Guild Wars 2

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

Derk.3189:

They say that because they want to add more later without being quoted on broken promises. They broke enough promises anyways it won’t matter if they add a few more on right?

You’re quite cynical. I haven’t encountered any broken promises personally but that’s just me. And quite honestly the only thing I’ve disliked the devs doing in GW2 was removing the snakes from BWE1. I liked those snakes. Bring back the snakes!

If you expect the worst of people, you’ll only believe they can do their worst. I don’t think they’ll add another level of gear because I don’t believe there’s a point and they’ve seems logical so far. People on the forums talk about how broken this game is but I’ve been playing it since BWE1 and haven’t really noticed anything broken about it. Maybe I’m oblivious? Maybe I just enjoy the game? I dunno. I just haven’t felt as deeply and personally affected as the people on the forums I suppose. All I know is people rant about their play style changing somehow but I haven’t changed mine at all. When they explain their style I understand it’s oftentimes just some kind of grind in disguise which I believe Anet is trying to reduce.

Just what I see. Just what I believe.

I’m not trying to insult you, but reading your post I can only sum it up with that you are naive. Colin’s blog post stemmed from a torrent of complaints about Arenanet breaking their promises, leading them to phrase their words in specific ways, even citing that they do not wish to be caught out on something later on when they do decide to have another change in their philosophies. Leaving avenues open so to speak. I am certain another tier of gear will come, probably next year. I am also certain I won’t be around in this game to care either.

lol@ the people claiming the new daily force them to change their playing behavior.

“sure it’s optional, but you might regret it, and for reasons you can’t even know yet.”
what the hell is this? some kind of new age psychobabble? some people are trying to hard to find a flaw in the new system, so they BS anything….if you don’t want them simply don’t select them in your daily panel.

Why would i regret Not picking the daily do not want to do in the first place when i am already in the process completing the daily i want to do and receive my chest?

While the OP has stated his opinions, here is a fact for you all.

No matter what the game developers do…
If something is changed/implemented/altered/added there are always people who are going to be happy about said changes, and there are always going to be people who are unhappy about said changes.

You can’t please everyone.

That being said, I would also like to share my opinion.

Anet needs to stop paying attention to the crybabies, and just design the game the way they see fit.

As it stands now, the majority of people are happy with the game to the point where they are not complaining on the forums.
If even a fraction of the people in the game are unhappy with something…. say 100 people… and they complain on the forums, chances are Anet will try and change something to make them happy.

That is where the problem arises…. the people who are currently happy with a system will never complain about it.

1% of the game’s population might feel that they are getting crappy loot.
1% in actual people, though is quite a bit. If all those people are complaining, the concern seems to be pretty legitimate. If drop rates are improved significantly, the people who were once happy with the current loot tables begin to get annoyed about how the sudden influx of rare loot is effecting game economy. There will always be 1% or more of people who are ALWAYS going to be unhappy… and if they cry and complain enough to get their way, they are only causing MORE people to be unhappy.

Let Anet make their game the way they see fit.

They are the game designers, not you.

/opinion

@TheBlackLeech:

Your stance is a relatively unpopular one, and I know it before you get told off about it. I happen to be partly in agreement with “let them do it their way”. Partially. I’d like them to do it their way but keep an ear out and an eye open for what’s being said about it.

And, of course, I would love to see someone whose unhappy job is to show up every week or so and address the big concerns of the week as they see it on the forums. Even if it’s to go “we don’t see that as a concern that you’re not getting 40 Ectos in a day” and annoy people.

Seriously. I’d find a way to send them a cheesecake.

Here’s my opinion:

If there’s one core flaw with Guild Wars 2, it’s the negative community that thinks they know all there is to know about game design, content creation, work flow management, product deadlines, community management, reward structures, psychology, macro and micro economics, programming, and other players thoughts on the game.

This negative community is so filled with vitriol and an undeserved sense of self worth that it makes me feel that maybe this game would have done better a couple of years ago, when gamers were less jaded about what constitutes “good” and “fun.”

It used to be that any content was good content, even with flaws, because there were more options. More things to do. More stuff to see. More enemies to vanquish. More loot to collect. Now we have adults who act like complete children, who can’t manage their own expectations or be objective about any added feature that wasn’t addressing their specific problem. They forget the broad goal and instead focus on the minuscule and petty. They scream about the game catering to some undefinable part of the player base while masquerading as adjusted and reasonable. They throw the equivalent of tantrums over small bumps in gameplay that would be run of the mill and expected in other games, old and new alike, while dismissing quality mechanics or novel ideas.

The game has flaws, but the core flaw in my opinion is the negative, jaded, and ludicrously vocal subset of this community that think they know best for the game and its players.

They don’t.

Mackdose.6504:

Here’s my opinion:

If there’s one core flaw with Guild Wars 2, it’s the negative community that thinks they know all there is to know about game design, content creation, work flow management, product deadlines, community management, reward structures, psychology, macro and micro economics, programming, and other players thoughts on the game.

