Guild Wars 2

killcannon.2576:

I don’t know if it’s as clear cut as a 50/50 split in the forum community.

As has been stated many times, the players who are content with the game as it is usually don’t come to the forums to tell everything they’re having fun, so the results are skewed towards the unhappy players. But on any given subject I’d say that it’s more like 60/20/20 broken down into “Doesn’t like X,” “Likes X,” and “Trolling.”

killcannon.2576:

I don’t know if it’s as clear cut as a 50/50 split in the forum community.

I don’t think he is being literal when he says that.

90% of people would agree with me.

tolunart.2095:

killcannon.2576:

I don’t know if it’s as clear cut as a 50/50 split in the forum community.

As has been stated many times, the players who are content with the game as it is usually don’t come to the forums to tell everything they’re having fun, so the results are skewed towards the unhappy players. But on any given subject I’d say that it’s more like 60/20/20 broken down into “Doesn’t like X,” “Likes X,” and “Trolling.”

I think there is more to it than “Forum goer A wants to turn GW2 into a WoW clone”, and “The defenders of GW2 as we see it”.

But I see why you and some others wouldn’t see it like that.

AntiGw.9367:

killcannon.2576:

I don’t know if it’s as clear cut as a 50/50 split in the forum community.

I don’t think he is being literal when he says that.

90% of people would agree with me.

I’m sure he will say he doesn’t if it suits his argument.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

Insignya.8625:

Reds themselves can start a thread asking people what they like or don’t like in the game, have a Q&A Session or collect poll results. Lots of games have a system where they collect community feedback, like Planetside 2’s Road Map. And at this point it’s kinda necessary – Guild Wars 2’s following a path many don’t find worth it to follow anymore and a blog post won’t hold their interest for long because, again, it’s nothing specific.

In 2013 devs are expected to seep through community feedback and find what’s best. For that they create their own systems or borrow somebody else’s. It’s another major part of future-proofing a game, you can’t not have an established method of taking the good criticism out of the bad.

But in case you haven’t noticed, the community feedback is mixed. That is to say, about half the people want what you want and about half the people want what I want…and they’re mutually exclusive.

So maybe devs ARE listening to community feedback and your side doesn’t have the numbers you think it does.

I don’t know if it’s as clear cut as a 50/50 split in the forum community.

I find I agree or disagree with different things different people bring up. For example :Sometimes I agree with points of view that you espouse, sometimes I disagree. I agree with some of what the OP is saying, and disagree with others. I find it’s that way with most of the posts I read, and I have the feeling that the devs are the same way. While every single idea may not be worthwhile when taken as a whole, they all offer something of value.

I think there are more people on the forum with ideas than just “Us” and “Them”. Unless the us and them break down to the people who actually discuss a given topic, and those who just continually shout that others are wrong without actually adding anything to the topic.

Sure, I was simplifying, but it doesn’t change my point at all.

Someone claimed Anet doesn’t listen to anyone, but usually, people say that when Anet doesn’t listen to them.

If the community is split on lots of things, even if it’s not just a them and us situation, then what I said stands. There’s no way to know Anet doesn’t listen.

And I suspect they do listen. They just aren’t guaranteed to react to all the advise and if that’s not the case, it’s impossible to say whether they listen or not.

In spite of that, those who don’t like the way the game is changing are going to claim they don’t listen, whether Anet listens or not.

I tried to find to some negative aspects of your thread but I can only agree with every single letter you wrote !!

I followed this game for 3 years, waiting patciently for it to be released… bought a new computer because I couldn’t play it on my laptop !

But I quit the game, mainly because my full guild, around 85 members left,…
And I guess the only reason why I got stuck for such a long time with the game is because of the guild, I wanted to build a good community but in the end a guild is just pointless since you have no challenging content to do.

Yes you have the guild challenges, which is also something I was looking forward to but for some reason this system is focused on big guilds. While all the events scale, the guild system does not scale and neither does the influence cost of everything.

All I wanted was hard guild challenges that you could play as much as you wanted to and with how many you wanted to.

I don’t get why they lock content like that, just like the RNG stuff, only a few may experience it. WHY ???

