Guild Wars 2

Ehra.5240:

critickitten.1498:

That statement says absolutely nothing about how this will fix the problem of precursors being subject to the whims of the RNG, all it says is that there will be “new ways” to obtain them.

You said you don’t see how the new system will " fix the problem of precursors depending heavily on terrible loot tables." I think it’s safe to say that when a dev says they are working on a new reward system that will grant precursors, they mean that there will be a new way to obtain them that does not rely on you killing monsters until it drops. That is what “new reward system” tends to imply, that it will be different from the current method of obtaining them. But if you want to keep assuming it’s not going to change anything at all then I guess that makes sense too.

I’m not convinced that it means what you think it means, no. I’m not expecting much.

I’d be perfectly happy to be wrong, but until we have further details, I’m not going to take the optimistic route and assume that it’ll be some brand new wonderful amazing feature that will blow my socks off.

And if you can’t understand why some of us might be burnt out with what boils down to just hype right now, then you probably weren’t around for the last several years.

At the end of many DE there is a seller of sometimes useless itens. They could add more interest things to those npcs like precursor tokens and more interesting itens.

critickitten.1498:

Ehra.5240:

critickitten.1498:

That statement says absolutely nothing about how this will fix the problem of precursors being subject to the whims of the RNG, all it says is that there will be “new ways” to obtain them.

You said you don’t see how the new system will " fix the problem of precursors depending heavily on terrible loot tables." I think it’s safe to say that when a dev says they are working on a new reward system that will grant precursors, they mean that there will be a new way to obtain them that does not rely on you killing monsters until it drops. That is what “new reward system” tends to imply, that it will be different from the current method of obtaining them. But if you want to keep assuming it’s not going to change anything at all then I guess that makes sense too.

I’m not convinced that it means what you think it means, no. I’m not expecting much.

I’d be perfectly happy to be wrong, but until we have further details, I’m not going to take the optimistic route and assume that it’ll be some brand new wonderful amazing feature.

And if you can’t understand why some of us might be burnt out with what boils down to just hype right now, then you probably weren’t around for the last several years.

I’ve been familiar with how Anet does things since the GW1 beta events, thanks. It doesn’t really matter how much you want to ignore what was actually posted, adding the precursors to a few more mobs’ loot tables would in no way consist of a “new reward system.” If you want to ignore the answer you were given to your concern of how acquiring precursors is reliant on poor mob drop rates then that’s your choice, but let’s not pretend you weren’t given an answer that clearly stated they are working on a new way of obtaining them.

Thank you for the update. Very much appreciated!

Ehra.5240:

I’ve been familiar with how Anet does things since the GW1 beta events, thanks. It doesn’t really matter how much you want to ignore what was actually posted, adding the precursors to a few more mobs’ loot tables would in no way consist of a “new reward system.” If you want to ignore the answer you were given to your concern of how acquiring precursors is reliant on poor mob drop rates then that’s your choice, but let’s not pretend you weren’t given an answer that clearly stated they are working on a new way of obtaining them.

If you want to immediately rush to the defense of the team without knowing anything about what will be released and whether or not it will address any of the concerns that have been expressed, that’s your choice. But let’s not pretend that you’re trying to do anything other than white-knight for them.

See? I can do it, too. If you’re going to be rude then I’m not going to bother engaging in discussion with you. You don’t have to like my opinion but you do have to tolerate it and show me proper respect and tone. Be an adult.

As to the actual bulk of your post: No, we weren’t given an “answer”. We’ve been given a promise, and we’ve heard those before.

We were given promises that the loot tables would be fixed long ago, and to date, they’ve only gotten worse. We were given the promise of a scavenger hunt back in November, which apparently has not gone too far beyond the discussion stage of development and will not be released until at least April, according to Colin’s post. And now we’ve been promised a “new rewards system” that has absolutely no details behind it, with assurances that it will fix the rewards problem.

Forgive me if I don’t immediately rush to the conclusion that it’s going to be a mind-blowing, amazing mechanic that will make the game so much better than it is now. I’ll wait until we’ve actually been told what the heck this “rewards system” is before I jump to the conclusion that it will definitely fix the problems many players have expressed. If you want to just presume that it’ll fix everything, then that’s your prerogative, but I’m not obligated to put blind faith into Colin’s post and just assume it’ll all be perfectly fine.

Also, if you’re right and it is actually “new rewards system”, my question still stands: how does that, in any way, fix the problems with the loot tables? If indeed it’s a new system then that implies it’s either

1. a new system to determine drops that will be replacing the existing system (which doesn’t necessarily mean that it will improve drops, only that it will change them), or
2. a new mechanic (like giving loot rewards for achievements) that is being transposed into the game on top of the existing system (which means that loot tables will still be awful, thus not fixing the problem).