I have to point out there probably are people here who have done (collectively) all of those things. I know I’ve been involved in, mmm, about half of them in various places in some form.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mackdose.6504:

Here’s my opinion:

If there’s one core flaw with Guild Wars 2, it’s the negative community that thinks they know all there is to know about game design, content creation, work flow management, product deadlines, community management, reward structures, psychology, macro and micro economics, programming, and other players thoughts on the game.

I have to point out there probably are people here who have done (collectively) all of those things. I know I’ve been involved in, mmm, about half of them in various places in some form.

Just because one has done a similar task before doesn’t make one an expert on the game, its specific branches of those disciplines, or the way that the development team operates. Hence “know all there is to know.”

I trusted Anet through all of GW1 and up to the first time I actually played GW2 at a convention. This is not the same Arenanet we once knew.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

No matter what the game developers do…
If something is changed/implemented/altered/added there are always people who are going to be happy about said changes, and there are always going to be people who are unhappy about said changes.

You can’t please everyone.

“Well, you can’t please EVERYONE!” can excuse any poor quality item ever made.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Anet needs to stop paying attention to the crybabies, and just design the game the way they see fit.

What would your argument be without condescension?

TheBlackLeech.9360:

As it stands now, the majority of people are happy with the game to the point where they are not complaining on the forums.

Most people won’t ever complain on the forums. They just buy a new game. Constructive customer feedback is actually a resource for companies.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

If even a fraction of the people in the game are unhappy with something…. say 100 people… and they complain on the forums, chances are Anet will try and change something to make them happy.

No. Not even close. Example: Read about Rangers above.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Let Anet make their game the way they see fit.

They are the game designers, not you.

They will make the game the way they see fit.

Every potential customer will decide if what they made is what they want to buy. WARNING: Customers also get mad when they feel they were mislead.

Anet hasn’t broken any promises, because they didn’t promise anything. Look up promise in the dictionary and see what it means, then use the word.

Anet has made changes to the original game. This is 100% true. They’ve also gone out of their way to say they’re a company that works on iteration. Iteration means that they try stuff, all the time.

During development they tried and abandoned many things that didn’t work. They had energy originally and energy potions. They abandoned it. No one said one word against it. No one said, you liked, you were going to have energy potions. No one said a word because they liked that specific change, but it was still a change. Anet said one thing and then did something else. Because it made more sense after seeing the data to do something else.

This is what an iterative process will get you. During development it’s easier to accept by people because people don’t have the game yet, haven’t gotten used to anything yet. But after the game launched, Anet trying things wasn’t going to stop. They even had blog posts about iteration itself and barely an Anet blogpost appears without the word iteration.

So they try stuff and some stuff works and some doesn’t and they move on. Which should I believe, two lines about vertical progression in pre release interviews or the countless times they mentioned iteration.

I trust Anet to do what they feel is best for the game. And I trust them to know a lot more about what’s best for the game (having more data than I do), than any specific subset of players.

Fortuna.7259:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

No matter what the game developers do…
If something is changed/implemented/altered/added there are always people who are going to be happy about said changes, and there are always going to be people who are unhappy about said changes.

You can’t please everyone.

“Well, you can’t please EVERYONE!” can excuse any poor quality item ever made.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Anet needs to stop paying attention to the crybabies, and just design the game the way they see fit.

What would your argument be without condescension?

TheBlackLeech.9360:

As it stands now, the majority of people are happy with the game to the point where they are not complaining on the forums.

Most people won’t ever complain on the forums. They just buy a new game. Constructive customer feedback is actually a resource for companies.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

If even a fraction of the people in the game are unhappy with something…. say 100 people… and they complain on the forums, chances are Anet will try and change something to make them happy.

No. Not even close. Example: Read about Rangers above.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Let Anet make their game the way they see fit.

They are the game designers, not you.

They will make the game the way they see fit.

Every potential customer will decide if what they made is what they want to buy. WARNING: Customers also get mad when they feel they were mislead.

I like it when i get replies like this one, because you have taken every statement I made, cut out the parts you didn’t feel like talking about, and replied to each remaining statement individually without context to the post as a whole.

In addition, its also easy to tell people they are wrong simply because they have a differing opinion than you.

What I have to agree with is that the vocal minority are not representing the bulk of players, most miserable players will just leave a game silently and not make a fuss.

However the silent players who are still in the game Anet listen to (yes – through science!), not me and not anyone else ranting here as we do not represent the sane and happy majority in the middle.

Mackdose.6504:

Just because one has done a similar task before doesn’t make one an expert on the game, its specific branches of those disciplines, or the way that the development team operates. Hence “know all there is to know.”

A movie critic doesn’t need to know how a movie was made to know what worked and didn’t work in a movie. He certainly doesn’t have to know how to create a quality movie from scratch. He just needs to be able to discern good quality from bad quality. This of course is subjective, but the criteria for making such an appraisal is largely shared across a large population.

So are we only sane when we’re in the middle, accepting everything? I must have launched from Completely Sane to Outright Nuts in a day. Good going, me.

