Guild Wars 2

Tifa Lockheart Ex.9614:

Obsidian armor? PvP ranks? Tormented weapons? Those weren’t grinds? GW1 has as much grind at GW2.

Yes and the grind was optional because all it was is skin/appearance.

Those are, yes. The grind which was NOT optional was in Factions. “Befriending the Kurzicks/Luxon” required you to get 10,000 Faction for the one of your choice. Before you did that quest the cap you could earn was . . . 10,000. And it was a load of slogging through places with the blessings on. And for bonus points, you couldn’t proceed with Factions until you did that.

Likewise (although I didn’t have so much trouble with this) if you were not native to Elona, there was a requirement to achieve a certain rank of Sunspear title to proceed. I got it as I did cartography “first pass” through all of Istan and doing the missions, so . . . others probably had a tougher time of it.

I was referring to his example of ob armor, pvp rank and weapon, those WERE optional. sunspear and faction point was part of the storyline so yah there was a bit of grind in that.

Tifa Lockheart Ex.9614:

I was referring to his example of ob armor, pvp rank and weapon, those WERE optional. sunspear and faction point was part of the storyline so yah there was a bit of grind in that.

I know you were referring to that example., still . . . there were grindy bits which had people grumbling in GW1 so the game was not perfect or devoid of the things people are experiencing now.

As for those optional grinds? I opted out of those grinds except when I got drunk and went “y’know, I can DO this!” . . .
. . . and promptly faceplanted in Random Arenas a few times in a row. Good times.

Astralporing.1957:

Karizee.8076:

Gehenna.3625:

Karizee.8076:

A better indication of how well the game is doing:

http://www.guildwarstrade.com/gems

Both volume and price steadily increasing. The game is doing great

Actually that means nothing.

First of all it is known that the price is not purely supply/demand but Anet actually influence the price as they have said themselves.

A rise of silver cost for gems and higher prices on the TP means that people can buy less gems with gold. That means it encourages people to buy them with real money rather than in game gold.

So, if anything, you can conclude Anet is encouraging people spending real money. That would mean to me they need more cash, so perhaps this actually means the game is not doing so well.

The sheer volume increase says otherwise.

Where do you see volume in that graph? I see only price, and since it’s based on ingame observation i don’t even know how would they estimate volume.
Seeing price change we can guess several things:
- it is possible that the supply went down. There are less people buying gems with real money and exchanging them for cash (that is relatively bad – less real money income), or
- demand went up – people buy more gems for in-game cash (that’s also not good – might mean they buy less for real life cash), or
- anet intervened to increase prices. That’s also not good, because it suggests they want to encourage buying gems for real cash more (perhaps because they need more income)
Lot of suggestions and guesses here, no hard facts, but on the whole it doesn’t look as good as you suggest.

Also, there still will be gem spikes on events and sales (and we have black friday coming up). That doesn’t tells us about the general tendencies.

http://www.guildwarstrade.com/gems

The top line is price.
The bottom graph is volume.

Volume has doubled in the last month.

chopsticks.9853:

42 (GW2 3rd qt profit) million ain’t gonna cut it… Idk how much it cost to make GW2, but I bet it cost more than 50 mill on the low end.

It’s gonna take A LOT of cash shop purchases to turn a decent profit. I’m sure they’re not in it to make a 20 or 30% gain…. That’s barley interest on the loan..

I do think the stock drop was because of GW2. Lets be honest most people expected more sales than AION… At this rate B2P is a utter failure for publisher and gamer a like. Pub. doesn’t make money, gamer has no say.

By 1st qt 2013 GW2 will be NCsofts smallest earner. Expect a more aggressive cash shop sooner than later, and freemium model by June of next year.

The more aggressive cash shop in the form of converting gems into gold is already here.

They stealth nerfed drops, they stealth nerfed globs of ecto, they instituted a now unnecessary DR in the open world environment…all in the hopes of keeping people playing longer to get drops needed for their legendary grind.

In the process tho they hurt people’s ability to build whole exotic sets which means they are alienating new players. The gem to gold thing was a good idea for trying to keep gold farmers out but when the market is left to 100 gems = 47-50 silver it’s not worth spending RL money on.

They need to return the drop rates to what they were when the game first started, they need to fix the problems with MF and make it work with chests and they need to make only level 70+ items drop worldwide for level 80 players, not just in the two level 55+ zones. They also need to make infused armor have the same stats as exotics or release infused armors for crafting using the actual crafting disciplines that would return the balance to the game to the horizontal model they promised us this game would be.

First of all, the prices of things didn’t go up because drop rate was lowered. The prices went up because botting was severely decreased. Higher prices on valuable items is GREAT for casual players (who of course feel entitled to everything) because they can farm for way less time to get the same amount of money.

You guys act like everyone should be able to get Legendary weapons very quickly. No. No, they should not. The entire point is that the stats are not better, and the fact is that any player can have full Exotic gear within a month with little work, as long as they play. Anything beyond that is a reward for your extra playtime.

chopsticks.9853:

42 (GW2 3rd qt profit) million ain’t gonna cut it… Idk how much it cost to make GW2, but I bet it cost more than 50 mill on the low end.

It’s gonna take A LOT of cash shop purchases to turn a decent profit. I’m sure they’re not in it to make a 20 or 30% gain…. That’s barley interest on the loan..

I do think the stock drop was because of GW2. Lets be honest most people expected more sales than AION… At this rate B2P is a utter failure for publisher and gamer a like. Pub. doesn’t make money, gamer has no say.

