-General Michael
Legendary weapons
Removing legendaries is a horrible business decision. As someone who enjoys skins, dressing up, and looking nice Legendary weapons are literally my endgame. Removing legendary weapons removes the endgame grind for people who want to have the perfect look. How many of those people do you think buy skins?
And now they cannot ever sell new legendaries in any future expansion because then that would be like charging your customer twice for the same content… Huge marketing failure while losing the customer enthusiasm.
I just don’t get how 6 people paid full time can only make 1 skin and 1 collection in like 6 months. Presuming these devs are competent then scrap the collection system, there is no need to over-complicate stuff if it reduces your content output by 95%.
Anyway the collection system is just a different type grind. I like the old system where you could play as you wish (like play WvW) to get your legendary.
All they needed to do is make kittening 16 skins and some precursor icons.
That is not the impact I was talking about. Comprehensionnnnnnn
You’re also ignoring the fact that I’ve stated many times now; Legendaries aren’t being removed so they will still have whatever impact to the game as they always had. I’m not projecting on you simply because you aren’t willing to understand or even read my posts.
Not throwing new legendaries into the game does have an impact too, though.
They are already working on expac 2….seriously, why would they do that?
Because that arc of the story requires far more development time and sophistication than a simple Living Story seasonal release. New zones, new elite specializations, new storyline, and possibly even a new race.
And there is nothing, aside from their own business decisions, that says those things can’t be released as living world content. The fact remains that they are already putting like 1/3 of their employees/effort into a second expansion, while canning/delaying unreleased parts of their still unfinished first expansion.
The more appropriate (and ethical) thing to do would be taking people off of xpac 2 and have them help get all of HoT’s annouced features into the live game. Going back on already promised features, while annoucing that you’re already preparing the next $50 (or more) product puts out a really bad company image.
This isn’t ok when some upstart indie dev does it.
This isn’t ok when EA/Ubi/etc does it.
So why should it be ok when Anet does it?
Footsteps Of War [FoW] | Yak’s Bend
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
Yup, and that doesn’t change because Legendaries aren’t being removed so I don’t think what I said is wrong.
That still doesn’t change the fact that you continue to decide to ignore my clarifications to be antagonistic and argue on irrelevant factorss, ignoring the most important one; that this is a business decision and Legendaries are not good ROI for Anet.
Lmao, that isnt so much as clarification, its pure backtracking. Your original argument was blown out of the water, and now you are having another pointless try at linking it to business decisions.
Honestly people will be disappointed because many people paid for new legendaries weapons aswell with HOT.
People are disappointed since HOT made this game something like :
You have friends you nerd 24h you achieve something.
While before this game was casual.People are disappointed because you don’t think about players,6 developers and what is hard to add some new style armor for every class? i don’t think it is so hard.
People are disappointed because they want see something new in the game,yes something new but not unachievable such as the content that there are now.
People are disappointed because since beginning we only have 13 world bosses… lol since 3 years we farm the same things over and over,instead of just take an unused map and put a world boss.
People are disappointed because living world story is bad really bad,and the following map that came with HOT are incredible bad designed, 300 floors,you can’t even find the way to reach a commander when u see in the map.
People are disappointed because pvp is never balanced,not all class are playable,is it hard to fix?.
And so on,there are tons of things people can complain,but i won’t give you any advice on how to make the game better,you have your developers your managers,so let them do the job,while gw2 keep losing players.
ok so a few things.
1. when I didn’t see a lot of new legendaries in HoT, I kinda knew this was coming.
2. i’m glad to hear that the focus will be on new ls content instead of graphics.(new legendaries) living story was always my favorite part of gw2.
3. there has never been a game released that was flawless and had no dissapointments in it. for example I paid for a new class with new builds and all I got was a premade buildless class(Revenant) I suppose a buildless class(no setable individual skills) is a nice option for players who don’t want to deal with builds. seems kinda like a throwback to the days of playing a warrior and all warriors had one set of unchangeable skills.
4.new world bosses could possibly come with new living story to explain their presence.
5. the hot map design was a huge blow to me as well, jumping is my least favorite part of video games ever and hot plays out like one long jump puzzle. but the more time I spend on the maps and the metas the more I am liking all of hot and it’s design.
6. pvp was recently balanced and all classes seem to be working in a pvp setting the way they are intended to. just because YOU can’t beat something doesn’t make it overpowered(reapers were predicted in hot previews by anet to “be a serious presence in pvp and wvw”) also just because YOU can’t win with a class doesn’t make it under powered.
7. as for class population and mmr in pvp. there is no magic programming code that forces players to login/play an equal spread of all classes/queue for the mode you are queued for/be of “equal skill” to you. there will always be a most popular class and that class you will see more often.
8. last pvp season the mmr was set to match closely the divsions. this resulted in 30-45 min queue times for the higher division players(as there weren’t many and also not many on all at once) this season they allowed a greater difference in division mmr so as to reduce queue times. this is an on/off switch type of deal there is no fader. either they match close to division and we deal with higher queue times or match less closely for faster queue times and we deal with w/e we get for teammates and opponents.
and a final note: thank you for choosing quality over quantity and meaningful story over skins. and thank you for working the busy seemingly under appreciated schedules you guys work to make this happen. gw2 is the best game out there and your team deserves some credit on this. may the coffee pot in the office be always full.
(edited by Warlock.7136)
This could be really great. Grinding for legendaries is a small minority of players. The majority of us want new game play content. Good on you for explaining this even though there was bound to be some people upset over this.
