Guild Wars 2

It is arenanet only fault if they stopped developping their game since launch. My guess is that NCSoft has unfortunately no voice in arenanet cause they are profitable.

Carighan.6758:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

See, I just don’t buy this. Not the cold logic, that makes sense, but that this model is more profitable than providing an actually good service.

I dunno, I can get behind that when I consider the publisher perspective. Committing to a specific game means you invest a huge amount of money, money that is at risk if the game flops.

If you release X games over time Y, you can then compare, given expected success rate, whether it is more profitable to commit fully to each game, or to keep-it-basic for each. And I suspect even given the increased income from the games that succeed, that the money you waste on the ones which falter after you commit makes up for it.

That’s a very cold-hearted perspective ofc, but that’s how I imagine publishers think about this. Games don’t matter, individual dev teams don’t matter, projected profits vs money-at-risk is what matters, as that’s what the shareholders want.

Oh I’m sure cutting corners saves money. But it isn’t that they’re cutting corners, it’s that they’re investing in pointless or negative updates. The NPE won’t pull in players, because they’ve never heard of it. Breaking the trait system will actively repel players, because vet players won’t recommend it. Turning off SAB, well as I said, the last time I actually managed to convince someone to buy GW2, it was with SAB.

Heck, even the LS, they’ve now made harder to sell with the gem pricing. Even someone who genuinely likes the LS, when speaking to a potential buyer would eventually get around to the awkward part where they have to explain that actually all of this “free” content won’t be free for them. So unless they want to wait till season 3, they’re not going to have a clue what’s going on. Then they’ll have to log in regularly (which given GW2 operates on B2P where feeling forced to regularly log in directly opposed to your selling point is kind of a big deal) to actually get the new LS if and when it comes out.

If ANet were lazy, I’d understand. If ANet were making decisions that screwed loyal players to attract new ones, I’d understand. What ANet has done for the last year or so, I don’t understand.

#1. Not enough like GW1. Most things that made GW1 so unique and good are not in GW2.

My top things they did wrong…

- Pretending that the content is forever. They should have said straight up either:
a) “The game doesn’t have a continual subscription and it won’t have continual content. You pay your fee, play your 100-1000 hours to taste, and get the end credits. That’s one of the best deals you’ll get in gaming.” or…
b) “Any additional content more substantial than Halloween and balancing patches will cost money, and will justify that cost.”

Instead, we have grinding to fill the hours and the gem store to fund the servers. People thought they would get something for nothing, and they are getting not much for not much.

- Ascended gear.

- Dungeons are hard mode, with no normal mode. There should have been a training wheels mode with minimal loot, and a lucrative hard mode for pros.

- About 80% of the map, almost everything below level 70, is filler so the game can have 80 levels. They have to invent horrible dailies to get people to even flirt with the dead maps. 80% of the maps should be level 80.

- Defiance, immunity to reflects, etc. Bosses that ignore the rules and mechanics of the game, and invalidate many of the more interesting aspects of play.

Couple of things they did right:

- Trading post. I would not have bought GW2 if I faced the prospect of standing in Kamadan again.

- No new skills, weapons, classes etc since launch. They can’t balance the ones they’ve got, adding more will screw it up for at least a year. The game would probably be better if they cut some dead wood.

Tachyon.5897:

1. The notion that removing the ‘holy trinity’ would make for a fun gaming experience and wouldn’t result in anything other than a stand there and hit ‘1’ DPS zergfest at 10fps.

That specifically is more of a problem with open-world bosses.

The “soft trinity”, however, does have the problem of two of the parts being typically rendered all but pointless in most boss fights. I’m not sure if I’d rate it as being in the top five, but Defiant stacks were certainly among their bigger mistakes IMO (control? what control?). Meanwhile, mechanics in a lot of boss fights basically bypass defensive support altogether, leaving you with offensive support (might stacks and fury) and, well, pure DPS.

Vayne.8563:

NcSoft owned Anet before Guild Wars 1 launched.

