Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,
Wanted to pop by and give another update on where we stand,
(…)

For all it’s worth: This is the kind of timely information and communication I (and maybe others) have asked for in the past and would like to see to continue in the future.

Thanks and Greetings.

ColinJohanson.2394:

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

We’re absolutely not bringing the China VIP system to NA/EU, correct.

thank you based Colin

ColinJohanson.2394:

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

We’re absolutely not bringing the China VIP system to NA/EU, correct.

Is there any chance we could get a statement from the developers on the changes made to the late-game personal story in the feature pack? Specifically the removal of the ‘greatest fear’ story arcs entirely and the reorganisation of key plot points that introduce numerous continuity errors and break pacing.

I’ve been playing since beta weekends. I’ve a bunch of 80s. I don’t power level my alts. I started a new Mesmer to check out the “new player experience.” It’s been fun. I like the pacing, I like the leveling rewards. I like the new arrow guide for things to do. (Would have loved that the first time through.) The only frustrations have been not being able to do skill challenges when I’m right next to them. I hate back tracking. Perhaps for the features that don’t actually “unlock” but are in the leveling pop-ups, there should be a different icon. (Exclamation point? Light bulb?) Agreed that the four elementalist areas should unlock MUCH faster. 1 per level would be nice. If rangers don’t have all skills for pets right away, I think that should also change. (All unlock within 5 levels maybe.) The ability for players with 80s starting alts to have all the locked systems unlock would be nice. Of course, all those items that take a char to level 20 that we’ve been getting for anniversaries come in handy about now, too!

anzenketh.3759:

munkiman.3068:

Can you tell us if the missing off the map POIs and Vistas are intended or bugs?

What about the skill point challenges? Are those meant to be locked out as well?

If it is a bug it would be something that should be a account-wide unlock. Because well obviously a level 80 already knows about them so no point on hiding it from them.

I’m also curious about the wardrobe, as i noticed (not on my toons, but others) that is also locked out early on. I wonder if that is intended as well?

ColinJohanson.2394:

Testing was done predominantly in the west focused on players who played guild wars 2 today, people who played gw2 at launch and left, people who heavily play other MMORPG’s, and people who heavily play RPG’s.

Did these players know they were part of a test? Or was it metrics? Either way, still hoping for an explanation of cow entertainment.

Colin, at around what levels should the utility slots be unlocking if they are misplaced wrong now?

I am having a very hard time believing that “entertaining cows” was the proper solution for players that found “pick up food, give to cow” confusing.

As regards the more important level gating, revamped introduction of the downed state, and the other changes made to enhance the feeling of progression, I’m incredibly surprised that the testing revealed so many aspects of the game that were confusing for new players.

Almost flabbergasted . Is guild wars 2 so innovative that even the cow feeding is-

Anyway-

Hopefully, once this is settled, it will provide ample incentive for alt creation, or at least not make it more tedious for players looking to entertain themselves while waiting for level 80 content.

I’m watching. Don’t forget about us after things are all said and done.

Most of what Colin says makes sense. Gating things farther away in level terms, but making level up more quickly so it takes the same amount of real time makes sense, and help feeling the first levels as more rewarding. Level up messages are a great addition. And maybe when you get rid of all these bugs (if all the things I think are bad are bugs) we’ll have a better levelling system than before.
But some decissions are quite weird. The cows you can no longer feed for instance. It’s not like an enviromental weapon to use in combat, is just a bundle you carry form point A to B. It’s not that hard to understand for anybody. In fact is a good way to teach players they can pick objects form the ground that maybe later will be useful.
The gating of downstate I can’t agree with too. It makes people help each other in the open world and creates a good sense of companionship instead of rivalry. It is nice to learn that lesson right form the start.
If some other things are indeed bugs (namely account unlocks) I’m happy with it.

Colin, I have a couple of questions I’ve seen on reddit.
I know that the company’s policy is not to discuss things being developed, but is there a chance that we could have a PTS for balance changes and this kind of system overhauls?
Some of us believe that our feedback could be more precise and overall helpful if it were given before a release where most of the community reaction is filled with passionate opinions and a bit of confusion.

Also, this is a bit unrelated, but regarding to overall patches, Can we expect the biweekly advertised patches on a regular schedule next year? I find it to be a huge selling point of this game (and have let me convince many friends to try it out), but in practice, we have biweekly updates for very short periods of time, and is not constant.

and if I’m lucky to have an answer: SAB! revert a bit of warrior changes (bring us RU’s arcing slice please!) and thanks for the good work!

