Guild Wars 2

Glad to see you are adding more glider skins because we got so many with the expac. Oh wait, we got 1, 2 if we got the collectors. We only got the black and white wings if we bough them from the gemstore, right alongside the bat wings and the crystal arbiter glider. Now you have gone and added the exalted glider that would have been an awesome reward and incentive from something like the exalted mastery line. The base glider is ugly as sin so of course people are going to want to get new skins for it. So what do you do after we pay $50 for the expac? Lock all the purty skins behind the paywall instead of the great mastery system.

I’m hoping that with the new LS episodes they change from the standard backpack rewards we had in core GW2 to glider skins for HoT, since gliding is a whole new HoT thing, and new LS episodes require it.

Honestly, this is something that eats at me as well.

We paid 50 bucks for this new expansion, and all we got was a couple new armor skins, couple new weapons, and one glider (two if you got the collector’s edition). I mean, really?

And now, right after the expansion releases, they are already throwing up new items in the gem store. Hey a new outfit, new gliders, several new weapon sets in the Black Lion chests, etc.

Just feels like we got a bum deal/shafted on the expansion. I get Anet loves money, but to release all this new stuff for the gem store after we just paid for an overpriced expansion (my opinion), just feels like a slap in the face.

Lack of armor skins I attribute to all the people that complained about no alternate race selection in GW1. Congratulations. You got more races, and made it harder to push out lots of armor quickly.

I blame the same people for outfits. It’s easier to craft one set of “armor” that all characters can wear than the expected three weights with gender and racial variants.

Lack of gliders I blame solely on arenanet. Day 1 DLC on that scale ain’t cool guys. One gem store skin was understandable, but you took it too dang far for something that requires the same amount of rigging as a backpack skin, your cheap to produce item of choice for live content rewards.

For a game with a primarily cosmetic reward model, stop being so stingy with cosmetic rewards for playing the game. Bare minimum we should be seeing one ingame skin for every gem store skin.

PopeUrban.2578:

For a game with a primarily cosmetic reward model, stop being so stingy with cosmetic rewards for playing the game. Bare minimum we should be seeing one ingame skin for every gem store skin.

Or even a chance of it dropping in the game (and being tradeable) so that we have a chance of getting everything simply by playing the game. Even buying 400 gems with just in game money is kind of ridiculous when you have a limited time to do so. Make the gliders have a small chance to drop/tradeable on the tp and now I can save up that gold over a longer time and actually buy it.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

We paid 50 bucks for this new expansion, and all we got was a couple new armor skins, couple new weapons, and one glider (two if you got the collector’s edition). I mean, really?

You are amazingly short sighted if all you see is armor skins, weapons and a glider.

Considering the gliders are a mastery feature, I don’t see this as a problem. It does not have a long lifetime since the moment we move out the maps ruled by the heart of thorns mastery tracks we lose acces to gliders. It means that glider skins add less value in the long term. Skins and outfits have a much bigger value since they can be used in any map. So what if we don’t have much unlockable glider skins through play? The next map released, might completely invalidate them.
I have more problems with the fact that gliders are depicted as an important feature in the customisation panel even though its Hot maps only nature.

Tim.6450:

Considering the gliders are a mastery feature, I don’t see this as a problem. It does not have a long lifetime since the moment we move out the maps ruled by the heart of thorns mastery tracks we lose acces to gliders. It means that glider skins add less value in the long term. Skins and outfits have a much bigger value since they can be used in any map. So what if we don’t have much unlockable glider skins through play? The next map released, might completely invalidate them.
I have more problems with the fact that gliders are depicted as an important feature in the customisation panel even though its Hot maps only nature.

HoT maps, and presumably all other maps moving forward.

I seriously doubt when they move on to the next region after another xpac or some LW updates they’d just go “and yep, gliding is over, hope you had fun with it.”

Remember that unlike GW1 ampaign, expansions in GW2 are linear, and more importantly, it’s actually impossible to own whatever the next expansion is without owning HoT.

This means you’ll see HoT masteries, at least some of them, having the same relationship to the next xpac as core has to HoT. You need to level up in core to really get started in HoT, but you need not do all the content. I’d be suprised if gliders weren’t the “minimum investment” in HoT content before moving on to the next mastry region. It’s a more “general purpose” mastry, unlike the other lines which are much more closely tied to species and lore.

The only reason gliders aren’t backward compatible is the amount of effort it would take to retrofit old maps and the content it would break. Moving forward in to new content, it would be silly to just turn off gliding when you can just as easily design the maps with gliding in mind, although they might not require as much gliding to get around.

