Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

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.

Oh I’m sooooooooooooooo sorry mr white knight sir…..
I couldn’t remember we got content every 3 weeks for the first 6 months then we were promised content every two weeks after a that. Probably because the game still had plenty to do six months after release…

it was three years ago…

…and Anet still delivered on its promises back then.

In reference to content packets:
“No need to buy them, Gw2 will feature consistent free content updates and in-game events going forward. Our goal is to make it so you get more from Gw2 for free than you get from a game you pay a subscription for.” – Colin Johanson

Also…. people asked for MORE content when they asked for an expansion.

People never asked for living world to stop, so that anet could save up all those releases, and SELL them to us all at once.

Fans of the franchise who were familiar with the game’s content doubling or even tripling with the release of every expansion in the original Guild Wars title don’t consider GW2:HoT an expansion. Hell… many people who never even played Gw1, but played gw2 from launch feel the same way.

HoT was not a true expansion…. and you can’t deny that.

It was a marketing tactic to get more money from fans by making them pay for content they were already promised for free.

Story time.

You go to an amusement park on a hot day and you decide to buy a small refillable cup, which lets you get free refills every two hours, you are able to refill the cup free of charge with your favorite soft drink…

but it just doesn’t seem to cut it…
and you are not getting enough to drink to keep yourself hydrated.

You are still thirsty.

You would really like it if you could get enough soda at once to keep you going until you were able to get a refill again.

You express your concern to a gentleman at the concession stand, he offers to “upgrade” your old refillable cup and he trades it for a different cup which he says is what you want since its much bigger. It is going to cost the same amount of money for the upgrade as it cost you to buy your original cup, but you assume its worth it and you happily pay the man.

That is when you get the new cup.
…and the cup itself is only 25% larger than the cup you had before.
You don’t get any refills… and must completely rebuy the large cup from now on.
You also have to wait 4 hours before you are able to purchase a new cup.

You immediately realize that you are going to be getting less of your favorite beverage less often…. so you say that you would rather have your old cup back.

The man at the concession stand instead of honoring your request, laughs and says…. “…but isn’t this is what you asked for?”

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Oh I’m sooooooooooooooo sorry mr white knight sir…..
I couldn’t remember we got content every 3 weeks for the first 6 months then we were promised content every two weeks after a that. Probably because the game still had plenty to do six months after release…

it was three years ago…

…and Anet still delivered on its promises back then.

In reference to content packets:
“No need to buy them, Gw2 will feature consistent free content updates and in-game events going forward. Our goal is to make it so you get more from Gw2 for free than you get from a game you pay a subscription for.” – Colin Johanson

Also…. people asked for MORE content when they asked for an expansion.

People never asked for living world to stop, so that anet could save up all those releases, and SELL them to us all at once.

Fans of the franchise who were familiar with the game’s content doubling or even tripling with the release of every expansion in the original Guild Wars title don’t consider GW2:HoT an expansion. Hell… many people who never even played Gw1, but played gw2 from launch feel the same way.

HoT was not a true expansion…. and you can’t deny that.

It was a marketing tactic to get more money from fans by making them pay for content they were already promised for free.

Story time.

You go to an amusement park on a hot day and you decide to buy a small refillable cup, which lets you get free refills every two hours, you are able to refill the cup free of charge with your favorite soft drink…

but it just doesn’t seem to cut it…
and you are not getting enough to drink to keep yourself hydrated.

You are still thirsty.

You would really like it if you could get enough soda at once to keep you going until you were able to get a refill again.

You express your concern to a gentleman at the concession stand, he offers to “upgrade” your old refillable cup and he trades it for a different cup which he says is what you want since its much bigger. It is going to cost the same amount of money for the upgrade as it cost you to buy your original cup, but you assume its worth it and you happily pay the man.

That is when you get the new cup.
…and the cup itself is only 25% larger than the cup you had before.
You don’t get any refills… and must completely rebuy the large cup from now on.
You also have to wait 4 hours before you are able to purchase a new cup.

You immediately realize that you are going to be getting less of your favorite beverage less often…. so you say that you would rather have your old cup back.

The man at the concession stand instead of honoring your request, laughs and says…. “…but isn’t this is what you asked for?”

In your mind what is a “true expansion”?

TheBlackLeech.9360:

In reference to content packets:
“No need to buy them, Gw2 will feature consistent free content updates and in-game events going forward. Our goal is to make it so you get more from Gw2 for free than you get from a game you pay a subscription for.” – Colin Johanson

Yes, Colin said this. This alone is misleading though. Anet stated before launch that they would eventually do more content which we would have to pay for too. I don’t think that ever changed, which is why they never explicitly said that they would never do a true boxed expansion. I think their hope was that they could subsist on the gemstore, and push out regular enjoyable content via the living world, but that may have been too forward thinking for this genre.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Also…. people asked for MORE content when they asked for an expansion.

This is true….

TheBlackLeech.9360:

People never asked for living world to stop, so that anet could save up all those releases, and SELL them to us all at once.

