Guild Wars 2

+1.

Might add that the only reason why custom exchange was brought back was 3rd party websites giving negative criticism. Players & reactions on forums didn’t matter at all.

I completely feel the same way: when making one step forward (e.g. retraiting is possible everywhere and without cost) they are making hundred steps back (trait unlocking change).

+1

This should get a Sticky and be used as a design document going forward.

Pretty much this. For some reason the white knights think you HAVE to implement two terrible things for one good thing. If you complain about the terrible things they all shout as loud as they can that there is this good thing. But in reality there doesn’t have to be the bad thing, there can just be the good thing, but for some reason Anet doesn’t do it like that.

+1

Anet please listen to this guy
and check his list of 150+ QoL Features too!!

This is such an awesome game and it could be even more awesome with so easy changes… and by stopping the addition of stupid changes!

B b b b but metrics lol. I hardly ever agree with all the points in a forum post but this is gold. +1 would read again.

Why is it that people who criticize assume they’re right while people who like stuff are wrong? Why isn’t it possible that someone can like a game without being a white knight?

The idea of play how you want has been taken so far out of it’s original context, it’s lost all it’s meaning. Anet was pretty clear on what they meant.

In most games, you level by going quest hub to quest hub and that’s pretty much what you do, until you get to a high enough level to go to the next quest hub, afterwhich you do dungeons then you raid. That’s the PvE experience of most themepark MMOs.

Anet wanted to be different, and this game is different. You can jump into WvW. You can level in Edge of the Mists. You can now level in PvP. You can craft. You can do a bunch of everything. You can never leave Queensdale if you like and still make max level. Hell someone leveled to max in the tutorial.

That’s what Anet meant and it continues to be true to this day.

SRy but Anet can’t listen to anyone because the voices in there heads say: “DO NOT LISTEN TO PPL”.

Vayne.8563:

Why is it that people who criticize assume they’re right while people who like stuff are wrong? Why isn’t it possible that someone can like a game without being a white knight?

The idea of play how you want has been taken so far out of it’s original context, it’s lost all it’s meaning. Anet was pretty clear on what they meant.

In most games, you level by going quest hub to quest hub and that’s pretty much what you do, until you get to a high enough level to go to the next quest hub, afterwhich you do dungeons then you raid. That’s the PvE experience of most themepark MMOs.

Anet wanted to be different, and this game is different. You can jump into WvW. You can level in Edge of the Mists. You can now level in PvP. You can craft. You can do a bunch of everything. You can never leave Queensdale if you like and still make max level. Hell someone leveled to max in the tutorial.

That’s what Anet meant and it continues to be true to this day.

I think you missed the point. One step forward two steps back.

Especially regarding traits I share OP’s view. And I wished that at least the cities weren’t “megaservered”. But I do like the new daily system.

Nice list you’ve put up there. I wont say I agree with everything but it’s enough to for everyone to find something they hate.

I honestly agree with a lot of what the OP is saying. Not that think that all the changes are for the worse, because some of them address other problems that sorely needed to be addressed but still there is lot to be missed as well.

Vayne.8563:

Why is it that people who criticize assume they’re right while people who like stuff are wrong? Why isn’t it possible that someone can like a game without being a white knight?

Where did he say that he’s right and everyone defending it is wrong? It is his list. His list about things he hates. And there are already some posts that say that he is right.

In most games, you level by going quest hub to quest hub and that’s pretty much what you do, until you get to a high enough level to go to the next quest hub, afterwhich you do dungeons then you raid. That’s the PvE experience of most themepark MMOs.

This isn’t most other games. This is GW2. And prior to the changes the OP listed, GW2 was great for the most part, atleast for me. Now it’s not so much.

+1
But like most other criticism about the direction of game heading to wrong direction, this will probably sink to oblivion @ the bottom of the forum.
Bottom line, i don’t think anet cares. It’s not democracy. They select whatever they wanted to hear and filter out the rest. That just how it goes.

I can’t talk about the NPE stuff, I already had my 8 level 80 before they did it.

World Boss.
- I prefer this system to the old one by far, especially for Teq. But I can see your point. Did you know that not all the world boss were in the timer? Still plenty of boss that you can fight just like before : Dredge Commissar, the Ogre, the Shaman, etc. A lot of World bosses were pressing 1 method even before the change, some were changed a bit, but I agree that the scaling system should be more punishing. You shouldn’t be able to akf auto-attack a world boss in the middle of a zerg.