The truth is, the health of the game is better served with game play additions rather than content that only the most dedicated of grinders will ever obtain.
Good idea! Lets also disband the raid team and move them over to LS as well. Even less people do raids than Legendaries. Plus, the raid team has been quite productive, so imagine what they could do in LS?
Pre-Ordered HoT | Recently started to get what I paid for – may spend $$$
You know what will be very annoying at this point?
If the continue to systematically release armor/skins in the gem store… Because a dev has said that it requires a lot of resources to make (armor – and I’m guessing, by extension gem store armor skins, since they are essentially armor).
Somewhere down the line they admitted releasing armors on the gem store was a bad idea and they won’t do it again.
You know what will be very annoying at this point?
If the continue to systematically release armor/skins in the gem store… Because a dev has said that it requires a lot of resources to make (armor – and I’m guessing, by extension gem store armor skins, since they are essentially armor).
If by gemstore armor skins you mean outfits, they said the outfits are about 10 times easier to make than armor.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dev-quotes-from-Reddit/page/3#post6023796
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
(edited by Just a flesh wound.3589)
You know what will be very annoying at this point?
If the continue to systematically release armor/skins in the gem store… Because a dev has said that it requires a lot of resources to make (armor – and I’m guessing, by extension gem store armor skins, since they are essentially armor).
If by gemstore armor skins you mean outfits, they said the outfits are about 10 times easier to make than armor.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dev-quotes-from-Reddit/page/3#post6023796
I’m kind of curious as to how. They’re just lacking stats, and aren’t in pieces. Still have to adjust per race, per animation, and so on.
can’t see the forest for the trees
An expression used of someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole.
everyone one of us in game.. in the forums.. all paid for this experience.
its just a game..
:)
You know what will be very annoying at this point?
If the continue to systematically release armor/skins in the gem store… Because a dev has said that it requires a lot of resources to make (armor – and I’m guessing, by extension gem store armor skins, since they are essentially armor).
If by gemstore armor skins you mean outfits, they said the outfits are about 10 times easier to make than armor.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dev-quotes-from-Reddit/page/3#post6023796
I’m kind of curious as to how. They’re just lacking stats, and aren’t in pieces. Still have to adjust per race, per animation, and so on.
Presumably because they’re one piece, not 6, and they don’t have to fit them against all the other armors of the same weight already in game. But they didn’t say.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
Taking peoples money and then not delivering what was promised. Classy, anet. I await your next post in the coming weeks when you announce you’re continuing down this path and are also giving up on raids.
Terrible time to tell us this news considering April 1st is right around the corner. Unless it’s an April Fool’s joke, which I don’t think it is.
If it is, it.is the most evil one ever, or what they could do it just mail everyone’s legendary weapon. That they can’t use as its soul bound to someone else.
Yeah that would probably be worse XD
Since we not getting the legendary weapons which was part of HoT content. How about Anet compensate us by giving us ingame items like gems or an additional character slot?
We got legendary weapons; we’re getting one more.
Now, I admit that I expected more, but upon re-reading the original blog post (and follow-ups in various places), I realize that was me imposing my hopes on their comments — they never promised a full set of 16, only the new process allowing to create our own precursor and some new ones.
I also agree that, at best, ANet mismanaged our expectations — they could have made it clear that only a few legendaries would be offered with launch and that it might take awhile to see more.
Still, in terms of legendaries, they delivered what they said they would.
I believe they technically satisfied the letter of what they promised, just to close a legal loophole, but there is such a thing as the spirit of the law. There is also such a thing as misleading your customer’s through clever wording. Both of these things are grievous offenses against their customers. They completely lost my trust with this. Unless they change their course and deliver on the expectations they set…for me to make the HoT pre-order purchase…then I"ll never spend another penny on any product they ever make. If this stands, I’m the fool for believing / trusting them again in the future. I’m not willing to be the fool.
For me this was kind of a disappointment I was hoping for a he-man like great sword or maybe a Thunder cats sword like sword for legendary weapons . That being said I play guild wars 2 for story and for living world. I don’t think that anet should give up making the legendary weapons just put it the shelf for now, I mean how many people does it take to make a lendary weapon ?
(edited by rohan king of gods.4238)
I know for myself for a long period of time I was only playing gw2 a little everyday just to finish my legendary. The game is so unbalanced in pvp and wvw right now that I likely would have just stopped playing all together if it wasn’t for the desire to make progress on my legendary. This is huge mistake on anets part (and sleazy too in my opinion, this was promised content for HoT!) and will just further alienate the company from the community.
This^
This almost completely parallels my situation. The only thing that had me logging on was incremental progress on astralaria and daily login rewards. I don’t even see a reason to login anymore as it stands. The only reason I was still bothering to ever visit the new maps was for legendary related things. They completely killed any reason for me to play with this. I didn’t care about LS2…what makes them think I’ll care about LS3.
We got legendary weapons; we’re getting one more.
Now, I admit that I expected more, but upon re-reading the original blog post (and follow-ups in various places), I realize that was me imposing my hopes on their comments — they never promised a full set of 16, only the new process allowing to create our own precursor and some new ones.
I also agree that, at best, ANet mismanaged our expectations — they could have made it clear that only a few legendaries would be offered with launch and that it might take awhile to see more.
Still, in terms of legendaries, they delivered what they said they would.
“Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will let you begin your journey toward the first new set of legendary weapons to be added to the game since its original set of 20 that were included in the launch of Guild Wars 2.”