This goes also for the loot, WHERE THE HELL IS MY LOOT ? People who have played Mmo’s know , if I kill this creature I will get something,..
For some reason in GW2 they don’t want to reward you.
You can’t farm in the open world because of DMR and also because creatures run away after walking a few seconds.

I remember in the beginning while farming Orr events, in an hour I had 10 rares… now that seemed like normal loot for the time played.
And now the only way to get some gold is still COF1, like I want to login everyday and play COF1 for 8 hours straight for a month to get a legendary or something else that is somewhat nice to look at.

You can’t teleport because in the back of your mind you think that it costs too much.
You can’t buy potions and foodbuffs for this same reason.

I’ve gave the game time to change, fix bugs, add new content etc… but for example, if I really enjoy dragonball and I know I’m forced to play it NOW for a month and then it will be gone, then why even bother. I want to login and know what I can do instead of the game “telling” me what to do.

“Want some fun?” → do temporary this or that.
“Want rewards?” → Daily this and monthly that.
“Want to do a dungeon?” → Play dungeon X a thousand times, fun fun fun.
“Want some gold?” → Farm COF1 until you puke.
“Want to support the game for further development ?” → Let them F you over with RNG chests.
“Want a legendary?” → Throw months of gametime away in the mystic toilet and pray to God you get what you want so you never have to go through the whole process again.

“We are building a game for the players” , Correction you are building a game for profit, there is no harm in that but those are facts I’d like to know before buying a game, indeed no monthly fees but I wonder how many players paid 10x more for less you can get in WoW. I’ve read that some people spend over 500 dollars in the store, think at how many months that is in WoW and what loot, mounts, etc you can get in Wow or any other MMORPG. You are concidered lucky if you get 1 skin for 500 dollars worth of RNG chests.

For real,… Stop treating customers like kittens. I know a lot of people who were just nice enough to buy useless items from the store to SUPPORT the game but all you do is spit in their faces.

@Skugga thanks man, I really do appreciate it. The whole reason I started this thread is to show Arena.NET that online communities aren’t built the way they’re going about it. There’s a bunch of suggestions that people wrote additionally, I myself wrote a list in the comments, here’s hoping you share your opinion there as well.

Guild Wars 2 was a great concept, but the game itself is so severely lacking. If they were doing only these big patches every 3 months or so and the game was in its current state I’d be more understanding, I could say “well, they obviously don’t have the resources to support it”. But they’re pushing these pointless updates when they haven’t even made a suitable platform to support a lasting community.

This will be offtopic, but thanks for sticking to the topic. And even though these forums have the most biased moderators, I’m still hopeful someone out there from Arena.NET cares about these points enough.

That type of game won’t last against the coming MMOs.

Why is that? A lot of casuals and a lot of non-mmorpg players are playing the game, I don’t see those going to any of the coming MMOs. They are too MMO-ish, maybe the old MMORPG players will find the upcoming MMOs more appealing but I doubt those who don’t like MMOs will.

GW2 players don’t want vertical progression

I still don’t see any vertical progression… In a way that exists in other games at least.

and that’s not what Colin Johanson wanted GW2 to become.

And of course you know better than Colin himself what he wanted GW2 to become…

be it a meaningful story ending, a powerful item, a new armor set and so on

Powerful item and “stat upgrade” are similar, no? I made a long post about how they could change the reward system of the game:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Changing-the-way-the-Reward-system-work/first#post2308317

RNG needs to go. Rewards need to be revamped and changed. Rewarding players who do variety of content is the way to go, in my opinion. The more unique things you do, the more rewards you should get.

The best rewards should be the hardest to earn

Indeed. But we need to define “hard” first, what is hard for some, is easy for others. What is hard at release, is easy-mode after a few months, be it a raid or a dungeon in any game. GW2 has some potential here, with the way they do temporary content, while the dungeons themselves shouldn’t be excessively hard to finish, adding some extra achievements like they did with Aetherblade Retreat is a great way to increase difficulty. Then, because it’s temporary, it won’t be changed to “farm-status” as easily.