Home World
- Now that sound like a guys from a village spitting on the city. Use your friend list when you meet someone new and you want to continue to play with him. Ya I saw ppl more often before, but its not like it was a big deal. I say hi and then nothing else, sometime they didn’t responded. Its not because you saw someone 2-3 that you are now friend. For me the disadvantage of the megaserver are so little compare to the advantage. Every map feel alive with ppl running around, doing map completion, doing events, guild missions. Compare to the old system, where a lot of map were completely deserted because there was only a couple of people on that map on each server.

Like I said I can’t comment on the NPE stuff, but the Personal Story and Exploration are just like before at level 80. Don’t know when you are lower level.

Daily and log-in reward
That complain doesn’t even make sense. Every reward from the old daily and monthly are in the log-in reward system where you literally have to do nothing. The only thing you are missing is the AP. Its the ONLY thing. Now if you are saying that doing 3 of those daily are too much for you to get a strait 10 AP, I call bullkitten. Oh you are too busy to take 1min to go in kryta chop 3 trees or 30sec to go in ascalon to take a Vista, really, really.

You get the reward for nothing, if its too much for you doing 3 daily then don’t go after the AP seriously. Now you seem like trolling. You don’t get punished for doing lower level stuff. If you do your level 50 you will have ALL the reward you used to do. If you want to do the level in the daily you gonna have something else, that’s it. Ppl need to calm down. Rewarding something specific, doesn’t mean punishing everybody else.

Some ppl dont like any changes. They scream for some every day but when they come they are upset. Evolution is only way how to survive

bloodletting wolf.2837:

Vayne.8563:

Why is it that people who criticize assume they’re right while people who like stuff are wrong? Why isn’t it possible that someone can like a game without being a white knight?

The idea of play how you want has been taken so far out of it’s original context, it’s lost all it’s meaning. Anet was pretty clear on what they meant.

In most games, you level by going quest hub to quest hub and that’s pretty much what you do, until you get to a high enough level to go to the next quest hub, afterwhich you do dungeons then you raid. That’s the PvE experience of most themepark MMOs.

Anet wanted to be different, and this game is different. You can jump into WvW. You can level in Edge of the Mists. You can now level in PvP. You can craft. You can do a bunch of everything. You can never leave Queensdale if you like and still make max level. Hell someone leveled to max in the tutorial.

That’s what Anet meant and it continues to be true to this day.

I think you missed the point. One step forward two steps back.

I didn’t miss the point. Other people in the thread are commenting on play how you want, and I wanted to stop that.

The one step forward two back thing is not fact, it’s opinion. Everyone is entitled to believe what they want.

Its facts that i have been screwed by these “updates” many times now.

Lemme do a quick rundown of the things I personally agree/disagree with.

1. World Bosses, I prefer them the way they are now
2. Home Worlds, I don’t touch WvW much so I can’t comment here. I do like having people around to do events
3. Unlocking Traits, I agree with this one. I thought the point of leveling was to learn you class/build. Right now leveling just delays us from using our class.
4. Unlocking Skills, Honestly I think the new system might have some merits for actual new players. HOWEVER, I don’t see why it isn’t bypassed entirely when making alts.
5. Personal Story, I can’t really speak to this one as I almost always quit PS right before or after Claw Island.
6. Exploration, Yeah. If people can’t figure out how to feed a cow then I think GW2 is a bit above their level. I like the event tracker though.
7. Dailies, Still testing it. However I find it funny that they bother to have a cap at all. It would take 1500 daily completions to reach the daily AP cap of 15,000 from 0. Everyone who got comfortable when the cap was introduced and reduced their dailies to 5/6 a day is kicking themselves right now. The rewards were supposed to motivate us to do these things, but for a guy with 4mil karma and 8 level 80s, eh not really.

You also forgot:

8. Outfits, The ability to wear them in combat is neat and I feel they are being used way more now. However, town clothes and mixing and matching bit the dust and many of the best skins have been converted to inflexible and undyeable tonics. Furthermore, with the introduction of outfits, it’s getting harder and harder to go back to mix’n’matchable armor as there is a noticeable gap in graphical quality.

If that helps at all.

