Guild Wars 2

And by we, I mean the western players who were the demographic of choice when the game launched. The biggest complaint when Guild Wars 2 hit China was that players burned through the content in no time. There’s still a large segment there that equates MMOs with grind and real money spent. The content host for the Chinese version has contests that reward the players who pay the most cash during the events. Many, many more potential clients await in that market made up of that likes to show off dollars spent in game, and who enjoy knowing that the hours put in today are only the first of many to come.

It’s quite possible that we are the scraps. Players made it clear that what’s come with HoT was not what they were wanting from the outset, but we got it anyway. There has been little to no response from Anet about it. Some bought HoT blindly and in general Anet probably got the revenue they were wanting, perhaps just icing on the cake, and they now have a design that will continue to hold up better in the Chinese market in the future. Just a thought that I had. Feel free to add yours.

I’m a western player. I have no idea what you’re talking about. And players saying it wasn’t what we wanted? How many players? Have you not noticed every time someone complains about too much grind in HoT, roughly half the posts in the thread are by people who don’t mind or even like it?

I think you’re over-estimating your opinion as something that is some sort of majority opinion. I think it’s probably a minority opinion. Of course, I think my opinion is probably a minority opinion too. I think most people don’t think deeply enough about their gaming experience to register much of an opinion at all.

western player here

and i also HATE asian MMOs

Heart of thorns is EPIC in my opinion.

I’m not understanding your post. Do you think it’s really possible to design an MMO that people don’t burn through on a few days unless you put in grind? There were levels 80s a couple of days after the original game’s launch. There were people who burned through the whole original game in a month or less, and then left. I don’t know when the first Legendary was put up for sale, but it was only about 3 months or so after the game’s launch, and that was supposed to be a long term thing for people to try to get. You could argue that the game started without enough grind to keep people logged on and working on goals. Personally I’m liking that every time I get exp now it’s going towards something.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m not understanding your post.

Asian MMOs are—according to stereotype, anyway—more grindy than Western MMOs. The OP is suggesting that Chinese MMO players are accustomed to a lot more grind than we are, and like it a lot more, so if it seems like Heart of Thorns is super grindy, that’s because it was balanced with the Chinese market in mind, rather than the Western market.

I don’t agree, but that’s what the OP is saying. If that were the case, though, there’s no reason the Western version would need to have the same amount of grind. If they were really padding out the game for the Chinese market, our version of the game could have required 250 hero points for an elite spec instead of 400, a reduced number for each mastery. etc. There’s no reason to assume those numbers were picked for the Chinese version, and just left in for the Western version.

People have been worrying about how the existence of the Chinese version would impact the game since it was announced, and I think a lot of it is unfounded worry. Whether the amount of grind in the game is good or not, I’m skeptical that the Chinese version has any impact on the actual numbers.

I’ve played Korean grinders, and GW2 is not comparable.

Anyone who has even dabbled in games like Rappelz or Last Chaos laughs at the idea of HoT being a grinder.

That said, I do think that there are demographics that Anet has decided are not worth catering to. However, I don’t think that the entire demographic of Western players is one of them. I would say that a group they aren’t catering to is the one that wants everything to be completed in their chosen time frame, which is usually, “now.” Then again, no MMO caters to them.

Oh honey, if you want grind and a cash sink, go play Perfect World.
GW2 isnt even close (thank goodness).

Sylv.5324:

I’ve played Korean grinders, and GW2 is not comparable.

^this, still they reduced the 400 to 250.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m not understanding your post. Do you think it’s really possible to design an MMO that people don’t burn through on a few days unless you put in grind? There were levels 80s a couple of days after the original game’s launch. There were people who burned through the whole original game in a month or less, and then left. I don’t know when the first Legendary was put up for sale, but it was only about 3 months or so after the game’s launch, and that was supposed to be a long term thing for people to try to get. You could argue that the game started without enough grind to keep people logged on and working on goals. Personally I’m liking that every time I get exp now it’s going towards something.

Yes it was “supposed” to be a long term thing to get but if someone plays all day then they logically should have that fast track by virtue of their being on more. You shouldn’t be punished for not playing all day but rather get rewarded for going above and beyond.

With all the new MMOs constantly being released, people that burn through content are gonna burn through it no matter what so they can get to the next big shiny thing.