Also, just wanted to add this:

Manifesto: (n.) a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer.

I do not see the word promise. I do see the words intentions, motive, and views. All of which I see existing in the game time and time again. Does every one of these things exist in all facets of the game? No. But the devil is in the details.

I wholeheartedly believe they are on track with their manifesto, and attempting to also keep players of ALL types to have at least one or two good reasons to keep playing and to see what is coming.

stobie.2134:

So are we only sane when we’re in the middle, accepting everything? I must have launched from Completely Sane to Outright Nuts in a day. Good going, me.

Well no… but there is ten shades of brown crazy most people could progress through and still not make it to the lofty heights required to earnestly attempt to single handedly save the game (add trumpets now).

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I like it when i get replies like this one, because you have taken every statement I made, cut out the parts you didn’t feel like talking about, and replied to each remaining statement individually without context to the post as a whole.

Oh please. Your entire post is directly above for all to read. Anything I removed was for the brevity and clarity of my responses and try to avoid a wall of text – not to mischaracterize your arguments. If you truly feel so aggrieved, you are free to supply details. Otherwise I’ll just call bs on this.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

In addition, its also easy to tell people they are wrong simply because they have a differing opinion than you.

Sounds pretty much what you are doing here. My responses provided reasoning and even an example.

Fortuna.7259:

Mackdose.6504:

Just because one has done a similar task before doesn’t make one an expert on the game, its specific branches of those disciplines, or the way that the development team operates. Hence “know all there is to know.”

A movie critic doesn’t need to know how a movie was made to know what worked and didn’t work in a movie. He certainly doesn’t have to know how to create a quality movie from scratch. He just needs to be able to discern good quality from bad quality. This of course is subjective, but the criteria for making such an appraisal is largely shared across a large population.

Movie critics aren’t born with an innate ability to discern good quality and bad quality, they refine it with exposure and experience. They learn why things work the way they do, and what causes a film to succeed or fail. This is what validates their opinion and gives critics authority on the subject matter. This part isn’t subjective.

OP I still like the game. But you are spot on, they lost my trust to. I don’t know if they realize how off they’ve been with their words vs actions. I don’t even know if they care. I held them in the highest regards, it’s like a different company to me. From my heart, it hurts, and oddly enough I still like the game on several levels, so it’s not a total train wreck, but I am a bit puzzled inside.

Movie critics that feel the director has personally slighted them generally won’t cast the film in an accurate light. Small issues that the viewers might not even notice become enraging to the critic, why doesn’t the audience hate the director’s consistent failure as much as they should – the critic has explained clearly to them all why…

Critical success and economic success are not as linked as one might think.

thisolderhead.5127:

stobie.2134:

So are we only sane when we’re in the middle, accepting everything? I must have launched from Completely Sane to Outright Nuts in a day. Good going, me.

Well no… but there is ten shades of brown crazy most people could progress through and still not make it to the lofty heights required to earnestly attempt to single handedly save the game (add trumpets now).

That’s ever so slightly depressing. Not much can lure me back to any gaming forum, but sooner or later, you have some question, want to find out more about something, & end up here. (I always regret this – I regret it now, & I’m pretty sure it won’t last) And if something in the game takes a turn that really bothers a person, it seems only – human – to try to do something about it. Every so often, it works. I don’t expect it, but if it means enough, it seems apathetic not to try. If I came here & found I was the only one bothered by something, I’d figure my issue didn’t warrant any attention, but if others are saying the same thing, I’d take some time to follow it up. I’m not sure why anyone would want to discourage that. Changes in games ruin games, for some. (For instance, I would say x-server lfg ruined wow for me, though some clearly don’t mind being abused by random strangers in anonymous runs. I knew nothing would change that – it was obviously set in stone, but some of these issues, here, seem like things that could be altered for the better.)

thisolderhead.5127:

Movie critics that feel the director has personally slighted them generally won’t cast the film in an accurate light. Small issues that the viewers might not even notice become enraging to the critic, why doesn’t the audience hate the director’s consistent failure as much as they should – the critic has explained clearly to them all why…

Critical success and economic success are not as linked as one might think.

It’s almost like you’ve seen Transformers 3!

On topic with the OP request (not talking about crybabies, entitlement, or crap like that):

I have no more trust in Anet at this point. Not saying that it can’t be built again with communication, but at this point, no trust.

I will be dealing with the latest update more in spite, and because I still have good friends playing the game with no other common game to go to, than in actual anticipation.

I’m seeing more and more the changes being implemented as a chore to be done/overcome than something to look forward to. Now this statement is an oversimplification since some changes are good/needed and some are neutral, but the over all feeling I have when all feelings are added up is: chore.

I’ve been with GW since the betas in 2004 and have had fun with it all, up until the last few months. We’ll see if communication starts to happen (not the PR, politician talk that has happened) or if this game will just fade from my game list.

stobie.2134:

thisolderhead.5127:

Movie critics that feel the director has personally slighted them generally won’t cast the film in an accurate light. Small issues that the viewers might not even notice become enraging to the critic, why doesn’t the audience hate the director’s consistent failure as much as they should – the critic has explained clearly to them all why…

Critical success and economic success are not as linked as one might think.