Vayne.8563:

bloodletting wolf.2837:

Vayne.8563:

Why is it that people who criticize assume they’re right while people who like stuff are wrong? Why isn’t it possible that someone can like a game without being a white knight?

The idea of play how you want has been taken so far out of it’s original context, it’s lost all it’s meaning. Anet was pretty clear on what they meant.

In most games, you level by going quest hub to quest hub and that’s pretty much what you do, until you get to a high enough level to go to the next quest hub, afterwhich you do dungeons then you raid. That’s the PvE experience of most themepark MMOs.

Anet wanted to be different, and this game is different. You can jump into WvW. You can level in Edge of the Mists. You can now level in PvP. You can craft. You can do a bunch of everything. You can never leave Queensdale if you like and still make max level. Hell someone leveled to max in the tutorial.

That’s what Anet meant and it continues to be true to this day.

I think you missed the point. One step forward two steps back.

I didn’t miss the point. Other people in the thread are commenting on play how you want, and I wanted to stop that.

The one step forward two back thing is not fact, it’s opinion. Everyone is entitled to believe what they want.

Sorry I forgot that you like 90% of anets decisions and you are entitled to your opinion. The title probably is a little misleading. The FACT remains that not just on the forums but in game players have been very unhappy with a lot of the decisions made in the past year.

Vayne.8563:

The idea of play how you want has been taken so far out of it’s original context, it’s lost all it’s meaning. Anet was pretty clear on what they meant.

In most games, you level by going quest hub to quest hub and that’s pretty much what you do, until you get to a high enough level to go to the next quest hub, afterwhich you do dungeons then you raid. That’s the PvE experience of most themepark MMOs.

Here you go:

It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.

I want to play Tequatl and Fractals 50 and CoE speedruns to get AP to get the most powerful rewards of Hellfire and Vambrace skins and the upcoming Pinnacle weapon skins.

Can I? No. I have to grind Queensdale events and harvest plants in Caledon. Yay?..

Rozbuska.5263:

Some ppl dont like any changes. They scream for some every day but when they come they are upset. Evolution is only way how to survive

I don’t think I’ve seen a single person on this forum complaining about Anet making changes to the game in general.
However, what bugs most people (I think) is that they seem to be mainly making unnecessary changes to features that didn’t need changing in the first place.
And fair enough if these changes appear to be, in fact, an improvement to the old. But unfortunately they hardly ever are.

Merging the Chinese features into the west is the worst thing to ever happen to this game, this is basically all of their changes rolled out into the west.

Lishtenbird.2814:

-snip-

EXPLORATION

Before:

• Walk around the world and feel like a free hero. Do what you want when you want.

Now:

• After the NPE improvement, follow the arrows (and press [F] to win). No need to make decisions.

Still do, can do. Walk around freely. If the arrow was intended for you, then yay?. If you feel cheated, well that is a problem you will have to deal with.

Why can’t I ride mounts in Guild Wars 2? That’s how I want to play. I’d also like to fly too.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this game has not been and never will allow the freedom to play every whim and fancy you have. The whole concept is flawed. If there is an optional way to play, there’s also always going to be an optimal way to play. Your choices end up being simply picking between an option in relation to the best one. (Why wouldn’t you always choose the best one?) Achieving perfect asynchronous balance between choices is impossible.

“Play how I want” is just some entitled community drivel that’s chanted to justify, “I don’t like this, change it because [reasons].” This is a game, and by the definition of “playing the game” you are playing by (and therefore confined to) the rules set forth by this game.

Play the game, or don’t; but you don’t make the rules unless you make the game.

Trait update was one of the stupidest things I’ve seen so far, and having megaservers everywhere struck a blow to server communities. You’d think they could keep server-only populations in LA and the cities, but noooo. And let’s all fondly remember the Fractured update.

As OP said, 1 step forward, 2 steps back. Though at times it feels like 1 step forward, 2 steps back and a punch in the stomach.

I play how I want every time I log in.

I don’t understand why people go through all the efforts to make these long posts when ANet clearly never listens to anything and continues in their own path of destruction.

If there was a negative button, I’d push it. I couldn’t disagree with you more on the points you highlighted. For my reasons, I cite Anet’s reasons for their implementations, because I agree with Anet’s logic behind them.

I can see how misinterpreting/misquoting “Play How You Want” would lead you to believe that it is gone.

Especially since your fanciful made up version of the concept never existed.

