Guild Wars 2

Like it says on the tin. For those of you who are disturbed with this new direction and are leaving the game, or even getting refunds, what would change your mind?

Please keep it specific, so it doesn’t get merged into the threadnaught.

My answer: Two options. The first, most preferable option is a complete reversion of this new strategy. Patch all ascended gear and transfusions down to the existing power level of exotics. Basically, admit the mistake, apologize, and move on.

Second, take one of the suggestions that’s been passed around both here and on the suggestions forums, and downscale Ascended gear in all content that it wasn’t designed for. At the moment, that would mean within the FotM dungeon only. Everywhere else, the Ascended gear would statistically equal to exotics. This allows you to keep the gear progression, but prevents it from impacting the rest of game and leaves it as just one more gameplay option.

Anyone else want to chip in?

Reduce Ascended Gear stats to Exotic Equivalent and give Exotic equipment Infusion slots as well. Change method of acquiring precursors. Honestly I’m surprised that they cited players hitting a legendary wall and quitting and didn’t address that wall at all.

Togashi Jack.9531:

Reduce Ascended Gear stats to Exotic Equivalent and give Exotic equipment Infusion slots as well. Change method of acquiring precursors. Honestly I’m surprised that they cited players hitting a legendary wall and quitting and didn’t address that wall at all.

This plus a crow eating apology for lying to me prior to my game purchase and trying to deceive us by not notifying us of their intended abandonment of their manifesto the moment the decision was made to go ahead with building this monstrosity of a patch might do the trick (If I can mange to cool off some over then next few days).

Make all ascended gear into exotics, with appropriately reduced stats, and give them normal upgrade slots. Remove infusions from the game. Remove agony from the game.

The re-prioritizing of player skill and creativity over gear.

I would come back for the game anet said this would be.

Togashi Jack.9531:

Reduce Ascended Gear stats to Exotic Equivalent and give Exotic equipment Infusion slots as well. Change method of acquiring precursors. Honestly I’m surprised that they cited players hitting a legendary wall and quitting and didn’t address that wall at all.

This and a simple apology would be icing but I would not require it.

Unless you also remove infusions, the problem is only half-solved.

What would bring me back:
New quests, new skills, new weapons, new customizability, new maps, new story.
No new grind.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Make all ascended gear into exotics, with appropriately reduced stats, and give them normal upgrade slots. Remove infusions from the game. Remove agony from the game.

I 90% agree with that. All ascended into exotics, nerf the stats so they’re at the same level as level 80 exotics, and removing infusion slots.
Well, why not keeping agony in, but weaker as it is then, so it feels like a real status alignment instead of a “you need good gears or you die by my new alignment”-type of alignment.

What everyone here have said already.
Even though i didnt leave yet i will, i get bored very easelly of grinding when i know it was all for nothing since in x ammount of time ill have to do it again in the same game.

To the OP, only your first suggestion would really work. People doesn’t grind a dungeon as much as that one will need to be, just for the sake of that dungeon. They want the stats they worked so hard to get, to have impact everywhere, and of course it matters a lot to them to show off; no deal if they cannot go around in “top gear”.

You cannot contain the problem, as some sort of tumor the game got somewhere, apart and hidden from view, with no consequences beyond its own space… nope.

Those people were conditioned to think about these games as work, and readily would disparage anyone who would remind them that games were there to entertain, to have fun. And yes, games could be complex, make you think, develop strategy, etc…. But since everquest, the main idea is to repeat the same stuff over and over like a mindless drone, and for some reason that is supposed to be admirable. (As you might guess by now, no I wasn’t ever going for legendaries, I thought no sane person would}

Very briefly put, those conditioned people crave that model; whereas the rest of us dread the moment we’ll log in the game, to keep doing the same chores.

Of course I dump those “games”

For them to send me 300 cupcakes.
For them to follow me on twitch like I followed them.
Oh wait, I haven’t left yet.

I suppose to read and respond to their forum and to stop infracting people all the time so much that they can’t be honest without getting stomped for interacting.

I’ve been on forums since the 90’s and been chosen to moderate several of them.
In another game my threads became stickies and I was private messaging in another with a dev.
Here I have had 3 or 4 infractions already for idiocy.
I’m not personally insulting people and just out of nowhere I find out that I broke rules. I watch every word I type on here now and it’s like I’m living under a dictatorship. I’m unsure of how I can interact because anything could result in a ban at which point I’m squelched. Trying not to get banned from the forums has been my toughest PVE fight so far.