However, this isn’t precisely true. People did ask for LS to stop.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Living-world-needs-to-stop/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/please-stop-this-whole-living-world-thing
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Please-stop-rushing-content-down-ANet

Just to cite a couple of them. There were a lot of reasons given as to why people wanted the LS to stop. One of which being that they did want the content that would have been contained in a LS season rolled into an expansion, but they also expected that an expansion (being what it is) would also have …well, more. They assumed that by stopping the LS cadence, Anet would have more time to put into development, and as such deliver us a more substantial chunk of content. Some of argued that wouldn’t necessarily be the case; Anet can only build content so fast after all. However, those that wanted an ‘expansion’ were obviously louder than those of us that didn’t see an expansion as the solution to the problem.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Fans of the franchise who were familiar with the game’s content doubling or even tripling with the release of every expansion in the original Guild Wars title don’t consider GW2:HoT an expansion. Hell… many people who never even played Gw1, but played gw2 from launch feel the same way.

HoT was not a true expansion…. and you can’t deny that.

HoT seems to be…lacking, a bit…for some people. I will agree to an extent. However, I’m also aware the GW2 is not GW1. It’s not even the same scope or the same type of development. There is more to it, so perhaps it’s not precisely fair to use it as a measuring stick. Although, I admit, that I have done so too (and probably will again). Still, HoT is to GW2, as EotN was to GW1. If you recall, people screamed that EotN was lacking too.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

However, this isn’t precisely true. People did ask for LS to stop.

The largest complaint heard unanimously was that people wanted permanent content, because having temporary content offered 0 replay ability and was ultimately a poor decision.

People asked for the temporary aspect of the Living Story scheme to stop…. not the 2 week content packets.

In every link you’ve provided, almost everyone is complaining about the lifespan of the content, and how there is no accumulation of content.

not enough content… permanent content… content…

a pretty strong underlying theme here.

Players wanted more content, and since the situation proved to be a great way for them to suck some more cash out of their playerbase without providing anything they weren’t already providing, Anet was happy to oblige.

1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 “Living World” – Free

0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 10 “Expansion” – $60

And that’s being generous and saying that HoT had an exactly equal amount of content we would have gotten through bi weekly LS…

How on earth is that addressing the issue that players want more content?

Its smoke and mirrors… and a pay wall.

Jhoul.6923:

Avectius.3271:

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

This does not apply to Underwater Content.

I r8 gr8 m8.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

However, this isn’t precisely true. People did ask for LS to stop.

The largest complaint heard unanimously was that people wanted permanent content, because having temporary content offered 0 replay ability and was ultimately a poor decision.

People asked for the temporary aspect of the Living Story scheme to stop…. not the 2 week content packets.

In every link you’ve provided, almost everyone is complaining about the lifespan of the content, and how there is no accumulation of content.

not enough content… permanent content… content…

a pretty strong underlying theme here.

Players wanted more content, and since the situation proved to be a great way for them to suck some more cash out of their playerbase without providing anything they weren’t already providing, Anet was happy to oblige.

1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 “Living World” – Free

0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 10 “Expansion” – $60

And that’s being generous and saying that HoT had an exactly equal amount of content we would have gotten through bi weekly LS…

How on earth is that addressing the issue that players want more content?

Its smoke and mirrors… and a pay wall.

Yes, one of the primary issues was that LS1 was temporary. And then we moved into LS2, which is permanent, and the complaints continued. People still called for an expansion, and for a stop to the LS, I’m not going to dig out all of the threads, but there are many.

People assumed that 1) while the expansion was made, we would continue to get content – which we didn’t (not sure why people thought that, its the same with every other game) and 2) that the expansion would somehow offer “more.” Anet did exactly what their players demanded – they made an expansion, they gave us raids, and they gave us guild halls.

Could all of this, including the story have been rolled out in content packets every 2-3 weeks over the course of the last year? Probably, but that’s not what the vocal people desired. I remember arguing this with them, going round and round, for months. They wanted more content, all in one chunk so they could play through it at their own pace. And now, they still aren’t happy.

Btw, the expansion was only $50, not 60.

Tigaseye.2047:

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

EXCESSIVE?!?! Seriously, ROFL.

The loot drops from dungeons were pathetic, people had to group up and do speed runs, because, even “speed running” them, it took about 3 hours or so to make 20 or 30 gold… which could only be done once a day.

When a precursor, costs close to, if not more than, 1000 gold… and the cost to “craft” that precursor into a legendary weapon is another 900-1500 gold, anyone hoping to earn one in game in the next year or so, without spending hundreds of dollars in real life cash on gems to convert to gold, would almost HAVE to.

Unless of course they would rather spend 4 months day in and day out running the SW farm, a most boring and lame grind that has been subsequently nerfed numerous times, sometimes stealthily to slow down it’s profitability until they could afford the precursor… then start running that same lame and boring SW chest farm for another couple months to pay for the enormous gold sink that masquerades as “crafting” to finish their legendary, aka cool weapon skin.