In either case, a “new rewards system” doesn’t necessarily fix the problem guaranteed. So yes, to you it just sounds like I’m whining, but to anyone else who is frustrated with the continual promises and hype, we’re going to sit here and grumble because we’ve come to expect less. And there’s nothing wrong with that, either. There’s nothing wrong with being disappointed in how things have played out so far, and it doesn’t make me or my opinion any less valid than yours because we’re both operating on no information. Which is why I’m doing the intelligent thing and saying that I’ll wait until we’re given some actual information before I try to draw any further conclusions.

I’m not really sure what your problem is. You seem to think that acknowledging that a claim was made means you can’t be skeptical of how the results will turn out. I never said that the problem is guaranteed to be fixed. I never “white knighted” or whatever hilarious term you feel like throwing out. I never made a claim to what the quality of the change will be.

You said that they made no comment about your concern of precursors only being obtainable through low mob drop rates. This is false, they are working on a new method of obtaining them. That’s all I said. Not sure why you’re so upset about it, but you’re complaining about a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with anything of my posts. I really don’t care whether you’re optimistic about what they’re planning or not.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point.

We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.

Some of these additions will come as early as the January release, and will get covered in more detail in the next week or two as well release all the details about this release once testing has signed off it’s all ready to go in January. (we’ll also provide a high level summary of our goals with reward systems, etc. in our 2013 blog post, which should be out next week)

Thank you for taking the time to post this information Colin.

I’ve been lurking on the forums for the past few weeks specifically for any official scavenger hunt information as the precursor is basically the final part missing from the journey towards my legendary. I know of quite a few others in my guild and friends list who are finding themselves in a very similar situation and who are/were waiting for news on this feature.

Looking forward to the coming updates and the surprises you guys have in store for us!

Ehra.5240:

I’m not really sure what your problem is.

Editing so that I’m being less rude. No point in responding to a rude person with more rudeness, I suppose.

My “problem” is that Colin’s post tells us nothing, and folks like yourself are acting like it tells us so much. It says nothing, and that’s part of the problem here. This isn’t proper communication.

We were originally told to expect an expansion’s worth of content in Jan and Feb. Then Colin basically suggests that it won’t be as big as we expected, and the bulk of it will be delayed to Feb and March. Now we’re being told that it also won’t include a feature promised to us back in November. But it’ll include a “new rewards system”.

Okay, great. What does that mean? You really haven’t given us anything to go on, here, and until I know what to expect, I’m going to be honest and say “yeah, not getting my hopes up again until I know more, sorry”.

I don’t understand why the staff feels like it still needs to sell itself to us. We already bought the game on your promises and hype, and while you’ve delivered a great game, you haven’t lived up to all of them. So it’s time to start talking with us. What features are you adding, and when are you adding them? I’ve honestly never seen a dev team this hush-hush about what it’s doing and when it’s doing it, and that frustrates the heck out of me as a customer because I want to know how their changes will impact the game.

I know that there are people out there with a full list of all the content promised to us “in the future” that we still haven’t seen. And so far, in regards to this patch, we’ve only been told what NOT to expect. It’s really about time the devs started telling us what to expect here.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point.

We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.

Some of these additions will come as early as the January release, and will get covered in more detail in the next week or two as well release all the details about this release once testing has signed off it’s all ready to go in January. (we’ll also provide a high level summary of our goals with reward systems, etc. in our 2013 blog post, which should be out next week)

Thank you for the update. I was a bit disappointed while reading this at first, but then I read “We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.” Hope to see news soon!

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point.

We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.

Some of these additions will come as early as the January release, and will get covered in more detail in the next week or two as well release all the details about this release once testing has signed off it’s all ready to go in January. (we’ll also provide a high level summary of our goals with reward systems, etc. in our 2013 blog post, which should be out next week)

I’ll just leave this “The Lover” Broker price progression statistic here so you can work on it as a homework.

http://i.imgur.com/BQv3t.png

Right now Anet literally force people to buy gold from 3rd party websites by not addressing the high pre-cursor prices since forever.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

Munkee.3542:

Colin Today:

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point.

Linsey Murdock A month ago:

I am definitely working on the precursor scavenger hunt!

Just add it to the list.

A month ago, I think that Colin J. was Content Designer — today, he is the Game Director. Things change. Please stop looking for excuses to be offended.

The tin-foil-hat crowd will never be satisfied. ANet, please just keep going the way you are. The tin-foil-hats are over at the drop rate thread too – and also are working very hard to be offended. Par for the course.

And all it really means is that Lindsey is probably working on “free time”; that Anet hasn’t assigned any time to it as a project. – to draw a parallel to another game :

In City of Heroes, they (the studio) set out and worked on a “walk” power (everyone jogged by default in that game). But the then-lead animator did some work on it here there over a long space of time and we got it.

critickitten.1498:

Ehra.5240:

I’m not really sure what your problem is.