From https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/maguuma/
You can argue that “set” doesn’t mean all of them, but it does in the latter part of the sentence. Also, the fact that the “rest” of them have been put on hold indefinitely argues that Anet thought they were building a full set (minus the UW weapons as has been stated before).
You know what will be very annoying at this point?
If the continue to systematically release armor/skins in the gem store… Because a dev has said that it requires a lot of resources to make (armor – and I’m guessing, by extension gem store armor skins, since they are essentially armor).
If by gemstore armor skins you mean outfits, they said the outfits are about 10 times easier to make than armor.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dev-quotes-from-Reddit/page/3#post6023796
I’m kind of curious as to how. They’re just lacking stats, and aren’t in pieces. Still have to adjust per race, per animation, and so on.
Presumably because they’re one piece, not 6, and they don’t have to fit them against all the other armors of the same weight already in game. But they didn’t say.
I think there are some older dev statements that say basically that. The difficulty in armor comes from it being in pieces that have to all fit together with all other individual armor pieces without gaps, extreme clipping issues, etc. It’s a lot faster to make a seamless style when you don’t have to worry about those issues.
However, I don’t think that excuses the complete lack of new armors. Some time ago (I think back in 2014 or early 2015) Anet did state that they would not be putting more armor skins in the gemstore, instead only using the store for outfits. Since that time, the number and rate of new outfits has increased drastically. While the number of new armor skins has been zero, save for the very few new armors HoT added (which require buying HoT to get).
I suppose we can’t say Anet didn’t keep their word on that part, but they sure did take the most extreme and absolute interpretation of it. They seem to have no interest in adding any skins, armor or weapons, that aren’t tied to the gemstore either directly or through black lion keys.
Footsteps Of War [FoW] | Yak’s Bend
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
Over the course of 33 pages, I’m sure this has been discussed, but I don’t have time to read through every comment here as that would take me all evening. Felt I should add my two cents though.
I think this change in focus is for the best. With the introduction of the legendary journeys and precursor collections, Arenanet has had to revisit a LOT of old, previously released content and tweak it a number of ways to get them to align with some semblance of a “journey” or storyline. In doing so, they’ve had to spend a lot of hours working on ways to make the collections accessible to all players, yet still difficult and time consuming enough to warrant the final legendary reward. That’s a really delicate balance, and getting it wrong would not only mean angered gamers because the new legendaries were too easy to acquire, but it could also have seriously negative repercussions on the game economy.
But read that again. They’re working on old content. They’re putting countless hours into re-balancing content that is already in the game and re-purposing it for the use of these new collections. Doesn’t that seem silly, especially with the admitted drought of new content we’ve been facing since the release of HoT? It absolutely makes sense to me that these developers should instead be given the freedom to work on new content for us (and them!) to enjoy. New adventures and journeys for us to go on.
I understand many feel that Anet should instead release the legendaries “as is” with a few new recipes thrown into the mystic forge, sans legendary collections, but this would be a step backward, I think. Consider also, these “shiny weapons” aren’t just weapon skins, but they all have to be unique, wholly different from every other legendary, else players will grump and groan that the newest sword or GS legendary is too similar to the others.
Legendaries are clearly a lot of work. It makes way more logical sense for that workload to be shifted to something with more substance. We don’t need more shiny weapon skins, we need new, fresh content to keep new and veteran players engaged and entertained for months (and ideally, years) to come. The glitz and glamour of your shiny new skin wears off after the first week.
Also, please folks. Enough with the personal attacks. Mike and the rest of the development team at Anet are doing their best to bring us quality content that they’re confident we’ll enjoy. Let’s cut them some slack and give them a chance to do that. Put your pitchforks away, at least for a few more weeks, and let’s see what they’ve got in store for us.
Anyway, tl;dr: content > skins.
Just my opinion. I’m sure I’ll be flamed for it, but c’est la vie.
On a more personal note: Mike, thanks for all your hard work. Please don’t let the vitriol here get you down. I’m confident that the majority of us look forward to what you have coming. You folks do good work—keep it up!
So far, I have seen zero successful dismissal of arguments. The arguments still stand.
No argument presented is going to change the fact that Legendaries as content do not have a good ROI; this is low impact. These are business decisions, first and foremost.
Customer retention is high impact. They can start making decisions based on what the lowest percentage of players and what the highest percentage of players want, but guess what…eventually…when you lose enough of those lowest percentages…you aren’t going to have much left. Not the first game I’ve seen go with that strategy. Every one that has done that…has ended up as a failure.
A wise man once said: ‘I am altering the deal, pray i don’t alter it any further’.
And said wise man ended up on a funeral pyre only to have it’s burnt head worshipped by his emo grandson. But that’s another story.
So far, I have seen zero successful dismissal of arguments. The arguments still stand.
No argument presented is going to change the fact that Legendaries as content do not have a good ROI; this is low impact. These are business decisions, first and foremost.
Customer retention is high impact. They can start making decisions based on what the lowest percentage of players and what the highest percentage of players want, but guess what…eventually…when you lose enough of those lowest percentages…you aren’t going to have much left. Not the first game I’ve seen go with that strategy. Every one that has done that…has ended up as a failure.
This isn’t even something that should even be up as a business decision, and it’s certainly not something we as customers should accept as one. Anet backing out on their 2013 statement of having a new legendary set by the end of that year was a business decision. Cancelling a set of legendary weapons that were a “listed on the box” feature of HoT is misleading customers in order to sell a product. It really doesn’t matter what Anet decides is a better business decision at this point. They should be obligated to provide their product as it was marketed.