Anet is catering to China because of the Billions of potential customers, its a no-brainer. It’s why we have a Chinese dragon for a raid.

Oh honey, if you want grind and a cash sink, go play Perfect World.
GW2 isnt even close (thank goodness).

I’ve played several of the games from perfectworld, and i agree completely, they’re in a completely different ballpark.

If you were to compare GW2 with any other Asian based (grind) MMO, you would have needed around 50 million exp to get from lvl 79 to lvl 80.
Instead of having stacks of 250 of a mat in your bank, you would have needed 10 of those stacks, or you would have needed to run an instance 500 times to get enough materials to start crafting a piece of equipment. Or you would have needed to “upgrade” your gear with an rng anvil and needed a cash shop item to get 100% success…

Believe me, be happy that GW2 isn’t aimed at the chinese market, otherwise you’d lose around 80% of the western playerbase, simple fact.

p.s. : it’s not billions of potential customers, most chinese or asian based mmo’s are F2P, their business model is different, and chinese players don’t spend so much in the cashshop either, they are used to ‘grinding’, just look at the goldfarmers.
Imagine playing a game where you see a map filled at every spot with bots. And for every account banned, 3 more pop up within minutes. If gw2 were completely F2P, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.

I was under the impression that GW2 did not do well in China. Do you think that Anet would throw good money after bad?

Ashen.2907:

I was under the impression that GW2 did not do well in China. Do you think that Anet would throw good money after bad?

^

That’s what I’ve heard also,though it’s all second hand information. If the amount of grind was not a success over there, why would they make it a model for here where it’s even less likely to be successful?

Prototypemind.4026:

And by we, I mean the western players who were the demographic of choice when the game launched. The biggest complaint when Guild Wars 2 hit China was that players burned through the content in no time. There’s still a large segment there that equates MMOs with grind and real money spent. The content host for the Chinese version has contests that reward the players who pay the most cash during the events. Many, many more potential clients await in that market made up of that likes to show off dollars spent in game, and who enjoy knowing that the hours put in today are only the first of many to come.

It’s quite possible that we are the scraps. Players made it clear that what’s come with HoT was not what they were wanting from the outset, but we got it anyway. There has been little to no response from Anet about it. Some bought HoT blindly and in general Anet probably got the revenue they were wanting, perhaps just icing on the cake, and they now have a design that will continue to hold up better in the Chinese market in the future. Just a thought that I had. Feel free to add yours.

First off I think this post shows what is “wrong” with the Western stereotype. The so called instant gratification that kids needs these days. This might show my age a bit but none in my 17 years of MMOs have I heard so much complaining about a so called “grind” in a game. “I have to play the game for more than 20 mins to get all the new content?”, “I have to actually go farm mats to make my weapons?”, etc.

2nd of all I have been playing GW2 off and on since launch. Nowhere in these entire game have I had to “cash out” to win anything. I am against the whole P2W stereo. I actually prefer paid subscription base as it forces devs to pump out new content or they don’t get paid. If anything the one thing that has come out of the Eastern Market that is killing game play is the “Cash Shop” and "Lotto chests (AKA Black Lion chest). These pump more revenue into a game then sub but for little to no work. However Rift and GW2 have at least found a decent balance primarily only offering vanity items. (I still have my issues with boosters.)

I keep hearing how great and helpful the GW2 community is but I really think it just exacerbates the complainy casuals. You give an inch and these people take a mile. If you want to complain about a grind go play Linage 2 and come back and we will talk. I have played over 20 MMOs in my years going back to the UO days. Never have I heard so much complaining about “playing” a game. I love GW2, played GW1 since beta. Never had people complaining this much about when you had to go and grind your Light Bringer or other factions. Saddest part is Anet gave in to these types and turned around and cut the “grind” in half in HoT (blaming it on themselves in the process) and we still have people kittening.

Never played WoW, never cared too. All I hear from people coming from WoW is they are a bunch of elitist kittens. I will at this point welcome someone to come and tell some of these kids to shove it up there kitten and get with the program. Players like the OP here are what kill games. They come in, QQ till the content is dumbed down for all, killing the experience/challenge and are off to play in someone’s newer shinier sand box the next week.

OP you are not the face of the Western Market. You are the fickle problem with a small minority of it.

