Guild Wars 2

I have read so much negative Posts here which are either utterly wrong and emotional impertinant or they are justified concerns which are overrunned by other emotional “this is all bs” posts. There are very few positive Posts but that is no suprise, because it is natural for a Forum to be negative, because people like to complain and if something is great, they are enjoying it ingame and it much more unlikely to spread those feelings on a Forum.
Therefore i want to go over the most common complains and make a statement to the to clarify they are right or not. I will use the example and comparison to WoW quite often, because it is the most succesful MMO ever made so far and a Milestone in MMO History.

C: GW2 has become a p2w game with the Elite Specialisations.
A: Wrong. The Term “p2w” is misused here to express the emotional Letdown of someone who likely just got killed by a Elite Specialisation. A Expansion is not a pay to win Mechanic in a MMO, it is progress and therefore not qualified to be called “p2w”. It is natural for every Game that a Expansion brings out more powerful Elements and everyone has acces to that whole content. If people decide to not take part in that progress, it is natural they are left behind and that goes for everything in life and in games. Let me give you a quick Example. When WoW launched an Expansion, it was no question of if you want to buy it or not, because the Level Cap gets raised, the new Raid has far better gear, the new Farmspots are way more rewarding etc. etc. If you want to be competetive, you buy an Expension in a MMO. To clarify, p2w is adressed to ingame purchases who are giving you a advantage over other players and are besides that not necessary or essential for the game. You can see, a Expansion does not fit into that Term.

C: HoT destroys the core game.
A: Wrong. If an MMO launches a Expansion, there is no “Core Game” anymore, it is called the Vanilla Version of it. The Core Game now is the Game plus the Expansion, which is why a Expansion is again no p2w Element. It is also the reason why all the really good rewards and other things are transfered into a Expansion and if they are not, a Expansion will just add so many more powerful and valuable things, that in the progress Vanilla content will get obsolete on its own. Guild Wars 2 has related to that still a outrageous good Vanilla Content.

C: Masteries for Fractals are a greed Move and with the Dungeon nerf only a grind to prolong everything. Already existing rewards are locked behind that stupid thing now
A: Almost right. Masteries for Fractals and Dungeons are a great Idea and a good way to implement even better progress and reward feeling into the Fraktals/ PvE content. The Dungeon nerf however was a difficult thing because Dungeons on that standard added maybe really too much gold with too little efford into the Game. A Group of 5 People finishing CoF within 10 Minutes or less added 5,25g in that time into the Game. That is quite a lot and now the same group would add only 1,75g into the Game. While i do understand the complainement about that loss of income and my own concerns about the new players who get into the Game and have it now much harder to earn gold without spending real money, it is a real problem if you imagine something like this would happen in the real world. (It already is btw.) It would be like the World Bank would simply add more and more money into the System and therefore the money itself would be less and less worth it. That already happened in GW2 since everything is now just even more expensive because Gold is less worth.
With that step now, newer players would get more for their real money, if they chose to buy Gems and trade it into Gold after and in the same progress, people who dont want to spend real money on the game are slowed down, which is not always the right thing. As you can see now, it is a very difficult thing how the economy evolves and needs to be investigated very closely and also monitored by ArenaNet.

Back to the Fractals. As I said before, adding the Masterie System is great but to lock already existing loot behind that now and therefore removing rewards from players who had acces to them before is not right. It is the wrong way to make people by a Expansion and there has to be another way. You just cannot hide something which already existed behind a even higher border only to make people use a Expansion System. A Expansion should add new things, not recycle old ones.
Here is a Quote of a User who put that into the right words :
“Those who did/do not purchase HoT should still not lose the ability to play what they were playing before.
The new levels, the masteries and such, however, belong to those who bought the expansion.”

C: HoT is the death for Soloplayers.
A: Not entirely wrong but given the name of this Game, it wasnt meant to be a Soloplayer game to begin with. Everything in Guild Wars 2 is and ever was designed to be a interactive multiplayer Content and it is one of the main reasons why Guild Wars 2 is such a great game. The possibility for players soloing Dungeons was wrong from the start and had to be fixed ages ago if you ask me. I do also think it is vital for a MMO to maintain its Group philosophy and keep players interactive and communicative. WoW has proofen that a MMO without those parts is likely to beeing toxic. It is because Guild Wars 2 keeps this philosophy high, this game is still really enjoyable for Soloplayers! Please keep that in mind.

C: 400 Hero Points for the Elite Specialisations are way too much! Iam forced to play through the Maps!!
A: Wrong. There is no Issue in “forcing” people to enjoy the Content, the new World, the Story to unlock your Elite Specialisation. I dont think that “forcing” is the right word for it and also it is justified just lorewise, that you, becoming a Master over your Profession, have seen and experienced the World. The Elite Specialisations are the top of your Characters progress and i think it is really wrong to hand it to you without any progress in the first place.

