Guild Wars 2

Red Falcon.8257:

Let’s make a real comparison.
You buy an internet connection package from a company that touted it as free of content locking, high MB/s connection and easy port forwarding.
After you buy it they change the download/upload rates down, they block sites they said they wouldn’t block, and don’t offer port-forwarding methods.
You call their call center and they refuse to give any explanation.

When you do a major design change, especially one that goes against what you previously claimed, you need to explain it to your customers.
If you care about their trust in your company that is.

Your comparison makes no sense. Your argument is invalid.

Astralporing.1957:

and devs visible lack of attention.

I wouldn’t say the devs didn’t pay attention and ignored the worries players had. They addressed the issue in two blog posts, which both basically boiled down to: “We knew some players would be unhappy with the change, but we think it’s a good idea, and more of the same will be on the way.”

That’s of course not what players unhappy with the added gear progression would have liked to hear, so they kept complaining. ANet made another compromise by assuring those fearing a gear treadmill that they would slow down the progression, so that the complete set of new gear would be released over the course of a whole year.

To think that they don’t listen to your complaints unless they announce the complete removal or neutering of the end game gear progression system is foolish. They compromised as far as they thought possible without giving up on the core idea, namely always offering players a way to feel like they improved themselves. The amount of players in favor or indifferent to long term stat progression is IMO larger than the number of players having a problem with it, by far. Notice that I said “in my opinion”, which is my personal guess, not a fact.

The three most common objections of a typical gear treadmill or gear grind are that:
a.)you need to do it to experience certain content/get certain cool skins
b.)you can easily fall behind and can’t progress with your friends anymore
c.)it trivializes lower level content, as well as cause pvp imbalance

GW2 has systems in place to solve all of the major caveats, and they are working actively on improving them:
a+b.)Ascended gear is optional to attain, since the game isn’t balanced around it, except for a tiny part called high level fractals. You can get unique fotm skins without ever doing a fractal level that requires ascended gear(correct me if I’m wrong)
c.)Downscaling(balanced correctly) takes care of the PvE side, while they are working on making ascended gear available in WvW. SPvP will always have max gear unlocked for all characters, whether it is exotics or ascended.
They are working on the WvW issue, working on adding more stat variants, working on giving players different ways to work for the gear. They are listening to player feedback about the system. The only group of people they don’t listen to are those who flat out want no vertical end game progression at all, because they fundamentally disagree with them, and there is nothing else to be said that wouldn’t upset this group of people even more.

I’ve been playing MMO since 2003, and I for one was extremely happy when GW2 stated that there would not be a gear treadmills, that the only thing you’d be working towards would be better LOOKS. I’m so tired of the endless gear and level grinds that every game has nowadays.

What I want? A real virtual world, I suppose. A place where crafting is complex enough to hold my interest and actually matters to the economy. A pace where drops are logical (e.g. animals will drop leather/meat/bone/feathers etc, in stead of pieces of armor). A place where there’s more than just endless mob killing, but that also has pure crafters, pure traders, social professions, anything you’d find in a real society. I want player cities, player housing, guild halls and world PVP that doesn’t make people wait in a queue for hours, EVEN IF THAT MEANS MY SIDE IS OUTNUMBERED 10 to 1.

So yeah… I’ve completely lost interest in the game. I still think they got a lot of things right, but when you add everything up – especially the recent addition of ascended gear and the changed dailies – it’s just not a game I can have fun playing anymore.

I know you can’t have it all, but I sure would have liked this game to take a different path from all the others. Some may applaud it as giving (part of) the public what they want. But please keep in mind that there are people who look for other things in MMO.

Interesting to see some nice discussion on this instead of the very emotional responses that were coming out following the Ascended announcement until the recent future.

I agree with the OP, I’m glad ascended is here but I have no interest in spending all my game time running fractals for it. I think it caters to people who don’t like to play the way I do, and I think that’s a good thing to have in a game. I personally believe that many of the players who left following Nov. 15th did so because of where they feared the game would be going, not because of where it was/is.

I don’t view the current Ascended pieces as “must haves” to run (non-fractal) dungeons successfully, or to win in WvW. I do really well in my full exotics, and I’m of the opinion that build, skill usage, and profession understanding trumps a couple extra stat points.

My only concern is that ANet has failed to rule out another gear tier in the future. This is possibly not a problem, but if they do release another gear tier, and my exotics are no longer just a few stat points off, I’ll need to get that gear. But what if they make it accessible only through a fractal-like dungeon where you need AR to get it? I will never be willing to grind for Ascended gear just so that I can grind for the new tier. But if my not having that new tier will mean I can’t contribute in dungeons or compete in WvW, I will stop playing. I already see signs that this will not happen, as ANet has made statements and taken actions to expand the “play your way to get what you need” options for the game.

TL;DR – I don’t want Ascended gear, but I have no problem with it. I do see that its implementation is a slippery slope, but for now I’m going to trust that ANet will make good choices in the future, and I’ll keep enjoying the game the way I enjoy it. I will not leave the game because of where I’m afraid it could go, I’ll leave if it ever gets there.