By 1st qt 2013 GW2 will be NCsofts smallest earner. Expect a more aggressive cash shop sooner than later, and freemium model by June of next year.

$42mil profit on a PC game is IMMENSE. You don’t seem to understand these values in relativity. That’s PROFIT, which means it isn’t counting the millions spent on operations in the opening quarter of the game. The absolute fact of the matter is that ANet has been hiring an expanding. A game studio does not do that unless their product has been very successful.

I don’t believe any of this garbage about the game being in trouble, as you people say this with every game, but even if it were… oh wait, it can’t be. The game is already paid off. Continued support and development for YEARS will only cost a few million. Remember, players can’t QUIT GW2, since they can’t cancel. Anyone can come back and try new patches.

Warhammer paid out its $100m investment too, /snicker!

The good news for anet is that they didn’t sink much cash into developing this since they owned the lore.

Fozee.1083:

First of all, the prices of things didn’t go up because drop rate was lowered. The prices went up because botting was severely decreased. Higher prices on valuable items is GREAT for casual players (who of course feel entitled to everything) because they can farm for way less time to get the same amount of money.

I’m sorry, but you lost me at the “casual players” and “farm” in the same sentence. Casual players do not sell farmed loot, but rather need to buy it. Lower prices are good for them usually.

Astralporing.1957:

Fozee.1083:

First of all, the prices of things didn’t go up because drop rate was lowered. The prices went up because botting was severely decreased. Higher prices on valuable items is GREAT for casual players (who of course feel entitled to everything) because they can farm for way less time to get the same amount of money.

I’m sorry, but you lost me at the “casual players” and “farm” in the same sentence. Casual players do not sell farmed loot, but rather need to buy it. Lower prices are good for them usually.

. . . I sell farmed loot. If you count “crap, I have 600 Mithril and nothing to do with it but throw some on the TP” as selling farmed loot. Then again I often have a nasty habit of detouring for resource nodes ever since I noticed I was getting more XP from them than a kill provided.

i actually stopped playing too, i just login do my guild leader stuff like trying to recruit more people, manage upgrades and ranks and then i log off without playing at all

couse they have serious bugs like pc crashing, dcs
couse they broken my favourite proffessions (thief, mesmer…)
couse the new content is shi….t i dont even try the new dungeon couse i know it will kick me on dc and im sure i will get a dc on anet side

and yesterday i wanted to play just a bit, gone to wvw,.. no zergs anywhere, no people anywhere wtf O.o the game is dead
everyone left at the same time as me o.o boah REALLY now

Stock of an entertainment company going down in times of crisis is not strange at all. Look for example at dreamworks: https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:DWA

And here I see an upwards trend: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=036570.KS

NC Soft makes many other games and how can you know? Perhaps Lineage 2 or Aion is bringing down the stocks.

People cut on entertainment to buy essentials, e.g., food and clothing. Why making such an analysis if things go bad or good? Why care so much if Anet goes bad?

“Obsidian armor? PvP ranks? Tormented weapons? Those weren’t grinds? GW1 has as much grind at GW2.”

An optional grind is a farm. Why can people not understand this?

You GRIND 20% better armour, you FARM gold (unless gold is required to get you said new armour). You GRIND stats, you FARM looks.

Just want to know if i am able for a refund still. I bought the game on 13 of july. Just before the last BWE, I know normally after so a time there is no chance but due to the massive redirection the game is going and the fact this max level gear no grind crap has now become false.

I hope they have removed any reference to this on any of there adverts or this is false advertising

Would I be able to get a refund. Not once in any game I have asked for a refund. But with such a big company doing this. Such a big lie they have done and openly, which is shocking. I just don’t want anything to do with them now.

Just so disappointed in them.

To just toss up a ball: is there any consideration of splitting up the servers? The GW hardline and the generic MMO audience will likely not be able to reconcile on this matter. If NCSoft demands that ANet tries to steal more players from other games, all they can do is sacrifice their principles, and with it, anger their fanbase. Which easily becomes a PR nightmare.
On the other hand, keeping the generic MMO audience satisfied as new titles zoom in on them, will take quite some effort, though obviously, the big possibilities appeal to a publisher.

Shipping will only go so far. So, is splitting the servers the easiest way out? Many games split between hardcore and normal, have old version game modes, or modded servers. Likewise, it might be easy to take some servers, assign fancy colors to the next few armor sets, and add a few multipliers for the armor stats and the mobs of the corresponding level, voila vertical progression. You can just add the same stuff in the regular version and keep it exotic and standard lvl 80, no big deal I would assume.

Most updates will barely be different for either side. Switching between modes could be made easy – just downlevel the higher tier items to exotic, done (slightly harder other way around, but well, can still be done). sPvP can stay together, WvW can either split or adapt standard strength levels, etcetera. Events will just be the same.

It’s the easiest way to not have to make a decision, one might say.

It’s the same handful of players making threads and putting up posts on each and every thread. What is more telling is they keep dropping little “commercials” for another well known game

And so the same people continue to say 80% of general forum content is a vocal minority…

Bad and unoriginal excuse that cannot counter the numeric evidence reached by this issue……

Also please provide some sort of evidence next time….