Invest in the future, not in the Living Story

Living Story = the future though. It’s not always working well, but it’s something new for the developers as well. An ever changing world is far better than a static world with lots of farmable places, what they need is to make Living World actually change Tyria, in a more amazing way.

Hardcore content = longevity

And offering new updates every 2 weeks is having the same effect on longevity. Players log to see what’s new, if they like the new skins/rewards/dungeons/story they will continue and complete it, if not, they will wait for the next release. That’s great for the longevity of the game. Hardcore content will simply alienate even more people that non-hardcore content does.

Fractals gave Guild Wars 2 meaning

If only Fractal rewards weren’t so bad (money wise) then it would’ve been much better, but this belongs to the rewards section I guess, which desperately need a change/revamp.

World vs World is a fun and engaging addition that cannot alone hold players’ interest.

Judging by the amount of guilds who are almost exclusively focused in WvW I must disagree here. As you said in the Fractals section, WvW also gives a goal – to win each week. Also, watch some Guild vs Guild action in WvW and then say anything about teamwork, there is loads of teamwork needed and it makes a difference in the end.

All we want is a satisfying goal – server-wide buffs for everyone if we cap a WvW borderland, an epic, exclusive skin for every 10 levels in PvP, a very hard instance that we have to plan for in advance to beat and be rewarded with looks that no one else can have…

You already get server-wide buffs for winning in WvW. Every few PvP ranks you get access to new skins, that get better and more unique the higher you go. Dungeons offer looks that no one else can have already, dungeon armor/fractal skins aren’t available anywhere else, all you need is here already.

Guild Wars 2 pushed the genre forward and then it stopped. MMOs that have adopted this gameplay model are already on their way and will likely be far more polished.

Which MMO are you talking about exactly? I haven’t seen any that have adopted the gameplay model of Guild Wars 2 and you dont’ know how much “more polished” they will be. Betas of MMOs I’ve tried lately (after GW2 was released) aren’t very much better than GW2 beta as far as polishing goes.

“If you don’t like it, you can leave!”

They said they will add Raids, but with a GW2-twist in them, not like the Raids in other games. If someone want to “force” mechanics/gameplay from other games (for example WoW-like Raids) that are contradicting the main design philosophy of the game, then yes they should search for a game that has what they want, what’s wrong with that?

killcannon.2576:

I think there is more to it than “Forum goer A wants to turn GW2 into a WoW clone”, and “The defenders of GW2 as we see it”.

But I see why you and some others wouldn’t see it like that.

True, it’s a simplified version. A few lights in the darkness stand out as people who genuinely think their suggestions will improve the game, but the majority think only of their own needs and think the way to achieve their goals is to scream louder than anyone else.

I try to look at the big picture, not just what I want from the game. But no one is perfect and everyone has their blind spot.

“I want this to be a niche title”

I don’t know why anyone would say that, and besides the game is “trying” to cater to lots of different players, how can it be a niche title? Proposing new mechanics or mechanics from other games is good, but as I said above, any suggestions must be following the basic design philosophy of the game.

whereas Guild Wars’s model encourages on-and-off sessions

That’s why they are doing a Living Story every 2 weeks, to keep players interested.

I don’t mind casual people and you shouldn’t mind the ones wanting to gain a level of satisfaction from the game that’s only achieved through completing difficult content and being rewarded properly.

And once again, we need to define “difficult”. The AR dungeon was quite a nice step to the right direction, hard enough but offers extra rewards, in this case some achievement points, for doing something different, and considerably harder than just finishing the dungeon. Achievement points are enough? Maybe, maybe not. Now that APs will give rewards, it remains to be seen how important/desirable those will be.

By far the most incompetent argument in favour or Guild Wars 2 I’ve read is “you’re playing the game wrong”

Silly argument indeed. Fun is subjective.

Don’t suggest a 180 design overhaul because no company will ever invest in such a thing

And when they do it, their game fails miserably.

maddoctor.2738:

By far the most incompetent argument in favour or Guild Wars 2 I’ve read is “you’re playing the game wrong”

Silly argument indeed. Fun is subjective.
.

However, the real argument is “you’re not playing the game as the devs intended.”