Well, considering how dead HoT will be when a new expac opens up…they’ll have to change how/where you can earn mastery in gliding then if they intend on keeping it for new players/those that haven’t maxed it out.

Runiir.6425:

Well, considering how dead HoT will be when a new expac opens up…they’ll have to change how/where you can earn mastery in gliding then if they intend on keeping it for new players/those that haven’t maxed it out.

Nah, if it’s just gliding that remains useful and the new map stuff only requires t1 gliding it would be fine, just the same as using core zones for leveling.

Not only that, he region limited mastry tracks and skins sort of ensure that “old” content like HoT remains relevant.

there should have been more of this type of thing released with the $50 spent. I expect this kind of thing with f2p titles. you get the content for free and buy cosmetic stuff if you want it. the game maker theoretically gets a more populated game and player’s get a good value. When you pay money for an expansion the players should get “expansion like content” bundled in with the purchase price. In GW2’s case that should include multiple armor sets, different weapon sets, backpieces, and gliders to name a few. They released very few to be earned.

Where are the weapon sets at karma vendors in HoT like the ones in the base game? You know, the weapon sets you could make with beads? The grawl sets for skulls? Where are the karma armor sets? Where are new cultural sets? What about faction weapon sets like the ones in all the major towns? Do the major towns in HoT have these? There were also very cool “map” sets of armor that were great for mixing and matching.

^This type of stuff lends itself to replayability and long term play. Unlocking all sorts of sets allows players to make their characters feel unique and also shows off where they EARNED their rewards. Other players see certain skins and immediately know where and how you acquired what you are wielding or wearing.

ArenaNet knows this and chooses to completely ignore it.

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

We paid 50 bucks for this new expansion, and all we got was a couple new armor skins, couple new weapons, and one glider (two if you got the collector’s edition). I mean, really?

You are amazingly short sighted if all you see is armor skins, weapons and a glider.

I’m talking cosmetic wise, not all around content. It’s kind of obvious given the subject of this thread.

Yeah. The cash shop kitten is beyond annoying right after we paid $50 for an expansion with a well below average amount of content for that amount.

I agree with the OP, but at the same time yelled “OMG I HOPE I GET TO BUY THIS!” when I saw the Exalted Glider skin sitting there in front of me before starting On Wings of Gold. I bought it immediately today because it was only $5 and the Heart of Thorns glider skin doesn’t really mesh well with my current cosmetics. When they knew that these massive maps would all revolve around Gliding, there should have been no less than 20 Glider skins prepared with at least half of them being rewards for achievements.

To be honest, paying $100 for the Ultimate edition of this game with knowledge that I don’t have to pay a sub ever feels like I’m getting over on them. A few things feel P2W (namely boosters), but I’m a filthy casual, so it’s none of my concern.

Iason Evan.3806:

there should have been more of this type of thing released with the $50 spent. I expect this kind of thing with f2p titles. you get the content for free and buy cosmetic stuff if you want it. the game maker theoretically gets a more populated game and player’s get a good value. When you pay money for an expansion the players should get “expansion like content” bundled in with the purchase price. In GW2’s case that should include multiple armor sets, different weapon sets, backpieces, and gliders to name a few. They released very few to be earned.

Where are the weapon sets at karma vendors in HoT like the ones in the base game? You know, the weapon sets you could make with beads? The grawl sets for skulls? Where are the karma armor sets? Where are new cultural sets? What about faction weapon sets like the ones in all the major towns? Do the major towns in HoT have these? There were also very cool “map” sets of armor that were great for mixing and matching.

^This type of stuff lends itself to replayability and long term play. Unlocking all sorts of sets allows players to make their characters feel unique and also shows off where they EARNED their rewards. Other players see certain skins and immediately know where and how you acquired what you are wielding or wearing.

ArenaNet knows this and chooses to completely ignore it.

Pretty much this. If the expansion was free, I would not blink an eye, but it rubs me the wrong way that they are doing this with a flagship expansion feature (gliding), as part of a paid expansion.

Actually I was going to make a similar post.

At the HoT launch day we get new glider skins to buy in the store, and now a bit more than a week later we get even more weapons and glider skins too. Meanwhile in the new expansion where gliding is a huge thing, we get no new skins to unlock at all.

And for an expansion lets not even mention how few actually relevant new weapon and armor skins we got…. Well the new legendary armor and weapons will be nice, but you get my point.

This feels more and more like “want a new glider skin? come buy from the store as there are none in the game”.