I get that a game developer needs to make money from their product, I realize there is overhead costs, employees, salaries, etc, etc… but I can’t think of a single other game that has weapon skins that cost HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS, that changes game mechanics, content, loot tables, drop and spawn rates and any other applicable facet of the game, expressly to thwart progress towards earning these glorified skins by players that don’t spend substantial amounts of real life cash to acquire them.

It has become more and more brazen over the past year, and has become blatantly obvious at this point… and really is a HUGE turn off.

This sort of thing feels insulting and exploitative. Furthermore, unfortunately, these efforts to maximize profits while minimizing the amount of content creation required to keep people playing, and spending money in the gem store, impacts, more then any one else, the veteran players, those that started playing at the game’s launch, and have supported the game, it’s developers and community, with their participation, praise and gem store purchases, for the last 3 years, not to mention their full price purchase of the original game,

And it seems every time you turn around something else is nerfed, removed or locked behind a time gate or money wall… a good example is the decision to put fractal loot in locked boxes that require players purchase keys at 20 silver each to open them. Of the hundred or so I have opened, I don’t believe I have opened one yet that had contents that were worth the 20 silver I spent on the key.

It reminds me of the Black Lion Chest Keys, I won’t go into another discussion of these black lion keys here, as I have posted a couple rants previously outlining how insanely terrible of a gamble they are.

The rush was on to push those pre-orders and get everyone’s money in the Anet coffers before they even outlined would exactly players could expect for the 50 dollar price tag, there were a lot of compartmentalized reveals about this, that and the other thing, but there was no concrete table of contents offered prior to, or even during, that “give us the money now and we’ll tell you what’s included later” push.

I was hoping for at least one or 2 new dungeons, because I LOVE dungeons, running dungeons is some of my favorite content in any game, and the dungeons in GW2 were pretty awesome and are what kept me playing after i had built 6 or 7 80’s, multiple sets of ascended armors and weapon sets, 4 legendaries, etc, etc. and with all the talk about the new and improved fractals expanding them beyond level 50 all the way to level 100, I was almost positive there would be a at least a couple new fractals…

And man o man, was I excited for that raid content, and I had characters built to the hilt, and geared to their ears in preparation… on launch day, me and my friends were gonna be raiding like 24/7 until we passed out at our keyboards.

So launch day comes and those new dungeons I was hoping for…. were non existent, and to add insult to injury, the already abysmal loot drops of the existing dungeons was nerfed by 66% on average, meaning those dungeon runs now reward you with 1/3rd of what you used to get. Disappointed doesn’t even come close to describing how I felt about the death of my favorite part of GW2…grrr. but wait, let’s just check out the awesome new and improved Fractals of the Mist, right?

Not so much, fractal loot nerfed hard, portions of it that contain items needed for achievements was now locked in a box that I had to buy keys to open… the disappointment was welling up… but let’s take a look at the new fractals first before we get too nerd raged up… oh wait, there is no new fractals, they are all just chopped up into thier own respective little segments, and can be chosen like items off the dollar menu at McDonald’s now. The easy to track tiered system where you could get your daily rewards chests…. are gone. But wait, they did add a new fractal mastery that I was required to farm like 10 million XP to unlock so that I could again be eligible for any decent loot drops…. even if they are much more rare and hard to come by now.

So…
Dungeons: DEAD.

Fractals: New-ish, Improved? Maybe a little in some ways, but balanced out by loot nerfs and locked loot boxes.

Ok, Ok.. let’s just take a deep breath and head on over and get down to some serious raid content!

Wait, what? No raids? They are coming later? It went from included in HoT will be the new GW2 raids and legendary armor, to at launch the first leg of the new GW2 raids will be available with additional portions following soon after, to : No raids at launch but they will be coming at a later date.

Another heartbreak… I dried up my tears and decided to go check out the new maps… and wow, they were actually awesome. Gliding, which I suspected would be cheesy and gimmicky wasn’t at all, it was and is actually very awesome and feels very perfect and in place for the Maguuma Jungle content, totally pleasantly surprised. +1 Anet.

So I glided around like a boss, did a bunch of hero challenges, worked on masteries, got tons of random loot… that I notice that salvaging returns have taken a … yup, you guessed it, a nerf… and a HARD nerf at that, but whatever, the maps are fun so I grinded it out and bit by bit closed in on my first complete map of the new expansion, 87%, 93%, 95%, 98%, 99% 100%!!! YEAH!!!! wait, were is my chest? Where is my map complete chest, omg it’s bugged, I didn’t get my chest… after the normal and typical nerd raging in map chat, guild chat, party chat and on forums… I did a little research and learned that it is a known bug that characters that have 100% map complete in Tyria… don’t get their map complete chests in Maguuma. Yes, I am dead serious, and it is STILL bugged at least for me.