Editing so that I’m being less rude. No point in responding to a rude person with more rudeness, I suppose.

My “problem” is that Colin’s post tells us nothing, and folks like yourself are acting like it tells us so much. It says nothing, and that’s part of the problem here. This isn’t proper communication.

We were originally told to expect an expansion’s worth of content in Jan and Feb. Then Colin basically suggests that it won’t be as big as we expected, and the bulk of it will be delayed to Feb and March. Now we’re being told that it also won’t include a feature promised to us back in November. But it’ll include a “new rewards system”.

1 – please show me where they said an expansion’s worth in Jan/Feb – everywhere I’ve seen/recall, it’s always been Jan/Feb/March (based on the fact that a good chunk of December has them on vacation). Simple curiosity here.

2 – I don’t ever recall a time frame for the scavenger hunt being promised to us. They have to both design a system, and the lore for it to fit in.

3 – While lacking in specifics, it lets us know a few things more. That a (implied less-RNG based) way of getting precursors is coming. That we have the big blog post coming next week it sounds like. And they haven’t apparently scrapped the scavenger hunt.

And I don’t see Colin’s post as a promise it will fix the Precursor issue. (Bah, feels like a Jak and Daxter game with all the Precursor talk) Merely that they will address it some. There is a difference.

Rajani Isa.6294:

1 – please show me where they said an expansion’s worth in Jan/Feb – everywhere I’ve seen/recall, it’s always been Jan/Feb/March (based on the fact that a good chunk of December has them on vacation). Simple curiosity here.

http://gamingbolt.com/guild-wars-2-interview-we-talk-to-areanet-about-how-the-mmorpg-has-been-doing-post-launch

We had a huge Halloween update in October, we just had a big one in November, we have a giant Christmas update coming in December, and all of those have gone over really well, and I think in December people are going to be really excited. But January and February are actually are biggest updates to date. They’re even bigger than all the stuff we did in October, November and December. And I think that when people see how much stuff they’re gonna get for no monthly fee in January and February, they’re probably going to be blown away. These two months combined are basically an expansion’s worth of content for free.
~ Colin Johanson

No mention of March. The promise was Jan + Feb = “basically an expansion’s worth of content”

Now the timeline’s been pushed back a month.

2 – I don’t ever recall a time frame for the scavenger hunt being promised to us. They have to both design a system, and the lore for it to fit in.

No timeline was given. But one of the most basic rules of game development is that you don’t pitch an idea to the players unless it’s upcoming in the near future, because players are inherently impatient and are going to start wondering where that release went.

And Colin recently confirmed that it’s not even made it anywhere near coding, it’s still in the concept stages almost three months after it was first stated that it was “definitely being worked on”. Worse, it’s not coming out until at least April, maybe later….that’s 5 months after it was originally pitched to us. And with ANet likely working on an expansion to release some time this year, it’s possible this will continue to take longer as it’s clearly not a priority right now. And it should be.

3 – While lacking in specifics, it lets us know a few things more. That a (implied less-RNG based) way of getting precursors is coming.

We don’t know that. We’re likely all hoping that it’s not RNG-based, but we don’t have any information on that for sure. It’s no more likely than what I said earlier.

That we have the big blog post coming next week it sounds like.

I kinda figured they’d have to release it next week, as that’s halfway through the month already and they still need time to roll the (apparently much smaller) Jan patch as well.

And they haven’t apparently scrapped the scavenger hunt.

Of course not. They’d be getting flak much, much worse right now if they announced that they were canceling the scavenger hunt concept.

That said, we’ve seen how long it takes to get fixes on things that are not deemed priorities. That alone is enough to concern me. This should be a top focus right now, up there with fixing dungeons and loot tables, and reducing the hefty grind of various things in-game. So it’s naturally quite disappointing to learn that it’s not considered a major step towards “strengthening the core game”. I think most players would say that it should be.

Rajani Isa.6294:

And I don’t see Colin’s post as a promise it will fix the Precursor issue. (Bah, feels like a Jak and Daxter game with all the Precursor talk) Merely that they will address it some. There is a difference.

That was sort of my point actually.

People were leaping to the conclusion that this “new rewards system” would be this great super amazing thing that would fix all of the game’s loot problems and would somehow fix the precursor issue. I don’t read it that way at all, and honestly, I suspect precursors will not be impacted nearly as much as people seem to think. I’d love to be proven wrong, though.

I think it’s funny how people say they are tired of not hearing from the Devs’, then when they finally do, they don’t stop complaining about what they say. Please, people, make up your mind.

They have a lot of work to do these 3 months. They can spend the time to improve the world so everyone benefit from it or spend the time on a making a Scavenger Hunt so only those who cares about legendary benefit from it… hmm which one is a wiser choice, a skin or over all improvement of the world?

han.9042:

They have a lot of work to do these 3 months. They can spend the time to improve the world so everyone benefit from it or spend the time on a making a Scavenger Hunt so only those who cares about legendary benefit from it… hmm which one is a wiser choice, a skin or over all improvement of the world?