Another part of the manifesto states that GW2 “takes everything you love about GW and puts it in a persistent world”.

I’d like to see a poll asking people what they loved about GW1. I guarantee “power ceiling/lateral progression” makes the top 3. In fact, it is one of the games defining characteristics…and I really wouldn’t be surprised to see it at #1.

We can argue like lawyers all day long over the intent behind each and every word of the manifesto, but at the end of the day, there is a -huge- public perception that they did in fact abandon it. That’s crystal clear by the fact that 3 months later there are still threads being created about it. And that perception is all that matters in the end.

Galrenmar.7025:

Gehenna.3625:

1) As someone pointed out to us, gear progression was actually not part of the Manifesto. So on this point they didn’t go against their manifesto and your title is therefore incorrect. What they did talk about and did break their promise on was “my story” and " we don’t make grindy games". But those are other subjects.

That is another subject, but it bears mention.

It’s nearly impossible to make a totally-grindless game. After all, that would require that NPCs be unkillable, nodes be unlootable and quests be uncompletable.

What is very possible is to construct a game that has reduced grind, which ANet accomplishes by removing the largest potential grind-fest — the grind for PvP viability — and giving us alternate methods of leveling (crafting XP/sPvP).

On the subject of the Personal Story, I think they did a good job. It’s not perfect, obviously, but meh. ANet still managed to craft a story around the individual, in a genre that is by definition intended for multiple players.

In short, ANet is trying to break out of the form-fitting ‘Kill X rats’ mold that has dominated the MMO genre since the earliest days of Ultima Online. I look forward to seeing how they’ll challenge the preconceptions of a largely carbon-copy industry in the future.

My view is that if you accept that you cannot make a grindless game you should not advertise it as grindless. That is just misrepresenting the truth. Also the game isn’t less grindy than other games. I say this because they made a basic mistake in their endgame system. They started without gear progression and added it with Lost Shores, but very small to begin with. The problem then is that it takes no grind at all to get exotics but without any more tiers, that means you are done too quickly since there is virtually no horizontal progression either. So the stuff that is left to do is get your ascended items with infusions and legendaries. And that’s a total grind.

I agree no game is grindfree but what the manifesto actually said is not true because there isn’t enough to do at level 80 except grindy stuff. Please note that grind for me is not just a matter of repetition but a mix of how often you need to do something AND how quickly it gets boring. I submit that the lack of variety in tactics and activities (For example, there are over 1500 DE’s but you can categorise all of them in escort, collect, kill x mobs and defend against waves. That’s 4 activities as far as variety is concerned) is part of the problem. I just got bored even with leveling and I’m an altoholic by nature.

The story line, whether you like it or not, is not MY story. You start at level 1 and become a hero instantly with the first boss fight. Then you have a local story where you could maintain you are still the hero but once you get to the main story the main character is not yourself but someone else. You are just the sidekick. So no, even if I liked the story as such (which I don’t. Too childish and bad voice acting), the truth is that the main story line is NOT about your character. You are the sidekick at best. So that’s why I say it wasn’t delivered.

As far as the OP here I still say that GW2 should’ve either chosen horizontal progression like they did very well in GW1 (but perhaps in other ways as it’s a different game) or they should’ve implemented a proper vertical progression aka gear treadmill. This game has neither. Instead of having best of both worlds it’s simply neither….a mismatch.

the dwindling # of players across all servers may tell a different story. i believe those who have remainded are more willing to accept the direction, but a lot of players have already left for this and other reasons so its difficult to draw any real conclusion.

Icecat.4528:

the dwindling # of players across all servers may tell a different story. i believe those who have remainded are more willing to accept the direction, but a lot of players have already left for this and other reasons so its difficult to draw any real conclusion.

Not all servers. My server never seems to stop growing.

I for one am not. I am not glad they nerfed drops before fractals, I’m not glad they added fractals, and I’m not glad they made a gear treadmill under the pretense that you don’t need ascended gears extra stats to remain competitive. If ascended gear wasn’t to remain competitive make it have exotic level stats, then it would truly be for what we’ve been told it’s for, agony resistance, until they do that it will remain a higher tier and thus better stat gear thus the tip of the treadmill iceberg.

If we weren’t being herded to the gem store then restore loot to the open world by removing DR. (and the permaDR we are suffering)

If we weren’t being herded to playing fractals then restore loot to the open world and remove dungeon requirements from dailies and monthlies. I and many many others like me didn’t come to this title to play WoW all over again. I’ve had 6 years of that, no thanks.

And the argument that those people who claimed there was no end game would have never been placated without fractals is not a sound argument, that type of player would have eventually disappeared from the game because they would have noticed another shiny with a similar treadmill system and run off to play that one. They aren’t doing themselves any favors by trying in a misguided gesture to hold onto the dungeon grind crowd, 8 years of mmo development history attests to that subscription model or not.