The following is still stated on the HoT website, and only thing keeping it from being completely, blatantly misleading is the fact that the remaining legendary weapons are only “delayed indefinitely” instead of being outright canned.
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will let you begin your journey toward the first new set of legendary weapons to be added to the game since its original set of 20 that were included in the launch of Guild Wars 2. The first three to be released will be the celestial axe named Astralaria, an experimental energy pistol called H.O.P.E., and the raven spirit staff named Nevermore. Additional legendary weapons will be released in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of 16 has been added to this game.
Footsteps Of War [FoW] | Yak’s Bend
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
I suppose there’s no grounds to make Anet accountable for their reversal via a class action lawsuit, but it doesn’t seem right that they can sell something and then decide for whatever reason that they are no longer going to deliver what people paid for.
MMO developers really can get away with things other, more traditional businesses can’t.
I suppose there’s no grounds to make Anet accountable for their reversal via a class action lawsuit, but it doesn’t seem right that they can sell something and then decide for whatever reason that they are no longer going to deliver what people paid for.
MMO developers really can get away with things other, more traditional businesses can’t.
report it to the trade association of their country. Legally sueing them might be a problem, but preventing them from trading in your country and selling their products is relatively easy. Report them for false advertisement, photograph that 16 lagendaries advert for HoT and the first post of this topic.
It is also important to note that even though you might have purchased HoT a long time ago, if you go and show all of this to your bank and say “I’ve been deceived”, they CAN charge back if ArenaNet refuses to refund you. This will obviously ban you from playing GW2 ever again, but if you weren’t going to play it anyway, it’s an option.
I suppose there’s no grounds to make Anet accountable for their reversal via a class action lawsuit, but it doesn’t seem right that they can sell something and then decide for whatever reason that they are no longer going to deliver what people paid for.
MMO developers really can get away with things other, more traditional businesses can’t.
Perhaps because a lot operate more as a service rather than selling individual products, particularly those still with subscription fees. Most decisions to pull previously mentioned features don’t involve that feature being marketed as part of a retail product. It’s a breach of customer trust, but if it was never explicitly marketed or sold there aren’t really any other issues with it.
However, Anet’s decision to not continue with legendary weapon does not give them that luxury to hide behind. A new set of weapons was, and still is, a listed feature of a retail product. They are still obligated to deliver that product, in full, as advertised.
Footsteps Of War [FoW] | Yak’s Bend
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
First I would like to thank MO for coming to the forums and posting, it was unexpected. Even though the news was not good, at least it’s communication and that should always be appreciated.
Now, to the matter at hand – I am dissapointed in this decision because I was really looking forward to the new legendaries. I haven’t crafted any in about a year because I crafted all the ones I wanted from the first set and I thought I’d wait to see the new ones before I commited to crafting the rest of the weapons I would like to have with legendary stats (aka changeable stats).
While MO’s arguments aren’t really bad and I can’t say in good conscience that I would preffer new legendaries over new content, the really small size of the team working on them does make one wonder if they would really have an impact on the speed with which we will receive the new content.
Legendaries have been a shiny part of GW2 and a very nice long-term goal, and I’m sure there are many, many players who shape their gameplay around obtaining them or at least are working/planning on working to obtain them.
I am hoping this is all an April 1st joke, but…
This is disheartening. I’ve been here since the BWEs, and put up with a lot of crud because the core game is so solid. But I honestly don’t understand why you think people are going to buy your next expansion after HoT was already content light and now we’ve been shown that shipping the new xpack is a higher priority than shipping one of the few things that were pretty heavily implied to be coming with HoT (and before that, were promised to us in 2013 without any hint of being put behind an xpack paywall).
I want to be happy, play your game, and shut up and give you my money when you ask for it.
You’re making that extremely difficult.
Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games.
Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet
Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet
Totally support Mike O Brien in his decision, he is a legend in the field and I trust his ability to evaluate what’s best for the game.
I’m not saying that not releasing the new legendaries isn’t bad, but it is the less bad that could happen, also focusing on the LS is good for me since I don’t care about Legendaries…
To the people getting upset about this thing…just get over it, if you like the game just for the legendaries or you bought Hot only for the new legendaries it was totally your fault not of the devs, you are free to move to something else, why wasting your time complaining about something that will not change?
I think we got too spoiled with constant updates and new free stuff that we forgot how much they did for the game till now. We already had legendaries with the expansion, now we will have 1 free. The others were not meant to be included into Hot, it was planned but they changed their mind, and that’s fine because it’s their game, their idea and they are the ones working on it. It’s not like you can wake up go to George R. R. Martin or another writer and say that he has to write his books differently and that the date of the release of his books were wong or that he promised somthing and he can not change his mind, because it’s his creation, if you like it you read it! The last thing that I want is that the devs start to follow every direction from the players and go till the end on everything that is on the table just because they promised it, even if it is not ready and not worth to be released compared to the rest. That would end up in just a big mess.
There’s literally something broken / missing …in your brain if you can’t understand the concept of free versus paid for. The same goes for the concept of advertising a product with listed features / components…and just flat out not providing the features /components once purchased. You follow that up with victim blaming?!? Its the customer’s fault for believing the seller about their publicly advertised features of their product? There is no 1 free legendary weapon. What was, and still is publicly advertised if a full set of 16 legendary weapons…requiring HoT purchase to be obtainable. This “1 free” you are talking about is just an attempt to validate one of their statements about “more” being available after the initial 3 gen 2 legendaries.
