I am disgusted with the announcement of a new tier of armor, to be honest. I quit WoW because I got tired of re-gearing.
You talk about this game not being a grind, but it so clearly is. It is a complete and utter grind.
In GW1 in its earliest stage if you wanted a perfect set of armor and a weapon you could get it in a week. I’m talking a week of playing just a couple hours a day. I’m talking no more than a month into the lifetime of the game. It got much easier over time.
It had OPTIONAL grinds, sure. For skins, mostly. Good looking armor and weapons.
And it worked fine, because the fun in the game was in discovering interesting builds and class combinations. Respeccing was COMPLETELY free, all you had to do was go to an outpost.
I’m grateful and impressed with all the base content provided in GW2 and that you improved in many areas surrounding the brunt of the game, but you left that very pulp lacking. The skill system is so restrictive it kills half the soul of the game right then and there. Kudos for trying something new with the weapons, though.
Gold sinks everywhere. For the most menial tasks. Harvesting mats. Map traveling. Death costs money over waypoints AND repairs, and believe me in a game where clearing content can be summarized in throwing corpses at a dungeon that kind of method gets old real fast.
From day one I looked at your gem store and saw what was wrong right there. Repair canisters? Merchant access and bank access where you pay for a single use? You KNEW your game was shoving inconvenience after inconvenience at the players, and you were hoping to capitalize on that.
I understand you wanted to make money, but this is the wrong way to do it. Here, let me help.
First off, allow me to teach you a fundamental rule of player retention. If you want me to put money in microtransactions the first step is making sure I feel comfortable doing so. Myself and a number of other cheapskates will not give you extra cash unless we’re certain we want to stick around for a while. If the drive instilled upon me is to FIX something wrong with core mechanics of the game, then I will go play another game instead.
Many times I brought up the store and wondered where are the armor skins. I mean you have some up there. Very few, though. Get more. Make them cheap. Heck, look at your GW1 store. You pay 5€ you get a permanent skin that you can wear whenever you want. I would buy that. That’s 5€ from me you could have had, and I assure you many others would jump on that.
During the development stage of GW2 I had nothing but high hopes for this game, but the more time I spend it the more I feel like I wasted my energy for no good reason. Your game is not bad, but I’m insulted by the entire marketing campaign and your manifesto in which you flat-out lied to me.
You promised the MMO that would tempt people not normally into MMOs yet this doesn’t feel any better than my time in WoW. I go to college and have a part-time job, that leaves me little time to play and a poor schedule to do it. What that means is that I have a hard time running dungeons and thus – gearing up. I can’t get any gold, either. If I get 1GP in a day that’s a lot for me. Now, this is something I can live with, provided that I have the certainty that when I finally save up enough or grind enough, the equipment I have is sufficient and will remain that way for the rest of the game.
And now, a gear treadmill in the horizon.
It’s painful, honestly. It’s painful because I know we are past the point where it can be fixed. This is a feature that’s in the game and regardless of how much negative feedback you get for it, it’s going through. Heck, I’m sure many people will be perfectly fine with it. Gear progression is the norm, they don’t mind.
Yeah, your game isn’t bad. But it’s not the game I was told I was purchasing.
It sucks being just another drop in the ocean.