So I have to be honest that was kind of the last straw and took alot of the wind out of my sails over the Heart of Thorns Expansion.

I like the maps, and the new content is very cool and a very welcome change from running around doing the same things 750 more times in Tyria, I like gliding that was done really, really well and adds a cool new dimension to the game.

The masteries are a cool concept, but sort of feel a little excessive in that some parts of the new content are not accessible until you unlock certain masteries and doing event chains in the maps yield you about enough XP to feel like it will take forever and a day to get them unlocked enough to explore the whole jungle. I do get that Anet wanted to make the new content something that would last for a while, having portions that will be new to you even several weeks after launch, and it’s not a bad concept… but maybe the experience rewards for some of the events could see a little buff to balance out the effort:reward ratio a little better, that will come in time I believe, they probably have bigger fish to fry at the moment, I am sincerely holding on to the hope that the map completion chest problem is close to resolution. I would feel much better about doing the content if I didn’t know that I was going to get jacked for the rewards for that effort.

So I personally think Heart of Thorns is a good expansion in terms of content design and execution, there are many, many things that Anet has done right, hitting the nail on the head with gliding and the multi-level maps, etc. It’s unfortunate that the excitement to explore and complete the maps is kind of on hold, because of a VERY annoying and senseless bug… and igf it has been fixed, and I am just unaware of what I have to do to get my completion to register and my chest to pop up, then I apologize, if not… then seriously, Anet, fix it. It’s ridiculous that it hasn’t been addressed yet.

The raid content is said to hit on the 17th, so we’ll see how that goes, hopefully it will be all of that and a bucket of chicken and we can all raid and loot and craft legendary armor until we are burnt out…. I sure hope so.

And maybe, someone at Anet will realize that dungeons were a very important portion of the game content for a sizable chunk of the community, and that nerfing the loot drops from them to the floor just forces that chunk of players to do some crappy grind for gold that they don’t enjoy… and if players are not enjoying playing, I assume that eventually they will stop.

Sorry this turned into a novel, but I like to write, needed to vent, wanted to add my 2 cents and hope that maybe this post will be viewed in a constructive way.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you bought the game and loved doing fractals, and decide not to buy HoT, then your fractal experience is kitten d, loot nerfed to floor, etc, etc, because you dont have the fractal masteries…

So you paid for fractals… and now you have had them taken away by and large unless you , well, pay for them again.

Yeah yeah, I know, you can still do fractals without Hot, but why would you? What would be the point of doing fractals without the masteries unlocked?

It would be like…. doing the dungeons now vs, pre Hot.

I truly detest the decision to castrate dungeons. The dungeons kept alot of people playing that would have no longer been playing otherwise.

And chopping up fractals, regurgitating them with locked boxes that require keys, loot that requires masteries to even get, and a new lvl system that reminds me of McDonalds dollar menu is not going to magically turn into the NEW dungeons.

The fact that not 1 single new fractal was added to the all new and improved fractals, shows exactly how much Anet is interested in providing compelling new content in terms of fractals/dungeons etc.

And yeah, I know, raids, raids, raids… that are still MIA, despite supposedly being included with HoT at launch when we asked to pre-purchase, then afterwards as launch drew closer it turned to well, the first part of raids will be available at launch the rest will come at a later date, then at launch it became raids will be coming at a later date.

Not to mention raids will basically be on a weekly lockout…. going to be hard to get all into something your only allowed to do once a week… and I am 100% sure that the weekly lock out is to keep people from having more then one CHANCE a week at obtaining a decent piece of raid loot… in an effort to stretch a little bit of content into a long and arduous journey to pursue a set of legendary armor.

Jski.6180:

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????

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.

1. Yes. Some people did “live and die off dungeon rewards” many of the legendaries you see in the game were paid for with the gold from many nights of many dungeon runs.

2. I did fractals daily, with many groups, we did at least 3 tiers every days, fractal fans are doing LESS fractals now.

3. Saying they were not that strong doesn’t nullify the fact that a core feature of guild membership was removed from the core game and locked behind the HoT paywall.

4. It IS living story, it is the 1 or 2 year road map of living story content reworked a little, with a core feature update/rework/large round of unilateral loot nerfs packaged as an expansion with a 50 dollar price tag slapped on it.

The content is decent, but it really isn’t enough actual content to warrant a full price expansion price tag. The content that IS there is being stretched by creating barriers by locking access behind mastery tiers and event chains that give little experience, making achieving the masteries take a long time… giving the illusion that there is more to the content then there is.

I do like the HoT content in some ways, but I am finding difficulty in enjoying it in anything other then a SW farm kind way… which bums me out, becaue I detest the SW farm, it is the most boring farm ever, it has been nerfed so many times, both overtly and stealthily, like nerfing the loot tables of the champ bags on multiple occasions.