It’s almost like you’ve seen Transformers 3!

Funny, this point AND Transformers 3 both came to mind as I typed the bit about critics. I didn’t go there though. =p

What troubles me the most is how negative criticism about the game is met with so much blatant hostility.

@OP with regards to your question, I don’t think I trust ArenaNet much anymore. This is two-fold I think. First, I don’t believe that they really care about what the game was originally meant to be and what we all were told it would be (and what it really started out as being). I think their direction for the game is going towards an entirely different philosophy. Secondly, I don’t believe that I can trust exactly what they claim as it often proves to be wrong in some way later on.

critickitten.1498:

1) A lot of people have praised the new dailies as “easier to complete”, but not only is this grossly untrue in many cases, it’s missing the point to begin with. The original dailies were the best model not because they were “easy” or “hard”, but because they were built entirely around the mantra of “play the way you want to”. Kills, kill variety, gathering, events. Things you could do nearly anywhere in the game. You could do them on your Lvl 1 or your Lvl 80, in any map zone you wanted. That provided a massive amount of variety that the new options are utterly devoid of. Kills in specific regions? Dungeon runs? Keg Brawl? These aren’t options that let you “play the way you want to”, they’re options that imply that maybe you’re not playing the game the way the devs want you to.

2) One of my favorite features of GW1 was the concept of horizontal progression. I had come from a lot of MMOs that focused around getting the biggest numbers, then chasing the next set of big numbers, and eventually that grind became too much for me, leading to me falling behind and quitting. GW2, I fear, is on its way towards that same fate. The devs have admitted that they like vertical progression and will continue with it moving forward….which, for someone like me who was disillusioned with other MMOs, that’s a deathblow to the game that “takes everything I love about GW2”, because it’s not taking one of my favorite elements from GW1: the fact that I never felt obligated to gear grind. I could leave, come back, and still be a competitor. Skill always felt more important than stats. Whether you consider Ascended to be a grind or not is personal preference, but the fact remains that it won’t be the end of their progression plans. They’ve said as much. And that bothers me, knowing that I could leave now, come back in two years, and be significantly behind other players in terms of performance, even if I was the better player.

3) The devs have a tendency of giving out no information, or worse, wrong and conflicting information. We’ve been told that the precursor system was actively being worked on, and then Colin comes along to tell us that it’s not even likely to happen until April (at the earliest). Colin comes along and talks about how they’re working on new rewards systems that could yield precursors (getting people’s hopes up that the laurel system would have some manner of obtaining them) and then backtracks on it within days. We’re told that the devs are working on condition damage, and yet not working on it. That culling will be fixed, and then a patch comes out and makes it worse. That AoE will be nerfed across the board, and yet on a case-by-case basis. I don’t feel as though I can trust the developers themselves any more, because they don’t say the same things, and some of the claims they do make are later revealed to be outright false or misleading.

You’ve played since beta – yet you don’t trust the company and hate the game. Makes sense, I guess.

1.) The new dailies give you far more choice than before, and I’m thankful for the variety they offer. I think it adds a lot more fun, and more importantly, spreads people out to help populate the world and not make it seem so barren. The fact I can pick what I want does equal to playing your way.

2.) There’s nowhere I’ve seen or read anywhere they’ve admitted they’re going to continue with vertical progression. I do not see ascended gear as “vertical” since it’s BARELY better than exotic. What the heck did you do in MMO’s with raids?

3.) I don’t see conflicting information anywhere at all in this point. lol?

thisolderhead.5127:

Movie critics that feel the director has personally slighted them generally won’t cast the film in an accurate light. Small issues that the viewers might not even notice become enraging to the critic, why doesn’t the audience hate the director’s consistent failure as much as they should – the critic has explained clearly to them all why…

Critical success and economic success are not as linked as one might think.

Well, the metaphor breaks down because you are not (generally speaking) revisiting the movie again and again. You watched the bad movie (or some part of it) and that’s that. On the other hand, you remember Star Wars was really cool and then you watch the embarrassment that is Jar-Jar Binks and really, really hope that you are not alone. You don’t care for everyone to hate the movie, you just really hope that the next one is better (a lot better LOL).

Of course critical success and economic success are not tightly linked. This does not change the fact that I will not endure poor quality products because they are popular.

Even if the veritcle progression increased the daily goal/currency combo allow it to be circumvented and reduces the effect of what can be perceived as a treadmill…

Have a look through some of the key individuals’ post histories – in many cases they were burned out on trying to power farm ascended/legendaries longer than I care go back – of course they are going to be upset with options being introduced to replace their grinds!

Alarox.4590:

What troubles me the most is how negative criticism about the game is met with so much blatant hostility.

Some might attribute this to cognitive dissonance. =p

Fortuna.7259:

thisolderhead.5127:

Movie critics that feel the director has personally slighted them generally won’t cast the film in an accurate light. Small issues that the viewers might not even notice become enraging to the critic, why doesn’t the audience hate the director’s consistent failure as much as they should – the critic has explained clearly to them all why…

Critical success and economic success are not as linked as one might think.

