I’ve been reading and reading the forums for quite a while now, always somehow managing to restrain myself from posting my own or replying to topics which stated which and what people were unsatisfied with in the game. There were many many many posts about the holes in the current economy, dungeons, drop rates, etc etc. Some of those were as stated:
-“Please make the legendary precursors obtainable through different methods other then gold. The market is monopolised by early exploiters and accidental lottery winners and there is a severe dissbalance between weapons such as the greatswords and others such as one-handers and the likes.(close to a 200g difference). Let us obtain it through dungeon tokens, combinable materials, things we can do on our own instead of the stale months-long gold grind.” You responded with increasing the already fictional “chance” in the Mystic Forge with another ficional multiplier, therefore not listening, nor comforting the current community in the least.
-“Please make Lodestones obtainable via dungeon chests, or buyable through dungeon tokens, or simply increasing the sad sad sad drop rate on anything that is supposed to drop them. We would like to be able to rely more on our own time and efforts, then hoping there’s a fluke on the Trading Post when they actualy become affordable” Nothing was done on this subject. On the other hand, Obsidian shards are being offered as rewards for the new dungeon tokens, these, which already have a “dependable” income source…karma.
“-Please make dungeons more interesting, more rewarding, so that when I’m done grinding all the tokens for all my complete armor set, I’m actualy happy about doing more, rather then being happy about being done.” The dungeon situation is still very bleak. You introduced new rewards but what escaped you is that by increasing the general drop chance on veterans+, you have given people another very strong incentive why to wear full MF gear and in turn hinder the rest of the group, a situation that broke apart many pick-up groups in the past. Leeching is finally the easiest way of of getting richer. Why not constrain those prizes only within chests?….
“-Please take a look at the classes we are playing. We feel like they are too weak, like they have just one or two viable ways to specc, like they lack in offense/defense, like they’re trait choices are silly, etc.” What you do is put some attention into the pvp section of the game, but the pve aspect gets either lost, or struck by the aftermath of those pvp changes(we see you are implementing changes seperately as of late but even those fail to encompass the actual player concernes/desires) For instance: I recently spent a good deal of money gearing my girlfriend’s character as a a dungeon-support oriented elementalist, only to discover that in the recent changes you nerfed everything that made such a build not desirable, but “Viable”. What is worse is the sheer fact that Elementalists have about 2 solid build options that actualy grant them “results”, and now they are down to 1. I do not regret the gear, or the gold spent, but rather looking at her sad face while knowing she can basicly shelve her character which she is so fond of. This naturaly affects many other classes, such as rangers and the likes, which are yet to see any concrete love thrown their way.
You do deserve praise where praise is due.
-The game is free, and as a free game it has no rivals as to how much it offers.
-The speed in which new content is released is great, and the quality as well as effort in those is clear as day.
-The animations, the landscapes, the sheer architecture of the world is astounding, and feels like a beautiful picture constantly in motion.
There are many other compliments that have a place here, but most get lost in my mind due to the so many already stated things that need fixing. There will always be whiners and hardcore fans, but within those there is an objective community that wishes nothing but the best for this game, and in turn seek your acknowlegement with their issues and concernes. So please Anet, take a longer look and listen…doubt anything wrong can come out of it.
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