For example, the complaints about DR. The devs have said that they aren’t against farming, but it’s clear from the mechanics of DR that performing the exact same actions over and over again, whether it’s botting or a live player mindlessly repeating the same actions, is discouraged. You can run around a zone following chains of events or killing mobs wherever you find them without ever triggering DR. But standing on a hill killing mobs as they respawn for hours isn’t playing the game as intended, and DR triggers to make you move on.

So people complaining that they can’t stand in one place and kill mobs endlessly aren’t just farming, they are playing the game in a way the devs specifically have indicated they don’t want. Acknowledging this is mere common sense, not saying “you’re doing it wrong.”

tolunart.2095:

maddoctor.2738:

By far the most incompetent argument in favour or Guild Wars 2 I’ve read is “you’re playing the game wrong”

Silly argument indeed. Fun is subjective.
.

However, the real argument is “you’re not playing the game as the devs intended.”

For example, the complaints about DR. The devs have said that they aren’t against farming, but it’s clear from the mechanics of DR that performing the exact same actions over and over again, whether it’s botting or a live player mindlessly repeating the same actions, is discouraged. You can run around a zone following chains of events or killing mobs wherever you find them without ever triggering DR. But standing on a hill killing mobs as they respawn for hours isn’t playing the game as intended, and DR triggers to make you move on.

So people complaining that they can’t stand in one place and kill mobs endlessly aren’t just farming, they are playing the game in a way the devs specifically have indicated they don’t want. Acknowledging this is mere common sense, not saying “you’re doing it wrong.”

It’s not playing the game that way that devs don’t want. It’s being rewarded for killing respawning mobs.

You want to spawncamp boars? Fine, play as you like. You won’t get any items for it though.

@AntiGw People don’t want to stand in one place waiting for neutrals to spawn, because monsters tend to be equally rewarding in their respective “tier” of level and mats they give. DR doesn’t hurt the campers, it hurts the legitimate farmer who wants to get something done in GW2.

For example, I needed 100 Charged Lodestones and since there are 2 areas in the game where they drop, one of which is an instance, I chose to hunt Sparks. Now after roughly an hour of farming I would hit DR and I’d have to call it quits. It’s a contradicting mechanic which wouldn’t be a problem if the reward system didn’t suck this badly.

Insignya.8625:

@AntiGw People don’t want to stand in one place waiting for neutrals to spawn, because monsters tend to be equally rewarding in their respective “tier” of level and mats they give. DR doesn’t hurt the campers, it hurts the legitimate farmer who wants to get something done in GW2.

For example, I needed 100 Charged Lodestones and since there are 2 areas in the game where they drop, one of which is an instance, I chose to hunt Sparks. Now after roughly an hour of farming I would hit DR and I’d have to call it quits. It’s a contradicting mechanic which wouldn’t be a problem if the reward system didn’t suck this badly.

There is this cheat that normally works – log out to the character select screen, lag back into your character, DR should be gone. When I was killing lots of skritt it actually helped, so you can try it and see if it works

@Mirta I tried swapping characters, will see if relogging works. Thanks!

Insignya.8625:

@AntiGw People don’t want to stand in one place waiting for neutrals to spawn, because monsters tend to be equally rewarding in their respective “tier” of level and mats they give. DR doesn’t hurt the campers, it hurts the legitimate farmer who wants to get something done in GW2.

For example, I needed 100 Charged Lodestones and since there are 2 areas in the game where they drop, one of which is an instance, I chose to hunt Sparks. Now after roughly an hour of farming I would hit DR and I’d have to call it quits. It’s a contradicting mechanic which wouldn’t be a problem if the reward system didn’t suck this badly.

You are not supposed to farm respawning mobs.

The fact that you can do that in other games means a design flaw in those games.

Again, farming respawning mobs is ridiculous, and needs to be removed from everywhere.

@AntiGw yes? I did post a special paragraph in the thread you didn’t read. Farming respawning mobs is basically the current PvE in a nutshell. It should go away but GW2 isn’t doing a good job at it.