NCSoft has a very different culture to what it did back then. Now, I don’t know how much of the conspiracy theories being thrown around I actually believe, but it really isn’t the same company as the company that published GW1 nearly ten years ago in anything but name and IP ownership.

draxynnic.3719:

Tachyon.5897:

1. The notion that removing the ‘holy trinity’ would make for a fun gaming experience and wouldn’t result in anything other than a stand there and hit ‘1’ DPS zergfest at 10fps.

That specifically is more of a problem with open-world bosses.

The “soft trinity”, however, does have the problem of two of the parts being typically rendered all but pointless in most boss fights. I’m not sure if I’d rate it as being in the top five, but Defiant stacks were certainly among their bigger mistakes IMO (control? what control?). Meanwhile, mechanics in a lot of boss fights basically bypass defensive support altogether, leaving you with offensive support (might stacks and fury) and, well, pure DPS.

Vayne.8563:

NcSoft owned Anet before Guild Wars 1 launched.

NCSoft has a very different culture to what it did back then. Now, I don’t know how much of the conspiracy theories being thrown around I actually believe, but it really isn’t the same company as the company that published GW1 nearly ten years ago in anything but name and IP ownership.

I don’t think anyone can say with authority how NcSoft has changed, unless they work at either Anet or NcSoft. It’s all, not just speculation, but wild speculation.

People are speculating that NcSoft is preventing Anet from talking about their updates. By the same token, NCsoft owns Carbine Studios, which produces Wildstar, and Wildstar devs talk about updates all the time.

It could be Anet that’s changed and not NcSoft. But we’ll never really know.

I don’t need a Top 5.

The Trait redesign. The best I can find about it is “It was a good idea, executed extremely poorly.” The feedback thread, with tons of suggestions, feels largely ignored by the devs.

Underwater combat. It was half-hearted at start, and instead of stepping up, they pulled back. Sadly, even the best underwater combat I’ve seen in an MMO is still… eh.

Lazy boss designs. It’s gotten better, but at start, they didn’t make good use of the “soft trinity” or one-man-armies design of characters.

WvW design. It’s lackluster and follows in the same vein as Dark Age of Camelot.

A reward system that doesn’t reward for time or skill invested.

Grind. Yes, all games do it, but in GW2’s case, it’s stuck in places that don’t need it.

Echoing Morte: “Defiance, immunity to reflects, etc. Bosses that ignore the rules and mechanics of the game, and invalidate many of the more interesting aspects of play.”

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Moreover, who is buying the game due to the NPE who wouldn’t have bought it anyway? What market knows enough about GW2 to know what it is, hasn’t bought the game already, and will be attracted by what they’ve heard? China?

Sorry, I used the term NPE as a euphemism for actual “new players.” Let me rephrase: Who needs one veteran player (disgruntled and unlikely to recommend or spend), when you can fool three new players into parting with the (deluxe edition) box fee and a couple of gem purchases before they invariable also move on in disgust.

I understand the logic of screwing over your loyal customers to make a fast buck. But screwing over your loyal customers in a way that will actively cut off a major source of advertisement and product appeal?

What if the fast buck is more than enough to never have to try and gradually milk it with a plan of longevity? It personally took me 9 months of word of mouth to even pick up the game in 2013 and I’m sure others still have it on their wishlist due to outdated positive word-of-mouth. Also, a lot of new player’s first introduction to the game is still The Manifest and other videos in the Media→Videos section (due to our current culture of viewing rather than reading). Nothing in there is explicitly marked as no longer applicable to the current state of the game.

So what keeps me playing and posting you may ask: the 2800 hours already spent has to be validated, yes? Yeah, I’m perverse like that.

KyreneZA.8617:

Sorry, I used the term NPE as a euphemism for actual “new players.” Let me rephrase: Who needs one veteran player (disgruntled and unlikely to recommend or spend), when you can fool three new players into parting with the (deluxe edition) box fee and a couple of gem purchases before they invariable also move on in disgust.

What if the fast buck is more than enough to never have to try and gradually milk it with a plan of longevity? It personally took me 9 months of word of mouth to even pick up the game in 2013 and I’m sure others still have it on their wishlist due to outdated positive word-of-mouth. Also, a lot of new player’s first introduction to the game is still The Manifest and other videos in the Media->Videos section (due to our current culture of viewing rather than reading). Nothing in there is explicitly marked as no longer applicable to the current state of the game.