It’s “Play how you want to get the best gear”, not “Play how you want and have all forms of rewards dumped into your character’s inventory”.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

The FACT remains that not just on the forums but in game players have been very unhappy with a lot of the decisions made in the past year.

That’s the weird thing. After reading some portion of the forum I feel almost depressed about the game. Then I get online the game, I have fun with my friends and guild, speak with ppl in the map, go in WvW with my second guild, have fun, laugh, get reward and sleep happy. Every time someone start to bash the game for no reason in the map chat, he’s receive badly with ppl ignoring him or telling him to play another game if he don’t like it.

I receive a totally different vibe in the game and in some more negative part of the forum. But maybe that’s just me alone in my bubble.

Btw, I’m not talking about constructive criticism of the game. There is a lot of stuff that I don’t like about the game. But when you start your speech with Play How I want is dead in the this game, the discussion don’t start in the right direction. You can say that you want the reward (AP or else) , but don’t like the change they did to reach that reward. But you are not force to do this content.

The arrow while exploring can be turned off in the menu.

About the dailies, I dislike and like a lot about it.
The rewards for them are great, but the achievements themselves were narrowmindedly created. They should be a lot more general. Fractal level shouldn’t matter, class you play in PvP shouldn’t matter, etc. etc.

Clip.6845:

The arrow while exploring can be turned off in the menu.

About the dailies, I dislike and like a lot about it.
The rewards for them are great, but the achievements themselves were narrowmindedly created. They should be a lot more general. Fractal level shouldn’t matter, class you play in PvP shouldn’t matter, etc. etc.

I agree with that. It should be more general so that more ppl could do it without getting out of their way.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Vayne.8563:

The idea of play how you want has been taken so far out of it’s original context, it’s lost all it’s meaning. Anet was pretty clear on what they meant.

In most games, you level by going quest hub to quest hub and that’s pretty much what you do, until you get to a high enough level to go to the next quest hub, afterwhich you do dungeons then you raid. That’s the PvE experience of most themepark MMOs.

Here you go:

It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.

I want to play Tequatl and Fractals 50 and CoE speedruns to get AP to get the most powerful rewards of Hellfire and Vambrace skins and the upcoming Pinnacle weapon skins.

Can I? No. I have to grind Queensdale events and harvest plants in Caledon. Yay?..

There is another quote in that very same blog that is relevant: “We’ll add support so daily achievements will be different each day of the week, which will help drive players to different areas of the world and play together.”

They always intended for people to go here and there, doing different things to get the achievements. It never was play where you want to get those rewards. People may have been able to do so, but it wasn’t their original intention.

About the boss timers vs the mega server. As is, I like neither option. Frankly, I don’t like using third party sites. Not only is it a design flaw, but you put your computer at risk. I printed a list of event times from Wiki which I keep by my computer now. Which i actually mind less than option 1. The problem is it’s largely inaccurate.

Yes, they screwed up the dailies. What I don’t understand is the dev’s inability to see five minutes in front of their face. They have a broken megaserver system that they’re fixing. They simultaneously force large groups of people into small areas. Then are seemingly shocked by the problem worstening.

Why not fix the one problem before tackling the second. Rather than fixing what needs it, (camera, lag, etc) They fix stuff that wasn’t an issue, like traits and the daily.

mtpelion.4562:

I can see how misinterpreting/misquoting “Play How You Want” would lead you to believe that it is gone.

Especially since your fanciful made up version of the concept never existed.

It’s “Play how you want to get the best gear”, not “Play how you want and have all forms of rewards dumped into your character’s inventory”.

I’ll go add Colin’s words to the OP if it helps.

yeap…about sums it up OP +1

xGraver.4918:

SRy but Anet can’t listen to anyone because the voices in there heads say: “DO NOT LISTEN TO PPL”.

If Anet didn’t listen to people then they wouldn’t change their game.
You should have figured that out at least.

Eitherway, good luck, the game won’t change as it seems, so you may as well leave it behind and find a better MMO making your dreams becoming a reality. One way or another, you are just stating that GW2 is becoming garbage and I don’t think ANET cares as long as they are getting money. And if you believe that you are better than ANET at deciding which system can make the most money, then you should be working at business managment instead of playing the game.

Bottomline is, you can leave if you don’t want to play this game since you seem to think it is garbage and one way or another, ANET won’t really beg you pardon and roll the game back.