MatthewMedina.5419:

SkiTz.4590:

You want to retain players? that’s not going to help. No one is going to keep playing this game because of the early levels…every MMORPG maker knows that endgame is how you retain players, not the early stages that get completed in less than a week…. so for the 10000th time, please work on a CONTENT PATCH FOR VETERANS. thats how you get new players to commit to this game and stay commited…. not by this pointless NPE.

I want to clarify one point I’ve been seeing expressed. This is one type of retention. There’s another type of retention where new players try the game and churn out before they even get to the point where they’re seeing the potential the game has to offer. Yes, a certain amount of people will just do that; they’ll log in to see what it’s about, have their curiosity satisfied, and move on. But we were seeing a lot of places where people who would otherwise have become active users were churning out prematurely because of the issues that we’re addressing with the NPE.

As Colin stated above, we can’t talk in detail about the ongoing development to drive retention for our veteran players, but I just wanted to make the point that the NPE was deliberately designed to address the early game retention issues, and ensure that Guild Wars 2 can benefit from a strong and steady influx of new players into the game.

It all falls on your metrics I guess, but myself and a large amount of guildies had absolutely no problems with the pre-patch 1-80 system… we thorughly enjoyed our path to 80, the problem started AFTER we hit 80…

this is just my opinion though… focus should be on veteran retention..you are at bigger risk if veterans aren’t happy, New players are just a small %…Chances are, there are more vets leaving the game than new players coming… and thats strictly on the fact theres hardly been anything meaningful in terms of content…and you still won’t tell us anything other than “We are working on it” QoL changes, while nice are just that , QoL, not content

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

How about instead of wasting over half your entire dev team on something that doesn’t benefit(and actually HURTS) your current playerbase, you use that dev time to add relevant content to the game for people actually playing the game?

So much wasted dev time on a 100% worthless feature that all existing players mutually agree upon is BAD, when you could’ve used this dev time to create new content for all of us to play.

You need to completely change your priorities, because if they simply are “gain more new players” instead of “keep existing players still playing and make them happier with more things to do”, you have no idea what you’re doing.

Sorry to say this, but the fact you’re still releasing bugged and obviously broken content 2 years after release is laughable, do you have no pride in your work? Can you not hire a competent QA team? Test things before you release them, for once, please?

TLDR: Spend less dev resources and time on pointless features no one wants, and instead use that time and resources on creating new content that’s long lasting and will actually keep your current playerbase playing.

Maybe a specification of which of the changes were unintended, and how they were intended to be?

10/10 backpedalling.

ColinJohanson.2394:

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

We’re absolutely not bringing the China VIP system to NA/EU, correct.

Thank you for that absolute answer and being patient with us for being temperamental about the vast changes most of which we are “Screaming Bloody Murder” over.

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

What is the VIP system?

munkiman.3068:

anzenketh.3759:

munkiman.3068:

Can you tell us if the missing off the map POIs and Vistas are intended or bugs?

What about the skill point challenges? Are those meant to be locked out as well?

If it is a bug it would be something that should be a account-wide unlock. Because well obviously a level 80 already knows about them so no point on hiding it from them.

I’m also curious about the wardrobe, as i noticed (not on my toons, but others) that is also locked out early on. I wonder if that is intended as well?

Can’t confirm right now but I believe my level 11 I started just to try out the NPE was able to access the wardrobe. I could see this being a bug if it is not account-wide unlocked.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I am having a very hard time believing that “entertaining cows” was the proper solution for players that found “pick up food, give to cow” confusing.

This is only the case during the first few levels. The poor cows got the short end of the stick they may starve but will will be plenty entertained.

It was not that picking up something and feeding it to the cow was confusing. It was that the players skills were replaced while a player was learning the new skills. I personally think a better option for feeding the cow was to treat it as a collector event not a environmental weapon. Perhaps it can’t be a collector event as it is a heart.

I think I’m understanding what’s happening now, they want to implement a free trial system as has been rumored awhile, but need to make sure that they get as many people to hang on after the trial period as they can.

eisberg.2379:

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

What is the VIP system?

Premium access to goods and services using real $$… its in china’s GW2, you can google it for more details

MatthewMedina.5419:

SkiTz.4590:

You want to retain players? that’s not going to help. No one is going to keep playing this game because of the early levels…every MMORPG maker knows that endgame is how you retain players, not the early stages that get completed in less than a week…. so for the 10000th time, please work on a CONTENT PATCH FOR VETERANS. thats how you get new players to commit to this game and stay commited…. not by this pointless NPE.

