(edited by Vintorez.1605)
The Chinese win
Paranoid bigots win too it seems.
It is quite ridiculous. The new player experience was never something that ANYONE took issue with. If it was they would have learnt back in headstart and beta when people were submitting suggestions. The game made sense, the functions were relatively intuitive. It definitely should NEVER have been dumbed down to this level.
They KNOW that localising the game for Chinese users would require different things to what Western players like and are used it. It doesn’t make sense to retroactively do all of this to the NA/EU version of the game. It wasn’t broke, now it is.
It doesn’t make a lick of sense considering that Chinese gamers are incredibly hardcore with mmos to begin with.
They do love their grind in their leveling experience though, so there’s that.
NA and EU players don’t however. Anet forgot to separate the two groups with this patch.
In reality I think the player testing scenario is just another excuse to stretch out the game for new players until they get some real content going for it (not talking about Living Story, but actual expansion-rivaling content like multiple new zones, dungeons, pvp modes, etc.) Almost like how many of the other new changes are specifically designed to cater to the gemstore and inflate the trading post.
Right now this game is looking like a sinking ship and I’m ready to jump off of it for good if we get one more “patch” that further destroys the leveling system.
I don’t think you can pin this on China.
I believe on of the devs said that the “tens of thousands of testers” was a mixture of people from China, NA and EU.
47,526 Chinese testers, 3 NA testers and 1 EU tester I would guess
The changes were the result of feedback since launch, not because of China. ArenaNet makes the changes while China localized them, so really, the changes could have been here first to begin with. China was simply used as a testing grounds to see how new players handled it.
All the changes they’ve made for the “new player experience” are complaints I’ve seen in the past (mostly from launch), especially the change to the personal story. Everyone’s quick to judge about not being able to use a certain amount of skills, but there are people who have never played an MMO before and think 5 skills were a lot to be thrown in to. Have you ever seen a non-gamer attempt to play an MMO for the first time, especially an older person? They need to be eased into the game. You know that saying about not knowing how to use the remote/tv/vcr/technology? Yeah.
Personally, I found the first 15ish levels to be the slowest in the game, whereas the rest went by far too quickly, since I reach 80 about 20-30% through. Removal of the personal story sounded dreadful to me, but I heard experience was greatly increased in the beginning, fixing that problem. I don’t care about the unlock changes since I can adapt and frankly, most classes use the first three skills the most anyways.
Oh come on it was 100% from the Chinese Version of the game why we got this update, in 2 years on these forums I seen very little posts about the old levelling system / downed state, every now and then someone would ask a random question but nothing on a major scale like Anet are making out,
The only reason the new levelling system/ trait system was put into China was to slow the rate the person could level up, they didn’t want people farming Orr in 6 hours, it makes sense I suppose, giving this game as no end game, the longer they can keep you away from the 80 zones the better,
It was also stated by some that every update going forward after Chinese version was launched would be for them, and not for us, if an idea/ update etc does not work there, it will not be put into game, im still guessing we will see the VIP system before Summer next year.
It was also stated by some that every update going forward after Chinese version was launched would be for them, and not for us, if an idea/ update etc does not work there, it will not be put into game
I don’t remember reading that. Could you maybe post a link to where you found it?
Or by “some” do you mean “not ArenaNet”?
I don’t see how the Chinese won. They only had 1-1.5+ million accounts activated so word of mouth of this game couldn’t have been that good over there.
Seriously, pretty much every single thing in the patch having to do something with leveling was at one time or another requested right here on these forums. The Chinese just had the honour/misfortune to be the guinea pigs for these features.
Oh come on it was 100% from the Chinese Version of the game why we got this update, in 2 years on these forums I seen very little posts about the old levelling system / downed state, every now and then someone would ask a random question but nothing on a major scale like Anet are making out,
The only reason the new levelling system/ trait system was put into China was to slow the rate the person could level up, they didn’t want people farming Orr in 6 hours, it makes sense I suppose, giving this game as no end game, the longer they can keep you away from the 80 zones the better,
It was also stated by some that every update going forward after Chinese version was launched would be for them, and not for us, if an idea/ update etc does not work there, it will not be put into game, im still guessing we will see the VIP system before Summer next year.
The only thing Anet stated would be for them not us was the optional subscription called over there the VIP membership. To my knowledge, no other statement was made.
From a programming standpoint it makes great sense to unify the versions though and from my point of view these changes are mostly positive, not negative.
Particularly if you were going to say, start doing free weekends to get new blood into the game.
The changes were the result of feedback since launch, not because of China. ArenaNet makes the changes while China localized them, so really, the changes could have been here first to begin with. China was simply used as a testing grounds to see how new players handled it.
All the changes they’ve made for the “new player experience” are complaints I’ve seen in the past (mostly from launch), especially the change to the personal story. Everyone’s quick to judge about not being able to use a certain amount of skills, but there are people who have never played an MMO before and think 5 skills were a lot to be thrown in to. Have you ever seen a non-gamer attempt to play an MMO for the first time, especially an older person? They need to be eased into the game. You know that saying about not knowing how to use the remote/tv/vcr/technology? Yeah.
Personally, I found the first 15ish levels to be the slowest in the game, whereas the rest went by far too quickly, since I reach 80 about 20-30% through. Removal of the personal story sounded dreadful to me, but I heard experience was greatly increased in the beginning, fixing that problem. I don’t care about the unlock changes since I can adapt and frankly, most classes use the first three skills the most anyways.
Why would people who have never played an MMO before purchase guild wars 2, rather than try out a free to play first?
Resident smug Englishman on the NA servers, just because.