Maybe some new regular skins as loot? Without grind? (We got one set of weapons you can get as loot, yay) Some new emotes? Maybe? No? Glider skins as reward? Oh, day one DLC it is then..

At this point, i’m not even disappointed anymore. It makes me smile like the Joker. (While i keep my money)

ViperClaw.1590:

Maybe some new regular skins as loot? Without grind? (We got one set of weapons you can get as loot, yay) Some new emotes? Maybe? No? Glider skins as reward? Oh, day one DLC it is then..

At this point, i’m not even disappointed anymore. It makes me smile like the Joker.

Why so serious?

joking aside, its completely sad that those items werent added into the base game to be obtained as regular drops. the improvised weapons could have served very well as just regular obtainable loot >.>

This seems like such a superficial thing to complain about.

Priorities may differ. And/Or people are finally fed up with DLC-BS.

Farm gold, buy the skins. The solution is already in the game. I’d rather pay the cash because I can, and I like the game and support it. Either way, it’s available for people if they want it.

Vayne.8563:

Farm gold, buy the skins. The solution is already in the game. I’d rather pay the cash because I can, and I like the game and support it. Either way, it’s available for people if they want it.

Pretty sure everyone in this thread is aware you can use the exchange to get them for gold. For one, it’s the principle of the thing. For another, the exchange rate is awful and many gem store items are not permanently kept in stock, so it’s not like you can lackadaisically farm the 80-160 gold (per skin) at your own pace and know that the items will always be there.

If no gem store item ever left circulation, I might be singing a different tune.

Also, I supported the game when I paid for the full version of the expansion. Comeatmebro.

It’s 100% about the principle, we paid a very high price for the expac, only $10 short of the base game which added what 10+ armor sets, 15+ weapon sets and a bunch of other stuff. With Hot we got 4 armor sets and like 2 weapons and they are already adding more to the gemstore. They add gliders, give us 1 then nickel and dime us for the other skins. Armor and cosmetic wise I really feel ripped off with this expac, especially since cosmetics are such a large part of the game.

ViperClaw.1590:

Priorities may differ. And/Or people are finally fed up with DLC-BS.

DLC-BS? Do you realise it’s a F2P game where a cash shop supports the game and future development? If you aren’t happy with having to pay for certain items just don’t friggin buy them. No one is twisting your arm to buy an entirely optional aesthetic.

I’m sure they would have in-game glider skins coming out the wazoo if you were paying a monthly sub or charging you for them alongside a sub, like other popular titles, but you’re not, so suck it up and move on.

Ballrazor.1982:

ViperClaw.1590:

Priorities may differ. And/Or people are finally fed up with DLC-BS.

DLC-BS? Do you realise it’s a F2P game where a cash shop supports the game and future development? If you aren’t happy with having to pay for certain items just don’t friggin buy them. No one is twisting your arm to buy an entirely optional aesthetic.

I’m sure they would have in-game glider skins coming out the wazoo if you were paying a monthly sub or charging you for them alongside a sub, like other popular titles, but you’re not, so suck it up and move on.

Quite honestly, they just released an expansion, im sure they could have held off on releasing new gemstore content for a few weeks, and i dont know maybe added some of the ones that they added to the gemstore to the base game instead. Auric glider should be unlocked from actually playing the game, maybe the reward for gliding through all the arches in Tarir. The Improvised weapons would have made great skins to drop out in the new areas, make it look more like the pact is salvaging the airships out of desperation and using whatever they can get their hands on to survive.

Now, the outfits, and the new shimmering(the butterfly ones) im fine with completely, because they dont fit into the new areas at all in my opinion.

Ballrazor.1982:

DLC-BS? Do you realise it’s a F2P game where a cash shop supports the game and future development?

A: HoT is buy to play. For many, it’s on top of the cost of the vanilla game as well. No one is playing in Maguuma on a free “trial” account.
B: Gliders only exist in the HoT maps, which, again, are behind a paywall.

It’s not at all unreasonable to expect at least a couple of skins to be unlockable through play when gliding is integral to 75% of the xpack which costs nearly as much as a whole game.

I second this, there should be in game glider skins. I already have three, the batwing and the one from the CE. Imo it’s shabby to introduce another glider skin for gem store only.