I simply applaud your intellectual honesty. It’s fine to love or hate vertical progression. It’s simply a method of simulating progression in a game. Personally, I prefer horizontal as it carries less baggage. Many on the forums, however, seem to be stuck in the denial phase of grieving where people are still not accepting that we currently have VP and a gear grind treadmill.

So, while I disagree that vertical is the right direction to go, I applaud you for logical coherence and intellectual honesty.

I love when people say Tons of people have left the game, NCsofts 4th quarter results sure paint a different picture.

They show great growth in GW2 revenue from the “golden days” of the 3rd quarter.

(Massively posted them the other day if you want to look)

There is still nothing to do at endgame. No point in running dungeons for ugly gear, no reason to go higher than fractal 20 since it drops infused rings and weapons. No reason to run events for worthless karma and drops and having dr kick in after 20mins. Spvp is garbage and WvW is nothing but a zergfest.

Astralporing.1957:

Heijincks.9267:

What may have sparked the initial idea that ANet was going to throw the manifesto out the window? I certainly didn’t remember any of it. When they “did throw it out” there was the initial outrage, but that quieted down quite significantly since.

Yes, it did. After all, if you see most of the topic about it getting locked down, without being addressed in any way, at some time you will start to post less. Or just leave.
And the complaints never really stopped – they were just made less visible by a healthy dose of forum censorship and devs visible lack of attention.

For the hardcore anti-ascended I can see why they think of it this way (despite that the contrary trend is being observed). However, that still begs the question: If the moderators are so keen on censorship, why do posts complaining about ascended still exist and not get shut down? If the mods were trying to censor it, they’re doing a pretty kitten job.

This also includes posts such as some in this thread.

Progression and rewards are what keep people playing an mmo. It doesnt need to be a massive grind, no need to switch to another extreme here. A basic reward system that rewards players and makes gear available to casual players as well. Or you could have very small character advancement “skills” that are purchased with more skillpoints, with a very small advancement for end game. Nothing to extreme or OP, but enough to keep you satisifed and feel like you are still “building” a character.

runeblade.7514:

In that case, can we just start calling this game a WoW clone?

No.

Gw2 > WoW

GW2 has a slight vertical progression!

WoW has a hard vertical progression!

the difference between the medicine and poison is the dose!

sPvP= No vertical progression.
WvW= Slight vertical progression.

Please, stop troll.

its wow influenced.
its an evolution, not a revolution.

but a fine game

pve endgame still not nailed.
but aside from that quite solid.
i loved my first play thru.
i remember divinity’s reach… and my first vista…
sniff
why do good things have to end…

World of Charrcraft…

Wow, just reading this post makes me crazy. I played in the betas and start at release. I had to take a break from paying at the beginning of November and didn’t start back up until a few weeks ago. I learned I missed a lot. In the weeks I have been back, I thought I was going to be way behind. The truth is I am not, I don’t feel like I am having to catch up. In other MMO’s I might be hurting finding groups or doing things which I am not in GW2. I don’t think any thing they added or took away changed the game. The game is still a lot of fun to play, I still don’t feel like I am grinding to do anything. Well write more later at work and have to log before I finished this.

Gw2 > WoW …………

Though I agree that Arenanet did make the right decision in putting in some form of vertical progression for the people crying for it, you can’t deny that this sets an ominous precedent.

If all your friends wanted you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?

If all the playerbase wants Arenanet to derail the game, will they do it?

My main concern is that most of the playerbase doesn’t actually know what makes MMO’s great or fun, and will cry out for things that will only wreck the game more and more.

If they were going to break their manifesto all along (they would have been planned well in advance) then why did they put a manifesto up or keep churning out the “not like other MMO’s” philosophy at all?

Isn’t it the issue that they said one thing but did another?

I would be fine if they said what would actually be viable to deliver and work from there and I personally think they didn’t have to tote around the status of being “revolutionary” in the MMO genre. Even if they didn’t outright say it, they sure did imply it.

nethykins.7986:

If they were going to break their manifesto all along (they would have been planned well in advance) then why did they put a manifesto up or keep churning out the “not like other MMO’s” philosophy at all?

Isn’t it the issue that they said one thing but did another?

I would be fine if they said what would actually be viable to deliver and work from there and I personally think they didn’t have to tote around the status of being “revolutionary” in the MMO genre. Even if they didn’t outright say it, they sure did imply it.

I agree with this.

But it isn’t just that really, it’s more the fact they changed direction on 3-4 things without yet commenting on it.
Like “we did this because…”, instead it was just “release update and hit Endure Flames”.

If Anet went in this direction they must have had reasons, reasons many would like to know.
Also many would like to know what is the future direction. We’re getting a lot of unrelated updates with seemingly no clear destination.

Still best MMO on the market, just not the “revolution of the genre” we were promised.
GW2 is currently a traditional MMO with action combat like Tera (albeit better of course).