Do you actually believe that, if just a few members of the dev team spent just a little time every day on the scavenger hunt, that ANet would have to cancel the Jan/Feb/March patches because they’d just be so completed overstretched?

Because I’m sorry, but I don’t. People do this sort of thing every day at work: chipping away at large, long-term projects by dedicating small fragments of time to them every day or couple of days. This allows them to get their daily obligations finished while still meeting long-term deadlines. And before you protest, yes, it does work with game development and coding as well, I know this from experience.

If they weren’t actively working on the scavenger hunt (and by “actively working” I mean “more than just Lindsey doing work on it all by herself”), they should have kept quiet about it until it was closer to being done. Expecting your players to wait nearly half a year for one badly needed mechanic is not a good way to run your MMO. But then, we’re still on hold for guesting, too….

domxnik.1453:

I think it’s funny how people say they are tired of not hearing from the Devs’, then when they finally do, they don’t stop complaining about what they say. Please, people, make up your mind.

Because the things they are saying now completely contradict the things they said then. If what they said then is not what they meant then they should have said what they meant the first time, or not said anything at all.

Most of us have been operating on the assumption that at this point in time the precursor scavenger hunt they said they’ve been working on for two or three months would be nearing it’s final stages of completion and would be done in the next month or two with their big updates.

Turns out that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Anet, do you have 2.5 guys working on a game or you set up wrong priorities?

Luna.9640:

I’ll just leave this “The Lover” Broker price progression statistic here so you can work on it as a homework.

http://i.imgur.com/BQv3t.png

Right now Anet literally force people to buy gold from 3rd party websites by not addressing the high pre-cursor prices since forever.

Or you could play the game hardcore for about 4 days and get the 300g for it.

Oh you don’t want to play hardcore? But you still want the game’s ultimate cosmetic item? Well, sounds like you have two competing ideas in your head right now. Which one will win?

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Or you could play the game hardcore for about 4 days and get the 300g for it.

The only way to do that is via the broker, and that’s not hardcore, that’s lame. Besides, by the time he gets the 300, it’ll jump to 350.

This is why I refuse to bother with legendaries; the only legendary part of it is sucking up to a few folks who took advantage of early exploits in order to generate more gold (by buying up every precursor afterward and spiking the prices).

Let those folks trade these things among themselves, and go for a reward that has nothing to do with them, until ANet looks at what should make a legendary legendary. It’s not legendary to blow up and flip items all day.

I really hope ANet lets us circumvent these folks. It’s the one thing that’s consistently disgusted me, and I understand that ANet is cautious about tampering with the market, but I think most folks would have less of a problem with it if it wasn’t players dishonestly gouging other players and which is exacerbated by punishing RNG.

This has not self-corrected, and it’s not going to as things stand.

Munkee.3542:

Just add it to the list.

Designing and programming are diffent things.
I.E. you may design a new car but not yet start its production; I believe that is what Colin meant, the feature may be under theoretical construction but not code production yet.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Or you could play the game hardcore for about 4 days and get the 300g for it.

Oh you don’t want to play hardcore? But you still want the game’s ultimate cosmetic item? Well, sounds like you have two competing ideas in your head right now. Which one will win?

Charging a 20-strong zerg and taking 6 of them down before dying is hardcore.
Taking a Norn’s ale away from him / her is hardcore.

Playing the trading post isn’t what I’d consider ‘hardcore’.

So market manipulators will no longer afraid of SH and can start another wave of prices bumping… ANet must do something with it ASAP. Atleast significantly increase a chance to get precursor from chests/MF.

But let’s be realistic. It’s not going to happen…

fellyn.5083:

domxnik.1453:

I think it’s funny how people say they are tired of not hearing from the Devs’, then when they finally do, they don’t stop complaining about what they say. Please, people, make up your mind.

Because the things they are saying now completely contradict the things they said then. If what they said then is not what they meant then they should have said what they meant the first time, or not said anything at all.

Most of us have been operating on the assumption that at this point in time the precursor scavenger hunt they said they’ve been working on for two or three months would be nearing it’s final stages of completion and would be done in the next month or two with their big updates.

Turns out that couldn’t be further from the truth.

So, no scavenger hunt, but they did they say “We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.”

I agree, scavenger hunt would be nice since the precursor is the most annoying thing to obtain. But I feel more things need to be fixed and added into the game right now. Never know, the new system might be good. Don’t get your hopes up on most these patches until you see official plans on what they are doing within the next couple weeks.

Ofc they will not do anything or fix in near future since as a general rule, money is always honey. But maybe they will add this someday after they figure out new ways to earn money from us and it’s ok cuz this is Free to Play game and they need to find money somehow. But i must say i miss to play P2P games and you paying for development and you can question what’s goin on with P2P system.