Now that I care less, I’ll just type those things for people that are in the same situation but unable to express it.

I got my money’s worth I guess. I enjoyed the game for a few months. You don’t owe me diddly. Is this the denial stage or the anger stage, your guess is as good as mine. I think it is the effort stage or else why post. All the praise I gave it to other people makes me look like a liar when things change and feel like a fool when I put in so much time. I casted this game everyday for months with nothing in return. Free advertisement, free pushing of it.

Maybe I expect some reciprocity for effort but it’s not logical. They are after all, a company with goals to increase their wallet. My mistake I suppose was not wearing bells on my toes when playing that fool and I’m just as disgusted at myself for falling for it.

Im grinding 2 other mmos for years if i add it up and still grinding due to the latest expansion.
I wont be grinding for another one. That is this one.
But what make me come back?
I’ll always come back cause its free! No subs unlike the other 2 mmos im still playing.
But Expansion? Nah not looking forward to that after this FoTM patch.

psirca.9452:

For them to send me 300 cupcakes.
For them to follow me on twitch like I followed them.
Oh wait, I haven’t left yet.

I suppose to read and respond to their forum and to stop infracting people all the time so much that they can’t be honest without getting stomped for interacting.

I’ve been on forums since the 90’s and been chosen to moderate several of them.
In another game my threads became stickies and I was private message in another with a dev.
Here I have had 3 or 4 infractions already for idiocy.
I’m not personally insulting people and just out of nowhere I find out that I broke rules. I watch every word I type on here now and it’s like I’m living under a dictatorship. I’m unsure of how I can interact because anything could result in a ban at which point I’m squelched. Trying not to get banned from the forums has been my toughest PVE fight so far.

Now that I care less, I’ll just say type those things for people that are in the same situation but unable to express it.

I got my money’s worth I guess. I enjoyed the game for a few months. You don’t owe me diddly. Is this the denial stage or the anger stage, your guess is as good as mine. I think it is the effort stage or else why post.

lol mate i agree with uve just said, ive been having this issue myself when the news abotu the gear grind came.

For me, it’s very simple. /follow to auto follow your target.

No amount of content or additions to the game will bring me back other than that.

Bugfixes.

I’ve already resubscribed to my old MMO. The whole Ascended gear thing was the last straw.

I was tolerating the hacking, the bots, the unstable trading post, the lack of slash commands, account recovery, telephone support and other standard MMO features, the total randomness of rewards (mystic forge), and all manner of quest and other bugs.

But if I’m going to play a treadmill it might as well be a game that’s stable and predictable so at least I feel like I have some kind of control. I don’t feel that right now in GW2. I hate to return to a troll-infested game, but for me that’s the better alternative right now. Hopefully GW2 matures eventually.

I haven’t left yet. I’d like to see them get rid of the instances. The best part of the game is the open world. Now it seems to have more of a focus on the dungeons and gear. I don’t play other mmos because of that. If this game turns into that (and it seems to be heading into that direction) then I’ll just quit mmos for good.

Well if they would just downgrade the ascended items to exotics but keep the infusion slot, and make a way to add infusions to our existing exotics, i will gladly come back.

A short break from the game will bring most people back to be honest

For my husband and I, ascended gear would need to be scrapped and rolled back to Exotic (top tier) with OPTIONAL horizontal grind for legendaries.

We had all but done with mmo’s due to the mind numbing, dull, anti-fun, repetition of grind. It is the laziest way to get around pressure for new content there is. Give the players futile busy work that never ends.

Neither of us have the time or inclination for something less challenging than data entry that soaks up your life. Infact data entry would be preferable as I’d be collecting money for that rather than paying out. For us gaming is all about entertainment and nothing is entertaining about grind.

I had 4 toons at lvl 80 and was trying to craft their exotics and this grind was excessive to me with the ridiculously low droprate on T6 fine crafting mats, I can’t get my own characters geared let alone help out my fellow guild members (the fraction remaining that is). But I grit my teeth and forged ahead knowing that it would end soon and then be done with.

There had been many statements from Anet over the years of how they as gamers themselves believed that grind was the antithesis of fun and was something they just weren’t prepared to do.

If they had been honest about the grind of this game (now compulsory and no longer optional), we would not have even considered purchase in the first place.