I want to clarify one point I’ve been seeing expressed. This is one type of retention. There’s another type of retention where new players try the game and churn out before they even get to the point where they’re seeing the potential the game has to offer. Yes, a certain amount of people will just do that; they’ll log in to see what it’s about, have their curiosity satisfied, and move on. But we were seeing a lot of places where people who would otherwise have become active users were churning out prematurely because of the issues that we’re addressing with the NPE.

As Colin stated above, we can’t talk in detail about the ongoing development to drive retention for our veteran players, but I just wanted to make the point that the NPE was deliberately designed to address the early game retention issues, and ensure that Guild Wars 2 can benefit from a strong and steady influx of new players into the game.

well over think it agian because for some reason you picked the worst possible way to handle.

MatthewMedina.5419:

SkiTz.4590:

You want to retain players? that’s not going to help. No one is going to keep playing this game because of the early levels…every MMORPG maker knows that endgame is how you retain players, not the early stages that get completed in less than a week…. so for the 10000th time, please work on a CONTENT PATCH FOR VETERANS. thats how you get new players to commit to this game and stay commited…. not by this pointless NPE.

I want to clarify one point I’ve been seeing expressed. This is one type of retention. There’s another type of retention where new players try the game and churn out before they even get to the point where they’re seeing the potential the game has to offer. Yes, a certain amount of people will just do that; they’ll log in to see what it’s about, have their curiosity satisfied, and move on. But we were seeing a lot of places where people who would otherwise have become active users were churning out prematurely because of the issues that we’re addressing with the NPE.

As Colin stated above, we can’t talk in detail about the ongoing development to drive retention for our veteran players, but I just wanted to make the point that the NPE was deliberately designed to address the early game retention issues, and ensure that Guild Wars 2 can benefit from a strong and steady influx of new players into the game.

And now you’re churning out the veteren players that were thinking of making alts but now can’t bring themselves to do it because of the asinine way skills are locked, Elite at 40 is horrible, at most it should have stayed at 30, if you wanted to level gate so badly you should have done it in a way that everything would have been unlocked at the same time it would have before the “feature pack” (I don’t consider level gates as a “feature” I consider them bad design.) Additionally locking the downed skills means that when a new player gets downed for the first time they’re going to be completely screwed if it was in a fight with multiple enemies since they won’t have any utility to assist in survival at that point only 1 and 4, and 4 is interrupted on ANY damage.

Elementalist being locked out of earth attunement until 24 was also quite silly as is locking the last underwater skill until 23. (earth attunement was considerably earlier pre-“feature pack” and was a heck of a lot less confusing than it is now (why am I being kitten for longer?)

This “feature pack” feels like a slap in the face with a steel gauntlet to veteran players. I for one won’t be spending any more money on this game for the foreseeable future due to it. (lets be real I haven’t spent any money since the “living story” first appeared and I realized that there wasn’t going to be any new dungeons)

eisberg.2379:

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

What is the VIP system?

basicly a motnhly ala pay to win faster

lordkabal.4857:

MatthewMedina.5419:

SkiTz.4590:

You want to retain players? that’s not going to help. No one is going to keep playing this game because of the early levels…every MMORPG maker knows that endgame is how you retain players, not the early stages that get completed in less than a week…. so for the 10000th time, please work on a CONTENT PATCH FOR VETERANS. thats how you get new players to commit to this game and stay commited…. not by this pointless NPE.

I want to clarify one point I’ve been seeing expressed. This is one type of retention. There’s another type of retention where new players try the game and churn out before they even get to the point where they’re seeing the potential the game has to offer. Yes, a certain amount of people will just do that; they’ll log in to see what it’s about, have their curiosity satisfied, and move on. But we were seeing a lot of places where people who would otherwise have become active users were churning out prematurely because of the issues that we’re addressing with the NPE.

As Colin stated above, we can’t talk in detail about the ongoing development to drive retention for our veteran players, but I just wanted to make the point that the NPE was deliberately designed to address the early game retention issues, and ensure that Guild Wars 2 can benefit from a strong and steady influx of new players into the game.

And now you’re churning out the veteren players that were thinking of making alts but now can’t bring themselves to do it because of the asinine way skills are locked, Elite at 40 is horrible, at most it should have stayed at 30, if you wanted to level gate so badly you should have done it in a way that everything would have been unlocked at the same time it would have before the “feature pack” (I don’t consider level gates as a “feature” I consider them bad design.) Additionally locking the downed skills means that when a new player gets downed for the first time they’re going to be completely screwed if it was in a fight with multiple enemies since they won’t have any utility to assist in survival at that point only 1 and 4, and 4 is interrupted on ANY damage.