Prototypemind.4026:

And by we, I mean the western players who were the demographic of choice when the game launched. The biggest complaint when Guild Wars 2 hit China was that players burned through the content in no time.

It’s quite possible that we are the scraps. Players made it clear that what’s come with HoT was not what they were wanting from the outset, but we got it anyway. There has been little to no response from Anet about it. Some bought HoT blindly and in general Anet probably got the revenue they were wanting, perhaps just icing on the cake, and they now have a design that will continue to hold up better in the Chinese market in the future. Just a thought that I had. Feel free to add yours.

…

So, multiple stereotyped generalizations all up in there…

A basic lesson: Not everyone in ‘the west’ is like you. Not everyone in ‘the East’ is unlike you, nor even in China.

I actually have all of one complaint about HoT and I don’t see it as a concern met by either of your two stereotypes:

I wanted 8 more dungeons, I got 0.

Otherwise I don’t see any flaws in the way HoT was done.

Ok, from a lore perspective I am annoyed – I want to return to Elona… Elona is what kept me interested in Guild Wars a decade ago. But as to how they did the content that they did… I don’t get your concern at all.

This is the only MMO among those I play that has ever done an expansion with no new dungeons (though one of my MMOs of choice has not had an expansion so we will see if this is a trend or just ArenaNet – but that MMO had a fully voice acted cutscene filled solo scaleable to group dungeon for Halloween that was new this year, so they might be thinking differently than here).

Driften.8716:

Prototypemind.4026:

And by we, I mean the western players who were the demographic of choice when the game launched. The biggest complaint when Guild Wars 2 hit China was that players burned through the content in no time. There’s still a large segment there that equates MMOs with grind and real money spent. The content host for the Chinese version has contests that reward the players who pay the most cash during the events. Many, many more potential clients await in that market made up of that likes to show off dollars spent in game, and who enjoy knowing that the hours put in today are only the first of many to come.

It’s quite possible that we are the scraps. Players made it clear that what’s come with HoT was not what they were wanting from the outset, but we got it anyway. There has been little to no response from Anet about it. Some bought HoT blindly and in general Anet probably got the revenue they were wanting, perhaps just icing on the cake, and they now have a design that will continue to hold up better in the Chinese market in the future. Just a thought that I had. Feel free to add yours.

First off I think this post shows what is “wrong” with the Western stereotype. The so called instant gratification that kids needs these days. This might show my age a bit but none in my 17 years of MMOs have I heard so much complaining about a so called “grind” in a game. “I have to play the game for more than 20 mins to get all the new content?”, “I have to actually go farm mats to make my weapons?”, etc.

2nd of all I have been playing GW2 off and on since launch. Nowhere in these entire game have I had to “cash out” to win anything. I am against the whole P2W stereo. I actually prefer paid subscription base as it forces devs to pump out new content or they don’t get paid. If anything the one thing that has come out of the Eastern Market that is killing game play is the “Cash Shop” and "Lotto chests (AKA Black Lion chest). These pump more revenue into a game then sub but for little to no work. However Rift and GW2 have at least found a decent balance primarily only offering vanity items. (I still have my issues with boosters.)

If you are saying that the Gemshop in GW2 is killing the game I will have to disagree with you. Sure I do agree with you about the bltc chests, they should go bye bye or at least separate the weapon skins from them. There is nothing in the gemstore that can be killing this game, most of it is fluff and convenience items. People can live without them and they do little to no harm to the game. If you are saying Anet makes enough cash off the gemstore to just sit back, relax and slack off, again I will have to disagree with you. If anything I think they are doing the best they can to expand the game and put in more content as fast as they can. It may not seem like that recently (well before HOT) but that is probably because they have gone back and put a lot of work into designing the wheel all over again not once but twice (the trait/skill unlock system). Also lets not forget the never ending (it seems) rebalancing of skills .

I and a lot of other people I am sure are over paid subs. I think they are nothing more than price gouging. For too long these companies have charged too much for what they have given. If anything they can slack off because they are already getting your money. I prefer the model we have because it means if the gemstore is not pulling it’s weight then Anet has to work for our cash thus – expansions.

I am still trying to figure out what this grind is. Having to do events to gain experience? Having to hunt down and beat hero challenges? I’ve noticed that some seem to think so, but for me that is not grind. That is playing a game.