To give a rather poor analogy:- I saw an apple advertised, I paid for an apple but after biting into it I discovered it was actually an orange. Now oranges are great and some people really love them. I just happen to be allergic to them.

Raizen.9532:

Well if they would just downgrade the ascended items to exotics but keep the infusion slot, and make a way to add infusions to our existing exotics, i will gladly come back.

Agreed 100%. I tried the new fractal dungeon grind and it’s not for me.

+1 because this was way to soon for a stronger set of gear to come out. down lvling the gear to current exotics is a good move, scale the mobs down too if that seems like an issue or w/e. but it is just way to soon for new gear.
I’m all for new, stronger gear. its petty much a necessity to keep people interested, aside from the die hard fans. but they should have waited till the did an expansion, when it actually makes sense. we’re what, 2.5/3 months into this game and already stronger gear is out? bad move imo, and apparently almost everyone else’s too.

I’m not going anywhere, just yet.

I have, however, revised my estimation on how long I’m likely to stick with the game (not too much longer) and how deeply vested I’m inclined to be (not very).

What would keep me around longer (or perhaps indefinitely):

- Community development (guild enhancements (halls), better and expanded forums, player-created chat channels, more robust social features and QoL improvements).
- Giving players more creative control over the appearance and behavior of their characters (expanded crafting options, more armor and weapon skins, more emotes, the ability to make cosmetic alterations to a character, the ability to store a wardrobe).
- Stronger (less buggy) combat mechanics and a much improved AI (no more ‘invulnerable’ nonsense, please).
- Skritt as a playable race. Especially if Gangnam Style is their racial dance (only half-joking here).

Given what the existing design priorities appear to be, I don’t think most of this will happen. At least not anytime soon.

And I’m actually okay with that. I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of this game, and I’m not even done yet.

The loss (for ANet) is that buying future expansions is not only no longer a given, which it once was, it’s shifted to: highly unlikely.

If they state, once and for all, in a clear, unambiguous manner, that vertical item progression is definitely what they want for the future of GW2 and that they were wrong about their manifesto, then they’ll earn my respect back. I still won’t be playing anymore, but I’ll be at ease with it.

If they essentially remove ascended gear (either by downscaling it to exotic level, or merging it together with the exotic tier), then I’ll keep on playing, but with a grain of salt (i.e. no money spending for a while, to assess the situation).

Bonus point is they remove agony too.

If they remove ascended gear and agony and make an announcement about how they were wrong and apologize for trying to mislead us, then they’ll earn some of my trust back (and probably some of my wallet with it too).

Anything less and it’s a no.

Rhyse.8176:

Basically, admit the mistake, apologize, and move on.

It will NEVER happen. I have never seen a gaming company do it, and they never will. Investors see it as a sign of weakness or so I’ve been told.

I’d sure love to see it, though. It would be a huge boon to ANet’s PR.

I haven’t quit yet (I want to at least “finish” the game by getting one char to 80 and finishing personal story).

But yeah, admitting ascended was a mistake and patching the stats down to exotic level would make me quite happy. At this point, I won’t even complain about them keeping agony content gating since I could just ignore ascended gear if the stats were the same.

Let people grind to get to dungeon level 500 and +73912 agony resist if it makes them happy, just don’t hide all the best items down there.

Edit:

Space Cow.2431:

Rhyse.8176:

Basically, admit the mistake, apologize, and move on.

It will NEVER happen. I have never seen a gaming company do it, and they never will. Investors see it as a sign of weakness or so I’ve been told.

I’d sure love to see it, though. It would be a huge boon to ANet’s PR.

SoE flat out admitting NGE was a really stupid idea, and a huge mistake they never should have made (direct quote: [Smedley] A: [S]ure. Stupid decisions. Complete and utter fail and I am very sorry).. Of course, by that point it was too late to matter one way or the other, but they did admit it.

First, they have to admit their mistake. They have to outline why it was a mistake.

Second, they have to apologize for it.

Third, they have to roll back all of the content that went against their manifesto.

Then I’d consider coming back.

More weapons, utility skills, classes, areas, bug fixes.

What will not bring me back is shiny items with bigger numbers.

;)

1)Delete the ascent gear project, and replace that with:
gear with highest stats but less stats… now if an exotic have 3 stats like (i invented numbers) power 30 precision 30 toughness 30, make an exotic version with 2 stats like power 45 vitality 45… or simply give us exotics items with the missing stats combinations.