Elementalist being locked out of earth attunement until 24 was also quite silly as is locking the last underwater skill until 23. (earth attunement was considerably earlier pre-“feature pack” and was a heck of a lot less confusing than it is now (why am I being kitten for longer?)

This “feature pack” feels like a slap in the face with a steel gauntlet to veteran players. I for one won’t be spending any more money on this game for the foreseeable future due to it. (lets be real I haven’t spent any money since the “living story” first appeared and I realized that there wasn’t going to be any new dungeons)

If there was an option to just disable it for the sake of vet players who make alts, that would be awesome lol

I can play my personal story once I exited the starting dungeon area in the old system. Now I have to grind all the way to level 10. That’s not " the things unlocked at later levels are earned at about the same time period you used to start using them in the old system in actual real game time " Colin.

I personally haven’t tested the new player experience myself, so I don’t have an opinion on it yet (what a weird conept, I know ;-)).

Just wanted to thank Colin and Matthew for the information updates!

I am looking forward to trying out the new system, once the bugs are fixed (and also to finding out what the improvements for players with mulitple alts will be in the future).

ShroomOneUp.6913:

eisberg.2379:

SkiTz.4590:

Colin, just clear up one thing – There is 0% chance EU/NA GW2 gets a VIP system?

What is the VIP system?

basicly a motnhly ala pay to win faster

I did a google search, and only found that they get a bigger name in purple and a discount in the Gem Store. What part of it is Pay to Win?

ColinJohanson.2394:

- There is misinformation…

this does not negate the MANY things in the patch that actually are true and far more egregious than that. and dodging, imo, should be the FIRST thing you teach new players as it is so integral to survival same with the downed state. and why there are not any downed state skills/elite skills that players can actually read and become acquainted with OUTSIDE of the actual state in the skills panel is beyond me.

- There are some things happening at the wrong levels…

why you guys would want new players to do dungeons without their full compliment of at least all their skills (because the current trait unlocking system is so…aaaah) is beyond me

- Not all of these changes were made as ways to teach the game, some of them are to provide a better sense of pacing, reward and progression…

this further confines new players ability to play the game they want to and instead the way you deem then able to. that is one issue many are having with these changes; they fundamentally change the way players play the game and when i tell someone new to “just do whatever you feel like to progress”, that does NOT hold true under this current system. there should be an opt-in/out selection during character creation because if you don’t put one in all you are doing is reducing the freedom of choice of players and not as you hope increasing their fun and excitment, because people play and enjoy content differently.

With the addition of the new rewards…

this could end up backfiring big time as if you level very fast early on say 1 level every 5 mins and then get to 20 and start leveling at one level per hour that could make people feel that the game progression has now become very sluggish all of a sudden and not wish to continue.

- In general…

if the development cycle was faster, more transparent, was more robust and lead to more tangible results, you might have a point. but it seems like you are catering to a non-existent crowd atm and not your current player-base. the veteran layers want many things to keep them entertained from rolling new alts, to new dungeons, to new WvW mechanics, new tPvP game-modes and better and MUCH more frequent balancing. now had we received or known that immediately after we would be getting the things we want, there probably would not be this backlash (which can be seen as being more about the general dismissive nature of development towards veteran players based on what is being focused on and what is being developed now). the ANet of today cannot walk and chew gum at the same time from what you have admitted you are not working on for veteran players in the foreseeable future.

- Over a years worth of testing…

i hope your metrics will also show you why veteran players stop playing and don’t return. many of us were waiting for the patch thinking that it’s been 6 months, surely ANet have not forgotten about us. but with very little new and fulling engaging long-term content (or in the case of a this feature patch; the ability to enjoy existing content) coupled with no new dungeons, no new changes to the structure and mechanics of WvW, not even any new Marionette type encounters from the living story, no new weapons, races, etc how long can we veteran players be retained at this rate?

- Finally, I want to add that a few things (hello traits!)…

it’s been 6 months already, you cannot expect people to keep waiting forever.

Thank you Colin for addressing many of out concerns (esp. that VIP system). I have one more question I hope you answer. Is it true that some parts of personal story were removed from the game?

MatthewMedina.5419:

As Colin stated above, we can’t talk in detail about the ongoing development to drive retention for our veteran players, but I just wanted to make the point that the NPE was deliberately designed to address the early game retention issues, and ensure that Guild Wars 2 can benefit from a strong and steady influx of new players into the game.