I see these things all over the place, and basically comes down to people being spoiled and thinking they are entitled to everything with little or no effort.
Nobody complains about legendary skin costing 3000 gold, but when it comes down to other skins everyone loses their kitten because it costs 200-300 gold. Yes, go and convert into gems. Gems is currency just like gold, badges, geodes and any other currency in game. It so happens it’s buyable with real money, which is only a positive thing for people that have less time on their hands.
If it was put at Exalted trader for 500 gold nobody would raise voice and everyone would be silently grinding for it. But since it’s on gem shop then let’s raise hell and go medieval on Anet’s kitten .
Your principles that you don’t want to buy just because it’s on gem shop are stupid and means nothing, because reasonable people will see it as an oportunity to buy it with gold instead.
Remember that Anet didn’t have to put gold to gem conversion at all. They did and thus made everything buyable with gold, you don’t have to spend a penny more than those 50 bucks (or only 10 if you got game on sale) and you get access to everything.

If you wanna look pretty with pretty skins put in some extra into game (time, gold, real money…), if not, you can still be EQUALLY competitive with stuff that’s available to anyone at ridicoulusly low prices.

And stop saying how low amounts of content we got for money. We got more than any other MMO will ever give. I even got base game and expansion for the price of one. Nobody will ever top that. Nobody.

Substance E.4852:

A: HoT is buy to play. For many, it’s on top of the cost of the vanilla game as well. No one is playing in Maguuma on a free “trial” account.
B: Gliders only exist in the HoT maps, which, again, are behind a paywall.

It’s not at all unreasonable to expect at least a couple of skins to be unlockable through play when gliding is integral to 75% of the xpack which costs nearly as much as a whole game.

Sorry, I meant B2P, my point still stands.

Gliding is indeed integral to the vast majority of the expansion, but glider skins are not and are purely aesthetic.

It’s like getting a free spoon with a box of cereal that you bought once and can eat for life. Then wanting a diamond encrusted spoon and complaining that you have to pay more. At the end of the day, it doesn’t affect your ability to eat the cereal.

How many free glider skins you should have received to make you feel happy?

Ameepa.6793:

How many free glider skins you should have received to make you feel happy?

Unless you have actually read the thread, don’t comment. Your ignorance does you no justice. No one, not once, asked for anything for free. They simply asked to add glider skins to the game so we can earn them, instead of putting them on the Gem Store (as day one DLC at that).

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Ameepa.6793:

How many free glider skins you should have received to make you feel happy?

Unless you have actually read the thread, don’t comment. Your ignorance does you no justice. No one, not once, asked for anything for free. They simply asked to add glider skins to the game so we can earn them, instead of putting them on the Gem Store (as day one DLC at that).

SpyderArachnid.5619:

We paid 50 bucks for this new expansion, and all we got was a couple new armor skins, couple new weapons, and one glider (two if you got the collector’s edition). I mean, really?

And now, right after the expansion releases, they are already throwing up new items in the gem store. Hey a new outfit, new gliders, several new weapon sets in the Black Lion chests, etc.

Just feels like we got a bum deal/shafted on the expansion. I get Anet loves money, but to release all this new stuff for the gem store after we just paid for an overpriced expansion (my opinion), just feels like a slap in the face.

Sounds to me that at least some of the writers are complaining that there was not enough skins included in the price of the expansion, so my question was, how many glider skins there should have been to make you feel happy? 2, 3, 5?

Ameepa.6793:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Ameepa.6793:

How many free glider skins you should have received to make you feel happy?

Unless you have actually read the thread, don’t comment. Your ignorance does you no justice. No one, not once, asked for anything for free. They simply asked to add glider skins to the game so we can earn them, instead of putting them on the Gem Store (as day one DLC at that).

SpyderArachnid.5619:

We paid 50 bucks for this new expansion, and all we got was a couple new armor skins, couple new weapons, and one glider (two if you got the collector’s edition). I mean, really?

And now, right after the expansion releases, they are already throwing up new items in the gem store. Hey a new outfit, new gliders, several new weapon sets in the Black Lion chests, etc.

Just feels like we got a bum deal/shafted on the expansion. I get Anet loves money, but to release all this new stuff for the gem store after we just paid for an overpriced expansion (my opinion), just feels like a slap in the face.

Sounds to me that at least some of the writers are complaining that there was not enough skins included in the price of the expansion, so my question was, how many glider skins there should have been to make you feel happy? 2, 3, 5?

No, your question was how many free glider skins should have been there to make us feel happy. And again, I’ll answer your question by saying, no one wanted anything for free.

When the game released, the one skin was fine for free. But there could of been other skins we could of earned via achievements or drops, or even collections. You know, being rewarded for your efforts instead of having to pay for them? So yeah, we hoped for a few more skins to be able to be earned in game via effort. Not locked behind the Gem Store as day one DLC.