What is grind to me is something like CoF xp farm or if I did the Mad King’s Lab for many hours a day. Or repeating one single event continuously or worse keep it from ever completing.

There is a huge amount of stuff to do in HoT in both ways: A lot of xp is needed but there is also a great variety of things to choose from. If this is what the Asian ‘grindy MMOs’ are like, maybe I should try one,

Garambola.2461:

I am still trying to figure out what this grind is. Having to do events to gain experience? Having to hunt down and beat hero challenges? I’ve noticed that some seem to think so, but for me that is not grind. That is playing a game.

What is grind to me is something like CoF xp farm or if I did the Mad King’s Lab for many hours a day. Or repeating one single event continuously or worse keep it from ever completing.

There is a huge amount of stuff to do in HoT in both ways: A lot of xp is needed but there is also a great variety of things to choose from. If this is what the Asian ‘grindy MMOs’ are like, maybe I should try one,

The difference is with those games and their grind you usually have little to no options/variety in doing your goals. Thus why they are called grinds. Here you have a ton of different events to do for the exp needed. In most of those games you may be limited to killing certain mobs for example as any others will be too low lvl to give you any exp at all.

I still have flashbacks to my days in Perfectworld trying to lvl beyond lvl 60 combat. I could only kill certain creatures and it was mind-numbing boring.

Don’t even get me started on Runescape and the spending 100+ hours in say 1 skill for example where you literally have go to your bank and withdrawal 28 steel bars, go to anvil and smith said 28 bars. Might not sound like much but when you have to do 100,000 said bars you soon realise that you are going to have to do this on auto pilot mode (no not botting, paying very little attention and just click, click, click) while watching a ton of movies over the next month or 2. Oh and did I forget to say that this is just for 1 lvl, from 98 smithing to 99? That is true grind my friend lol….

Ah yes, try a real Korean MMO/grind such as Silkroad Online, botting is mandatory. (Not really but hundreds do, and it’s a real business).

Hi there go and kill 1000 sproglets, done that, go and kill another 2000 sproglets…………… and so on

Moving on at least GW2 has content somewhat.

I don’t know about the “we” thing, but personally, I’m definitely not target market, and becoming less so with each new direction taken by Anet management.

Having huge amounts of grind in some other MMO’s doesnt make it more fun or imo more acceptable in others.

However my experience of GW2, including HOT has so far been very little grind whatsoever. The only grind being for gold for skins, which has been reduced with the expansion through legendary crafting.

I cant see how people can call masteries a grind when I have levelled most of mine just by doing each branch of the meta events in the new maps once.

Heart of Grinds does feel like more of a asian mmo now.

Monk Tank.5897:

Anet is catering to China because of the Billions of potential customers, its a no-brainer. It’s why we have a Chinese dragon for a raid.

We’ve had dragon’s in the game looonnnng before the Chinese expansion. People have thought dragon’s were cool long before computers were invented. But cool conspiracy theory.

This is nothing compared to the mastery system we as players encountered playing EverQuest. This system has A LOT less points to earn and the progress is earned across your whole account. People are allowed to have what, over 60 character slots in this game? Could you imagine the effect of having to level mastery on each and every one of them? If that were the case for even the 6 characters I have, some alts wouldn’t be getting their mastery leveled, plain and simple.

They even jacked up the cost of Ascended armour.

SirServed.5693:

This is nothing compared to the mastery system we as players encountered playing EverQuest. This system has A LOT less points to earn and the progress is earned across your whole account. People are allowed to have what, over 60 character slots in this game? Could you imagine the effect of having to level mastery on each and every one of them? If that were the case for even the 6 characters I have, some alts wouldn’t be getting their mastery leveled, plain and simple.

Yes I can imagine the effect of having soulbound mastery. I played the original grinder game WoW, where for yrs. everything was soulbound. Now that’s grind.

Well, some people have taken the stereotypes to heart, but it’s really not out of sorts to generalize eastern and western MMOs in that way. Eastern publishers in general continue to push games based around grind and gating, sometimes even gating based on real money spent. Western MMOs tend to focus on cosmetics and pay-for-convenience items to continue enticing players between content releases. Eastern games keep players playing by making them invest so much time that they feel like they can’t walk away, and western games do the same via cash. If that’s not PC, oh well, it’s how it shakes out currently.