Adding level restrictions rather than tutorials will bore new players, causing them to leave.

PvP already has a tutorial area the first time you enter Heart of the Mists, and one of GW2’s selling points is that anyone can PvP from level 1. Hiding PvP behind a level gate will frustrate any PvP-minded new players, and make them feel like they’ve been lied to.

Diving goggles are really easy to use. The skills are just for show, and the goggles are generally away from combat. New players have often been excited to discover them. I remember first discovering the diving goggles in LA during a beta weekend, and telling my friends about it. They all brought their characters there and we dove off together. It was great. Low level characters are now met with the message “You cannot use this object at this time” and no explanation.

Low level characters in starter zones no longer encounter interrupts or conditions. Skill slots and class mechanics are behind steep level gates now. Any new players considering moving from another MMO to GW2 will now see combat as “move to enemy, autoattack until it dies, repeat”, and quickly come to the conclusion that GW2 combat is boring and repetitive.

This goes completely against the idea of trying to retain new players.

[/quote]

As Colin stated above, we can’t talk in detail about the ongoing development to drive retention for our veteran players, but I just wanted to make the point that the NPE was deliberately designed to address the early game retention issues, and ensure that Guild Wars 2 can benefit from a strong and steady influx of new players into the game.[/quote]

Well I think that telling us some details on future plans may help restore some community faith in the dev team right now. Heck, you have changed course on every other promise that you have made, why not on this?

Zeus CM.1692:

Thank you Colin for addressing many of out concerns (esp. that VIP system). I have one more question I hope you answer. Is it true that some parts of personal story were removed from the game?

What about Tonn? Where’s Tonn, Colin? Where’s Tonn? #NeverForget #TonnRIP #WheresTonn

Fos.4185:

I can play my personal story once I exited the starting dungeon area in the old system. Now I have to grind all the way to level 10. That’s not " the things unlocked at later levels are earned at about the same time period you used to start using them in the old system in actual real game time " Colin.

That was not changed for that reason. The reason why they changed that was to fix the flow of the story itself. This in my opinion was a required change. my wife stated her big gripe was that she did not like the frequent interruptions to the story bits with leveling. Now she won’t be interrupted on new characters she plays. She was a little confused about the change (She does not read patch notes) but she basically took it as oh so I need to level up more to access them ok.

ColinJohanson.2394:

balance issues where certain levels appear to be very out of whack, etc.

Yeah. That sort of happens when you implement completely new (seemingly arbitrary) stat thresholds in a game which formerly didn’t have them when said game also has various scaling systems. I’ve been saying it for a long time, Arenanet is too ambitious with a lot of the changes they try to implement, and that’s more true in this patch than any patch released in a long while.

I appreciate that Anet wants to change the game, as there’s always room for improvement. But, the level balancing issues should have been EXPECTED, and even if nobody expected them they should have been discovered in testing for changes this big. Did you guys test leveling up in the new system before it was released on the live servers? Did nobody notice that the level scaling seemed to be off, which is something I noticed within HOURS of semi-casual play?

I’m sorry, but I really can’t see how this patch got released like this unless you guys really just didn’t test it at all, or you just tried to do way too much way too quickly, or both. According to the best evidence so far, the level scaling problem is more of an oversight than it is a bug. It appears to be a failure in planning, and not in the implementation of that planning.

I’d really like to give you guys the benefit of the doubt, but to be honest I just didn’t feel rewarded in the new reward system. I got a couple of shiny trinkets from gaining some levels, and leveling to 15 was much faster (about 80% faster according to my estimation) but other than those few things I didn’t really feel like I was getting much that I didn’t get from leveling up in the old system. Add that to the fact that the fundamental design seems to be not thought out properly before implementation, and some horrendous bugs on top of that. I think Arenanet needs to do a little bit more forward thinking with some of these patches, particularly the ones which alter the entire leveling experience like the April trait overhaul and this current patch, although I don’t remember the April patch causing nearly as many balance issues. Maybe it did, I don’t know. I wasn’t leveling a new character, then. I was playing on 80’s during the April patch.

At least answer me one question: why couldn’t these changes be worked on and released individually over time so the kinks could be worked out? Did you want to “wow” us with a huge update? Were a lot of these changes just copied from the China version of the game, as some posters have claimed? It just seems strange to me to do all of this stat and skill overhaul when each of these things change the difficulty curve of various parts of the game, particularly at mid-level. Couldn’t you maybe have changed the skill unlock levels first, and then if there were no problems with that introduce the new stat changes on level up? I really don’t see the logic in gating all of this skills at once and changing the entire level-up mechanics at once. Is it easier for the programmers to do it all at once? Because, I certainly don’t see how it is easier to actually balance so many changes to leveling all at once.