Well, the metaphor breaks down because you are not (generally speaking) revisiting the movie again and again. You watched the bad movie (or some part of it) and that’s that. On the other hand, you remember Star Wars was really cool and then you watch the embarrassment that is Jar-Jar Binks and really, really hope that you are not alone. You don’t care for everyone to hate the movie, you just really hope that the next one is better (a lot better LOL).

Films (and books) are not considered to be “one off” in the way you state, at the risk of seeming snooty – that is the consumer throw-away movie market, and your metaphor breaking example is from that market, Film is entirely different and I apologise for not being both more specific and more correct in the term usage in my prior.

Of course critical success and economic success are not tightly linked. This does not change the fact that I will not endure poor quality products because they are popular.

Good to hear – your agony over making this decision has been well voiced, but I hope you can find a better product for you soon.

Kingfisher.7213:

I think a lot of what you are experiencing comes from dealing with a company which lacks experience.

This is ArenaNet’s first MMO, and their lack of experience in running one shows.

Warcraft had similar problems as they grew their MMO and learned some lessons the hard way.

Unfortunately, ArenaNet doesn’t seem to have a deep grasp of MMO history and is recreating classic mistakes.

I think they can recover from them, but it will be bumpy ride for us as they figure things out.

Here is a video back from 2007 where Warcraft’s founder talks about their mistakes and lessons learned:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/5/How-to-Rule-the-World

• 17:25 – Dangers of Releasing a Game too early
• 39:40 – Process to Communicate with Players about Problems
• 43:50 – Importance of Testing
• 44:45 – Importance of Public Test Realm

I think your post makes the most sense I’ve read on this forum to date! To me, this sums up all the issues with this game.

“Learn from history or you’re doomed to repeat it.”
- Jesse Ventura

The game simply needs a test-server, pronto. If Anet would stop experimenting on a live environment of such a scale and actually take a moment to see what is really going to happen if thousands of people get their hands on the stuff they just put together; the game would be better off.

Instead we have to fight tooth and nail (after the fact), over every little thing with the devs and their sometimes blatant stubbornness (the ordeal with the FoV and camera distance comes to mind).

But no, we get the guild missions system as it is and completely shut out a substantial amount of people; effectively introducing a raid-gate into the game.

I really don’t know why they like to make it so hard on themselves and the players; who’re left in frustration about forced implementations of changes in the game which sound good on paper to a group of 4 people in an office, but are horrible to ten-thousands of players who have to live and play with it.

thisolderhead.5127:

Movie critics that feel the director has personally slighted them generally won’t cast the film in an accurate light. Small issues that the viewers might not even notice become enraging to the critic, why doesn’t the audience hate the director’s consistent failure as much as they should – the critic has explained clearly to them all why…

Critical success and economic success are not as linked as one might think.

And some things that didn’t get either are received much better later in their lifetime. “The Shawshank Redemption” comes to mind on that score.

On the point of critics.

While anyone can be a critic, there is a difference between simply criticizing (again, anyone can do this) and actual analysis (very few do this). Chuck Sonnenberg is quite adept at this, and I do recommend you look into his reviews (Google: SF Debris). There’s a marked difference between that level of criticism, and the sort you can find on YouTube in five minutes.

And notably, even a really good critic isn’t necessarily going to say things you agree with. Even if they make really good points, there is the very real chance that you still like what it is they ripped apart. Something not being a good movie, or being terribly written/acted/produced/presented is an entirely different animal than “did I enjoy it?”.

In short? Not all critics create their critiques equally. It’s never wise to take it at face value. And it’s okay to like something even if everyone tells you it’s crap.

Just as it’s okay for someone else not to like what you like.

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Critickitten: You mention in your first paragraph that this is your opinion. I changed the thread title to reflect that (which you could have done in the first place yourself). The original thread title was sensationalist and broad to attract more views. I will change the title back to reflect that it is a personal opinion. If you change it once again, this thread will be locked and trashed.

I know I’m not the first to notice your casual moderation in favor.

EVERYTHING on these forums is “in our opinion” but you protect yourself by taking the edge off of the genuine problems.

I’ve never seen behavior like this before.

Not cool.

No more infractions please, GW2 is the best MMORPG of all time. There are no flaws in the game whatsoever, the Mods in the official forums are most tolerant guys ever.

Zeldain.5710:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Critickitten: You mention in your first paragraph that this is your opinion. I changed the thread title to reflect that (which you could have done in the first place yourself). The original thread title was sensationalist and broad to attract more views. I will change the title back to reflect that it is a personal opinion. If you change it once again, this thread will be locked and trashed.

I know I’m not the first to notice your casual moderation in favor.

EVERYTHING on these forums is “in our opinion” but you protect yourself by taking the edge off of the genuine problems.

I’ve never seen behavior like this before.

Not cool.

I agree. Honestly everything as you stated in this form is in your opinion. But in an attempt to dull the problem you force us to include in our thread titles. Why?