As to the grind with HoT, it is an increase from what was seen before. You didn’t have to play through the game previously to be your class. There seems at least for now to be a lot more complaining about not being able to play as the new advanced classes going into HoT, but rather having to play inside HoT and jump through hoops to become these new ACs that really don’t tie into the story line anyway. What players have gotten with HoT is not what was expected.

I’m in no way saying that GW2 suddenly reaches the ranks of Asian grinders with the release of HoT, but in my opinion it feels like that aspect is more of what Anet is concerned with than what they’ve been promising. There’s nothing epic or fun about the new Mastery system, and I sure don’t see anything epic in obtaining Legendary weapons via it either. Again, I have no problem with the feedback or criticism, and most of it has been pretty tame, but to those just using my post as a stepping stone for rants about your love of HoT, there are other threads for that. As to real money, secondary game houses are responsible for running games in much of Asia, and the company that handles GW2 has monetized much of what goes on there according to players from the CN server who have come here asking for help.

Regardless, I legitimately don’t feel like what was delivered reflects what this game was said to be about originally, reflects what one would have expected had he played since launch and never heard of HoT until it was released, or of someone who followed the development of HoT and the write-ups and features on it. There’s grind there that feels like it’s there just to keep players logged in and that does nothing to enhance the experience of Guild Wars 2.

If “I hate long term goals” players were the game’s core demographic at launch (and having spent 9 months building my Infinite Light I don’t believe that was actually true for a second…) then I’m glad the game’s emphasis has changed.

HoT has delivered dozens of ongoing projects to inch towards. Some of which, shockingly, don’t involve gold farming in the Silverwastes .

They deceased the amount of effort it takes to get to 80 and gear up your char. They then added optional “grind” to get account bound Masteries, which you get by playing the game and doing events. Not exactly the way an “Asian grinder” works.

It’s a sad day, really, when just playing the game by doing the events is considered grinding.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It’s a sad day, really, when just playing the game by doing the events is considered grinding.

That’s usually an indicator that the content within the game simply isn’t fun for one reason or another.

Gene Archer.8560:

That’s usually an indicator that the content within the game simply isn’t fun for one reason or another.

Well I personally think its great fun lol

Gene Archer.8560:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It’s a sad day, really, when just playing the game by doing the events is considered grinding.

That’s usually an indicator that the content within the game simply isn’t fun for one reason or another.

Maybe those people should leave then. Why would they hang around playing a game that isn’t fun? Lots of other games out there.

As a player who mostly likes running about in the world doing open events I must say that I’m really feeling like the target audience of the Mastery system. It really gives me a rewarding feel to log in and play knowing that experience counts toward something in the long run other than superfluous skill points. That right there made me really happy about buying HoT despite having little to no raid ambitions.

The funny thing is the exact same thing happened when the game launched. People were complaining that everything from getting exotic armor to reaching level 80 to unlocking all the weapon skills was a horrible, unbearable grind which no one could be expected to deal with and proof that the game was poorly designed.

A month later the same people were complaining there was nothing left for them to do, the game was boring and poorly designed because it shouldn’t be possible to rush through it so quickly.

I’d put money on exactly the same happening with HoT. Give it another 3 weeks and people will be asking what to do now they’ve rushed through their personal goals and are refusing to touch the rest of the expansion (which won’t count as ‘real’ content for various complicated reasons).

Except by then they should be able to complain that raiding takes too long/is too hard/doesn’t give them every item they wanted on the first run etc.

Vayne.8563:

I’m a western player. I have no idea what you’re talking about. And players saying it wasn’t what we wanted? How many players? Have you not noticed every time someone complains about too much grind in HoT, roughly half the posts in the thread are by people who don’t mind or even like it?

I think you’re over-estimating your opinion as something that is some sort of majority opinion. I think it’s probably a minority opinion. Of course, I think my opinion is probably a minority opinion too. I think most people don’t think deeply enough about their gaming experience to register much of an opinion at all.

A good thing Vayne is here to tell us what everyone else is thinking.

Prototypemind.4026:

The biggest complaint when Guild Wars 2 hit China was that players burned through the content in no time.

The same complaint was made here the first week of launch. Ascended was practically demanded back then. Without endgame content to grind towards, many people simply burned through everything the game had to offer within the first week or two. Normally, this is where raiding would have stepped in. Without offering vertical progression however, I don’t see it lasting long.