To be honest it feels like anet will treat glider skins like other f2p games treat all skins, which is kind of sad since HoT isn’t a f2p game but still, 400 gems isn’t bad at all (~80g).

PopeUrban.2578:

Lack of armor skins I attribute to all the people that complained about no alternate race selection in GW1. Congratulations. You got more races, and made it harder to push out lots of armor quickly.

I blame the same people for outfits. It’s easier to craft one set of “armor” that all characters can wear than the expected three weights with gender and racial variants.

Not quite, although it does require resources.
In GW1 each new campaign added some 6 armour sets per profession per gender. Thats 120 (6×10×2) new armour sets by the time they got to Elona. Sure, some where reskins, but that is no different in GW2.

In GW2 the armour sets for Sylvari, Human and Norn are shared (Scaled). Charr seems to be scaled as wel, but perhaps with more clipping issues so lets count that one as well. Then they need to adjust for the Asura. But even then the base design is already in place, so making the models is what remains. So thats 3 armours to design.
Then they have armour classes, so each of the three armour class professions share the new skins. This means per class you only need one set, reducing the amount of work.

So that means that one armour set (bladed for example) needs 3x design for armour classes, 3x design for races, 2x for gender, but only for 1/3x professions. That means that one design set for a complete line requires 3 × 3 × 2 x 1/3 = 6 sets to design for 9 professions. Thats 1.5 per profession, as a comperative metric.

With the current 4 unique sets (correct me if I missed one) that translates to 6 designs added in terms of workload from Anet. For all genders, races and professions.
Now i get that having multiple races introduced issues with clipping and the complexity has increased as well compared to GW1.
But even then, 6 design workload as part on an ‘expansion’ is rather thin. The original launched with dozens of armours to choose from. Dungeon sets, karma sets, crafted sets, racial sets etc etc.. Sure that took time to make as well, but comparativly…

So, Tl:dr: Comparitively very few new armours for the expansion.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Ameepa.6793:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Ameepa.6793:

How many free glider skins you should have received to make you feel happy?

Unless you have actually read the thread, don’t comment. Your ignorance does you no justice. No one, not once, asked for anything for free. They simply asked to add glider skins to the game so we can earn them, instead of putting them on the Gem Store (as day one DLC at that).

SpyderArachnid.5619:

We paid 50 bucks for this new expansion, and all we got was a couple new armor skins, couple new weapons, and one glider (two if you got the collector’s edition). I mean, really?

And now, right after the expansion releases, they are already throwing up new items in the gem store. Hey a new outfit, new gliders, several new weapon sets in the Black Lion chests, etc.

Just feels like we got a bum deal/shafted on the expansion. I get Anet loves money, but to release all this new stuff for the gem store after we just paid for an overpriced expansion (my opinion), just feels like a slap in the face.

Sounds to me that at least some of the writers are complaining that there was not enough skins included in the price of the expansion, so my question was, how many glider skins there should have been to make you feel happy? 2, 3, 5?

No, your question was how many free glider skins should have been there to make us feel happy. And again, I’ll answer your question by saying, no one wanted anything for free.

When the game released, the one skin was fine for free. But there could of been other skins we could of earned via achievements or drops, or even collections. You know, being rewarded for your efforts instead of having to pay for them? So yeah, we hoped for a few more skins to be able to be earned in game via effort. Not locked behind the Gem Store as day one DLC.

And you CAN earn. Earn that gold, get gems and there’s your skin! There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from doing that. How is buying from gem shop different from buying from Trading Post or in-game NPC trader? Absolutely no difference. Currency is different but that is irrelevant. You use all kinds of currency in different parts of game and you’re not complaining about that, so why complain when items come to gem shop?

martin.1653:

And stop saying how low amounts of content we got for money. We got more than any other MMO will ever give. I even got base game and expansion for the price of one. Nobody will ever top that. Nobody.

You’re lucky. Most people paid full price for the original game and another $50 for $20 worth of content. This is entirely about their dubious marketing strategies.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the content we got in HoT, but it wasn’t worth $50 for those who bought the original game. It would be a lot more defensible if people who had already bought the base game were able to upgrade for $25 or $30.

I’m not sure whose decision it was to not have that available, but it was entirely incompetent.

martin.1653:

And you CAN earn. Earn that gold, get gems and there’s your skin! There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from doing that. How is buying from gem shop different from buying from Trading Post or in-game NPC trader? Absolutely no difference. Currency is different but that is irrelevant. You use all kinds of currency in different parts of game and you’re not complaining about that, so why complain when items come to gem shop?