What the OP said really is true, sad but true. Honestly Anet has been so vague as of late its worrysome.

Honestly what happened to the old Anet from Gw1?

Vayne.8563:

Anet hasn’t broken any promises, because they didn’t promise anything. Look up promise in the dictionary and see what it means, then use the word.

- What about this video then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m26s

I thought it was pretty clear vision statement that they don’t want grind in their game. Yet they have added grind to their game, more with every patch. And from reading interviews they sound “very excited” about it too. What are fractal relics (quantities starting at 5) for? Why does the back item cost 1,350 fractal relics in a game that is not supposed to have grind?

What about half the achievements? Kill 1,000 centaurs. Get 1,000 sword kills. The whole WvW tab in achievements is about massive grind. Kill a million players in WvW to get your title.

Guild missions: get 5th level unlock and grind 50,000 influence points before you even get a chance to try them out.

Based on these observations, I say that Colin Johanson has mislead the players.

Zeldain.5710:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Critickitten: You mention in your first paragraph that this is your opinion. I changed the thread title to reflect that (which you could have done in the first place yourself). The original thread title was sensationalist and broad to attract more views. I will change the title back to reflect that it is a personal opinion. If you change it once again, this thread will be locked and trashed.

I know I’m not the first to notice your casual moderation in favor.

EVERYTHING on these forums is “in our opinion” but you protect yourself by taking the edge off of the genuine problems.

I’ve never seen behavior like this before.

Not cool.

I’ve read this entire thread and stayed out of it thus far. But I really agree that this dev comment was a bad idea. It could easily have been said via PM, but instead was placed in public view… where everyone can see that the devs have acknowledged the existence of this thread via the rebuke to the OP… and have chosen to completely disregard the content of it. I would have preferred that they ignore the thread completely, because that post made the devs look bad, and the OP seem right… even though I (and I’m sure others) don’t even agree with what the OP said.

Revolution.6301:

Zeldain.5710:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Critickitten: You mention in your first paragraph that this is your opinion. I changed the thread title to reflect that (which you could have done in the first place yourself). The original thread title was sensationalist and broad to attract more views. I will change the title back to reflect that it is a personal opinion. If you change it once again, this thread will be locked and trashed.

I know I’m not the first to notice your casual moderation in favor.

EVERYTHING on these forums is “in our opinion” but you protect yourself by taking the edge off of the genuine problems.

I’ve never seen behavior like this before.

Not cool.

Honestly what happened to the old Anet from Gw1?

NCsoft happened…..among other things.

Zenith.6403:

Vayne.8563:

Anet hasn’t broken any promises, because they didn’t promise anything. Look up promise in the dictionary and see what it means, then use the word.

- What about this video then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m26s

I thought it was pretty clear vision statement that they don’t want grind in their game. Yet they have added grind to their game, more with every patch. And from reading interviews they sound “very excited” about it too. What are fractal relics (quantities starting at 5) for? Why does the back item cost 1,350 fractal relics in a game that is not supposed to have grind?

What about half the achievements? Kill 1,000 centaurs. Get 1,000 sword kills. The whole WvW tab in achievements is about massive grind. Kill a million players in WvW to get your title.

Guild missions: get 5th level unlock and grind 50,000 influence points before you even get a chance to try them out.

Based on these observations, I say that Colin Johanson has mislead the players.

I say you’re not really seeing more than half of things. Grind had been in Guild Wars 1, purely for titles. Want to take a guess as to how many of them weren’t grind? Around 10. What did they do? For most of them, absolutely nothing other than give you something shiny to show off.

Achievements in GW2 are . . . heck do you even get to show off the Slayer and Weapon Master achievements? Anyway, they’re the same thing. And you don’t even get to show them off. In short, they may be grind but they serve no purpose and have zero function even cosmetically. They’re there for those who want the Achievements for the sake of having them.

Let’s walk to the next point about grinding for gear. Two words: Obsidian Armor. And yes, I’ll compare the laborious task of earning that one right up against a Legendary in this game because they’re analogous in scope. The amount of work doesn’t match, but neither does the scale of the two games anyway. And much like Legendaries . . . this was just a cosmetic “look I managed to have it” armor skin the same the Legendaries (currently) are just a weapon skin.

Your basic “almost best-in-slot” gear in Exotics are ample enough that you can kit yourself out in it with minimal trouble. In Guild Wars 1, after Nightfall and Inscriptions, it wasn’t hard for you to build your set of gear with the effects you wanted. It was kind of hard and/or expensive to get the models and maximum efficiency/effectiveness of them. (Required 8, the mods all at max, or gods help you if you wanted one of the Prophecies/Canthan drops which would have completely random and sometimes impossible combinations…)

(I’m not touching Ascended, as if I do we’re going to side-track all day long and still won’t get anywhere. Don’t bring it up, because I’ll just ignore it. It’s grindy, but it’s only undeniably critical to Agony-laden Fractals.)

So where’s my point after rambling?