So what keeps me playing and posting you may ask: the 2800 hours already spent has to be validated, yes? Yeah, I’m perverse like that.

actually while Guild Wars 2 is annoying in their changes and kitten right infuriating sometimes, as a casual game it’s not the worst. I recently got it for my friend for 10 pounds (yes, current sales sometimes get the price down to ridiculousness) and I find it amusing to show him the jumping puzzles and the world bosses. He’s a guy that more often goes for co-op games to play with us and never goes for MMOs and yet he’s okay to play this one a couple times a week. And I sincerely think that that’s the target audience for Guild Wars 2. Casual players that will level up slowly, clear the content slowly and therefore will always have something new to marvel at.

Neural.1824:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

I understand the logic of screwing over your loyal customers to make a fast buck. But screwing over your loyal customers in a way that will actively cut off a major source of advertisement and product appeal?

It’s short term hit-and-run style business planning. Get in, make as much money off the “suckers” as you can, then close up. I haven’t seen much evidence from anyone at Anet that they have any designs on being around for any length of time.

how about not closing down Gw1? Would someone as non committed to their product as you’re describing leave such a game running in all likeliness at a loss?

CrashTestAuto.9108:

What ANet has done for the last year or so, I don’t understand.

Granted, me neither. The quality of the LS patches is really good but the pace of all development is so terribly terribly slow that I wonder how many people are in the office. Doing dev work, I’d guess 2-3 devs, 2-3 programmers and 5-10 art/sound people, if I had to ballpark it.

Thing is, I guess it rolls in the cash, or why would NCsoft even fund it? :s

@OP: nice thread, but very soon it will get lost in triviality cause of

white knights, or get lost in void cause of red knights

5. I totally agree with you and want to complement or repeat …

- time-gated crafting
- time-gated materials for crafting (dragonite ore)
- forced to do parts of the game you did not want to do (e. g. world bosses,

temple events)
- nothing out of fractals is needed for crafting armor/ weapons for fractals

(logic?)
- pushing crafting to 500 (ahhh what a pain in the kitten!!!)
- now you suffocate in dragonite-ore (silverwastes …)
- dropped weapon-boxes/ armor-boxes in fractals are 99% useless, cause not

berserker
- chosen (and maybe bought) armor-skins on exotic set became redundant
- scripted agony

maybe would be better/ would have been better:

- upgrade exotic armor to ascended through crafting (infusion slot) with

mats you get in fractals —> no better stats than exotic!!!
- selectable stats from weapon-/ armor-boxes and rings

4. You are totally right …

- no new builds
- no new theory-crafting
- stagnation since several months

3. Guess what, you are right …

- can´t talk of LS1, cause i never played it
- played LS2, cause of lacking new dungeons/ fractals, but where is the new free content in it? Ok, there are two annoying new maps. But for the rest you have to pay, when you don`t log in at the right time.
- playable content is about 15 Min each. The rest is watching cut-scenes.
- Cut-scenes not skippable (not even if you play it again)
- trivial content

2. Ok, you´re right …

- why did they need to change NPE and waste time on it?
- very annoying that you have to play part of the game, that you maybe don´t like just because of getting traits
- when you hit lvl 35 in the new system, you are nothing but a sausage. Ready for first dungeon? One trait point? At lvl 60 4 points, idk? A very good reason to exclude < 80 from your dungeon runs.

1. Yep, absolutely …

- they don´t need to tell us details, but a rough roadmap where the game is going
- many of us are in standby-mode (because of the good sides of the game and the (unused) potential), so just one official and honest comment, if there will be new dungeons/ fractals in 2015 and we would have a basis for making our decision. Let this wating loop end, pls.

thx

(for every spelling-mistake i give you 1S, wsp. me)

1- Content removal
2- Making EotM into a karma train for upscaled characters instead of a new WvW map
3- Lack of GvG
4- Lack of Guild halls and other guild features
5- Critical damage and divinity/celestial nerf

I’m sorry, can someone point out to me the rulebook which says that a corporation must use the same exact business plan or method for every single one of their products?

Anet/NCSoft are simply capitalizing on the GW name.