Recently 3 Arenanet devs have commented on upcoming features and contents. Izzy made did an interview to some German gaming website and most of his answers could be summed up as: “We’d like to do that, but we aren’t”. Jonathan Sharp rehashed the same bunch of stuff from a blog post months ago about PvP updates, and used 600+ words to say ‘its coming soon’ (he said that in the blog post months ago too). And now this. Another vague answer about the progression of development.

Anet should just do another lost shores event; 1 chest, 1 time with a stupidly high chance of getting a precursor! If your lucky you may even get 2 ;-)!

kKagari.6804:

Another vague answer about the progression of development.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Some of these additions will come as early as the January release, and will get covered in more detail in the next week or two as well release all the details about this release once testing has signed off it’s all ready to go in January. (we’ll also provide a high level summary of our goals with reward systems, etc. in our 2013 blog post, which should be out next week)

Just in case you missed that, and the reason why he hasn’t gone into detail here.

called it! not to sound mean spirited but it kinda made me laugh to hear that there will be a much longer wait for this “scavenger hunt” when soooooo many ppl are just itching to get there precursor and refuse to use the mystic casino. now they can get in line with the rest of us and prepare to throw their gold away or wait even longer or just focus on some other part of the game.

TerrellEdenost.7086:

The problem with that idea is that they won’t know what the 95% is until weeks before launch. And that is just what we are getting. Next week we’ll get the details because they will be >95% sure that it will be in the patch. If they tell us that something is gonna be there early in the month and then it fails QA testing… what then? There will be way more QQ about being told something will be there and then isn’t. ArenaNet is actually doing the right thing by running all new content through QA and then making a formal announcement for the update.

The point is this… we have to treat all comments from dev as “sneak peaks” with no expressed or implied release time and that is that. Otherwise you’ve set your expectations too high.

See, I disagree with this. If the level of communication was higher, the devs could announce X. let’s say X fails QA testing (assuming at this point QA exists- I’m looking at you, snowflake jewelry…). The dev (or…gasp! our community manager) comes back and says, “yeah, X didn’t pan out, we’ll take another run at it later.”

That, right there, is called ‘communication’. This is the same thing I’ve been saying for months: the communication we receive from ANet is so few and far between that we have to guess and speculate at everything. If they simply communicated more openly, more often, the playerbase probably wouldn’t be as whiny on the forums.

I invite you to take a look at the dev tracker here, and then compare it to the dev tracker on the RIFT forum. The difference in the level of communication is night and day. The biggest thing I loved about RIFT is that I always knew what the dev team was working on, what was coming up next, and that my feedback was heard. I wish ANet would try this tactic- it works wonders.

Edit: all that being said, I was kinda hoping for a scavenger hunt too =/

Am i the only one getting less and less excited for these upcoming updates?

At first it was “two HUGE updates with content equal to a EXPANSION!”, now its a tiny boring patch at the end of January and nothing exciting till March. And now no plans to implement the scavenger hunt for six months. Meanwhile they are going to make precursors drop as rewards from the world, that will only make those people who terrorise the Trading Post even richer.

Times running out, the game is dying, the servers are empty, no one plays anymore, its even impossible to get a group for Fractals, the longer we are made to wait for new GOOD content the more players leave, i dont think people have the patience to wait till March and beyond for change.

Its scary and extremely disappointing to see WoW delivering faster and better content then this game… and i hate WoW.

Arnath.2319:

Am i the only one getting less and less excited for these upcoming updates?

At first it was “two HUGE updates with content equal to a EXPANSION!”, now its a tiny boring patch at the end of January and nothing exciting till March. And now no plans to implement the scavenger hunt for six months. Meanwhile they are going to make precursors drop as rewards from the world, that will only make those people who terrorise the Trading Post even richer.

Times running out, the game is dying, the servers are empty, no one plays anymore, its even impossible to get a group for Fractals, the longer we are made to wait for new GOOD content the more players leave, i dont think people have the patience to wait till March and beyond for change.

Its scary and extremely disappointing to see WoW delivering faster and better content then this game… and i hate WoW.

Is that so? I did fractals last night. It took less than 30 seconds to get a full group, creating the group from scratch. www.gw2lfg.com has your back.

I also did wvwvw last night as well, and in tier 6, all 3 servers at one point during the night after the reset reported queues in all of their maps.

Yeah, the game is definitely dieing. The post about having no scavenger hunt for at least 3 more months is truly disappointing, but to claim the game is dieing…? Uh, no.

Arnath.2319:

At first it was “two HUGE updates with content equal to a EXPANSION!”, now its a tiny boring patch at the end of January and nothing exciting till March.

You forgot the Feb patch. And how do you know that:

• The Jan patch will be boring?
• Nothing exciting until March?

Can’t really assume anything.