There is a difference. Many players dont feel like they’ve earned something that way, i know i dont. Id much prefer doing an achievement and unlocking it that way, like the silver waste armor and the lumi armor, or the bladed armor that i worked my kitten off for, than “oh, just save up gold and buy it.”

See the difference now? we would have liked to have some kind of glider skin in game, that you work towards by doing things in game, that gets awarded when you finish an achievement. Not more gold grinding, Not for free.

Einlanzer.1627:

martin.1653:

And stop saying how low amounts of content we got for money. We got more than any other MMO will ever give. I even got base game and expansion for the price of one. Nobody will ever top that. Nobody.

You’re lucky. Most people paid full price for the original game and another $50 for $20 worth of content. This is entirely about their dubious marketing strategies.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the content we got in HoT, but it wasn’t worth $50 for those who bought the original game. It would be a lot more defensible if people who had already bought the base game were able to upgrade for $25 or $30.

I’m not sure whose decision it was to not have that available, but it was entirely incompetent.

And this

To those saying “go grind the gold”:

As I said, the gem store has no permanence, so it is not as simple as that. It is sort of like a seasonal event going on for each new item, except instead of there being a special currency and unique content to go do to get that currency, it’s either pull out your wallet or farm gold.

With most items in the game, especially the ones that cost a lot of currency, they are on a merchant (or earned through a process) that never goes away or changes. You could take a year to get the currency for the item and have nothing to worry about.

The gem store, due to them wanting to entice customers, build desirability for various items, and avoid an overfilled store, does not work that way. Very few items are permanently in the store, especially when it comes to skins.

And that is setting aside the blandness inherent in grinding out gold for a new skin. Why should it surprise you that people don’t like that? It’s a theme that runs through most of the “earning” processes in this game. When the process is mostly a gold grind, people tend not to like it, even if the item in question is permanently available.

Probably because farming gold is not a question of skill, of completing challenges, or anything like that. Farming gold is a question of being good at farming gold. That’s it.

Faab.8049:

PopeUrban.2578:

Lack of armor skins I attribute to all the people that complained about no alternate race selection in GW1. Congratulations. You got more races, and made it harder to push out lots of armor quickly.

I blame the same people for outfits. It’s easier to craft one set of “armor” that all characters can wear than the expected three weights with gender and racial variants.

Not quite, although it does require resources.
In GW1 each new campaign added some 6 armour sets per profession per gender. Thats 120 (6×10×2) new armour sets by the time they got to Elona. Sure, some where reskins, but that is no different in GW2.

In GW2 the armour sets for Sylvari, Human and Norn are shared (Scaled). Charr seems to be scaled as wel, but perhaps with more clipping issues so lets count that one as well. Then they need to adjust for the Asura. But even then the base design is already in place, so making the models is what remains. So thats 3 armours to design.
Then they have armour classes, so each of the three armour class professions share the new skins. This means per class you only need one set, reducing the amount of work.

So that means that one armour set (bladed for example) needs 3x design for armour classes, 3x design for races, 2x for gender, but only for 1/3x professions. That means that one design set for a complete line requires 3 × 3 × 2 x 1/3 = 6 sets to design for 9 professions. Thats 1.5 per profession, as a comperative metric.

With the current 4 unique sets (correct me if I missed one) that translates to 6 designs added in terms of workload from Anet. For all genders, races and professions.
Now i get that having multiple races introduced issues with clipping and the complexity has increased as well compared to GW1.
But even then, 6 design workload as part on an ‘expansion’ is rather thin. The original launched with dozens of armours to choose from. Dungeon sets, karma sets, crafted sets, racial sets etc etc.. Sure that took time to make as well, but comparativly…

So, Tl:dr: Comparitively very few new armours for the expansion.

They also spent more than a year developing the core game. a lot more. From what we were told HoT had a production cycle of about a year.

Also keep in mind that from a technical standpoint developing GW2 armor is a bit more work intensive than GW1 armor. The animation rigging is a bit more complex, the shaders and dye channel systems are likewise a bit more complex in terms of texture iteration, and in many cases you’re looking at developing a much higher res mesh to build a low poly cage and bake normal maps on to.

I do this sort of work for a living, and doing a model to the visual specifications of GW2, even if it were the “same” model (say, for instance, the difference between the cash shop primeval armor and the ame armor from GW1) in both workflows, you’re probably looking at four or five times the amount of man hours spent compared to the old versions.

Then you multiply that by essentially a completely new model for gender variation, retargeting the rigging for everything that’s not a human, sylvari, or female norn to account for skeletal rig differences, as well as the structural tewaks for male norn and charr/asura biology and that work ramps up exponentially.