I know that when the traits were changed, monsters were made easier since lower level characters no longer had access to traits or stats from traits. Were such considerations even taken with these new stat thresholds? It looks like someone just slapped a completely new design on the leveling system without much thought as to the in-game ramification that the new leveling system would have on existing in-game mechanics which someone with even a limited experience in programming could have predicted.

A quote from the Forbes website on customer retention:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexlawrence/2012/11/01/five-customer-retention-tips-for-entrepreneurs/

“Never Underestimate the Value of Retention

For those who feel that customer retention plays a relatively minor role in helping a company grow a healthy bottom line, here are a few statistics you might be interested in. According to Bain and Co., a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%. And if those numbers don’t impress you, Gartner Group statistics tell us that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers. Still not sold on customer retention? One final statistic provided by Lee Resource Inc. should give you plenty to think about: Attracting new customers will cost your company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer."

Just sayin’

anzenketh.3759:

Fos.4185:

I can play my personal story once I exited the starting dungeon area in the old system. Now I have to grind all the way to level 10. That’s not " the things unlocked at later levels are earned at about the same time period you used to start using them in the old system in actual real game time " Colin.

That was not changed for that reason. The reason why they changed that was to fix the flow of the story itself. This in my opinion was a required change. my wife stated her big gripe was that she did not like the frequent interruptions to the story bits with leveling. Now she won’t be interrupted on new characters she plays. She was a little confused about the change (She does not read patch notes) but she basically took it as oh so I need to level up more to access them ok.

Key farming was the real reason behind this. It’s no secret…

This is frankly one of the poorest and most artificial attempts to force a sense of progression I’ve ever seen. And this is coming from me, who have defended ANET on a vast majority of its decisions in the past and play this game religiously.

The most inexcusable change would be to hide POIs from low levels. Why would you disincentivize map exploration in a game where that is a central pillar? I don’t want to have to come back later to a zone I already mostly explored just to get the POIs or blindly try to hit the POIs where I remember them on my new alts. That’s just unnecessary and frustrating.

Since this seems to be the go-to thread for this topic, I’m just going to ask if there is any official word on certain concerns I and others had noticed:

- Stat-ups being levels apart is now a serious concern when downscaled. Until you hit the next “stat level”, downscaling will actually weaken you as you level.

- Pushing Elite slots back to level 40 is going to cause many people to consider Ascalon Catacombs to require level 40 now.

- And I seriously have no idea what the thought process about gating map exploration is. As someone who loves to explore with new alts, I find the story unlock system feasible, but it appears as if you are actively disincentivising exploration!

This update has brought a lot of amazing things to the game, but this one aspect, with the new player level-gating, is really looking like a step in the wrong direction; I do not see how locking things up on the high shelf is supposed to encourage players to do things.

Also, did I just hear right? The “Greatest Fear” story arc was removed? There’s still one variant of that I hadn’t yet tried! (Also, how would this impact people who were in progress on it?)

Why did it take two days to clarify that there are "bugs’ in this new system?

If you would simply have asked players on this forum if they thought time-gating skills would help the game they would all have replied: NO.

Maybe you should ask the players before making these dramatic changes.

Players want new dungeons
Players want Guild halls and GvG
Players want new areas to explore
Players want more skills
Players want SAB to keep going

Players don’t want more grinding
Players don’t want more time-gating
Players don’t want slower levelling up

Duke Darkwood.4237:

Also, did I just hear right? The “Greatest Fear” story arc was removed? There’s still one variant of that I hadn’t yet tried! (Also, how would this impact people who were in progress on it?)

#WheresTonn

EnemyCrusher.7324:

MatthewMedina.5419:

As Colin stated above, we can’t talk in detail about the ongoing development to drive retention for our veteran players, but I just wanted to make the point that the NPE was deliberately designed to address the early game retention issues, and ensure that Guild Wars 2 can benefit from a strong and steady influx of new players into the game.

Adding level restrictions rather than tutorials will bore new players, causing them to leave.

PvP already has a tutorial area the first time you enter Heart of the Mists, and one of GW2’s selling points is that anyone can PvP from level 1. Hiding PvP behind a level gate will frustrate any PvP-minded new players, and make them feel like they’ve been lied to.