C: Hot has way to little Maps, no Armor / Weapon Skins , no Content at all. THNX ANet.
A: Wrong. Eventhough there are only 4 Maps right now, every Map has 3 Layers so i think it is fair to count one Map as atleast 1,5-2 Maps. Looking at the Skins however, it is right to call that little. I really think there has to be added much more yes. Talking about the Content in the End, the Expansion provides a lot of Content. Guild Halls, Masterie System, new Professions, new Class, new Maps, new PvP, new Sets, new Cinematics, Raids, new Dungeons, Gliding, new PvE fighting System, Action Cam and maybe even more.

In the End, there are issues in the Game and there have to be some improvements, but overall the very majority of criticsm so far is not justified. Sure it is possible that iam wrong about certain points, if so feel free to tell me as calm as you can why, if not nvm… Maybe i will update this as time passes and add some other things i have forgotten now.

So far, have a nice day and enjoy HoT.

Nice objective post. I think they shafted us a little with skins in particular, but I’m not as bothered about most of the other stuff and think the content we got is pretty high quality. I think they’re trying to create a better structure around the end game, which makes sense.

Changing reward structure for dungeons is a little annoying but somewhat understandable. What bothers me a bit more is their overt lack of support for dungeon content in general. Fractals are cool and all, but come on, 5 man traditional dungeons are an important part of any MMO world. Freaking support them, add new ones, and try to make existing ones better.

So far, I’m not regretting my purchase.

C: HoT destroys the core game.
A: Wrong. If an MMO launches a Expansion, there is no “Core Game” anymore, it is called the Vanilla Version of it. The Core Game now is the Game plus the Expansion, which is why a Expansion is again no p2w Element . It is also the reason why all the really good rewards and other things are transfered into a Expansion and if they are not, a Expansion will just add so many more powerful and valuable things, that in the progress Vanilla content will get obsolete on its own. Guild Wars 2 has related to that still a outrageous good Vanilla Content

sorry but this is only quibbling at his best…

Einlanzer.1627:

Nice objective post.

and @ Einlanzer you call a ( if good or bad isnt the point!!) personally sight on the topic from te OP as objective. really? O.o

An personal assesesment cant never be objective and there is a lot of personally assesement in Ops “answers”.

the fact that you agree with OP doesnt make something objective.

The only disagreement I have is with the group aspect. GW2 isn’t designed very well to promote group activity. Guilds, dungeons, even world events are very “anti-communal” in the way they are designed, mix that in with mega-servers and multi guilds the “community” ironically becomes more distant. I would also disagree with the comparison to WoW, WoW at least early on was very good at promoting and maintaining a healthy community. Not sure where they failed in that regard, both games have toxicity, WoW is just known for it because of its size.

Expansion? Where? It’s more like a mild update.

-They said new fractals, though you get 50 more levels of the same ones.
-They said raids. They haven’t been implemented yet.
-The story? It’s just LS3 which I couldn’t care less about.
-New Zones? Couldnt care less, got 5 full decked toons…only 1 of them has map exploration over 5%…and even that one is below 40%.
-Elite Specs, I got 5 toons…that’s 2000 points to grind, in a PvE zone which I couldn’t care less about b4 I even get to play it and by the time I’ve finished grinding I’ll be bored of it.
-Legendary armor? Why, I’ve got ascended sets.
-Also really? No kittening NEW beards for humans? Really?

All I care about is new classes to use in WvW/sPvP, some new fractals, raids, and cool armor skins. So far HoT got nothing of the mentioned above, and yes since you can’t use elite specs from the get go in WvW/Fractals they don’t count. It’s not a new character, it’s a new trait line…no reason to hide it behind a grind wall.

No one can say what is wrong or right for another person. That being said, if you don’t like something you should have the opportunity to say it. Yes, from the beginning, it was stated on the official blogs this:

Will Guild Wars 2 be solo-able?
Yes. You will be able to advance your character to the maximum level without ever joining a group, if you so desire. Most content will be designed in a solo-friendly way, though often with mechanisms for scaling up in difficulty when more players are involved. This will give players the option to experience the game however they prefer.

Apparently, you cannot do that anymore in the new expansion. Its not a matter of wrong or right, its a matter of how you want to play and what was said of the game before you decided to purchase it as to whether or not you would be interested in it.

I can see that even though I have been playing since the beta of GW1 because of the solo content available, that is it no longer the game for me long term. I will play the core game, but I will not purchase HoT because its not enjoyable to me. Doesn’t make it wrong if its enjoyable to YOU though. All I’m saying is that its a different game than what it was. Your opinion may differ but that doesn’t make either of us wrong or right for having an opinion.