Melonbrew.9681:

Just want to know if i am able for a refund still. I bought the game on 13 of july. Just before the last BWE, I know normally after so a time there is no chance but due to the massive redirection the game is going and the fact this max level gear no grind crap has now become false.

yes you are: NCSoft issues refunds up to 6 months after purchase.

beren.6048:

Stock of an entertainment company going down in times of crisis is not strange at all. Look for example at dreamworks: https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:DWA

And here I see an upwards trend: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=036570.KS

NC Soft makes many other games and how can you know? Perhaps Lineage 2 or Aion is bringing down the stocks.

People cut on entertainment to buy essentials, e.g., food and clothing. Why making such an analysis if things go bad or good? Why care so much if Anet goes bad?

Aion is booming in Asia still. It failed on the West, true, because it’s not cut to Western audiences.

As people always say, you don’t have to worry about it unless YOU are noticing in on your server, as of now it has a healthy player base and all of the people that were going to quit or have quit are already gone. Once we see desperate promotions for the game like TOR, then get worried.

The guys who made this game are just really out of touch with reality. They don’t know what people want, they respond to out pouring of hardcore fans but ultimately fail to see the larger picture. They need retention but they also need new prospects. Its very frustrating because as a player who grew up as a child dreaming of mmos before they existed to playing all kinds when still that same young child as mmos emerged for the first time, I see every single problem. Yet the developers do not. Its quite sad that even my wife wife who is a new mmoer for this generation of mmos can see a lot of the proble.s. Yet Anet take desperate measures to increase gem sales, because internally they are probably blaming everything except themselves, bots to retention. Some of the actions they take are actually punishing players which increase the players rate of leaving.

Even now anet is working on retaining players throwing out new pvp things, new items, continue feverishly to promote the long term game. Yet not having one iota of notion of what would increase the player population. Retention is nothing near as hard as they make it seem. They are fundamental confused, because they have never really made an mmmo. GW1 was something new some experienced for its difference then stayed for its uniqueness as it progressively got creative.

There are only two things required in an mmo, not grind or anything else. Distraction (pet battles, in world chess games, loot progression these all fall under distration), and Polish Anet play the game have every member of the staff play the game get each member to level up from the start. Try out Causicus’s (sp?) Manor at level 30 tell me that first dungeon experience doesn’t make you want to quit the game. Your losing so many players to polish you don’t even realize it.

Retention is great coming up with more dungeons is brilliant in fact not coming up with new armors for those dungeons not so great though (what are those guys working on by the way?). Rentention getting dungeons and projects don’t work when just yesterday 3 out of 6 dungeons all bugged out thats 50%. That is a lack of polish a serious lack. Don’t you see the other underlining problem? There are to many punishing problems that waste peoples time, then anet came out with all these DRs and created an exodus while people waited for anet to get there act together.

I’m not a developer but man I wish I could throw out input. Then again I don’t like to put direct ideas into forums they mysteriously get deleted end up in game without even so much as a “good idea”.

This was written on a touch phone appreciate that anet.

Tito.3270:

fefner.5729:

This time next year id say the game will be in trouble when TESO comes out.

you know that teso uses the hero engine?, no content can make right what an awful engine destroys, have fun lagging with more then 10 people on screen.

lol man u read one thing and then take that thing and place completley out of context… They designed there own engine and used the hero engine only as a working platform to throw ideas around and get the ball rolling.. They also have designed there new engine and also charcter models and effects to allow more than 200 on the screen at the same time. Anyways…

My view on this is a simple one, I do still play althoug not as much as I have been playing, i have several reasons for this that have compunded together to prevent me logging in.

1, i fell out with my old guild as i felt the work and time that I was putting in was not being appreciated. ( i dont work for praise but appreciation is different and politeness goes a long way). After i left i changed server and joined a new guild.

2, I was very dissapointed with the lag that we had on the event. i felt a little like a guinea pig tbh and I cant help but wonder if they dident do enough server load tests during open beta. Also I think they couldent have had enough time to implement a fix for this so the event went ahead and was poor, really really poor.. I would prefer a re-run of it instance based for groups of 10 players maybe.

3,The forums that i check every day before i log into the game proper are full of negative angry posts. I dont blame you for being angry and negative but theres not much constructive critisism going on right now, its mostly just knee jerk reactions to other peoples views and posts. Not all of thwese posts are correct either, io urge all of you to read the references and material and make your own judgement without any peer pressure. This being the case it kind of puts me on a downer before i start playing.

4, several new titles have been released (single player games). Dishonoured, Assassins creed, sniper V2, Hitman absolution, Need for speed most wanted, medal of honour warfighter, endless space to name but a few and i have been working my way through these new titles and will return to gw2 nice and fresh again after i complete these fully

5, Alot of new movies and tv series are out like walking dead, arrow, game of thrones, skyfall, flight to name a few and i have been watching these and trying to catch up

6, its coming uop to christmas and its a busy time of year for everybody im sure but specially so if you have wee snappers to think about and occupy your time.

7, I have some personal issues that im taking care of at the moment a lawsuit being one of them and this takes alot of my time.

So as you can see although im slightly dissapointed by anets performance during the event I have alot of other interests thatare detracting from my game time. So this is not my main cause of less playtime but certainly is a small factor in the whole…

Im not bothered about the new gear as it is not the start of vertical progression or power creep or whatever the buzz words for it are.. Ive read there statements and watched there videos and its no suprise that humans being humans we can watch the same things and read the same stuff and come out with completley different views.