The reason we saw so much armor in GW1 was specifically because there were only two variations of any given armor, and that the textures there were all just diffuse maps with the occasional quick and flat specular. The problem with adding unique character started to become apperant as you moved through the campaigns. You had core classes with lots of choices, but by the time you got to nightfall, you were looking at paragons with a fairly anemic number of variations in comparison.

These factors are likely why with GW2, realizing the extra time in the pipeline for racial variants. anet made the shift to the armor weight system and simply created some accent pieces per class.

However, the fact remains that if we had stuck to “humans only” we’d have par more armor choices as a function of basic workload economics.

I’m not saying I hate the option of other races, but you can’t have it all. part of why we see so many stand alone backpacks, hats, gloves, and boots is for the same reason. They’re relatively interchangable as they’re largely non-deforming models that are either completely rigid and bone locked, or have very few points of multi-bone vertex influences in the rig.

Einlanzer.1627:

martin.1653:

And stop saying how low amounts of content we got for money. We got more than any other MMO will ever give. I even got base game and expansion for the price of one. Nobody will ever top that. Nobody.

You’re lucky. Most people paid full price for the original game and another $50 for $20 worth of content. This is entirely about their dubious marketing strategies.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the content we got in HoT, but it wasn’t worth $50 for those who bought the original game. It would be a lot more defensible if people who had already bought the base game were able to upgrade for $25 or $30.

I’m not sure whose decision it was to not have that available, but it was entirely incompetent.

For 50$ you usually can’t get an AAA game on release. You could get an AA game and chances are it will last you for less than 20 hours and will have zero replay value. Now, tell me, how much hours since release have you got into GW already?

For that 50$ you bought a MMO game of such magnitude and quality that it should be on prepaid model, but it isn’t. You basically have lifetime subscription for this MMO and lifetime support when you need it.

If you think that paying 50$ once every 3 years is a lot, and then you proceed to get countless hours of gameplay and fun out of it then you should get another hobby maybe. Buy a ball and kick it around. i’m sure you will get more bang for the buck. Saying 20-30$ worth of content is pretty insulting. The content you got needed countless hours of human work to be done, and more will be added without any cost. Comparing this to many other games you got much more than 50$ worth of content. Much, much more.

They may have dropped the ball when they did that thing with giving core game for free, but they redeemed themselves. And it was a kitten good redemption if you ask me.
You seriously can’t expect to get expansion completely free after 3 years of playing core game for 50$. Be realistic.

PopeUrban.2578:

Faab.8049:

PopeUrban.2578:

Lack of armor skins I attribute to all the people that complained about no alternate race selection in GW1. Congratulations. You got more races, and made it harder to push out lots of armor quickly.

I blame the same people for outfits. It’s easier to craft one set of “armor” that all characters can wear than the expected three weights with gender and racial variants.

Not quite, although it does require resources.
In GW1 each new campaign added some 6 armour sets per profession per gender. Thats 120 (6×10×2) new armour sets by the time they got to Elona. Sure, some where reskins, but that is no different in GW2.

In GW2 the armour sets for Sylvari, Human and Norn are shared (Scaled). Charr seems to be scaled as wel, but perhaps with more clipping issues so lets count that one as well. Then they need to adjust for the Asura. But even then the base design is already in place, so making the models is what remains. So thats 3 armours to design.
Then they have armour classes, so each of the three armour class professions share the new skins. This means per class you only need one set, reducing the amount of work.

So that means that one armour set (bladed for example) needs 3x design for armour classes, 3x design for races, 2x for gender, but only for 1/3x professions. That means that one design set for a complete line requires 3 × 3 × 2 x 1/3 = 6 sets to design for 9 professions. Thats 1.5 per profession, as a comperative metric.

With the current 4 unique sets (correct me if I missed one) that translates to 6 designs added in terms of workload from Anet. For all genders, races and professions.
Now i get that having multiple races introduced issues with clipping and the complexity has increased as well compared to GW1.
But even then, 6 design workload as part on an ‘expansion’ is rather thin. The original launched with dozens of armours to choose from. Dungeon sets, karma sets, crafted sets, racial sets etc etc.. Sure that took time to make as well, but comparativly…

So, Tl:dr: Comparitively very few new armours for the expansion.

They also spent more than a year developing the core game. a lot more. From what we were told HoT had a production cycle of about a year.