I think the OP is grossly exaggerating the current situation. ANet has a vision for this game. That vision might not line up with your vision. Therefore, ANet will do things and continue to do things that you won’t agree with. I think you need to take a step back and gain some perspective on the whole situation. This is a game… there is no reason to be this upset over something that isn’t even real.

Chase.8415:

China is the worst thing to ever happen to this game.

Pre-made semi-racist sentences like these are the worst things to ever happen to this thread…..

Lishtenbird.2814:

I want to play Tequatl and Fractals 50 and CoE speedruns to get AP to get the most powerful rewards of Hellfire and Vambrace skins and the upcoming Pinnacle weapon skins.

Can I? No. I have to grind Queensdale events and harvest plants in Caledon. Yay?..

The thing is Hellfire is not a powerful reward, just cosmetic.

Now I don’t fully disagree with you for this thread but we have to bear in mind that in this game everyone is equally powerful, at least it is easy to be (and you mostly play how you want for that). Then since it is a MMO you need some farm/grind to get people attached to the game. In other MMO you grind to be able to beat the content, here you grind to have a new skin by doing the content.

Now what they are adding is some branching in the rewards. Basically since feature pack 1, every activities are more or less equally rewardful in term of gold or rare and exotic drops. But if you target a specific reward then you must do a specific activity. If you want luminescent skin go to Siverwastes, for more rares do the world boss train and for more gold do dungeons.
Now they added the AP reward under specific tasks so that not everybody gain AP passively from daily activities but the people who will wear Hellfire skin will be seen as dedicated AP chasers. I don’t say it is better or not but I think it follows a trend that as started for one year when they decided that specific reward should be permanently acquirable (rather than time limited reward and content).

For you other point in OP post, while I think there is truth I can also see good points in the cited changes, like finding more people since mega server, not missing world boss by 2 minutes or learning trait effects at you own pace with new trait acquisition.
In the first version we got we couldn’t compare between before and know but in many cases I think that reverting some changes would make the original flaws shine more than the actual ones.

Astral Projections.7320:

There is another quote in that very same blog that is relevant: “We’ll add support so daily achievements will be different each day of the week, which will help drive players to different areas of the world and play together.”

They always intended for people to go here and there, doing different things to get the achievements. It never was play where you want to get those rewards. People may have been able to do so, but it wasn’t their original intention.

I’m perfectly fine with people who complete Ascalon Logger getting a bunch of extra wood (and even a bit of experience). I can get this wood elsewhere.

I’m perfectly fine with people who complete Queensdale Zerger getting some centaur trash, or greens, or even some [Delicious Boar Steak] (+10% movement speed when in a zerg; +10% experience from events). I can get these greens elsewhere.

What I am not fine with is stuffing “the most powerful rewards” – AP, which cannot be unlimitedly grinded unlike barracudas in Southsun, – into such events and forcing me to click vistas and do Fractals 11 instead of doing Fractals 50, Tequatl or Winter Wonderland.

Ranael.6423:

The thing is Hellfire is not a powerful reward, just cosmetic.

In a game without infinite vertical progression, skins are the powerful reward. As well as gemstore stuff which comes out of AP chests (like Total Makeover Kits or +20 levels scrolls).

Big +1s to the Unlocking Traits/Skills section.

+1 and Im just waiting for this thread to disappear like a goldcoin ino pocket of a guardsmen of LA.

Tree.3916:

I think the OP is grossly exaggerating the current situation. ANet has a vision for this game. That vision might not line up with your vision. Therefore, ANet will do things and continue to do things that you won’t agree with. I think you need to take a step back and gain some perspective on the whole situation. This is a game… there is no reason to be this upset over something that isn’t even real.

There is no reason to be upset over your dreams and hopes going down the drain? How is the game not real? I don’t understand.
It’s just a game, yes, but it’s the first MMORPG with such a huge potential that it’s really upsetting to see it go in the direction it’s going.
I’m not exactly sure what demographic are they trying to please, and sometimes it honestly seems like they do certain updates just because.

I hoped for more challenging content and for focus on classes, races and new maps. Not on deleting things they personally don’t like and changing things no one asked to change. Why am I not allowed to be upset?

Lishtenbird.2814:

I’m perfectly fine with people who complete Ascalon Logger getting a bunch of extra wood (and even a bit of experience). I can get this wood elsewhere.