My view is that i trust what they say when they say its not the start of a gear grind. For me personally i dont beleive they have lied or violkated my trust in them yet. maybe my expectations are now a little lower following this event but that is all. Im happy that ascended have slightly better stats than exotic but worse than legendary and look forward to plkaying again whwen i have more free time.

beren.6048:

Stock of an entertainment company going down in times of crisis is not strange at all. Look for example at dreamworks: https://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:DWA

And here I see an upwards trend: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=036570.KS

NC Soft makes many other games and how can you know? Perhaps Lineage 2 or Aion is bringing down the stocks.

People cut on entertainment to buy essentials, e.g., food and clothing. Why making such an analysis if things go bad or good? Why care so much if Anet goes bad?

I agree with you…

You guys do realise there is a global rescession and if you look at any companys stocks on any market right now you will probably see a decline in a great dealof them right?

Look at it this way: Guild Wars sold up to 6 million plus copies in the many years it was available. Guild Wars 2 has sold nearly half that in 3 months time (its possible they are getting close to 3 million units), which is a pretty impressive figure. This doesn’t take into account number of digital deluxe, collector’s editions, BLT digital goods sold, and other Anet upsells. All we know is that they helped to boost overall figures for NCSoft, and Anet likely is doing pretty well.

In addition, many people have this mentality to question if a game is dying after release due to drops in player activity. This would be a problem for a game that operates mostly off of monthly subs, but GW2 does not. The difference is that ANet continues to update the game, release patches and fixes, and address concerns regardless of no monthly fee. It’s because of this that I doubt this game is in trouble. ANet simply has to start working on a new expansion, which likely has already started, in order to keep the income floating in. The BLT special deals will likely also help boost sales as well.

People love to predict doom and gloom for games. They have done this for many MMO’s out there. All ANet has to do is to learn from their mistakes and build a better game as a result. I don’t think Guild Wars 2 is going to close down shop anymore than Guild Wars 1 did.

Fourth.3974:

As people always say, you don’t have to worry about it unless YOU are noticing in on your server, as of now it has a healthy player base and all of the people that were going to quit or have quit are already gone. Once we see desperate promotions for the game like TOR, then get worried.

Like weekend friend invites?

endless.1376:

People love to predict doom and gloom for games. They have done this for many MMO’s out there. All ANet has to do is to learn from their mistakes and build a better game as a result. I don’t think Guild Wars 2 is going to close down shop anymore than Guild Wars 1 did.

And people have been right for many of the games that they have predicted doom and gloom. And in each of those games there were people like you and the other posters on these forums who simply chose to ignore the warning signs and turn a blind eye to the damage being done to the game.

The fact is that Anet has not learned from all of these other changes that games have made that illicited outrage from loyal customers who came to forums in droves in desperation to voice their opinion about the game they loved. It should serve as a warning, but instead all you “enablers” chose to do is to label the true long time loyal customer base of the GW franchise as destructive, when if fact nothing could be further from the truth.

All I can say is go ahead and keep on turning a blind eye to the outrage on these forums. The same thing playing out here has played out many times in other game forums in the past. They ignored the outburst in those forums too … to their ultimate detriment.

If they keep this trend of sneakily making changes to slowly move it away from the manifesto that atracted many players, they’ll end up losing those players.

But they may not care if they attract other players instead, as those initially attracted have already paid.

Curlybaby.6258:

endless.1376:

People love to predict doom and gloom for games. They have done this for many MMO’s out there. All ANet has to do is to learn from their mistakes and build a better game as a result. I don’t think Guild Wars 2 is going to close down shop anymore than Guild Wars 1 did.

And people have been right for many of the games that they have predicted doom and gloom. And in each of those games there were people like you and the other posters on these forums who simply chose to ignore the warning signs and turn a blind eye to the damage being done to the game.

The fact is that Anet has not learned from all of these other changes that games have made that illicited outrage from loyal customers who came to forums in droves in desperation to voice their opinion about the game they loved. It should serve as a warning, but instead all of you “enablers” chose to label us, the true long time loyal customer base of the GW franchise, as destructive when if fact nothing could be further from the truth.

All I can say is, go ahead and keep on turning a blind eye to the outrage on these forums. The same thing playing out here has played out in other forums. They ignored the outburst in those forums too, to their ultimate detriment.

I don’t think that the forums represent the entire playerbase. I do think that people are over exaggerating things in a game that is very new and also has plenty of time to change aspects of its gameplay. Your passion about helping to build a great game is awesome though!

endless.1376:

I don’t think that the forums represent the entire playerbase. I do think that people are over exaggerating things in a game that is very new and also has plenty of time to change aspects of its gameplay. Your passion about helping to build a great game is awesome though!

You are absolutely right in that forums do not represent the entire player base. But it is always a very accurate micro-representation of the “pulse” of the player base. Why? Because, not unlike rallies/voting in political elections. players who “rally-up” in numbers at forums are generally the more informed and passionate members of a community whose actions generally dictate actions and direction.

Again, unlike many of you who are blindly dismissing this outrage as “the minority,” I am not here trying to convince anyone to support my point of view. Go ahead and enjoy your gear grind treadmill. I am fully aware that this is what some of you wanted, and you got it. Good for you. But keep in perspective, that if this change was enacted in fear of financial repercussions resulting from complaints by the pro gear grind folks who occasionally complained about it on these forums, those complaints were but a mere “trickle” as compared to the “tsunami” we are seeing played out on the these, and outside forums all over the MMO community, as we speak.

There will be consequences.

I seriously felt hurt when they said they’d add an increase in stats into the game… and hurts more when you don’t get a honest reply.