I want HoT to do well and be fun… unfortunately, it just doesn’t seem to “gel” well for many players, it feels like a giant even chain farm…

I have high hopes for raids, but I’m fairly confident that the week long lockout timer is gonna ruin them as an actual alternative to anything…

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

In reference to content packets:
“No need to buy them, Gw2 will feature consistent free content updates and in-game events going forward. Our goal is to make it so you get more from Gw2 for free than you get from a game you pay a subscription for.” – Colin Johanson

Yes, Colin said this. This alone is misleading though. Anet stated before launch that they would eventually do more content which we would have to pay for too. I don’t think that ever changed, which is why they never explicitly said that they would never do a true boxed expansion. I think their hope was that they could subsist on the gemstore, and push out regular enjoyable content via the living world, but that may have been too forward thinking for this genre.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Also…. people asked for MORE content when they asked for an expansion.

This is true….

TheBlackLeech.9360:

People never asked for living world to stop, so that anet could save up all those releases, and SELL them to us all at once.

However, this isn’t precisely true. People did ask for LS to stop.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Living-world-needs-to-stop/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/please-stop-this-whole-living-world-thing
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Please-stop-rushing-content-down-ANet

Just to cite a couple of them. There were a lot of reasons given as to why people wanted the LS to stop. One of which being that they did want the content that would have been contained in a LS season rolled into an expansion, but they also expected that an expansion (being what it is) would also have …well, more. They assumed that by stopping the LS cadence, Anet would have more time to put into development, and as such deliver us a more substantial chunk of content. Some of argued that wouldn’t necessarily be the case; Anet can only build content so fast after all. However, those that wanted an ‘expansion’ were obviously louder than those of us that didn’t see an expansion as the solution to the problem.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Fans of the franchise who were familiar with the game’s content doubling or even tripling with the release of every expansion in the original Guild Wars title don’t consider GW2:HoT an expansion. Hell… many people who never even played Gw1, but played gw2 from launch feel the same way.

HoT was not a true expansion…. and you can’t deny that.

HoT seems to be…lacking, a bit…for some people. I will agree to an extent. However, I’m also aware the GW2 is not GW1. It’s not even the same scope or the same type of development. There is more to it, so perhaps it’s not precisely fair to use it as a measuring stick. Although, I admit, that I have done so too (and probably will again). Still, HoT is to GW2, as EotN was to GW1. If you recall, people screamed that EotN was lacking too.

EotN issues was it was dead before it was released due to Anet saying it was the last ever content for GW1 at least for me it was.

In saying that although is wasn’t as big as Factions or Nightfall, it was still a decent size and opened the maps up a bit more, it brought in a boat load of skills, Dungeons for the 1st time if we discount SF as a dungeon of sorts, lots of new Mini games, new heroes to find, new greens, new elites to hunt down, farming spots and a new endgame content. Even offered up new styles like glasses and bandana’s ect.

As a massive fan of GW1 played it everyday to the end of EOTN I hardly play GW2 I’m not sure how they go from GW1 and reduce so much in GW2.

Tigaseye.2047:

Devata.6589:

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.

You are right.. I said ‘and’ but did mean ‘or’. What is a big difference.

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

Other than that, you do exactly show what I mean.

I also had the same with pets (you mean, ranger pets right?). Loved going into the world collecting those special ones. Also requested that to be something in GW2.

But this exactly shows what I mean. Play-time for people like us was for a (big) part, going into the world doing these things. In GW2 that has been removed.

You can still get those things by grinding gold (or some other currency) but that is something else. Grinding gold to get items != as directly working towards those items.

So if somebody says it’s fine because you can still get those items by grinding, or spending money than the is wrong.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

However, this isn’t precisely true. People did ask for LS to stop.

The largest complaint heard unanimously was that people wanted permanent content, because having temporary content offered 0 replay ability and was ultimately a poor decision.

People asked for the temporary aspect of the Living Story scheme to stop…. not the 2 week content packets.

In every link you’ve provided, almost everyone is complaining about the lifespan of the content, and how there is no accumulation of content.

not enough content… permanent content… content…

a pretty strong underlying theme here.

Players wanted more content, and since the situation proved to be a great way for them to suck some more cash out of their playerbase without providing anything they weren’t already providing, Anet was happy to oblige.

1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 “Living World” – Free

0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 10 “Expansion” – $60

And that’s being generous and saying that HoT had an exactly equal amount of content we would have gotten through bi weekly LS…

How on earth is that addressing the issue that players want more content?

Its smoke and mirrors… and a pay wall.

Yes, one of the primary issues was that LS1 was temporary. And then we moved into LS2, which is permanent, and the complaints continued. People still called for an expansion, and for a stop to the LS, I’m not going to dig out all of the threads, but there are many.

People assumed that 1) while the expansion was made, we would continue to get content – which we didn’t (not sure why people thought that, its the same with every other game) and 2) that the expansion would somehow offer “more.” Anet did exactly what their players demanded – they made an expansion, they gave us raids, and they gave us guild halls.