If you’ve been following along, everything ArenaNet has done, including the NPE which people blamed China for, has been complained about here first. HoT is simply trying to appeal to those who quit back at launch.

DaShi.1368:

Vayne.8563:

I’m a western player. I have no idea what you’re talking about. And players saying it wasn’t what we wanted? How many players? Have you not noticed every time someone complains about too much grind in HoT, roughly half the posts in the thread are by people who don’t mind or even like it?

I think you’re over-estimating your opinion as something that is some sort of majority opinion. I think it’s probably a minority opinion. Of course, I think my opinion is probably a minority opinion too. I think most people don’t think deeply enough about their gaming experience to register much of an opinion at all.

A good thing Vayne is here to tell us what everyone else is thinking.

It’s a vast improvement over the OP who is apparently able to tell us what everyone in “the west” and everyone in China wants from GW2.

Which is especially confusing to me since I’m in the UK, which is generally considered to be a western country, and I don’t agree with anything they said.

This is all just an evil ploy to stop people farming gold and make them farm XP instead. I think it’s working as intended.

My birthday buff and heroic boosters ended last night and…instead of 5k exp per monsters…it’s down to 250 per. Subsequently, my exp rates tanked when those ended so now MR gains is super low….so low it makes me feel like I am playing the usual korean f2p MMO; these are usually designed in such a way with low exp/loots to frustrate you enough to pay up for boosters.

This game is looking like a korean f2p mmo more and more but I guess that is the direction they are going. I expect them to nerf loot rates to push item boosts in the near future. After that, maybe they will also introduce a monthly ‘premium’ service as well. In the past, I have never felt the need to use boosts but now they are almost mandatory to get anywhere since those give 10x the exp as unboosted…I for one am not pleased.

Danikat.8537:

DaShi.1368:

Vayne.8563:

I’m a western player. I have no idea what you’re talking about. And players saying it wasn’t what we wanted? How many players? Have you not noticed every time someone complains about too much grind in HoT, roughly half the posts in the thread are by people who don’t mind or even like it?

I think you’re over-estimating your opinion as something that is some sort of majority opinion. I think it’s probably a minority opinion. Of course, I think my opinion is probably a minority opinion too. I think most people don’t think deeply enough about their gaming experience to register much of an opinion at all.

A good thing Vayne is here to tell us what everyone else is thinking.

It’s a vast improvement over the OP who is apparently able to tell us what everyone in “the west” and everyone in China wants from GW2.

Which is especially confusing to me since I’m in the UK, which is generally considered to be a western country, and I don’t agree with anything they said.

I really don’t understand why you need to misinterpret his post. If you think it is wrong, then state your reasons why. Arguing against something that doesn’t exist doesn’t make sense.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Why would they hang around playing a game that isn’t fun?

I don’t know. Ask all those people that wanted gear grinds, hard modes, uber challenging content, etc why they hung around and demanded ANet change the game from what it used to be.

But, since they stuck around and got their way with HoT, it’s only fair now that the other side sticks around and demands ANet change the game back to what it once was.

Gene Archer.8560:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Why would they hang around playing a game that isn’t fun?

I don’t know. Ask all those people that wanted gear grinds, hard modes, uber challenging content, etc why they hung around and demanded ANet change the game from what it used to be.

But, since they stuck around and got their way with HoT, it’s only fair now that the other side sticks around and demands ANet change the game back to what it once was.

Mounts
Dueling
World PvP
Gear inspection
Move the maps borders so they aren’t square or so that there aren’t spaces in between
Remove all invisible walls
Make things easier
Make things harder

/shrug

There is always someone asking for something. They weren’t the first, the most unusual or the last. I doubt ANet pays attention to any request unless their metrics back that request up.

Well, I’ll start by adding that I’m a western player.. lol.

As someone who has played and enjoyed games with an actual grind I can only assume you’ve not played them, because HoT is not a grind. :P

I’m someone who quit less then a month after launch because there was nothing left to do, I’ve only been back a bit over a month and I’m back because of the promise of challenging endgame content (finally).

I assume you’re post is in relation to masteries, because it doesn’t take much to get your elite spec or anything else in HoT.

Just doing all of the achievements and unlocking the skins will get you well past max masteries, even if they’re not your thing you could max them in 3 months just doing daily adventures and little else, lol.