Is it bad I’m already looking at Blade & Soul – which I have also waited for over 3 years?… Hope there’s no problem mentioning this game since it’s also NCSoft’s.

If they will make me grind, atleast I want to have a sexy cat toon and STUNNING graphics :>

The graphics in GW2 are “good”, they made some improvements but I have seen better.

I log onto my level 9 and those zones, everyone I go to, are full. I log onto my level 40 and those zones, everyone I go to in the 30 to 45 range, are full. I constantly get the “you’re in overflow” when I go to any of the cities. I wouldn’t say the game is dead or dying … perhaps stabilizing, yes. They are new folks coming into the game and leveling ect. I do agree that bring in gear grind was a huge mistake and ANET should reverse that soon as can. I was hoping that ANET would have a … say … 20% off discount on the game sales this black Friday; As I knew 2 ppl personally that would’ve purchase the game if it was a little cheaper. I think ANET missed out on such a deal, and I’m sure they toy with the idea of it. Either way GW2 doing fine in my book, and it better be around for a while to come. I will say that I’m looking forward to huge land expansions and story expansions in upcoming expansions. The world is Beautifully done, props to the team, however I’m big on realistic large worlds that makes me feel I’m apart of something and not nothing. I also feel they could improve the texture quality a little bit more for those of us that can handle a small step up. However the game is fine as is, and I’m just being needy lol. Instead of talking junk about the game and its few little short comings… Perhaps talk positively about it and get some of your friends back in it. More players means ANET will feel its worth improving the game, but less players, and more smack talk from its players will mean less improvement as the team will lose its faith in what it’s doing for us players.

I don’t mind grind or equipment that seems beyond your reach because you need a lot of gold to obtain it. I’m used to that from playing asian MMO’s. But what I do mind is when that “grind” is boring as hell.

I thought vindictus and dragon nest forums were full of QQ about nexon but the GW2 forum is full of QQ about both the game AND the company. When most of the complaints is about the company mismanaging a game that forum users like then it’s not a terrible sign… the company needs to get it’s act together and fix the servers and stop doing stupid events. When the forum users are complaining about both the game AND the company… then you have problems, because you need to fix both the company and the game.

Anyone remember Richard Garriot’s Tabula Rasa? It was a mediocre MMO that was terribly managed and was eventually shut down…. that could happen to GW2 if the developers don’t do anything substantive. FF14 was a horrible MMO when it was released as a open beta and during official release. But the developers realize the issue and are implementing MAJOR changes to the game to make it better and relaunch the game 3 years later (2013) with a revamped graphics engine, combat, interface, gameplay… everything.

I feel that GW2 needs THAT level of a change to make it last for 5+ years, and actually make it enjoyable.

There is, in my view, absolutely no way to avoid grind and the quest for awesome loot (by grinding) in an RPG. If you remove these elements then what is left most likely isn’t an RPG.

Hardcore players likely just want progressive difficulty content for their guilds and small groups. These players usually end up helping to promote a game, but it does become a problem when the entire game is built around these players. If all ANet is doing is adding in some elements for these players on top of the vast choice you already have, then I see nothing wrong with it.

MMO’s are always in a constant state of development, and I agree with ANet that they need to consider developing content for all types of players. I have no doubts though that they will be making the normal dungeons easier to play through and understand. I personally would want the Story Mode to be simplified for experiencing the story. The explorable would remain the harder content., but that is just me honestly.

I understand why it was done but did anet need to put on giant red notices every 10ft or something that this game isnt about gear grind-tiered gear and gated content?

Did there need to be a questionnaire filled out before they could buy the game and say like nope you want a different game cant buy this.I dont know.

The only grind for me was going after the legendary if I chose to but that was optional since it didnt have better stats. It is now mandatory because they will continue to bump stats up in perpetuity as new gear tiers released.

So yes GW2 is dead -long live GW2.1 viva la revolution
It seems that people love the new dungeon and stat boost along with the grind and for the longevity of the game and those involved it looks like the right way forward.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The grind which was NOT optional was in Factions. “Befriending the Kurzicks/Luxon” required you to get 10,000 Faction for the one of your choice. Before you did that quest the cap you could earn was . . . 10,000. And it was a load of slogging through places with the blessings on. And for bonus points, you couldn’t proceed with Factions until you did that.

Likewise (although I didn’t have so much trouble with this) if you were not native to Elona, there was a requirement to achieve a certain rank of Sunspear title to proceed. I got it as I did cartography “first pass” through all of Istan and doing the missions, so . . . others probably had a tougher time of it.

Uh, no. The Factions requirement could easily be completed by doing the quests – as intended – for the respective faction. Between the reward points for the quests, the initial faction missions that got you there, and the killing that you did between quests, you would get to 10,000 more or less automatically (in fact, for Kurzick you could get all 10,000 just from questing), unless you did something stupid like spend the points while you were trying to build them up. It also bears noting that faction was account-wide; you could earn it very quickly by playing on a PvP character in JQ/FA and that would help fulfill the campaign requirement. If you did that, you could also increase your cap by 10,000 without even touching the campaign.

And for Nightfall, the Sunspear rank requirement for foreign characters was actually removed shortly after release (what this tells us is that you don’t play campaigns much), but even so, the introductory quests gave you a ton of Sunspear points and took you almost all the way to the required rank, and from there you only had to do local quests to get the rest.

None of the things you mention required grinding, or even in the worst case only a tiny bit of grinding to make up for suboptimal play. If you had to do a lot of grinding for these things, you messed up. If you hate doing quests, that’s a different issue, but these requirements did not force anyone to grind. As designed, these requirements were just token gates to prevent runners from rushing people through the whole campaign. A person who played to experience the content wouldn’t even notice these things come up.