Based on their track record with their previous game, ArenaNet has never been opposed to grinding being present. They have been opposed to it being strictly required to play through what they built as the main section of the game. Extraneous bits added on later or “challenge missions” were always a different story.

thisolderhead.5127:

Good to hear – your agony over making this decision has been well voiced, but I hope you can find a better product for you soon.

Sorry, but you do not dismiss me here. I find these discussions valuable. And there is no agony. Thanks for trying to paint my experience as something it is not but I realize you must be confused by reading so many posts and delving into people’s personal histories. I’m sure you wouldn’t have made that comment as an ad hominem to discredit a view that is not your own.

Besides… I do have Agony Resistance… =p

Revolution.6301:

Zeldain.5710:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Critickitten: You mention in your first paragraph that this is your opinion. I changed the thread title to reflect that (which you could have done in the first place yourself). The original thread title was sensationalist and broad to attract more views. I will change the title back to reflect that it is a personal opinion. If you change it once again, this thread will be locked and trashed.

I know I’m not the first to notice your casual moderation in favor.

EVERYTHING on these forums is “in our opinion” but you protect yourself by taking the edge off of the genuine problems.

I’ve never seen behavior like this before.

Not cool.

I agree. Honestly everything as you stated in this form is in your opinion. But in an attempt to dull the problem you force us to include in our thread titles. Why?

What the OP said really is true, sad but true. Honestly Anet has been so vague as of late its worrysome.

Honestly what happened to the old Anet from Gw1?

What the OP said is opinion, not true, not false. People in this thread have disagreed with him. Unfortunately,. when people feel aggrieved, they feel they have the right to venture into hyperbole, a form of exaggeration.

Of course it’s true that the OP doesn’t trust Anet anymore. That’s true. But his reasons for not trusting them are spurious at best. And sensationalizing a headline to sell newspapers is cheesy no matter who does it.

Zenith.6403:

Vayne.8563:

Anet hasn’t broken any promises, because they didn’t promise anything. Look up promise in the dictionary and see what it means, then use the word.

- What about this video then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m26s

I thought it was pretty clear vision statement that they don’t want grind in their game. Yet they have added grind to their game, more with every patch. And from reading interviews they sound “very excited” about it too. What are fractal relics (quantities starting at 5) for? Why does the back item cost 1,350 fractal relics in a game that is not supposed to have grind?

What about half the achievements? Kill 1,000 centaurs. Get 1,000 sword kills. The whole WvW tab in achievements is about massive grind. Kill a million players in WvW to get your title.

Guild missions: get 5th level unlock and grind 50,000 influence points before you even get a chance to try them out.

Based on these observations, I say that Colin Johanson has mislead the players.

If you listen to the video and you look at the text, and I’ve posted this many times on the forums, it’s obvious that Colin is talking about grinding mobs to gain levels. That’s what he’s talking about. Making combat fun. You’re taking the whole paragraph out of context by looking only at the word grind and ignoring everything else. It’s not how English works. Here’s the actual paragraph in text:

“When you look at the art in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s visually stunning. I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and then when you play the combat in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

We want to change the way people view combat. Nothing about grinding for achievements. Nothing about grinding for gear. Nothing about vertical progression.

Anyone who even has a basic understanding of English should read that paragraph as not having fun tasks and having to work to get to the fun tasks. As in gearing up to start raiding.

But you dont’ have to grind to do the content in Guild Wars 2. You don’t have to grind to do dungeons, because I can do dungeons in greens. You don’t have to grind to do the fractals, because as you get to the lower level fractals if you enjoy them you get what you need from them. And you can do any level you want. You’re not locked out. You don’t have to grind to run around in Orr and farm.

That’s what he was talking about, and that’s all true. You don’t have to grind for that.

People are misunderstanding basic English and calling it a lie. Hyperbole at best, ignorance at worst.

critickitten.1498:

3) The devs have a tendency of giving out no information, or worse, wrong and conflicting information. We’ve been told that the precursor system was actively being worked on, and then Colin comes along to tell us that it’s not even likely to happen until April (at the earliest). Colin comes along and talks about how they’re working on new rewards systems that could yield precursors (getting people’s hopes up that the laurel system would have some manner of obtaining them) and then backtracks on it within days. We’re told that the devs are working on condition damage, and yet not working on it. That culling will be fixed, and then a patch comes out and makes it worse. That AoE will be nerfed across the board, and yet on a case-by-case basis. I don’t feel as though I can trust the developers themselves any more, because they don’t say the same things, and some of the claims they do make are later revealed to be outright false or misleading.

I stopped trusting them in November. Sure they did improve things slightly with the guaranteed rares and the ability to get a few powerful blood with the new RNG chest that costs laurels to purchase but really, they have broken too many things to actually trust them. #3 in your list showed this the most eloquently so I quoted that.

We were told that they didn’t want to harm legit farmers as well and when i pointed out to them how they were harming the legit farmers, when they reduced the rewards from meta events to mere blues, they suddenly had a concern when they had 6 threads all talking about the lack of loot. It became a movement.