(MMORPG, massive multiplayer online role playing game, is not MMFGORPG, massive multiplayer forced group online role playing game. Just because there are lots people playing the same game doesn’t mean they all have to play together if they don’t want to)

Amaya.1483:

C: 400 Hero Points for the Elite Specialisations are way too much! Iam forced to play through the Maps!!
A: Wrong. There is no Issue in “forcing” people to enjoy the Content, the new World, the Story to unlock your Elite Specialisation. I dont think that “forcing” is the right word for it and also it is justified just lorewise, that you, becoming a Master over your Profession, have seen and experienced the World. The Elite Specialisations are the top of your Charakters progress and i think it is really wrong to hand it to you without any progress in the first place.

That you think “lore” even matters shows how blinkered your view is, lots of players could not care less about lore, plenty of players have little to no interest in the tedious open world PvE in this game, but if for example they want to use the specialisations in content they enjoy like dungeons, fractals & raids, then they are forced to go grind the tedious new zones because that is where the hero points are, it is a direct contradiction of what this game is supposedly about “no grind”, “play your way”, etc.

A lot of inaccuracies and opinions stated as facts in the OP.

OP post sounds a bit over emotional to me. Also it’s fractals. Sorry that bothered me a little. But combating negativity with even more negativity doesn’t work. It just makes people even more negative.

Fraktals and Charakters
Fraktals and Charakters
Fraktals and Charakters

ye, srsly, you can’t even type that right but yet you think you have the ability to clarify what is right and what is not?

and others dare to say its objective post? it’s purely subjective.

A lot of this seems subjective, based on the OP’s preferences, definitions, interpretations, etc. You can objectively answer things like “Do I have to do map completion to unlock my elite spec?” or “What happens to my guild bank?” You cannot objectively answer “Is this the death of solo play?” or “400 points is too much!”

Subjectivity is okay. People are going to have different opinions on these issues, and they’re going to fight about what’s best, and that’s normal.

It becomes a problem, though, when you flatly tell people their complaints are wrong and you are right. You’d better stick to just the facts if you want to do that, not your ideas about what is reasonable or how things are meant to be, because those are subjective.

Amaya.1483:

C: GW2 has become a p2w game with the Elite Specialisations.
A: Wrong. The Term “p2w” is misused here to express the emotional Letdown of someone who likely just got killed by a Elite Specialisation. A Expansion is not a pay to win Mechanic in a MMO, it is progress and therefore not qualified to be called “p2w”. It is natural for every Game that a Expansion brings out more powerful Elements and everyone has acces to that whole content. If people decide to not take part in that progress, it is natural they are left behind and that goes for everything in life and in games.

I’m not so sure if one can’t call that p2w.
The problem I have is, that I main a thief and I have played D/D for the past 2 years but that build has been destroyed (thanks for the 200 ms evade buff though, anet, honestly).
So, naturally the new weapons and so on are better, for now. But I don’t want to play them- get my problem? It’s not a certain dagger that is more powerful than the rest, it’s a whole new weapon with whole new mechanics. And that is something I don’t agree with and the reason why I think that the vanilla classes/builds shouldn’t be left behind.

GW2 has become a p2w game with the Elite Specialisations.

The meanings of terms evolve over time. I agree that there is a tendency on the forums for people to use loaded pejoratives to try to build agreement for their position. However, that does not mean that there is not some potential accuracy to this complaint, even if I would not use the term P2W. If Elite Specs are objectively more powerful instead of the horizontal progression they were advertised as, then these people have a point. That, however, remains to be seen.

HoT destroys the core game.

Again, the use of too strong a term to make a point. What HoT has really done is to devalue the core game. While adding a pay point to access new content is perfectly reasonable, adding a pay point to maintain access to rewards that were already part of a prior purchase is bound to attract justified criticism.

C: Masteries for Fraktals are a greed Move and with the Dungeon nerf only a grind to prolong everything. Already existing rewards are locked behind that stupid thing now

Nice to see you see my prior point.

HoT is the death for Solo players.

While ANet has certainly emphasized herd play since GW2 was an idea, they also presented a strong solo play component. How much of the complaints about solo-unfriendly HoT will still be valid once players learn the new mechanics remains to be seen.

However, in Dry Top and Silverwastes, being in a map copy that has too few players in it means that the experience for someone who is logged in to just poke about and have some fun is reduced. I suspect that things like Hero Challenges or events that require multiple players are going to be problematic for late adopters, or those who took the time to smell the nasty jungle plants instead of racing to be with the herd.

Both Rift and Wildstar found out to their detriment that ignoring solo-preference players meant reduced income for them. Depending on how it shakes out — and it’s too soon to tell — GW2 might find the same thing.