If these patches strengthen the core of the game, add to the current content + fix the most common complaints, then it’ll be worth more than additional new content.

Hey Anet devs, Im sorry but I get a laugh out of you saying that you are going to expand rewards across the board. You have been promising that for months and nothing changes each time. You even came out and stated that world drops were increasing and that vets and champs would drop good rewards in your patch notes….. it was a lie. I just dont believe you anymore. You seem like nice people in all of your videos. Please be honest and nice behind the scenes too.

fellyn.5083:

Is that so? I did fractals last night. It took less than 30 seconds to get a full group, creating the group from scratch. www.gw2lfg.com has your back.

I also did wvwvw last night as well, and in tier 6, all 3 servers at one point during the night after the reset reported queues in all of their maps.

Yeah, the game is definitely dieing. The post about having no scavenger hunt for at least 3 more months is truly disappointing, but to claim the game is dieing…? Uh, no.

Yup, busting at the seams on my server as well

Queues all night for WvW.
Hitting overflow servers at 7 am.
Hundreds of people at dragon events.
Starter areas swamped with players.

As fast as they lift the server caps, the servers fill back up again. I’ve never seen a game 5 months after launch have this kind of traffic, it’s a phenomenom.

Must be the server i am on, log in and no lions arch overflow, there has been no overflow since Tixx reached Lions Arch during Wintersday. Everyone stopped playing around that time. Takes a hour if im lucky to get a Fractal group, sometimes it takes even longer.
Everyone hates Fractals now, people have realised that there is no point going past level 10 and stopped playing.
It is impossible to get a group for any other dungeon.

The only thing i dont do is PVP, and i doubt every single player on my server is doing PVP, so i must just be on a dead server then, maybe its time to start merging servers?

But back on topic, they may as well put the Scavenger Hunt on hold until the first expansion comes out and use it for the new legendaries.

Right now there is a HUGE number of quick easy things that can be added to fix the precursor problem, there really is NO EXCUSE for them not fixing this problem months ago. I will avoid going into conspiracy theories, but legendaries have been one epic disaster and make this game look bad.

Sylv.5324:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Or you could play the game hardcore for about 4 days and get the 300g for it.

The only way to do that is via the broker, and that’s not hardcore, that’s lame. Besides, by the time he gets the 300, it’ll jump to 350.

Incorrect. When I was pursuing my legendary, I was easily able to make 50g a day doing dungeons and fractals. Yes it was a lot of hours, but it was at least fun and ‘playing the game.’

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Incorrect. When I was pursuing my legendary, I was easily able to make 50g a day doing dungeons and fractals. Yes it was a lot of hours, but it was at least fun and ‘playing the game.’

50g a day means 6 days of grinding, not 4. And not everyone has the time to commit to that. And there’s nothing “hardcore” about grinding dungeons, either, except perhaps the time commitment itself.

As to the notion that only the “hardcore” obtain legendaries….I’m apparently not hardcore and not among the game’s best players. Okay, fair enough. I know I’m not the best around (and plenty of things can take me down). Yet in WvW, I seem to recall more than one occasion where I killed a person with a legendary in single combat while playing my ranger. Sometimes I’ve even killed multiple people in a group whose leader had a legendary. In fact, in my experience, those with legendaries have tended to be less skillful and less useful in both dungeons and in WvW than other members of my group.

That suggests to me that many of those who have these “hardcore-only” items aren’t really all that good at the game, and really….why are players who suck at the game getting their hands on a legendary? That indicates a massive failure in the way legendaries were supposed to operate. That’s why players have clamored for the scavenger hunt and other skill-based content to be added, so that instead of just having a big wallet to get the BiS items, you can actually earn them.

Rainzar.6905:

now they can get in line with the rest of us and prepare to throw their gold away or wait even longer or just focus on some other part of the game.

That’s not fun. I’d like Bolt but I’m not going to be played that way by the devs or price-gouging players who keep buying up precursors all at once to jack the price every few days.

I’ll finish quip since I got it a while back, will stick with my greatsaw (which I like best anyway) and figure out what to do for a good one-handed sword.

I think that, if there is so much frustration about legendaries, that folks should outright refuse to do anything toward getting them until there are means of getting it without RNG or trading post shenanigans.

no one said it was fun, alot of things in these games are not fun. Is collecting 250 of anything fun? no. my point was people were so hopeful that the devs would come to their rescue when the reality is, the undertaking of what is needed to accomplish what people want is on par with “new endings for mass effect 3” its several months of worth and requires a real ‘team’ of people to complete it, not 2-3 guys who dabble on it during offnights. that plus the devs have a terrible knack of stating things only to be picked apart for “exactly” what they really meant to say much later to most peoples dissapointment.

so like i said before, either be prepared to throw your gold away, or continue waiting.

critickitten.1498:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Incorrect. When I was pursuing my legendary, I was easily able to make 50g a day doing dungeons and fractals. Yes it was a lot of hours, but it was at least fun and ‘playing the game.’