Fractals are currently killing the game. The gating mechanic combined with not letting players rejoin their party upon disconnects and crashes ( which still plagues this game like nothing else due to inept programming ) have already driven away just about every single person I regularly play with. Now I’m stuck alone trying to run this content praying to the Six that I won’t get stuck in an endless loading screen or something equally abhorrent. Good times!

Remove the gating mechanic, revert the gear changes and make a public apology. That’s the only recourse at this point. They kittened up and everybody knows it. Their refusal to make amends is just increasing the negative perception of Guild Wars 2. In a single week it went from one of the most beloved MMOs on the market to the most loathed.

Leablo.2651:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The grind which was NOT optional was in Factions. “Befriending the Kurzicks/Luxon” required you to get 10,000 Faction for the one of your choice. Before you did that quest the cap you could earn was . . . 10,000. And it was a load of slogging through places with the blessings on. And for bonus points, you couldn’t proceed with Factions until you did that.

Likewise (although I didn’t have so much trouble with this) if you were not native to Elona, there was a requirement to achieve a certain rank of Sunspear title to proceed. I got it as I did cartography “first pass” through all of Istan and doing the missions, so . . . others probably had a tougher time of it.

Uh, no. The Factions requirement could easily be completed by doing the quests – as intended – for the respective faction. Between the reward points for the quests, the initial faction missions that got you there, and the killing that you did between quests, you would get to 10,000 more or less automatically (in fact, for Kurzick you could get all 10,000 just from questing), unless you did something stupid like spend the points while you were trying to build them up. It also bears noting that faction was account-wide; you could earn it very quickly by playing on a PvP character in JQ/FA and that would help fulfill the campaign requirement. If you did that, you could also increase your cap by 10,000 without even touching the campaign.

And for Nightfall, the Sunspear rank requirement for foreign characters was actually removed shortly after release (what this tells us is that you don’t play campaigns much), but even so, the introductory quests gave you a ton of Sunspear points and took you almost all the way to the required rank, and from there you only had to do local quests to get the rest.

None of the things you mention required grinding, or even in the worst case only a tiny bit of grinding to make up for suboptimal play. If you had to do a lot of grinding for these things, you messed up. If you hate doing quests, that’s a different issue, but these requirements did not force anyone to grind. As designed, these requirements were just token gates to prevent runners from rushing people through the whole campaign. A person who played to experience the content wouldn’t even notice these things come up.

Hey, remember the party line for the people speaking out on Ascended gear as a treadmill! Any amount is an amount!

And I did I was in from the second week of Prophecies . . . but it was still called “grinding out Faction/Sunspear” for those particular gates. For me, it was never an issue as the Faction gain was a side effect of me both doing quests and doing my cartography in the areas.

So to be uncharitable, I bypassed one grind by doing another

The thing is that GW1 had plenty of grind in the sense that certain armour sets (obsidian) took a long time to get. Some weapons were rare drops and also were hard to get and thus expensive.

It didn’t matter however because the stats were the same, so it was ok if it took you 2 or 3 times longer to get it than the other guy.

Where GW2 failed itself is that the armour and weapon sets that are available aren’t interesting enough. Legendary weapons have far too few skins and the existing ones are meh in my view and the armour sets are also of much lesser design quality than the elite armour sets in GW1.

No wonder people got bored. In a way, the poor design of gear in GW2 is possibly what caused the game to fail on an endgame level and made people cry for better stats. That wouldn’t have happened if people had a great variety of gear to collect, simply because they are awesome…it lacks that awesomeness factor.

Add to that less flexibility in swapping builds (traits cannot be reset anywhere you are nor for free) as was possible in GW1 so there was a real point in having at least 2 armour sets for different builds. It just fit together.

GW2 is too fragmented, it doesn’t have the cohesion they managed before and by doing that they set themselves up for disaster perhaps.

Fundamental design flaws causing a lack of coolness in gear that ends up causing the company to throw their own principles to the wind and resort to stat tread milling.

Again, it’s not about grind in general or farming rather, but about a cycle of getting gear for the sake of content where you can get gear for content where you can get gear for….well, etc etc.

People were expecting a game with that push to keep at endgame to keep up with the stats. Anet closed that door due to their own inability to understand what they achieved with GW1 and why it worked.

At this rate I don’t think the game will have long term appeal and will go down the same road as other MMOs that failed to deliver in recent years. Sad but true…at least from my point of view.

Gehenna.3625:

Add to that less flexibility in swapping builds (traits cannot be reset anywhere you are nor for free) as was possible in GW1 so there was a real point in having at least 2 armour sets for different builds. It just fit together.

That wasn’t in vanilla GW1, that got added later. There used to be “refund points”. Boy was that annoying.

Link: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Attribute_Refunds

Not all ideas in the start of a game are good, and later additions might be good for it. Thing is, we don’t know at the moment, we can just assume and extrapolate what’s coming or what’s going to be the result once this gets finished.

. . . ArenaNet, if you survive this, and the game is still here when you have the idea to do this again? Please please please don’t split it into a couple parts again?

I see a disturbing lack of “I think” and “I believe” in this thread. People, you don’t know the majority of the things you’re writing here. You’re probably not the professionals the industry hires to figure out what the players want. What YOU want is not necessarily “what the players want”.