2)Let the people infuse their actual Exotic set, they already have the sistem (the fractal sistem) and instead of ascendent items, they sell infusion slotters, an item that can make and infusion slot to and exotic item. I think that only with this idea, they can dive to the grinder ones enoght items to collect, beacause:

they already have offensive and defensive infusion slot, if we make a slotter for every type of gear, Like:
Offensive slotter for: armor(6 piece of armor + back + breather), weapons, ring, amulet, earring… total 5 type of slotters, that become 10 type if we add the defensive type too.

3)infusion add stats only on dungeon and not in the whole game experience.

4) more communication

With this, i think a can reconsider my position, everyones make mistakes.

Its a very very slow treadmill. People that loved GW1 won’t want that. Sadly, people that loved GW1 aren’t the majority apparently.

I love how you’re speaking as though this game is dead/done/dusted….

This is not WAR, Aion, Rift or Star Wars… Guild Wars 2 won’t “die” like they did.

Game is fine and still new, thus, still developing… stop crying.

I agree with making this new gear have same stats as the exotics.
But add changes to animations u get for the skills you use to make ur skills more interesting to use. This would definantly be awesome =D

But yeah, im currently having a hard time enjoying this game since the blog and introduction to this new “Gear”.

What would bring me back… in a word

Pandas.

Nothing will bring me back unless they go full WoW 2.0 now.

Togashi Jack.9531:

Reduce Ascended Gear stats to Exotic Equivalent and give Exotic equipment Infusion slots as well. Change method of acquiring precursors. Honestly I’m surprised that they cited players hitting a legendary wall and quitting and didn’t address that wall at all.

This.

Ferguson.2157:

This plus a crow eating apology for lying to me prior to my game purchase and trying to deceive us by not notifying us of their intended abandonment of their manifesto the moment the decision was made to go ahead with building this monstrosity of a patch might do the trick (If I can mange to cool off some over then next few days).

This.

Ganzo.5079:

4) more communication

With this, i think a can reconsider my position, everyones make mistakes.

And this.

Equal gear scaling in the WvW environment.

Rekuja.6318:

I love how you’re speaking as though this game is dead/done/dusted….

But it is dead/done/dusted for many of us. Not all of us, of course. Not me, necessarily (although Orr may do the trick). But for many people, this is no longer the game they bought. It may have the same name and some superficial similarities, but the game they bought three months or so ago is indeed dead/done/dusted.

Obligatory analogy —

ApartmentCo: Hey guys, do you hate the smell of onions? Well, so do we! “I chopped an onion! Hey, I chopped it again! Boo hoo!” If the scent of onions makes you cry, too, then rent or lease one of our deluxe apartments in the sky and live happily ever after in an environment completely devoid of the scent of onions!

Anti-Onionites: No onions? At last! Rent rent rent lease lease lease!

Meanwhile, three months later…

ApartmentCo: We hope you are as excited as we are about the new onion-scented carpets we are installing this week!

Anti-Onionites: What! Onion-scented… ? Why why why?

ApartmentCo: Customer feedback!

What would bring me back is simple:

Instead of putting out new content, make the old content -work.- Oh, and improve communication – if a particular profession, for example, is afflicted with a bug that makes at least one of their traits nearly useless and the fix is going to take a while…maybe pop in and at least let them know that somebody’s listening. It can go a long way.

I stopped playing a month ago out of disappointment and disgust that a particular trait was simultaneously too useful to go without, without having second thoughts about removing it (also, very few Turret traits, so not much point taking it off if Turrets are your focus), and too bugged to make proper use of, in all but one case.

Trait in question: Deployable Turrets; only functions properly with Rocket Turret outside of Heart of the Mists, never functions properly with Healing Turret, and in PvE it completely skips working on four out of six of the Engineer’s turrets.

A heap more larger sPvP maps (3 initial maps was not enough, plus capricorn with the npc sharks is horrible). At least 5-10 need to be added . Different game modes in sPvp would be nice or an arena mode. Balance thieves and mesmers. Also the amount of stuns and avoidance mechanics in the game is highly frustrating especially when your ping is around 250. Players warp around already, then add in avoidance mechanics and your lucky to even do any damage to some players.