Sidenote, and this is nothing personal, shouldn’t you be banned for your name? I mean I sometimes forget these forums have the worst moderators ever, but still, it seems reasonable to ban someone who’s name is basically anti – the developer’s product.

They need to make GUILDS more relevant. What about explorer guilds rewards and missions for exploring? Thief Guilds thief and infiltrating missions(rewards). Warrior guilds. Magic guilds etc. but allow cross collaboration as well. Making guild team ups EPIC!! Wanna raid So So mega castle ( Dungeon ) get some help from cross class guild players. alow player specific classes to join different or same guild their choice. so for instance I have. Ele. (1 guild) Ranger (another guild), necro, etc. but also allow cross missions. So my ranger from 1 guild can team up with my ele. guild to sack a dungeon.

Insignya.8625:

@AntiGw yes? I did post a special paragraph in the thread you didn’t read. Farming respawning mobs is basically the current PvE in a nutshell. It should go away but GW2 isn’t doing a good job at it.

Don’t you agree then that DR is a step in the right direction? It lessens meaningless spawnfarming, encourages more fun gameplay and reduces inflation (less items produced out of thin air).

Insignya.8625:

Sidenote, and this is nothing personal, shouldn’t you be banned for your name? I mean I sometimes forget these forums have the worst moderators ever, but still, it seems reasonable to ban someone who’s name is basically anti – the developer’s product.

That’s quite a leap of logic right there…

@AntiGw heck man, that’s my two cents on the subject. If I were a gaming developer I’d ask you to change your name, but that’s unimportant.

DR would be a step in the right direction if GW2 wasn’t this grindy. As it is it’s just an annoying restriction. I would draw a comparison with Microsoft’s Xbone – they tried to force the digital market on us and failed, because it just screws over the consumer and doesn’t provide benefits because we’re not ready to go digital yet. Same with GW2, although on a much smaller scale – MMOs are still way too grindy, even GW2 has ludacris amounts of grind, despite it trying to innovate. As such, you can’t force DR to restrict bots when the consumer is largely affected by this decision. Well, you can, obviously Arena.NET have done that. I don’t think the MMO market is there yet in terms of innovation to pose these restrictions. Maybe in another two-three years we’ll see DR as something common and unobstructive.

@DeathSyke Indeed, Guild Missions should have been expanded upon. And there are things like NPC sneak detection in the game, there was a Heart that needed you to do that. So they can pull off an infiltration guild mission, it’s just a lack of inspiration and effort. Warrior missions would be freaking cool but, as of now, the closest we have are “guild challenges”, which are only a challenge if your keyboard gets disconnected.

I think Wildstar will put a broader emphasis on that with the multiple character paths (Warrior, Explorer, Scientist, Settler) they have going. Devs are really passionate about that and it looks like they’re working pretty h@rd on (stupidest censoring ever) unique missions for each path.

If you are specualting about whether ANet are listening or not, they are. This is most evidenced by the heavy use of suspensions and infractions however and not in their patches.

pricer.5091:

If you are specualting about whether ANet are listening or not, they are. This is most evidenced by the heavy use of suspensions and infractions however and not in their patches.

Most infractions just serve as warnings as they have no points associated with them. Infractions with points generally means you crossed a line.

I’m guessing from the nature of some of your posts that you set your lines at different places than some other people might.

@pricer It’s hilarious when devs do reply and it’s just blatant trolling. If they are listening, they’re not showing it in any shape or form. Get with the times, Arena.NET, and look at how far ahead other devs are in terms of communicating with players. How the f are we supposed to discuss a blog post? On Facebook?

Excellent points, OP. Well done.

pricer.5091:

Vayne.8563:

pricer.5091:

If you are specualting about whether ANet are listening or not, they are. This is most evidenced by the heavy use of suspensions and infractions however and not in their patches.

Most infractions just serve as warnings as they have no points associated with them. Infractions with points generally means you crossed a line.

I’m guessing from the nature of some of your posts that you set your lines at different places than some other people might.

Are you aware that you have 107 pages of posts? 107 pages of posts and only one message? I’d take a break if I were you and go play the game.

I’m not sure how this is your business. And it’s not one message. You are mistaken. If you don’t know, it’s okay to say you don’t know.