Ever think that perhaps it isn’t ANet that’s out of touch, it’s us?

Fozee.1083:

I see a disturbing lack of “I think” and “I believe” in this thread. People, you don’t know the majority of the things you’re writing here. You’re probably not the professionals the industry hires to figure out what the players want. What YOU want is not necessarily “what the players want”.

Ever think that perhaps it isn’t ANet that’s out of touch, it’s us?

Every goshdarned day I wonder about that, and my eyes drift to Minecraft where I wonder if it’s worth it to get back on that and grind . . .er . . . explore for more Lava so i can complete my Obsidian monument.

I love all the posts actually defended the game and actions of anet/ncsoft. I suppose with it being an MMo you have to have fanboys and/or people in denial. I’ve played 15 years worth of online games now, I’ve seen big ones rise and others fail – certain games rise from ashes and be reborn. Right now, Guild Wars 2 is obviously in a transitional period, that being said ~ that transition is not what many players signed up for – the vertical progression for instance being one of them.

Sure, people can say ~ our guild is doing great, what about the thousands of other guilds on your particular server which have probably died in the past month? Look at all the guilds which are on the verge of dying because of people quitting the game, and/or moving onto more populated guilds. I know it, you guys know it ~ the game is in a sheer state of exodus right now. People are quitting the game in far higher numbers than people are joining, and there are many reasons why.

Its quite possible to list a hundred different areas and problems that need fixing right now ranging from bugs and exploits through to major crash related issues. There are very few areas in game right now that anet or ncsoft can truely say its working 100%, and even then they’ll be a thousand players who would probably disagree.

Right now though is what counts, not what happened in the past or even the future and right now, the game has problems ~ the players are not happy, overall confidence is low and people are quitting the game in droves, the evidence is all over the place. The question is, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do to instil confidence in your product to keep the majority playing?

I personally would like the softcore GW2 back, where everyone was on the same page. It was more of a skill based game, than who exploited/botted/purchased gold/got lucky with event precursors etc etc etc game. In closing, if you still think the game is doing fine – I think I can recommend a good psychiatrist.

No grind? I feel like I am grinding all the time, my highest level is 36, I just grind hearts and look for PoI’s and Skill Challenges and vistas all the time, feels like a grind to me.
Leveling in this game is one of the slowest games I’ve played in a while, yes there’s the so called events, but they take a decent amount of time and give low amounts of xp.

Memnoch.2589:

No grind? I feel like I am grinding all the time, my highest level is 36, I just grind hearts and look for PoI’s and Skill Challenges and vistas all the time, feels like a grind to me.
Leveling in this game is one of the slowest games I’ve played in a while, yes there’s the so called events, but they take a decent amount of time and give low amounts of xp.

. . . you never played EverQuest. Every 5 levels after 30 (that is, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60) seemed to require about ten times the experience of the previous level by some devious bug. From there you were okay and it seemed more in line with before the “Heck Level”. Until the next one. And don’t get me started on anything past 60.

And for years they were saying “no such thing” despite being able to demonstrate with timestamped screenshots.
Oh and the icing? Dying took 5-10% of your experience total to the next level. Not a flat amount, so you lost more XP during a “Heck Level”.

Be very grateful you missed this. It was a grind of nigh epic proportions.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Memnoch.2589:

No grind? I feel like I am grinding all the time, my highest level is 36, I just grind hearts and look for PoI’s and Skill Challenges and vistas all the time, feels like a grind to me.
Leveling in this game is one of the slowest games I’ve played in a while, yes there’s the so called events, but they take a decent amount of time and give low amounts of xp.

. . . you never played EverQuest. Every 5 levels after 30 (that is, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60) seemed to require about ten times the experience of the previous level by some devious bug. From there you were okay and it seemed more in line with before the “Heck Level”. Until the next one. And don’t get me started on anything past 60.

And for years they were saying “no such thing” despite being able to demonstrate with timestamped screenshots.
Oh and the icing? Dying took 5-10% of your experience total to the next level. Not a flat amount, so you lost more XP during a “Heck Level”.

Be very grateful you missed this. It was a grind of nigh epic proportions.

You are comparing an old school mmo to this? I’ve played grinding games, my first being Asheron’s Call, please don’t give me the “well at least it isn’t like this game.” excuse, you people are saying this isn’t a grinding game, there is a grind in this game. Leveling in this game is slow, maybe not as slow as the old mmo’s that are 10 + YEARS OLD!!! but still slow nontheless. (and yes I did play Everquest as well)

Memnoch.2589:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Memnoch.2589:

No grind? I feel like I am grinding all the time, my highest level is 36, I just grind hearts and look for PoI’s and Skill Challenges and vistas all the time, feels like a grind to me.
Leveling in this game is one of the slowest games I’ve played in a while, yes there’s the so called events, but they take a decent amount of time and give low amounts of xp.

. . . you never played EverQuest. Every 5 levels after 30 (that is, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60) seemed to require about ten times the experience of the previous level by some devious bug. From there you were okay and it seemed more in line with before the “Heck Level”. Until the next one. And don’t get me started on anything past 60.

And for years they were saying “no such thing” despite being able to demonstrate with timestamped screenshots.
Oh and the icing? Dying took 5-10% of your experience total to the next level. Not a flat amount, so you lost more XP during a “Heck Level”.

Be very grateful you missed this. It was a grind of nigh epic proportions.

