywall called HoT.

THAT’s what they removed from the core game, made people buy HoT to get back but also in the process screwed-over small guilds who used to be able to earn the perks but now can’t unlock the Guild Hall needed to do the same thing.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

At the release of Guild Wars 2, players were promised free bi weekly content packages… Up until several months ago, that is how GW2 received all of its new content. The game’s content delivery and upkeep costs were funded exclusively through gem store purchases as well as the game’s sale price.

Many players enjoyed the release of new content, while some complained it just was not enough to keep their attention.

Anet decided it would be better off releasing those small packages all in a bundle in the form of an expansion. Anet also decided to put a price tag on the bundle… and what ended up happening was, players received less content (than what would have been expected in the same amount of time, had it been delivered through the Living World method), they paid for it, and the gem store still continues to support the game’s upkeep costs.

Neither method seems to work better than the other, and in switching between methods, what myself and many players have noticed is that Anet is simply stretching out the amount of down time between content releases, and is releasing less content than expected given a certain timeframe.

Method A is okay
Method B is sort of ok

A transition between methods A and B is nothing but down-time on content delivery.

Veteran players desire new content every so often to remain entertained, and what is Anet is delivering simply is not enough.

The Living world content delivery method was like breadcrumbs being fed to a hungry person at set intervals, just enough to keep the person from starving, but not enough to keep them satiated.

…while the expansion method was like letting a person starve almost to death, then giving them an entire piece of bread….. still not enough to make them feel satiated, but enough to put them back to the hungry level.

When are you going to give us a meal, Anet?

…and don’t tell us we are going to have to wait an exorbitant amount of time, because you are starving your community to death.

Are we going back to the Living Story updates every other week, or are you going to give them to us all at once labeled as an expansion?

If you plan on going back to the every 2 weeks thing, you are already behind…. since you are once again stuck in the transition between the A and B methods.

…and if you plan on bundling up more living world releases and putting a price tag on them, you may as well call it what it is….. a subscription fee.

You fooled myself and many others with the Heart of Thorns prepurchase.

…but you won’t be getting any more money from me until you eliminate all the smoke and mirrors and start being transparent with your intentions for the content delivery method.

I have no problem paying for content I feel is worth the price tag, and paying money is not the issue here.

I also have no problem paying every couple of months…. hell even EVERY MONTH…. if you delivered an appropriate amount of content associated with the price tag in return.

What IS an issue is deceiving your customers .. and tricking them into buying their way through a pay wall THEY ALREADY PAID FOR AT LAUNCH to continue playing the same old game they already had, (with a few minor additions) once the game went free to play.

The game was stale two years ago, and if you think reselling the game to us under false pretenses was a good idea, please think again for the next “expansion.”

Can we have a real expansion next time, instead of a glorified list of gated grindfest chores labeled as content?

At the release of Guild Wars 2 people were guaranteed what? You must have been playing a different game, because the bi-weekly content wasn’t offered until the Living Story and quite a bit into the Living Story. On release we were “promised” no such thing.

And it’s great to ignore people complaining about the release cadence being too fast and not having time to work on other stuff.

Actually I pretty much disagree with your entire post. It’s a revisionist version of history with a bunch of stuff you’re assuming and have no real evidence for.

One thing we do know though. The player base did ask for a paid expansion. At least a very loud portion of it did.

How is gold farming more effective in HoT?

I did dragon stand and earned a whopping 1g for 2 1/2 hours of effort.

I want to play the new content, but there is no gold to be had in HoT so I´m grinding the Silverwastes.

Kraggy.4169:

pdavis.8031:

fellyn.5083:

pdavis.8031:

fellyn.5083:

pdavis.8031:

fellyn.5083:

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?

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

Are you sure about that?

I haven’t seen anywhere that says any guild features have been removed from free accounts, and only available exclusively in HoT.

It’s nothing to do with ‘free accounts’, the paywall applies to players who bought the base game.

They removed the old perk system allowed guilds to earn them via Influence and made the Scribe craft do the same thing, which they put behind the gate of Guild Halls which is behind the paywall called HoT.

THAT’s what they removed from the core game, made people buy HoT to get back but also in the process screwed-over small guilds who used to be able to earn the perks but now can’t unlock the Guild Hall needed to do the same thing.

Once again for those who cannot read. You do not need HoT to gain access to Guild Halls. Also, “Guilds without a guild hall can use the Guild Initiative Headquarters in Lion’s Arch to gain some of the bonuses before unlocking the hall itself”.(https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_hall)
And again, as a member of a guild you receive all the same bonuses with or without ever having purchased HoT.

Is it more difficult for smaller guilds to get the guild bonuses? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s locked behind a paywall.