Other people have acknowledged that I’ve said stuff that goes against Anet, I don’t know why you can’t.

Insignya.8625:

@pricer bro, please, don’t feed the troll, just ignore it. It’s written 107 pages of quoting people and arguing with them. I mean, I haven’t seen trolls that pathetic in all my years of playing League of Legends.

Of course, anyone who disagrees with you is a fan boy, a troll. If your arguments were stronger you wouldn’t need to call people names.

There’s no real discussion here.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure how this is your business.

It’s a nurture thing.

Right, let’s call it quits, alright gentlemen? These forums are completely and 100% moronic. I don’t write threads to get in conflicts, I write them to help the people making the game.

Since no developer wants to even acknowledge the existence of criticism here, there’s no point in continuing. It’s just catering to forum warriors and I’m sure you folk have better things to do.

Insignya.8625:

@pricer It’s hilarious when devs do reply and it’s just blatant trolling. If they are listening, they’re not showing it in any shape or form. Get with the times, Arena.NET, and look at how far ahead other devs are in terms of communicating with players. How the f are we supposed to discuss a blog post? On Facebook?

Do you even know what trolling is? Because I doubt devs are actually intending to create negative reactions with their posts. As for not listening, read the section in Colin’s posts where he states that more permanent content is coming as part of living story due to feedback they have received.

More importantly, don’t think that yours is the only opinion that matters. Feedback is important, but demanding developer attention to your thread is somewhat egotistical.

I didn’t read the thread comments, but I like the original post quite a bit. Its a tough line that the devs have to walk with keeping it casual, yet at the same time rewarding progression, and I feel like they’ve done a great job. Temporary content isn’t a terrible idea either, because if you don’t like a particular storyline, you can just skip it and try the next one. The biggest problem I have currently is that WvW has no long term reward. You could run with the zerg for months and your fellow server mates can’t even see your rank. The rank up chests have terrible rewards as well, at least in my experience. If they introduced exclusive skins for WvW that were only accessible once you hit a certain rank, that would solve the problem… assuming they’re cool skins, of course.

I think we’re starting to lose perspective. Not just on the OP, but also the game.

Think about where GW2 stands in relation to other MMOs, think about what it set out to achieve that was different to them.

Yes, in some areas is might not have done brilliantly, but it IS very different from other MMOs, and it IS in new territory. We can’t expect them to get it 100% perfect from the beginning. In terms of being a year down the line, we can see that the devs are making changes (whether or not in the direction you want them to go is not the issue for my post) and clearly testing out new ideas involving gameplay etc. I think someone already mentioned it, but WoodenPotatoes’ Youtube video of GW2 9 months on is very good and interesting to watch.

What has changed even more significantly perhaps, are the expectations of the players. What was new and innovative to us a year ago, is now the norm. It is now the very base of our expectations, and ANet isn’t keeping up. It is now old news that you can jump, can dodge, can move in combat. We seem to have forgotten that this just wasn’t the norm before GW2. Heck, it isn’t the norm now, if other MMOs in the market are anything to go by.

This is just one example of where GW2 has totally broken the convention. And this still IS a huge deal. The market needs time to adjust. ANet needs time to figure out where it fits in the market. And I believe the ARE trying to adjust to the range of opinions people have about the game and how it can evolve. However, they aren’t going to just respond to every post out there – actually too much communication is often bad for a company. I’m not saying they shouldn’t tell us everything, but when everyone starts talking to everyone, things get said that aren’t strictly correct, assumptions get made etc, and people start expecting things that weren’t ever coming their way. So generally, larger companies restrict information until they’re ready to make an official statement.

So perhaps what has changed wasn’t so much a case of ANet getting everything wrong, but more the fact that what they got RIGHT has just become too normal for us now. I’m not saying they shouldn’t keep improving and making changes (of course they should). I’m simply saying we’ve lost perspective a bit on what they HAVE achieved.

Insignya.8625:

Since no developer wants to even acknowledge the existence of criticism here, there’s no point in continuing.

You might want to stay away from the forums of all games ever created. There’s not a single one where developer would come out to personally argue with you.