I’m perfectly fine with people who complete Queensdale Zerger getting some centaur trash, or greens, or even some [Delicious Boar Steak] (+10% movement speed when in a zerg; +10% experience from events). I can get these greens elsewhere.

What I am not fine with is stuffing “the most powerful rewards” – AP, which cannot be unlimitedly grinded unlike barracudas in Southsun, – into such events and forcing me to click vistas and do Fractals 11 instead of doing Fractals 50, Tequatl or Winter Wonderland.

In a game without infinite vertical progression, skins are the powerful reward. As well as gemstore stuff which comes out of AP chests (like Total Makeover Kits or +20 levels scrolls).

Ok, I see your problem. You’ve incorrectly determined that the “Play How I Want” concept applies to cosmetic skins.

The quote meant that you can achieve top level/competitive stat gear without having to do content you don’t like.

Now that I’ve cleared up the misconception, you may want to reevaluate your entire post.

I would have had a dog in the fight for some of these things but the trait fiasco has, simply, burned me out. I find myself saying “meh” towards much of anything GW2 these days.

Other than that, and preceding that, my main hatred was directed towards ascended gear.

World Bosses: I always had to guest if I wanted to do some of the higher level ones. So it was always a zerg fest. It’s just less of a hassle now. They have always been on timers, now it’s just synchronized, so no issues with that. Yes, it’s annoying the I can only do Teq on weekends because most of the timers are inconvenient for me, but that’s life. The game doesn’t revolve around “my” needs/wants/desires. (Although it would be nice)

Home Worlds: Being a NA player, I really haven’t seen much along the lines of language complaints. I can see how it would be a much bigger deal for EU though, for the language issue. I thought they had a filter work around for that now. I mean, would you really want a map of only 20 people if there were only 20 Spanish speakers, for example? Wouldn’t we end up going right back to the “maps are dead” gripe? I have heard a lot of wvw based complaints. There are a few suggestions out there to help that, which they may or may not take. Of course, that all also depends on what becomes of wvw, if it remains server bound.

Traits: I like the trait change for the most part, and yes I do trait hunt. Sometimes I just buy them too. There are some aspects I don’t like and think need changing, but overall it’s not awful.

Unlocking Skills: I agree that weapon skills should go back to unlock through kills. That was fun. I also agree that we should go back to getting a skill point per level. It’s so annoying to have utility skill 3 open at 19 and have ZERO skill points to use to unlock a skill to put in it (until I hit level 20). Makes me grind my teeth, every time.

Personal Story: I’ve always felt the story was best done is you did it in it’s chapter arcs (a suggestion I’ve made to many people, and they seemed to like it better that way too), so this change doesn’t bother me much. Some of the later story arrangement, ok, makes me scratch my head. I agree that putting off access to the initial story chunk to level 10 might be a bit much for some people (although that’s how I’ve pretty much always done it from my second char onward, but not everyone is like me).

Exploration: Can still do exactly like before. Unless I’m mapping, I pretty much just ignore the arrow. Besides, I thought there was an option to shut that off if you didn’t want to use it.

Dailies: Just came out, still haven’t made a solid decision. There are things I like, and things I don’t, but that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong or ‘bad’ right out of the gate.

Colin Johanson

Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. (2011)

Colin Johanson

It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards. (early 2013)

DevonCarver.5370:

It is also the case, that we want people playing all the parts of the game, so there are always going to be optimal ways to get specific rewards and those may not always include WvW. (late 2013)

IMO, “Play How You Want” was officially declared dead by ArenaNet at the end of 2013. It was obvious long before that ArenaNet doesn’t want you playing how you want. They want you to feel pulled into “all the parts of the game” if you want to get to the rewards.

When i logged in yesterday to check out the changes i wasn’t really all that impressed. This game continues to dumb itself down, i did a lot of talking to people and they mostly said, if another game came out similar to this one, they wouldn’t bother. The game is heading into a facebook farmville.

All i see them doing these days is getting dedicated players riled up, but they don’t leave, since, well, lets face it, there simply isn’t anything better in the mmorpg world. But i do see most of my friends playing something else over even logging in.

I think the idea of rewards is completely lost on them now. They basically throw out rewards like a river flows water, practically begging people to just log in, but not really addressing core issues why people don’t even want to do that much. I’d spill out all the feedback again, but it’s literally pointless. I tend to agree with most of the OP.