Diving goggles are really easy to use. The skills are just for show, and the goggles are generally away from combat. New players have often been excited to discover them. I remember first discovering the diving goggles in LA during a beta weekend, and telling my friends about it. They all brought their characters there and we dove off together. It was great. Low level characters are now met with the message “You cannot use this object at this time” and no explanation.

Low level characters in starter zones no longer encounter interrupts or conditions. Skill slots and class mechanics are behind steep level gates now. Any new players considering moving from another MMO to GW2 will now see combat as “move to enemy, autoattack until it dies, repeat”, and quickly come to the conclusion that GW2 combat is boring and repetitive.

This goes completely against the idea of trying to retain new players.

PvP is still accessible at level 1. Someone that came to the game for PvP was likely referred by a friend who told them it can be done at level 1. They are also likely a veteran gamer and are likely to look up instructions(Note to self update the wiki) and will find out that they can just use a hotkey to access it.

Diving goggles are accessible at or before level 11. Lions Arch is level 35. See my comment above on why they removed feeding the cow to understand why it may be gated. It may also be a thing that should have been a account-wide unlock.

As for point 3 conditions are introduced early on. Information about them happens at level 13. So within the first 3 hours of gameplay. You don’t want to frontload a player.

ColinJohanson.2394:

- There are some things happening at the wrong levels. Things like utility skills and elites are intended to come at approx. the same time they used to in actual game time, we sped up leveling for levels 1-15 and had them slide back in levels a bit to offset that pacing, they are not currently where we want them to be in the level up system. This was an oversight, and will absolutely be fixed.

Does this also include the profession f1-4 skills?

Nick.6972:

Why did it take two days to clarify that there are "bugs’ in this new system?

What’s even worse is when major media outlets (PC Gamer) are picking up on the story and spreading the news about the player reactions…

Where is your marketing/PR department? You do realize we live in the world of the internet and anything 24+ hours old without a response of at least “oops, it’s broke” is a major and massive shortfall.

ColinJohanson.2394:

- There are bugs! We’ve seen the content direction system (the little arrow) pointing people at super high level maps when it shouldn’t, some systems/features not unlocking as intended for all characters on your account once your first learns them, some systems level gated that aren’t intended to be, balance issues where certain levels appear to be very out of whack, etc. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, our team is working to figure out what happened here and fix these as quickly as possible.

That isn’t just this patch. That happens every patch.

I dont think I remember a single patch (big or small) coming out without bugs and that didnt unintentionally break other aspects of the game. Often new bugs are introduced and other times there are unintended consequences that could easily have been spotted/predicted with a bare minimum of testing.

There is unambiguously a QA issue with your process. This reflects poorly on the game and casts doubt in your ability to realise future projects.

For instance, when the megaserver was announced I had absolutely no expectation that it would be working as described/intended, and it wasnt. 5 months and a whole feature pack later and we have entirely new preposterous bugs (i.e., join missing).

We aren’t your beta test.

Please take a long look at your QA process.

I’m very appreciative of Colin’s post in this thread. I think it is definitely needed and overdue.

I haven’t experienced the new content yet, but the posts I’ve seen and what I’ve read has impacted me, how I feel about the game, and how I feel about recommending it to other users.

Without the context that has been provided here it is easy to get sucked into the hype. I still have concerns. But now I understand more clearly that this is still a work in progress, and that ArenaNet acknowledge that it requires refinement. That is huge. And important. And it wasn’t clear before.

My recommendation to the community is that we take this to heart, continue to provide constructive feedback and let’s allow ArenaNet the time needed to refine this a little more. I’m not going to lie. I have expectations that this will be done soon so that the team can start investing in the content that’s going to keep me and my friends playing for years to come. It’s out of the gate now and in the public domain, and that introduces social media challenges that need dealing with.

I think you guys at ArenaNet have some reconsidering to do too. I applaud your intent, your vision, your goals, and we allow that mistakes will happen. I love the hugely understated changes addressing the performance issues from the original SouthSun launch to the sheer scalability and culling fixes and the mega events we saw towards the end of season 1. It shows that you listen, and that you are responding to community requests. Wardrobes show this, Reward changes show this (yes I know there’s still an unhappy crowd), PVP and WvW changes show this. These are great and positive things we’ve had.

It’s great that you want to bring in and engage new players. But…. to sell something like this you need to manage dialogue better. You need to look at the client experience (us!) and you need to consider the worst possible outcome, and consider how you manage that. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. You also need to enable your players to deal with change. That is a continuous process, and it starts well before launch, its built up around launch, and then followed through AFTER launch with commentary and quick acknowledgment of where things could be better if those points are made. Colin’s post needs more profile, media outlets need some comment to stem articles like that PCG one, or at least some channel for 2-way discussion (constructive of course). I know you have your policies, chaps. Don’t get rid of them, but PLEASE REVIEW THEM like you do the game mechanics and reconsider how you bring us on your journey!