400 Hero Points for the Elite Specialisations are way too much! Iam forced to play through the Maps!!

Some feel that waiting 3+ years since launch with almost nothing new added to professions was already too long a wait. Others feel that waiting the (exactly) 9 months since the HoT announcement was too long a wait. It isn’t that people want not to play the content, it’s that they want to play the content with the new mechanics, not with the old mechanics they’re bored to tears with.

C: Hot has way to little Maps, no Armor / Weapon Skins , no Content at all. THNX ANet.

Whether the content offered by HoT provides value for money is a personal decision. While your opinion thereof is perfectly valid for you, it may not apply to others. Calling such an opinion “wrong” implies that there is some objective measure of value. This is seldom the case in terms of enjoyment because people enjoy different things. Players on both sides have made comparisons to other products, but at the end of the day what matters is how much one enjoys the offering. Those who make these type of complaints are hopefully also saying what they would find acceptable. However, even, “I don’t like X!” is feedback.

My only 2 complains are that there are not enough armor skins in the x-pac. The ones that are there are top notch perfect.. but i sure do would have liked full profession armor with the collections..not just 1 piece and a weapon. And my other complaint is that its way too awesome and i had no sleep for 2 days playing this game…wtf a-net why would you do something like that?!

Iam sorry if i wrote Characters and Fractals wrong or even something more. English isnt my native language and in my native language its written with “k”. Maybe it was some kind of auto correction, or i just misspelled it. In any case, sorry for that, but that doenst make my initial Post any less true or more emotional. I dont clame to be 100% right in everything, but i do think i have a pretty cool-headed opinion about MMOs.

Amaya.1483:

Iam sorry if i wrote Characters and Fractals wrong or even something more. English isnt my native language and in my native language its written with “k”. Maybe it was some kind of auto correction, or i just misspelled it. In any case, sorry for that, but that doenst make my initial Post any less true or more emotional. I dont clame to be 100% right in everything, but i do think i have a pretty cool-headed opinion about MMOs.

Actually your original post is only true in the sense that it is all based on your opinion. And to be honest, your opinion is no more true than anyone else’s.

Right or wrong is a nonsense here as personal opinion is simply an individual’s opinion. What is factually correct here is that people are not happy with the expansion: FACT.

The best approach to this will come from those who are happy with expansion but have concerns that maps will be empty so making any remaining hero points more difficult to get.

This would result in the happy players complaining that there are empty maps and demanding it to be fixed.

A happy balance is certainly needed here :-)

OP your comments and opinions hold a lot of truth it is really sad that the naysayers feel they have to come in and nit pick your use of the English language. People are so funny they read your post and say none of it is correct yet in the same breath give their opinions and claim them as right.

I am LOVING HoT and I DONT find it grindy and I DONT hate that I have to work for Masteries and I DONT think the game is P2W and those are my opinions. Each to their own but there is no need to get personal and nasty about someones use of the English language because you cant make a valid point of your own.

Jazzabelle.6531:

People are so funny they read your post and say none of it is correct
.

noone said that.

its a huge difference if someone says in MY OPINION something is this way or if he/she comes and want to sell his opinion as facts and excactly this is the intention of OP.

Jazzabelle.6531:

I am LOVING HoT and I DONT find it grindy and I DONT hate that I have to work for Masteries and I DONT think the game is P2W and those are my opinions

e.g you posted it correct as YOUR opinion and not as facts.

So you made a long and elaborate post about semantics, while completely disregarding the legitimacy of those complaints based on many player’s points of view regarding how they ’’feel’’ about the expansion… which is the point that should matter the most imo.

The bottom line with what is wrong or right with your post is your attempting to pigeonhole customer complaints with a blanket of rational.

When people purchase something they are entitled to their opinion, and assessment of the product, even if they voice those complaints wrapped with emotion.

For those of us that have been around for a very long time and remember some of the first MMO’s like UO, we are very familiar with the impact that game changes can have on a community.

While your trying to frame this communities response in a neat package of dismissal while candy-coating, or skimming past the industries continued trend of leaving an established player-base out of the loop when changes are decided; keep in mind they, “the community” are what determines the success or failure of said changes.

As for emotional responses “I get that, and fully understand it.” Because when you’ve dedicated many hours to building and playing in a particular MMO for several years, its not only an investment of your time, but it can also change the landscape of friendships/guilds, and how you entertain yourself in your free time if those changes are not received well by the community.

In fact the company doesn’t really need your chivalrous defense because unlike the player-base they are shielded by many laws of protection, while those that have invested in it at the consumer level, then poured many hours of their time into it have nothing because the industry has been allowed to run rampant with no regulations in place to protect the players investment.