There’s too many examples like this to go into detail. they continue to tell us they are working on class problems yet we see hardly any real fixes to the core problems we face in the three weakest classes of the game, two of which are Adventurer classes which cannot fulfill the third in the AN new trinity, DPS.

There’s so much that doing 2 simple things would solve most of the problems with this title in 1 month but i see no evidence that they even realize what doing something about these issues would solve.

PTR
removing DR entirely

These two things would completely turn this game around, but I believe there’s too much pride involved to admit that the old methods of doing things in mmo’s are the best ways because they’ve been well tested and time honored. They provide solutions that QC of this game just cannot seem to get a handle on right now.

I completely agree with you critic but it’s going to take something drastic for them to listen I’m afraid. Just look how long it took them to fix the loot issue and even then they still haven’t provided us with a quality means of collecting the T6 mats to craft with.

I agree with the original poster, i no longer trust the developers of this game.

For me personally this game has been slowly dying since November and despite many people giving the developers constructive criticism they just ignore it completely or even delete the thread, because apparently you are not aloud to say anything negative about this game on these forums without it being seen as “breaking the rules”.

They have become very good at creating hype, they also assume that everything they do is grand, fantastic and fun, they assume that we will automatically love everything they do. Now to be fare all advertising people do this, but i thought ArenaNet were above that, at least they use to be.

Take a look at ALL there blog posts, they NEVER give any specific detail and get us excited about something that we know nothing about. They consistently lie and retract promises they made.

Also, i agree with other people posting here that Martins response to this thread was very immature and unprofessional, he even threatened the original poster. Completely unacceptable and only adds fuel to the fire. Martin should apologise.

If this is how ArenaNet treats its customers what hope is there for this games survival.

Raijjn.8256:

let me add my 2 cents in here…

first and foremost, there’s something that all of you have failed to understand. Guild wars 1 was a game, guild wars 2 is NOT a game, it’s not here for your entertainment. Guild wars 2 is a business.. it’s entire design is centered around creating your need to spend real money on it. THAT’s the bottom line… anet, doesn’t give 2 squirts is p*ss about whether or not you like the changes they make. they don’t care a bit about what you feel they should or should not add to the game. they’re sole purpose is to create, in you, a need to spend your money. there are far too many examples of this in game for me to list here, but for those of you who will undoubtedly call bs.. take a look at the history thus far.. anything that deals with the gem store get immediate attention.. everything else, get attention, IF at all, when they feel like getting around to it. how long did it take them to fix the skritt segment of the personal storyline? how long did it take them to fix the cattlepult so ppl could get the vista? during this time, how many new items did they add to the gem store for you to spend money on? how many new bugs did they introduce, rather than fixing any of the existing bugs? I loved gw1.. but anet has lost their sense of gaming when they discovered what kind of money they could make from all the suckers that don’t see the big picture.

vv que trolls vv

Proof? Because I don’t spend money on the game and play it just fine. This kind of conspiracy theory is the worst kind of conspiracy theory. One that appeals to fear in people without having a shred of evidence to back it up.

There are so many greed F2P games out there and P2W games out there. This isn’t one of them.

If Anet was really after cash sales from the shop, they’d introduce pay to win options like many other games.

“If Anet was really after cash sales from the shop, they’d introduce pay to win options like many other games.”

There is a (n often direct) path from real money to the highest stat items in the game, it is pay to win already. Fortunately most of the players seem to be poor/cheap mwhahahahaha.

Alarox.4590:

Interesting, as I’m sure most people think this response is.

(snip)

I’m not usually one for looking into the reasoning behind people’s words on a forum, but I do think this is interesting enough to warrant an analysis.

Can we stop poking the hornet’s nest? There’s no good that can come of poking them like this when it’s really unnecessary.

thisolderhead.5127:

“If Anet was really after cash sales from the shop, they’d introduce pay to win options like many other games.”

There is a (n often direct) path from real money to the highest stat items in the game, it is pay to win already. Fortunately most of the players seem to be poor/cheap mwhahahahaha.

Or just unwilling to spend on it when there’s a method of getting there less impactful to their wallets

Though I’m not quite sure I see “pay to win” here . . . sure you can burn a bunch of cash, into Gems, into Gold . . . into items. But most of those items are mostly readily accessible in other ways. Except Legendaries, which is more “pay to look awesome/silly”.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

thisolderhead.5127:

“If Anet was really after cash sales from the shop, they’d introduce pay to win options like many other games.”

There is a (n often direct) path from real money to the highest stat items in the game, it is pay to win already. Fortunately most of the players seem to be poor/cheap mwhahahahaha.

Or just unwilling to spend on it when there’s a method of getting there less impactful to their wallets

Though I’m not quite sure I see “pay to win” here . . . sure you can burn a bunch of cash, into Gems, into Gold . . . into items. But most of those items are mostly readily accessible in other ways. Except Legendaries, which is more “pay to look awesome/silly”.

Ah – I see, nothing I was referring to was exclusively P2W, just that cash to domination would be viable for a decent/good player.