You are comparing an old school mmo to this? I’ve played grinding games, my first being Asheron’s Call, please don’t give me the “well at least it isn’t like this game.” excuse, you people are saying this isn’t a grinding game, there is a grind in this game. Leveling in this game is slow, maybe not as slow as the old mmo’s that are 10 + YEARS OLD!!! but still slow nontheless. (and yes I did play Everquest as well)

Oh please, read my posts, I didn’t say there wasn’t a grind in this game. I didn’t say there wasn’t grind in GW1. I said there WAS an element of grind in GW1, as there’s one in this game.

As for leveling in this game being slow, it’s slow if you do nothing but tag random enemies. It gets better if you find stuff that’s been alive longer as there’s a bonus for killing stuff which has been alive longer. And I mean to the tune of “138 + 749 Bonus” when I pick on some of the yellow non-aggressive monsters in areas.
Mining/chopping/harvesting gets me more than that per node. Participating in the big DE chains can yield a bit. Daily Achievement awards give you something like a flat 3% I think, in addition to what you get while doing the achievements. Simply doing Daily Achievements I racked up two levels over three days. At level 80. And that’s half an hour to an hour maximum to do that.

I’m giving you “at least it’s not X” excuse because, you know, I don’t really think very many people playing this game did play games older than 10 years. Or if they do I think they’re suppressing the memory in fear of what horrors might be remembered.

(The Battle of Bloody Kithicor and its aftermath. Oh GODS above and beasts below . . . )

It was the same in GW1 . . . leveling through killing was a heckuva lot slower than doing the quests. GW2, it’s slower unless you do some DEs or other things than just beat down everything in range.

Everquest 1 is the king of exp grinding games, nothing can match it in that department. However, the gold farming/gear grinding department can be said its worse than EQ1 was. Lets face it, gold just isn’t that easy for the average player to farm without spending a significant portion of time devoted to it.

Average Player EQ1 – quite possible to take a year perhaps more to level a character to cap, however during that time the gear you acquire gets better and better, your always earning coin so your platinum starts increasing especially in later zones. Not taking into account raids.

Average Player GW2 – Probably would take a few weeks to hit 80, in that time that player is perhaps going to amass a maximum of about 10g in that time give or take. If the player wants a legendary item, you’re talking maybe as much as 250 hours of hardcore farming, perhaps much longer depending on TP prices and/or the player getting lucky. Not counting Pre-cursor drops.

The problem is for new players to GW2, the costs in mats to acquire exotics especially specific sets, karma items suck because it’ll take far longer – especially since the the karma DR, nerfs to ORR etc. Basically, new players to GW2 are really in a bad place – unless they do plenty of homework, get on a highly populated server/guild and even then, new players would need some handouts/help and even then, its going to be a hostile environment for them.

Ostra.3927:

Natural.7013:

They want to appeal to both sides of the fence, but it sure will be hard with the vocal minority in these forums on a daily basis. 2 million soldish? A few thousand complainers on the same three forums. Anet you decide.

But what made the 2 million people buy the game??

Did 2 million people buy the game because they increased the power creep? Or maybe 2 million bought the game because they said this would be different then all the other games?

Yeah thought so.

I bought it because all my friends were playing it. Before then, I actually was disgusted by the idea of a game so casual-focussed as to claim to remove grinding (something I enjoy) and the holy trinity. (another thing I feel defines the MMO genre and role-playing within the game world)

The game is fortunate enough to have been fun for me and won me over as a loyal customer. I could care less about that manifesto silliness. And the introduction of this small, uninvasive gear treadmill hardly bothers me, and if anything makes me glad that it isn’t the casual-oriented theme park circlejerk that was advertised.

Casualist elitists are just as bad as the ‘locusts’ (such a silly/hip term right now) when it comes to being biassed towards certain styles of play, and I do not want to support a game that promotes player laziness.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Average Player GW2 – Probably would take a few weeks to hit 80, in that time that player is perhaps going to amass a maximum of about 10g in that time give or take. If the player wants a legendary item, you’re talking maybe as much as 250 hours of hardcore farming, perhaps much longer depending on TP prices and/or the player getting lucky. Not counting Pre-cursor drops.

Yeah but far as I can tell the original intent was for Legendaries to require that much to get to, and the bonus was that they had neat effects as opposed to Exotics. Yes, I said “original intent” there, because now with Ascended in the picture the goal seems to be to get to Exotics and upgrade at your leisure . . . will you be maximally effective?

No, but then again, I’ve never played . . .

. . . scratch that . . .

I’ve played very few games where being absolutely to the maximum effectiveness the player can muster is a must.

Creeper.9360:

If they continue with this monthly event style pacing, the game will be quite alive for a good while longer.

Rift did that very same thing an people began to complain even then *the irony. So they slowed it down and then the other half said pff t this.
Also with how this last chunk made all dungeons ghost towns something has to change with that anyway.

Servers are noticing tons of dead zones and having content completion issues right now :/ Cities are ghost towns, high lvls don’t feel the need to play in lower zones after all. Many are just lvling new toons till things get fixed.

They need to change something; since the games f2p they can easily get many back.

To add to the comments above; 100% of the people I started with have also left.

Anet is just being far to slow… Not acting fast enough kills games these days.

Pvp effecting pve, balance etc. To many classes that are broken or force u into a specific build (which this game was NOT supposed to be about.)

And yeah they delete posts all the time :/ as aggressively as Swtor started to do….

And your elitist GS types are ruining the experience for many no in guild or lacking friends. (Another thing that was supposed to be gone in Gw2; yet it seems worse then ever…)