Could all of this, including the story have been rolled out in content packets every 2-3 weeks over the course of the last year? Probably, but that’s not what the vocal people desired. I remember arguing this with them, going round and round, for months. They wanted more content, all in one chunk so they could play through it at their own pace. And now, they still aren’t happy.

Btw, the expansion was only $50, not 60.

You can’t argue with someone who already has his mind made up. He doesn’t remember when Anet said there would be two week content, he doesn’t remember threads with people saying it was too fast, he doesn’t remember Living Story Season 2 being permanent and still there are tons of people asking for an expansion.

Some people will never be satisfied not matter what you give them. They think devs wave a magic stick and poof, expansion. The four new zones must have taken ages to create and test. They’re truly complex. I was flying around in the canopy today doing stuff and I have to tell you, that place is nuts. The amount of design work to design that zone has to be harder than designing something like Queensdale.

But you know, it’s not a true expansion because it doesn’t have X. I think it is a real expansion and I can see playing it for as long as I’ve played expansions from other MMOs. Particularly once the Living Story kicks in again.

reading this I get one thing, people are just too obsessed with rewards. Rewards rewards rewards… How I am going to get them as quickly as possible? There is like 0 care about the gameplay itself.

Worst yet people dont even realize what they’re wishing for. Do you really want farms that give 30+g per hour to remain untouched? do you honestly believe nerfing that was so that people would by HoT (as if there is anything that gives anywhere close to 30+g / h in HoT? Nerfing things like dungeons actually keeps old content in play people not the other way round.

Think about it… so lets say they never touched dungeons rewards. Well Anet arent stupid if they take the time to develop an expansion they want it to sell.. they’re going to do what they can to ensure it sells. People like to play the most rewarding content (see first paragraph) thus for any expansion to sell it has to have content that pays more then anything else that comes before it. Slowly as new content is released that 30g/h will rise and rise and rise which gets us to something mind boggling I read.

someone in reference to another MMO said it was super easy to make 25k gold in that game, that 25k gold is nothing which is funny to me cause i did play that game for a very little while before any of its expansions and I remember when once I helped a player find a certain npc he was looking for an gave me something like 2 or 10 gold I dont remember and was crashed cause that was orders of magnitude more gold I ever had till then. I am not sure how that game changes in the years after but I dont think rewards in the core game where expanded so much that someone who never bought any of the expansions could still play the game and enjoy himself.

Our of curiousity I went youtube and checked out some farming guides based on their years…
6 years ago…. 200g/h
2 years ago – 2600g/h
1 year ago – 10000g/h
2 months ago – 75k-120k /h

so anyone can tell me whats the problem there? You think HoT is a paygate to enjoyment? If I decided to play in the core game today what items will I never be able to afford? if every expansion increased income by a factor of 10 then it would be a problem. not farming the in the latest expansion means I am pretty much cut out of the auction house.

Keeping things in check ensure you’re not forced to play specific content which is good and like the opposite of most complains in this thread!

Also can we stop comparing Gw2 expansion to Gw1 Expansions? It takes ~8 months a build a house but ~4 years to build a sky scrapper. they’re both buildings, they may both be work of art but the work required to build one is just orders of magnitude more then building the other one.

Vayne.8563:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

However, this isn’t precisely true. People did ask for LS to stop.

The largest complaint heard unanimously was that people wanted permanent content, because having temporary content offered 0 replay ability and was ultimately a poor decision.

People asked for the temporary aspect of the Living Story scheme to stop…. not the 2 week content packets.

In every link you’ve provided, almost everyone is complaining about the lifespan of the content, and how there is no accumulation of content.

not enough content… permanent content… content…

a pretty strong underlying theme here.

Players wanted more content, and since the situation proved to be a great way for them to suck some more cash out of their playerbase without providing anything they weren’t already providing, Anet was happy to oblige.

1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 +0 +1 + 0 +1 +0 +1 “Living World” – Free

0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0+ 0 + 0 + 0 + 10 “Expansion” – $60

And that’s being generous and saying that HoT had an exactly equal amount of content we would have gotten through bi weekly LS…

How on earth is that addressing the issue that players want more content?

Its smoke and mirrors… and a pay wall.

Yes, one of the primary issues was that LS1 was temporary. And then we moved into LS2, which is permanent, and the complaints continued. People still called for an expansion, and for a stop to the LS, I’m not going to dig out all of the threads, but there are many.

People assumed that 1) while the expansion was made, we would continue to get content – which we didn’t (not sure why people thought that, its the same with every other game) and 2) that the expansion would somehow offer “more.” Anet did exactly what their players demanded – they made an expansion, they gave us raids, and they gave us guild halls.

Could all of this, including the story have been rolled out in content packets every 2-3 weeks over the course of the last year? Probably, but that’s not what the vocal people desired. I remember arguing this with them, going round and round, for months. They wanted more content, all in one chunk so they could play through it at their own pace. And now, they still aren’t happy.

Btw, the expansion was only $50, not 60.

You can’t argue with someone who already has his mind made up.

That’s about the only thing you got right.