Technically…1 is more. Even that is just a loop hole and a serious breach of customer trust and credibility.
Sore topic, legendaries again…
The visuals are more likely to be done than the journey to get the legendaries themselves so perhaps consider releasing the skins without the crafting as a combined WvW & PvP reward.
Then add the precursor to the loot tables and see how the economy reacts.Then the rest.
Would be a waste to throw away the work that has been done so far but putting more stress on a very small team seems even worse.
Seemed like pulling the emergency break as the quality envisioned for the entire legendary procedure couldn’t have been met in a timely fashion.
I prefer more live content tailored to 99% of the player base though, looking forward to this.
As this post was begun by the head of Anet I’ll assume it’s being monitored. As cotent I paid for will not be delivered (new legendary weapons) and hasn’t been implemented (cool WvW) I am formally requesting a refund on HoT. I’ll play you the announcement video and cite each instance you as head of the company promised and failed to deliver on if necessary. I’ve played since GW1 and not seeing the same company I used to love.
I’ve always been critical of decisions I’ve disagreed with but until now I’ve haven’t been able to say for a fact that you sold me something you 100% didn’t deliver on.
I paid you aren’t delivering so I formally request a refund.
contact support. If they don’t provide it, do a charge back on the grounds of being scammed.
I think that’s a pretty shady thing to do, and even asking for a full refund at this point might be too much. Incomplete as it is, HoT has been out for over 5 months, and unless your purchase was very recent you’ve likely gotten a decent bit of gameplay out it, or at least had the opportunity to do so. I’ll be the first to grab a flaming pitchfork and march to Bellevue, WA to say that we should see some compensation for lack of receiving the advertised product, but I think asking for a full price refund is taking it too far.
I bought HoT not too long after it’s release, for a price I’m still not totally sure it was worth (around $37) in relation to the base game or other games. I did, however, get a decent amount of playtime out of that purchase, even if a lot of that time was spent repeating the same content. Repetition is expended in this genre to some degree, but I do feel that HoT’s content relied on that far too heavily. But, despite that and how I feel about this recent revelation, the time and enjoyment I did get from HoT does still mean something. To me, requesting a refund for a product I did use and get enjoyment/entertainment from is dishonest.
I’m not going to try and name a price I think it was worth, because there is little point in doing so. I made a reasonably informed decision (main reason I waited till after release) and bought HoT for a price I thought was acceptable at the time, based on what I knew. That was my decision and I am fine living with it. However, that was a decision also effected by advertisements and promises by Anet of future additions that were to be included in that purchase. Future additions that we now learn are not being delivered. It is this, and only this aspect, that I feel warrants the need for compensation to customers. (Recent purchases, and those purchased after this statement, while the HOT website still lists a set of legendary weapons as a feature, should have a full refund available)
I don’t know what the compensation should be, or how much value it should carry, but some compensation is certainly in order given the misleading terms HoT was sold under. To offer some suggestions, the most obvious would be Anet’s own currency of gems. Though, I’m sure that won’t mean anything to players that are leaving the game over this decision. We’re all obviously PC gamers here, so perhaps some arrangement with store credit/funds from another game retailer (Steam/Origin/etc) would be more suitable. I’m sure someone at Anet, or on these forums, can come up with something that would be acceptable for most people. An alternate compensation solution also avoids the difficulties of trying to handle refunds for game copies sold outside of Anet’s own store/website, ensuring that even those customers receive fair and equal treatment.
tldr;
We’ve been playing this thing for months now, and it’s a bit late to ask for a full refund for a product we’ve used and gotten entertainment from. However, some compensation is in order for failure to deliver on aspects of the game that were advertised as included features and likely impacted purchase decisions.
Footsteps Of War [FoW] | Yak’s Bend
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
Seer Of The Divine | Sarina Starlight | Tireasa | Caedyra
(edited by mrstealth.6701)
Extremely disappointed in this decision and just the overall tone of the posts coming from Mike. Wife and I started looking for new games last night, this was more the last straw than anything, and well no one likes feeling deceived. Thanks for the fun while it lasted really hope you rethink this decision.
Hi
Since everyone is putting their 2cents in here I may aswell do the same.
I do feel cheated about the decision to suspend legendary development as that was one reason why I pre-ordered HoT. The promise of new legendaries gave me much hype because I was dissatisfied with the current set and was eager to see more, now that it has been suspended for an unknown amount of time, I feel sad and a little mislead, in my opinion an “expansion” means almost a second game added to the core game which, when you buy, comes as one whole package not through a string of updates that may last months even years to come. I had made my peace before this announcement, but now I really feel like the community deserves some form of compensation worth the disappointment, be it gems or refunded money, I don’t care, but it has to be equivalent, unless of course the Devs decide to continue development of the legendaries.
With that said I do not mean to be offensive as I really enjoy, the debatably, half pie expansion and have been glad to see how much work and effort the Devs have poured into it and I will try to be patient and wait until the next major update.
Sincerely,
A Semi-Disgruntled Player.
So… they put everything thay can in HoT – like guild buffs, half of fractals – new legendaries that were said to be part of core game in 2013, grind for old legendaries is also in HoT… things left in core game are nerfed – dungeons. So its just money grab. And decision to not make any more new legendaries for a long time because thay can not afford 6 devs while 70 are already working on next paid expansion….
its all slap in the face. money grab – nothing more, covered with a lot of info how many devs is working on what part of game – why should i care about that? we paid for hot, and thay said that part of that paid product will be done in regular intervals. suspending it indefinitely is not regular intervals.
plus a lot of people here defending them because we will now get better living story 3? maybe but only because of ls gated behind hot, so f2p buy the game.