Personally i did the grind in 2 other mmos and i can’t be bothered grinding so this patch is largely pointless. The new pvp map isn’t really that good either, the design is bland, boring and small like the rest of the maps. I played a few dungeons with friends and they were too hard for them. So a difficulty setting when the party leader enters the dungeon would be nice too.

more skills and combat depth, right now its just stack all the boons and remove all the conditions. more weapons would be nice, or even multiple weapon skills to choose from for each weapon. but before any of that, bug fixes, bug fixes, bug fixes. this should have been the #1 concern. get what you have working then add new content. and as just about everyone else has said, drop the Asc. gear. i actually logged on GW1 today for the first time in a year.

its too bad, i actually had (no lie here i swear) some money going onto to my paypal that was going to clear around the 19th of this month. but i probably won’t be spending it on gems anymore.

A. Turn wvwvw into spvp gear system, except you can still transmute PVE skins, and take durability hits, but you cant wear PVE gear into wvwvw, and everything is there for you on NPCs like spvp.

OR

B. The person who made the decision to include ascended gear is fired, and sent to the unemployment line, and the entire ascended gear update is removed. In which case I will buy 10,000 gems as a reward, but until then you arent getting a dime

I have not left yet, but I am close.

The ascended gear thing is not my issue at all, since the game began to be a farm/grind game early on because everything…EVERYTHING is just so expensive. The nickle and dime me to death with the costs of travel and gear repairs makes me log off at least once a day, usually for the rest of the day.

If you are a person who never grinds or farms, you are, essentially, broke all the time. There is no real way to make any money outside of grinding or “gaming the system”—-Finding an exploit or reading up on “the market” and then spending lots of time “gaming the market”. In a word? For me? Tedious.

Everyone is too busy grinding some dungeon or some area to play together, and even if you do play together, staying together is a big fat pain in the rear.

Having to give up something every day as impossible for me to complete is worrisome, tiring, and in the end, saddens me.

The lack of support from the beginning. The lack of communication from the beginning. The overwhelming feeling that I am being watched and anything I say or do will be used against me, and I will end up being banned for some slight that I was not even aware was against ambiguous and ever-changing rules.

Sad.
Frustration.
Ambiguous.
Maddening.
Slow.
Unrewarding.

These words should not be used in the description of any game in my book. Sadly, Guild Wars 2 has burned its manifesto, and live in a bubble of pats on the back and smiles all around.

They will never see this post, I am sure of that.

People actually playing the game instead of grinding dungeons 24/7.

Shooopa.5632:

People actually playing the game instead of grinding dungeons 24/7.

That’s asking for too much! Crossing the line there.

Schnuffles.5369:

Equal gear scaling in the WvW environment.

This would work for me. Not that I’m leaving, I’m just not spending any more money.

Take this kitten OUT:
http://www.gw2db.com/items/71383-solaria-circle-of-the-sun-infused

Stop adding new CRAP to get and add new REAL CONTENT (which they are). The new dungeon is brilliant so far. Too bad it seems to serve a kitteny design philosphy.

I’m not out yet, but I hardly see this going anywhere good, but there’s a little hope... pff

Make changes to return to horizontal progression. If that means changing Ascendant stats to exotics, then please do it. If it means adding an infusion slot to exotics, then please do it.

1. I have not left. I am still enjoying the pre-patch content and playing with my guildmates.
2. I do believe this is an introduction of a gear treadmill so I will eventually leave. The moment I see or experience griefing because I do not have Ascendant will be my last logon. I quit other games because of this and even stopped playing MMOs for a while.
3. While I am playing, I will not be buying anything else in the Cash Shop. This change has shown me that I am not a valued customer so there is no reason for me to spend anymore money.

I will not ask for a refund because I got my money’s worth. I love this game. I really liked all of the content Arenanet created. I just do not like the frustration that gear tier progression brings. I suffered through that for 6 years in various “traditional” MMOs. I truly believed that GW2 would be different. Then I played it, had fun and realized it is different and my kind of game. Now it is doing a 180 and becoming like all others. Not going to go down that road again.

I wanted to write something but it seems that dalendria pretty got my own points spot on.

I don’t regret spending my $60 and then some each month, but right now i don’t even want to bother to express my opinions with words, but my wallet. This new gear introduction has left me feeling betrayed and apparently i am playing Rift all over again. Rift had it’s motto “We are not in Azeroth anymore.”, and just like Rift i feel Tyria is slowly merging with Azeroth and Telara :P

I will probably play how much i can with my exotics, and the minute i feel like this game is being catered to raiders – i’m out of here and done with the MMO genre as GW2 was our last hope.