50g a day means 6 days of grinding, not 4. And not everyone has the time to commit to that. And there’s nothing “hardcore” about grinding dungeons, either, except perhaps the time commitment itself.

As to the notion that only the “hardcore” obtain legendaries….I’m apparently not hardcore and not among the game’s best players. Okay, fair enough. I know I’m not the best around (and plenty of things can take me down). Yet in WvW, I seem to recall more than one occasion where I killed a person with a legendary in single combat while playing my ranger. Sometimes I’ve even killed multiple people in a group whose leader had a legendary. In fact, in my experience, those with legendaries have tended to be less skillful and less useful in both dungeons and in WvW than other members of my group.

That suggests to me that many of those who have these “hardcore-only” items aren’t really all that good at the game, and really….why are players who suck at the game getting their hands on a legendary? That indicates a massive failure in the way legendaries were supposed to operate. That’s why players have clamored for the scavenger hunt and other skill-based content to be added, so that instead of just having a big wallet to get the BiS items, you can actually earn them.

You’re putting way too many words into my mouth. If you’re going to have a conversation with me, don’t project your gripes onto me. For instance, I never claimed having a legendary makes a person a better player. And I suppose you take issue of the word “hardcore” that I used. I was defining it simply by hours played as a contrast vs. the term ‘casual.’ So I’ll repeat it again, you CAN afford a precursor if you’re willing to grind for a few days in a significantly non-casual manner.

But enough about that, the only thing I cared about is that someone said that you can’t afford one without gaming the TP, and I respectfully disagree citing my own example of acquiring all of the cost of my legendary through gameplay.

I dunno why everyone wants the legendaries making so much easier to obtain. “When everyone is special. No one is.”

And since the Legendary weapons are such a tiny fraction of a game, Id say its reasonable for patches that are aimed at the games “core” aintgoing to worry about some shiny weapon. The games got bigger issues than some precursors, and I for one am glad they worrying about those first.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

-snip-

And what I’m trying to illustrate is:

• That you are not a good example of the average player in terms of time commitment or otherwise (which apparently you took as an insult)
• That the current model results primarily in players who bought power rather than earning it

If legendaries are going to be discussed by devs as these wonderful items that only the very top players can achieve, then they should make strides to fix that problem.

Lutharr.1035:

I dunno why everyone wants the legendaries making so much easier to obtain. “When everyone is special. No one is.”

No, I want to make them harder to obtain, not easier.

There’s nothing “challenging” about buying your legendary on the Trading Post.

Colin, I have a bet with my best friend that you will post the official blogpost next week. Don’t want to lose to him, he won’t let me hear the end of it.

Please don’t let me down.

sweet kitten eyes

critickitten.1498:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

-snip-

And what I’m trying to illustrate is:

• That you are not a good example of the average player in terms of time commitment or otherwise (which apparently you took as an insult)
• That the current model results primarily in players who bought power rather than earning it

If legendaries are going to be discussed by devs as these wonderful items that only the very top players can achieve, then they should make strides to fix that problem.

Lutharr.1035:

I dunno why everyone wants the legendaries making so much easier to obtain. “When everyone is special. No one is.”

No, I want to make them harder to obtain, not easier.

There’s nothing “challenging” about buying your legendary on the Trading Post.

Earning that much coin legit is as difficult as getting the legendary. The legendary is just a massive time sink with zero skill involved, just like earning the gold to buy one. The part most people hate and cba with is the RNG for the precursor. Do away with that though and watch everyone wandering around with a legendary. I know its the only thing holding me back. Im not the type to invest a huge ammount of time and money into a slot machine. But I dont begrudge the system even if its not to my tastes. I accept the fact its not for me and enjoy the game without a shiny stick.

Now if Anet want to revisit the precursor lottery then good for them(with the scavanger hunt idea). Im just glad they aint doing it at the expense of things that NEED changing or fixing. Legendarys aint NEEDED to enjoy the game for most of the playerbase, but the core game is.

Luna.9640:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point.

We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.

Some of these additions will come as early as the January release, and will get covered in more detail in the next week or two as well release all the details about this release once testing has signed off it’s all ready to go in January. (we’ll also provide a high level summary of our goals with reward systems, etc. in our 2013 blog post, which should be out next week)

I’ll just leave this “The Lover” Broker price progression statistic here so you can work on it as a homework.

http://i.imgur.com/BQv3t.png

Right now Anet literally force people to buy gold from 3rd party websites by not addressing the high pre-cursor prices since forever.

And they wonder why the game is flooded with botters and illegal RMT is so popular, these things and the trading post economy literally say use RMT or move on..