Ouch… You can’t really compare MMOs with how many gold you can farm in each of them. In some gold may be the only valid currency, or you simply have more options to spend the money outside of cosmetic goods. And in other MMOs with subscription you have the option to pay your fees by using in-game gold (disregarding that other players are simultanously spending real money for the system to work). And that amount of gold needs at least to be earnt within a month.

Furthermore daily quests are in other MMOs hugely used to farm for money, instead of GW2 where you get other rewards for your daily activies (ignoring dungeons). In GW2 you are not excluded to farm gold to buy gems, but can simply use real money and the amount of gold for a completed heart quest is vastly lower than money per quest in some other MMOs. I’m not saying any of those are good or bad, though, just that it’s not sooo smart to use other MMOs gold farm results to say “look GW2 is fine with the low amount of gold you earn.”

The only valid point made in this entire thread is that rewards were reduced, which was an odd decision for Anet to make, considering the rewards were never that fantastic to begin with.

Other than that I don’t see how people don’t get how MMOs and expansions work. In every other MMO I’ve played an expansion makes pretty much all of the “vanilla” content irrelevant. Which isn’t even the case in GW2…

So what is this paywall non-sense people are talking about? You bought an MMO, 3 years later they came out with an expansion. If you want to continue on with the story and the new content, you buy the expansion. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here…

i knew it from the beginning. u will never get a good gaming experience if a game is centered around a cash shop.
im really disapointed. it was nearly the same price as the original game but its soooo much smaller. its more like a dlc than an addon.

this addon added nothing else than 4 map with living story crap. look at it…. we didnt get anything else. no new dungeons, fractals. no new weapon and armor skins except a few really uggly ones. still no access to sinister gear except by doing stupid living story. precurser crafting is really bad.
we got mega events with an server system that doenst really support this kind of events since u cant join with a big guild of ~100 ppl.
we got adventure that i did once to get mastery points. will never do them again. they suck!

Draknar.5748:

Other than that I don’t see how people don’t get how MMOs and expansions work. In every other MMO I’ve played an expansion makes pretty much all of the “vanilla” content irrelevant. Which isn’t even the case in GW2…

It’s entirely the case in GW2 if you looked at it objectively, especially as your assertion about ‘every’ other MMO invalidating existing content when a new expansion comes out.

The ONLY thing HoT does which is different from some, but by no means all MMOs, is that the level cap isn’t raised, but still much of the original game is invalidated because like MOST other MMOs the expansion makes existing end-game gear from existing end-game activities OBSOLETE: ergo, it "makes pretty much all of the “vanilla” content irrelevant"

Here is my story with HoT
I went to buy/check the price in the closest gaming shop.
Saw it costs 30-40$
Went out and bought Fallout 4 instead.

Galen Grey.4709:

reading this I get one thing, people are just too obsessed with rewards. Rewards rewards rewards… How I am going to get them as quickly as possible? There is like 0 care about the gameplay itself.

Worst yet people dont even realize what they’re wishing for. Do you really want farms that give 30+g per hour to remain untouched? do you honestly believe nerfing that was so that people would by HoT (as if there is anything that gives anywhere close to 30+g / h in HoT? Nerfing things like dungeons actually keeps old content in play people not the other way round.

Think about it… so lets say they never touched dungeons rewards. Well Anet arent stupid if they take the time to develop an expansion they want it to sell.. they’re going to do what they can to ensure it sells. People like to play the most rewarding content (see first paragraph) thus for any expansion to sell it has to have content that pays more then anything else that comes before it. Slowly as new content is released that 30g/h will rise and rise and rise which gets us to something mind boggling I read.

someone in reference to another MMO said it was super easy to make 25k gold in that game, that 25k gold is nothing which is funny to me cause i did play that game for a very little while before any of its expansions and I remember when once I helped a player find a certain npc he was looking for an gave me something like 2 or 10 gold I dont remember and was crashed cause that was orders of magnitude more gold I ever had till then. I am not sure how that game changes in the years after but I dont think rewards in the core game where expanded so much that someone who never bought any of the expansions could still play the game and enjoy himself.

Our of curiousity I went youtube and checked out some farming guides based on their years…
6 years ago…. 200g/h
2 years ago – 2600g/h
1 year ago – 10000g/h
2 months ago – 75k-120k /h

so anyone can tell me whats the problem there? You think HoT is a paygate to enjoyment? If I decided to play in the core game today what items will I never be able to afford? if every expansion increased income by a factor of 10 then it would be a problem. not farming the in the latest expansion means I am pretty much cut out of the auction house.

Keeping things in check ensure you’re not forced to play specific content which is good and like the opposite of most complains in this thread!

Also can we stop comparing Gw2 expansion to Gw1 Expansions? It takes ~8 months a build a house but ~4 years to build a sky scrapper. they’re both buildings, they may both be work of art but the work required to build one is just orders of magnitude more then building the other one.