I started another subscription based mmo 2 days ago… and suspend my playing here indefinitely – i will maybe just do daily log in. Debts paid quickly encourage friendship.
(edited by okultis.3170)
So… thay put everything thay can in HoT – like guild buffs, half of fractals – new legendaries that were said to be part of core game in 2013, grind for old legendaries is also in HoT… things left in core game are nerfed – dungeons. So its just money grab. And decision to not make any more new legendaries for a long time because thay can not afford 6 devs while 70 are already working on next paid expansion….
its all slap in the face. money grab – nothing more, covered with a lot of info how many devs is working on what part of game – why should i care about that? we paid for hot, and thay said that part of that paid product will be done in regular intervals. suspending it indefinitely is not regular intervals.
plus a lot of people here defending them because we will now get better living story 3? maybe but only because of ls gated behind hot, so f2p buy the game.i started another mmo 2 days ago… i suspend my playing here indefinitely.
I have to disagree, a “money grab” is a VERY bold statement…almost accusation. If you have enjoyed the game up until this announcement, why change your views on it? Yes I believe they did slip up this time as they have done in the past, but to say that HoT is a money grab just because a certain aspect of it has been ‘suspended’ doesn’t signify it as such in my opinion.
Not delivering what is paid for is money grab. you can call it scam also. for example – if you lend someone money and that person dont want to pay you your money back he or she wont say thay they wont return you your money. they will say that they cant do that for a moment but will some time in future. that was what happened with Anet. Thay said we will deliver soon… in regular intervals. now its we cant, not enough money, but dont worry, one day in future.
and ls3 is something already too late bacause we didnt get ls3 because of hot and ls was core game feature… and next expansion is like: i know i own you your money, but preaty pleeeeaaaase just give me some more and i will then pay you back this and all money you gave me before.
i doesnt matter did i enjoyed that person company.
(edited by okultis.3170)
As this post was begun by the head of Anet I’ll assume it’s being monitored. As cotent I paid for will not be delivered (new legendary weapons) and hasn’t been implemented (cool WvW) I am formally requesting a refund on HoT. I’ll play you the announcement video and cite each instance you as head of the company promised and failed to deliver on if necessary. I’ve played since GW1 and not seeing the same company I used to love.
I’ve always been critical of decisions I’ve disagreed with but until now I’ve haven’t been able to say for a fact that you sold me something you 100% didn’t deliver on.
I paid you aren’t delivering so I formally request a refund.
contact support. If they don’t provide it, do a charge back on the grounds of being scammed.
I think that’s a pretty shady thing to do, and even asking for a full refund at this point might be too much. Incomplete as it is, HoT has been out for over 5 months, and unless your purchase was very recent you’ve likely gotten a decent bit of gameplay out it, or at least had the opportunity to do so. I’ll be the first to grab a flaming pitchfork and march to Bellevue, WA to say that we should see some compensation for lack of receiving the advertised product, but I think asking for a full price refund is taking it too far.
I bought HoT not too long after it’s release, for a price I’m still not totally sure it was worth (around $37) in relation to the base game or other games. I did, however, get a decent amount of playtime out of that purchase, even if a lot of that time was spent repeating the same content. Repetition is expended in this genre to some degree, but I do feel that HoT’s content relied on that far too heavily. But, despite that and how I feel about this recent revelation, the time and enjoyment I did get from HoT does still mean something. To me, requesting a refund for a product I did use and get enjoyment/entertainment from is dishonest.
I’m not going to try and name a price I think it was worth, because there is little point in doing so. I made a reasonably informed decision (main reason I waited till after release) and bought HoT for a price I thought was acceptable at the time, based on what I knew. That was my decision and I am fine living with it. However, that was a decision also effected by advertisements and promises by Anet of future additions that were to be included in that purchase. Future additions that we now learn are not being delivered. It is this, and only this aspect, that I feel warrants the need for compensation to customers. (Recent purchases, and those purchased after this statement, while the HOT website still lists a set of legendary weapons as a feature, should have a full refund available)
I don’t know what the compensation should be, or how much value it should carry, but some compensation is certainly in order given the misleading terms HoT was sold under. To offer some suggestions, the most obvious would be Anet’s own currency of gems. Though, I’m sure that won’t mean anything to players that are leaving the game over this decision. We’re all obviously PC gamers here, so perhaps some arrangement with store credit/funds from another game retailer (Steam/Origin/etc) would be more suitable. I’m sure someone at Anet, or on these forums, can come up with something that would be acceptable for most people. An alternate compensation solution also avoids the difficulties of trying to handle refunds for game copies sold outside of Anet’s own store/website, ensuring that even those customers receive fair and equal treatment.
tldr;
We’ve been playing this thing for months now, and it’s a bit late to ask for a full refund for a product we’ve used and gotten entertainment from. However, some compensation is in order for failure to deliver on aspects of the game that were advertised as included features and likely impacted purchase decisions.
The only shady thing here is that I paid for something that was not and will not be delivered. Anet have officially broken their promises and as a consumer it’s my right to demand a refund. Last one out turn off the lights.
Buy To Play Guild Wars 2 2012-2015 – RIP
Unlucky since launch, RNG isn’t random
PugLife SoloQ
Unlucky since launch, RNG isn’t random
PugLife SoloQ
Sad to see how things have turned from bad to so so much worse in the past few weeks.