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

critickitten.1498:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Incorrect. When I was pursuing my legendary, I was easily able to make 50g a day doing dungeons and fractals. Yes it was a lot of hours, but it was at least fun and ‘playing the game.’

50g a day means 6 days of grinding, not 4. And not everyone has the time to commit to that. And there’s nothing “hardcore” about grinding dungeons, either, except perhaps the time commitment itself.

As to the notion that only the “hardcore” obtain legendaries….I’m apparently not hardcore and not among the game’s best players. Okay, fair enough. I know I’m not the best around (and plenty of things can take me down). Yet in WvW, I seem to recall more than one occasion where I killed a person with a legendary in single combat while playing my ranger. Sometimes I’ve even killed multiple people in a group whose leader had a legendary. In fact, in my experience, those with legendaries have tended to be less skillful and less useful in both dungeons and in WvW than other members of my group.

That suggests to me that many of those who have these “hardcore-only” items aren’t really all that good at the game, and really….why are players who suck at the game getting their hands on a legendary? That indicates a massive failure in the way legendaries were supposed to operate. That’s why players have clamored for the scavenger hunt and other skill-based content to be added, so that instead of just having a big wallet to get the BiS items, you can actually earn them.

You’re putting way too many words into my mouth. If you’re going to have a conversation with me, don’t project your gripes onto me. For instance, I never claimed having a legendary makes a person a better player. And I suppose you take issue of the word “hardcore” that I used. I was defining it simply by hours played as a contrast vs. the term ‘casual.’ So I’ll repeat it again, you CAN afford a precursor if you’re willing to grind for a few days in a significantly non-casual manner.

But enough about that, the only thing I cared about is that someone said that you can’t afford one without gaming the TP, and I respectfully disagree citing my own example of acquiring all of the cost of my legendary through gameplay.

450g Dusks and 478g Legends are not something you grind in a few days; stop lying.

Not to mention then the real grind for many legendaries, which are the lodestones+T6 ingredients+ecto.

Lutharr.1035:

Earning that much coin legit is as difficult as getting the legendary.

No it isn’t. It’s time-consuming, not difficult. Do not confuse the two.

If I wanted to, I could save my money and buy a fire-fighter outfit. But that wouldn’t make me a fire-fighter, years of extensive training would.

Getting a Legendary item is not at all challenging, it’s merely a matter of resources. Put the Legendary behind a long, very challenging quest though….and suddenly you’ll find a lot less people with Legendaries, not more. When something boils down to mere resource gathering, it’s guaranteed to eventually become over-saturated. You say things like “we don’t want everyone to have a Legendary”, yet I’ll note that I’ve seen them more and more often in WvW, and this game’s not even half a year old. A few years down the road, everyone who was trying to get one will have one, and then we’ll be complaining (far too late) about how they were too easy to obtain in the first place.

The legendary is just a massive time sink with zero skill involved, just like earning the gold to buy one. The part most people hate and cba with is the RNG for the precursor. Do away with that though and watch everyone wandering around with a legendary.

How do you figure that stripping out the heavily-purchased nature of legendaries (which you yourself admit involves no skill) and replacing it with a massive, heavily challenging quest system that requires skill and draws upon all of your knowledge and experience of the game….will result in everyone getting a Legendary? Your line of thought doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. It sounds like you didn’t read what I said at all and are just repeating yourself because you can’t think up an appropriate reply to what I actually said.

I’m beginning to think that people honestly have no counter-arguments against the broken status of Legendaries, and so in order to continue defending this bad game design (design that runs contrary to the game’s stated goals), are stuck having to repeat the same two over and over: “changing the system would mean that you’d make it too easy and thus everyone gets a legendary” and “it’s optional so why should you care”.

Except both counter-arguments miss the mark.

We don’t want it to be easier to get Legendaries, we want it to be harder, with a heavy story focus and unique, challenging content.

We don’t care that it’s “optional”, because optional content should still be designed in the most optimal way possible so that people feel encouraged to try (even if they fail) and so that we can hold these things up these examples of amazing content that GW2 does differently when people say things like “Aren’t all MMOs the same? Why should I play GW2?”.

Come up with a new counter-argument, preferably one that actually addresses the things we’re saying, please. We’ve already shown time and time again that no one is actually asking for what you say we are. No one wants an easy button for Legendaries….we just want to actually make them something worth bragging about.

If you look at it from their side, the business side. Do they want to severely limit people getting legendaries? Or do they want people in the game, playing it, making the gold, getting the karma, doing the jp and world map completion?

The requirements as they are, steep as they may be, are attainable by most. A long grueling quest that involves some skill and would be, at the outset, daunting to this “casual” player base would keep many away (gonna put a note here stating that I am not downing the idea of something skill based as a requisite for a legendary, I am just stating my hypothesis)

The previous wins every time because more people are gunning for it, more people in game, and a chance at having those folks buy gems to trade for gold the legit (and very well less cost effective) way.