For me a big part of the way I play an MMO-RPG is indeed reward base. In an MMO there is not really one big goal like finishing the main story. You hunt down those fun items.. that is the game-play. So yes it’s rewards, rewards and more rewards.

That is also a good thing because it helps to create replay-ability.

But not now, and I personally also don’t mind them nerfing the gold-grind (while when if you nerf dungeons would be the last thing they should nerf imho).

But if then they nerf dungeon gold rewards they need to put in specific rewards or where that already is the case (TA:A) higher their drop-rate.

The problem some people have is that they got used to grind and GW2 was grindy to get items. Now that according to them some grind has moved to HoT (while I am not sure that is true.) they feel required to do more grind. I think HoT made progression with losing some of the grind by making more direct approached available. But it’s still something they need to work on, and the gem-store is not helping.

About the GW1 vs GW2 comparison. Yeah GW2 is bigger but it also has a bigger team and more players. That should even out everything.

Jordy.1570:

i knew it from the beginning. u will never get a good gaming experience if a game is centered around a cash shop.
im really disapointed. it was nearly the same price as the original game but its soooo much smaller. its more like a dlc than an addon.

this addon added nothing else than 4 map with living story crap. look at it…. we didnt get anything else. no new dungeons, fractals. no new weapon and armor skins except a few really uggly ones. still no access to sinister gear except by doing stupid living story. precurser crafting is really bad.
we got mega events with an server system that doenst really support this kind of events since u cant join with a big guild of ~100 ppl.
we got adventure that i did once to get mastery points. will never do them again. they suck!

While I disagree about the size of the expansion. Yes a problem is that it’s centered around a cash shop.
What is sad because it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to be a B2P game, so centered around the game and expansion-sales.
The price of HoT was also more in line with that, while the release date (3 years after GW2) was way off as for a B2P model to work (comparing income to the cash-shop model) you would need a release every year to 1,5 years.

Anet clearly sees that their game is too much of a grind-game where people grind gold to get the items they want instead of working directly for them. That is likely why they implemented the mats for map events system (so directly farming mats is more viable.. or should be) and precursor-crafting, legendary armor from raids. On the other hand, as long as some of the best skins will stay available in the gem-store you will keep the grind.

So let’s hope that now they see that the LS approach did not really work (income dropped) while releasing a new expansion does (income raise a lot, while I still have to see the exact numbers) they might move back to their GW1 model.

raiden.9024:

EotN issues was it was dead before it was released due to Anet saying it was the last ever content for GW1 at least for me it was.

In saying that although is wasn’t as big as Factions or Nightfall, it was still a decent size and opened the maps up a bit more, it brought in a boat load of skills, Dungeons for the 1st time if we discount SF as a dungeon of sorts, lots of new Mini games, new heroes to find, new greens, new elites to hunt down, farming spots and a new endgame content. Even offered up new styles like glasses and bandana’s ect.

As a massive fan of GW1 played it everyday to the end of EOTN I hardly play GW2 I’m not sure how they go from GW1 and reduce so much in GW2.

I wouldn’t say it was dead before release. I thought there were plenty of people playing it when it launched. People waiting for GW:Beyond and for more information on GW2. Granted, as time passed as we didn’t have so much as a peep about GW2, people started to drift away in larger numbers. That didn’t really matter too much with heroes though.

Some people feel HoT is a decent size, other’s dont. They feel, as they did with EotN, that its not enough content for what they paid. That’s going to vary from person to person, and really, there isn’t much you can argue one way or the other on that particular topic because it’s all opinion. Granted, there are things we can point out, like the fact that HoT brings just as many skills into play as EotN did, that people may not realize.

However, in the end, whether or not someone feels it was worth the price tag is completely personal. Me personally, I figure if I get an hour for each dollar I paid, then it’s a pretty kitten good value for entertainment per dollar in comparison with other options available to me.

I am/was a hardcore GW1 fan as well (thousands of hours across 4 accounts, averages out to like 10 hours a day for like 7 years, as embarrassing as that is to admit), but I still enjoy GW2. I agree they are distinctly different games. Sometimes, yes, I do feel they may have strayed too far into the tradition mmo standards, and it may turn out badly in the end. Still, all I can do is enjoy the ride while it lasts.

Vayne.8563:

You can’t argue with someone who already has his mind made up.

Oh sure I can, Vayne. I won’t get anywhere, but that’s beside the point. Arguing is what I do.

Vayne.8563:

Some people will never be satisfied not matter what you give them.

Also very true. Anet is kitten ed if they do, kitten ed if the don’t.

Vayne.8563:

But you know, it’s not a true expansion because it doesn’t have X. I think it is a real expansion and I can see playing it for as long as I’ve played expansions from other MMOs. Particularly once the Living Story kicks in again.

I think it’s a bit small on the story side (at the present time), personally. However, I also recognize HoT for what it is….a transition piece. Doesn’t make it less of an expansion, given the base meaning of the word, but someone will always find something lacking.

Can’t wait for LS to start back up!