Manage the journey and hopefully we don’t need to have another incident like this.

I’m a big promoter of this game (my friends think I must be on commission), and I truly want people to see everything this game has and CAN offer to them – as much as you do, truly. Emotionally, I’ve been on this journey with you for many years (even before the game launched) and I have an interest in its success. Work with us by explaining your thinking and let us share our concerns and let’s show how the most friendly MMO community can enable this game to blow every other MMO out of the water.

The surprise events and story stuff – keep that secret, but these basics of playability don’t need to be so hush hush.

Broom.2561:

Reyouka.7039:

….. Rangers can’t actually control their pets, one of the main draws of the class, until level 24. Are you freaking kittenting me?

pet controls come up at level 22, pet swapping at 24. I would have deleted my ranger long before that if I’d had to level it that way. We barely have control as is, why make it even WORSE??!

Pet Controls are level 5 Swapping comes with that as well (if you’ve found another pet to charm), Alt Skill is level 13 same time you get your first Utility.

Duke Darkwood.4237:

Since this seems to be the go-to thread for this topic, I’m just going to ask if there is any official word on certain concerns I and others had noticed:

- Stat-ups being levels apart is now a serious concern when downscaled. Until you hit the next “stat level”, downscaling will actually weaken you as you level.

- Pushing Elite slots back to level 40 is going to cause many people to consider Ascalon Catacombs to require level 40 now.

- And I seriously have no idea what the thought process about gating map exploration is. As someone who loves to explore with new alts, I find the story unlock system feasible, but it appears as if you are actively disincentivising exploration!

Also, did I just hear right? The “Greatest Fear” story arc was removed? There’s still one variant of that I hadn’t yet tried! (Also, how would this impact people who were in progress on it?)

1.) This was a bug confirmed in another post somewhere. Scaling was not working as intended.
2.) Please see Colin’s post in this thread.
3.) Disable the compass. This was put in there for people who are not used to exploration inside of a game to give them a little guidance to explore.

I would like to know the answer if the “Greatest Fear” story arc was removed. It is possible it was just moved. So I either need to wait for a answer from ArenaNet or experience it myself.

MatthewMedina.5419:

I want to clarify one point I’ve been seeing expressed. This is one type of retention. There’s another type of retention where new players try the game and churn out before they even get to the point where they’re seeing the potential the game has to offer. Yes, a certain amount of people will just do that; they’ll log in to see what it’s about, have their curiosity satisfied, and move on. But we were seeing a lot of places where people who would otherwise have become active users were churning out prematurely because of the issues that we’re addressing with the NPE.

As Colin stated above, we can’t talk in detail about the ongoing development to drive retention for our veteran players, but I just wanted to make the point that the NPE was deliberately designed to address the early game retention issues, and ensure that Guild Wars 2 can benefit from a strong and steady influx of new players into the game.

I am a big supporter of the things you guys have done. I like both LS1 and LS2. And while I appreciate what you and Colin have said, even I don’t like what I see here on the new leveling experience. I love to level alts. It is part of the fun for me. And the changes certainly puts a damper on that experience for me.

Additionally, after playing for 2 years beginning with the head start, we get this HUGE build up from you guys about leveling for new characters? Sorry, but that is disheartening. And how does this keep a from-day-one person excited? I know you say you are working on things for the veterans, but even I am not feeling the love and I am a very patient guy.

I think it is great that you guys are trying to keep early game people playing, but where is the bone thrown to the loyal people who have played for two years?

Carbon Footprint.3421:

A quote from the Forbes website on customer retention:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexlawrence/2012/11/01/five-customer-retention-tips-for-entrepreneurs/

“Never Underestimate the Value of Retention

For those who feel that customer retention plays a relatively minor role in helping a company grow a healthy bottom line, here are a few statistics you might be interested in. According to Bain and Co., a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%. And if those numbers don’t impress you, Gartner Group statistics tell us that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers. Still not sold on customer retention? One final statistic provided by Lee Resource Inc. should give you plenty to think about: Attracting new customers will cost your company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer."

Just sayin’

no one is arguing that ANet should not retain customers, what people such as myself are saying is that ANet are going after the WRONG people to retain first (non-existent/brand new players) and not their current customers.