I understand that GW2 has a a decent amount of casual players but it also has a decent amount of players who like having things to work towards, most of the new content can be accessed without any masteries at all with mostly all of it being available with the masteries you’d gain just from the map completion/adventures/story/meta events you’re able to do without any masteries.

Gene Archer.8560:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Why would they hang around playing a game that isn’t fun?

I don’t know. Ask all those people that wanted gear grinds, hard modes, uber challenging content, etc why they hung around and demanded ANet change the game from what it used to be.

But, since they stuck around and got their way with HoT, it’s only fair now that the other side sticks around and demands ANet change the game back to what it once was.

Uhh, where’s the “gear grind”, “hard mode” and “uber challenging content” in HoT? lol

We hopefully get a gear grind and challenging content with raids, something that you wont even have to do and will make up 1%(ish) of the total content in GW2. Why are you opposed to 1% of the content not being aimed at you? I’m fine with the vast majority of easy content that’s not aimed at me, because I don’t think 100% of the content in an online game needs to be exclusively content I want to do.

If the 4 HoT maps are too hard for you then by all means avoid them and stick with the 30 or so (?) maps that are much easier. Though, they’re certainly not “uber challenging content”, “hard mode” or a “gear grind”.

fixit.7189:

My birthday buff and heroic boosters ended last night and…instead of 5k exp per monsters…it’s down to 250 per. Subsequently, my exp rates tanked when those ended so now MR gains is super low….so low it makes me feel like I am playing the usual korean f2p MMO; these are usually designed in such a way with low exp/loots to frustrate you enough to pay up for boosters.

This game is looking like a korean f2p mmo more and more but I guess that is the direction they are going. I expect them to nerf loot rates to push item boosts in the near future. After that, maybe they will also introduce a monthly ‘premium’ service as well. In the past, I have never felt the need to use boosts but now they are almost mandatory to get anywhere since those give 10x the exp as unboosted…I for one am not pleased.

I ran out of boosts 2 days ago and while it’s definitely not as fast, I also feel a lot less pressured to get something done once I log on “because I’m on a boost timer”. For once today, I actually had the chance to relax and take in what was actually going on during a zone’s meta event on a large scale. If this wasn’t the direction they planned for this game from the start, I can’t say that they made a mistake by making this choice.

Not sure you are talking for the majority here.

All time activity is way up. Many guildies are happy with HoT. Some (including myself) have sunk way to much time into the game the last few days.

If you are having a hard time finding fun in playing the game, try diferent game modes. Maybe wvw or spvp could ineterest you. If that does not work, maybe it’s time to dig deep and see if this is a game you want to stay with. Maybe you aren’t GW2 target audience.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

. I doubt ANet pays attention to any request unless their metrics back that request up.

And there’s no way for a player to know what the metrics are without sticking around since ANet never tells us anything until about, oh, 4 days before it’s gonna happen.

So I guess there’s the answer to why people don’t leave when they aren’t having fun. They stick around in the hopes that the game will change to how they want it, because maybe eventually they’ll be the metric in question, but since ANet never says anything, they definitely don’t leave because then they’ll miss their chance if they’re not there.

But yeah, since the hardcore junkies didn’t have the decency to leave, I wouldn’t expect the other side to leave any time soon. Expect either millions of posts complaining about the new difficulty curve, or expect a whole lot of nerfing in the coming months, since ANet can’t decide who it wants as its audience.

Gene Archer.8560:

Expect either millions of posts complaining about the new difficulty curve, or expect a whole lot of nerfing in the coming months, since ANet can’t decide who it wants as its audience.

1) If the Gold requirements in some Adventures were toned down, I would not complain.
2) PvE combat difficulty feels good (I play DH). You really can’t expect to have mastered your character in a manner that makes every fight subjectively easy in just over a week. There are a few enemies that literally destroy some play styles, leaving people having “wtf?!?” moments after getting laid out.
3) I haven’t played PvP since August so I can’t offer any opinion on that.
4) The mastery system isn’t the demon that players believe it to be.
5) I would literally pay to glide in Central Tyria, if that’s what it takes.

Just wait, I expect raids will require participants to have most HoT specific MRs at max.

ie. ley line gliding.

Also expect raid leaders to only invite people who have combat boosters and revive orbs…fun (and expensive) times ahead!