Went on a break with BDO launch but now I’m just sad to see GW2 is in such a state I’m not sure how to return… hopefully LS3 comes soon and reignites that spark.
Lord Sazed / Hasla the Huntress / Seaguard Hala
Seamarshal Belit / Initiate Xun Tsu / Mistwarden Roshone
Seafarer’s Rest | Northerner @ Dragon Season
Seamarshal Belit / Initiate Xun Tsu / Mistwarden Roshone
Seafarer’s Rest | Northerner @ Dragon Season
Customers pay, provider delivers. That’s the only thing we need to know as customers.
Did we pay? Yes.
Did ANET deliver? No.
Find a solution ANET. It’s not on the customers to fix the mess you got into. Take the devs from the teams that are not working on the promoted features.
(edited by Spira.4578)
I suggest MO takes a look at wooden potatoes latest video.
Mike O’Brien has been Mike O’Lyin’ and will now be Mike O’Flyin’ in business class indefinetly. Nice Mike O’Tryin’ to fool me.
I don’t care too much about new legendaries being postponed/cancelled. I don’t have enough playtime or in game resources to craft all pre and legendary weapons. I chose one or two and started the collections, and in the same time I started to gather materials in order to be ready for the day I’ll have the precursors.
On the other hand, I also don’t feel any content drought right now and I still have a lot of achievements, collections to do… not to mention PvP leagues which entertain me much more than expected.
But if switching 6 people from a content I am not even sure to start (precursor collections) helps to bring faster some piece of content that I will experience (living world) then I am totally fine with the decision.
But I keep on wondering one thing : since the hardest part of the new legendary weapons seems to not be art and modeling but the collection part, why not make the precursors as PvP or WvW rewards? It is less design for the collection and gives some exclusive rewards to those modes other than another backpack….. after all nothing says that only PvE activities are legendary.
Mike O’Brien has been Mike O’Lyin’ and will now be Mike O’Flyin’ in business class indefinetly. Nice Mike O’Tryin’ to fool me.
daaang boi
you gave him a mike o’fryin’
Nalhadia – Kaineng
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/advertising-marketing-internet-rules-road
I feel like you guys forgot to read this.
We’re definitely owed some form of compensation if we purchased HoT. This is absolutely treading in the realm of misleading consumers.
Quoting this so others can see and read the link. Thanks for finding this.
;)
I can’t say I’m a god.. others confirmed it tho..
ikr weird as kittens
ikr weird as kittens
None of us know what was going behind the scenes at anet. Mike inherited all these problems from his predecessor. Perhaps the previous director didn’t know or understand how to manage his team successfully. I personally don’t like his decision, as the end game for me is to make legendary weps. But if this is what it takes for the greater good, so be it. This distrust we have was brought by the previous directors empty promises not the current one.
There’re too many unknowns here to outright accuse Anet of shady practices. Even though there’s a blog post saying it takes a month to complete a legendary not including the art for it, that could have changed. For instance, after implementing the system to the existing legendary weapons Anet was probably reasonably certain they could do so with future weapons and wrote that post. But after initial feedback and releasing the next 3 maybe they found out a host of bugs and problems like requiring failed events and such and that piled up to the point where they have to rework the whole system(weapons, events, collections, etc.), making it prohibitively long to implement. Thus now Mo saying they have “six developers working on that, who could work on it for years to come”. So what was originally (and reasonably) expected to take months now requires several years to implement, possibly beyond GW2’s expected life span.
A lot of players would then ask “why not just hire more people to the legendary team?” Well, projects often don’t work that way. Imagine an issue of a comic. You have a writer, a penciler, an inker, and a colorist. Each worker cannot start their work until the previous person does their job. Let’s say the penciler is typically where production slows the most since that is where most of the visual art is made. Hiring more inkers and colorists aren’t going to speed that up because they’re waiting for the pencils. And hiring more pencilers won’t do anything because, well, try having multiple people draw a cohesive image on the same page, or even match each others art styles on separate pages. Some jobs simply can’t be sped up with more people. Legendary Weapons might be one of them.
Then there’s the “why not take people from the 70 man xpac 2 team instead of legendary team?” Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in completely different stages of production that require skill sets that simply don’t mix and match with each other. Who’s to say xpac 2 isn’t in a preproduction stage, and those 70 people are all concept artists, story boardists, script writers, people who specialize in coming up with new mechanics like gliding for HoT, you know, idea guys. While LW-like content is now in a production stage. They wouldn’t be idea guys, they’d be guys that make the ideas happen. Heck the 70 xpac people could have been LW people a few months ago while LW was in preproduction. If this is the case, it wouldn’t be surprising to take the legendary team that was in a stage of production, and fit them in a team that’s in production and it would be silly to take people off of the 70 man idea team and plop them in make idea happen team.
I’ve read a lot of posts saying HoT without the lengendaries is like being sold a car without wheels/engine/whatever components. I’d like to offer my own analogy. It’s like you wanted a red car, Anet said they could make it and give it to you. They have painted many cars already and are confident they can paint this one for you too. However, the red paint factory blows up, or the red paint making process is suddenly found to be substantially environmentally unfriendly and becomes illegal to produce, or a component of the red paint reacts poorly with the materials making up the body of this special car. Basically something that makes Anet red cars impossible to make for the foreseeable future. They offer you a blue car instead in the form of the OG legendary weapons crafting/collections. You still have all the functionality of the red car, you can make a legendary of any weapon type. You just can’t have the look you wanted.
Are you entitled to a refund in that situation? Yeah, I guess so. You paid for a red car, but Anet can’t provide it anymore. However, if you do ask for a refund I would hope you do so without being convinced that Mo/Anet are evil cash grabbers or that incompetence led to this, because this is not necessarily so. At least give them the benefit of the doubt.
If there’s any evidence whether or not Anet is evil cash-grabby or not, it’s that Mo took the time to tell us directly what is happening. If he were going for a cash grab, he would’ve stayed silent and continued clawing at gem sales till the game died. He didn’t, he wants us to know he will be honest with us.
Let’s also not forget Mo is a founder of Anet. He has led the team through core GW1, Factions, Nightfall, EotN, and core GW2. Even if HoT is a total flop (and I don’t think it’s a “total” flop), 1 flop after 5 fairly substantial successes should at least earn him the benefit of the doubt for a bit right?
Guys, I understand that you are all really upset…
I still think that what some of us fail to understand is that this is how game industry works… I explain myself… you should not buy a game because the devs promised to add more content after the release that will compensate what the game is lacking from the start, that is your fault, I’m sorry, but it is true. You can’t trust a company that far because kitten-ups happen and things change and maybe something that they really want to ship never comes to life because they can’t find a way to do it or they need too much time. It was their fault to make some of us continue to think that the ideas, that what was planned was definitive and that it was a promise, to never iterate on the issue saying that they are trying but they can’t be sure themselves to deliver, because that is how making a game works. There’s no magic wand that will make the game interesting and fun, it is a process of trying out, and some times you find that is much better to put something on hold instead of sacrificing the results. Would you prefer the Legendaries to come out half finished? Or broken? OMG anet is shipping half the work done again! That’s what you would read again on the forums.
That in my opinion is what MO is trying to do, he figured out that is not going in the right direction and instead of fake it and make people think that they are doing it, instead of shipping half backed content, he is telling us that they are placing the Legendaries on hold, it does not mean that they will never come, in the future I’m sure that they will return on them but for now they are focusing on something that have better chances to be delivered in a short time and in good state.
Still, even if things are not great recently, I look around and couldn’t find any MMO that keeps me engaged as Gw2, and I’m sure that this is the same for a ot of other people, and that is why we get so upset and feel betrayed but instead of leaving and migrate to another game we are still here complaining.
Expecting MO to say that the Hot release was a bad choice that it was a mess is not something that will ever happen! Just because, if he is still running the company it means he believes that even if things didn’t go as planned it is still a project worth the time. If MO says something like that, then you can be sure that GW2 has no future.
MO is trying to change things, obviously he is trying to do it for the better, not everyone agrees but none of us knows what is happening internally at Anet, what was the extension of the problem.
If things will be really better only time knows.
I will keep playing and if I finish every thing I like in this game, get too kittened off about some release or find something better, I will stop playing the game! If Anet doesn’t deliver any good content the next expansion isn’t worth that name I will not pay for anything else.
Guys, I understand that you are all really upset…
I still think that what some of us fail to understand is that this is how game industry works… I explain myself… you should not buy a game because the devs promised to add more content after the release that will compensate what the game is lacking from the start, that is your fault, I’m sorry, but it is true. You can’t trust a company that far because kitten-ups happen and things change and maybe something that they really want to ship never comes to life because they can’t find a way to do it or they need too much time. It was their fault to make some of us continue to think that the ideas, that what was planned was definitive and that it was a promise, to never iterate on the issue saying that they are trying but they can’t be sure themselves to deliver, because that is how making a game works. There’s no magic wand that will make the game interesting and fun, it is a process of trying out, and some times you find that is much better to put something on hold instead of sacrificing the results. Would you prefer the Legendaries to come out half finished? Or broken? OMG anet is shipping half the work done again! That’s what you would read again on the forums.
That in my opinion is what MO is trying to do, he figured out that is not going in the right direction and instead of fake it and make people think that they are doing it, instead of shipping half backed content, he is telling us that they are placing the Legendaries on hold, it does not mean that they will never come, in the future I’m sure that they will return on them but for now they are focusing on something that have better chances to be delivered in a short time and in good state.
Still, even if things are not great recently, I look around and couldn’t find any MMO that keeps me engaged as Gw2, and I’m sure that this is the same for a ot of other people, and that is why we get so upset and feel betrayed but instead of leaving and migrate to another game we are still here complaining.Expecting MO to say that the Hot release was a bad choice that it was a mess is not something that will ever happen! Just because, if he is still running the company it means he believes that even if things didn’t go as planned it is still a project worth the time. If MO says something like that, then you can be sure that GW2 has no future.
MO is trying to change things, obviously he is trying to do it for the better, not everyone agrees but none of us knows what is happening internally at Anet, what was the extension of the problem.
If things will be really better only time knows.
I will keep playing and if I finish every thing I like in this game, get too kittened off about some release or find something better, I will stop playing the game! If Anet doesn’t deliver any good content the next expansion isn’t worth that name I will not pay for anything else.
It seems you fail to understand how business works.
Customer pays. Provider delivers.
It’s not Customer pays. Prodiver delivers partialy and changes the deal on it’s own without consulting the customer.
It litereally doesn’t matter what the story behind the curtains is. From the customers point the only thing that we should ask is:
Did we get everything that we paid for?
And the answer to it is: no.
It literally doesn’t matter WHY – at least not to us. Same as they don’t care how we got the money to pay for their game we shouldn’t care how they are working on the promoted features.
Don’t sympatize with your seller, because as soon as you do, the seller will use your kindness – which is exactly what was and still is happening with this game.