Also keep in mind that from a technical standpoint developing GW2 armor is a bit more work intensive than GW1 armor. The animation rigging is a bit more complex, the shaders and dye channel systems are likewise a bit more complex in terms of texture iteration, and in many cases you’re looking at developing a much higher res mesh to build a low poly cage and bake normal maps on to.

I do this sort of work for a living, and doing a model to the visual specifications of GW2, even if it were the “same” model (say, for instance, the difference between the cash shop primeval armor and the ame armor from GW1) in both workflows, you’re probably looking at four or five times the amount of man hours spent compared to the old versions.

Then you multiply that by essentially a completely new model for gender variation, retargeting the rigging for everything that’s not a human, sylvari, or female norn to account for skeletal rig differences, as well as the structural tewaks for male norn and charr/asura biology and that work ramps up exponentially.

The reason we saw so much armor in GW1 was specifically because there were only two variations of any given armor, and that the textures there were all just diffuse maps with the occasional quick and flat specular. The problem with adding unique character started to become apperant as you moved through the campaigns. You had core classes with lots of choices, but by the time you got to nightfall, you were looking at paragons with a fairly anemic number of variations in comparison.

These factors are likely why with GW2, realizing the extra time in the pipeline for racial variants. anet made the shift to the armor weight system and simply created some accent pieces per class.

However, the fact remains that if we had stuck to “humans only” we’d have par more armor choices as a function of basic workload economics.

I’m not saying I hate the option of other races, but you can’t have it all. part of why we see so many stand alone backpacks, hats, gloves, and boots is for the same reason. They’re relatively interchangable as they’re largely non-deforming models that are either completely rigid and bone locked, or have very few points of multi-bone vertex influences in the rig.

and yet with every outfit and armor that comes out, there’s clipping and stretched textures everywhere, body parts are simply removed (yes I’m talking for asura and charr) which shows the armor rigging is only being done for humans, and then slapped onto the other races with a thumbs up and kicked out the door.

Dante.1763:

martin.1653:

And you CAN earn. Earn that gold, get gems and there’s your skin! There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from doing that. How is buying from gem shop different from buying from Trading Post or in-game NPC trader? Absolutely no difference. Currency is different but that is irrelevant. You use all kinds of currency in different parts of game and you’re not complaining about that, so why complain when items come to gem shop?

There is a difference. Many players dont feel like they’ve earned something that way, i know i dont. Id much prefer doing an achievement and unlocking it that way, like the silver waste armor and the lumi armor, or the bladed armor that i worked my kitten off for, than “oh, just save up gold and buy it.”

See the difference now? we would have liked to have some kind of glider skin in game, that you work towards by doing things in game, that gets awarded when you finish an achievement. Not more gold grinding, Not for free.

Einlanzer.1627:

martin.1653:

And stop saying how low amounts of content we got for money. We got more than any other MMO will ever give. I even got base game and expansion for the price of one. Nobody will ever top that. Nobody.

You’re lucky. Most people paid full price for the original game and another $50 for $20 worth of content. This is entirely about their dubious marketing strategies.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the content we got in HoT, but it wasn’t worth $50 for those who bought the original game. It would be a lot more defensible if people who had already bought the base game were able to upgrade for $25 or $30.

I’m not sure whose decision it was to not have that available, but it was entirely incompetent.

And this

I don’t feel like buying it from some empty shell NPC, feels like I put gold in a sinkhole and in return just getting some pixels, but such is the life.
I don’t feel like grinding for Bandit Crests, but tough luck, if i want to get anything from that trader in SW then I will have to overcome this feeling, man up, and buy it despite my principles and feelings.

RollFzzlbeef.4092:

and yet with every outfit and armor that comes out, there’s clipping and stretched textures everywhere, body parts are simply removed (yes I’m talking for asura and charr) which shows the armor rigging is only being done for humans, and then slapped onto the other races with a thumbs up and kicked out the door.

Did you ever do rigging and animation? If you did then you would understand why this happens. Most armost like that wouldn’t be usable in real life with all those acrobatic stuff going on in game. If you do a dodge roll in any kind of heavy armor… actually just doing that dodge roll in itself is impossible.
Animations can’t be changed for every specific piece of armor, so stuff like these must happen (although I didn’t really notice any clipping and stretching, but then again, I didn’t nitpick about it).

martin.1653:

For 50$ you usually can’t get an AAA game on release. You could get an AA game and chances are it will last you for less than 20 hours and will have zero replay value. Now, tell me, how much hours since release have you got into GW already?

For that 50$ you bought a MMO game of such magnitude and quality that it should be on prepaid model, but it isn’t. You basically have lifetime subscription for this MMO and lifetime support when you need it.

If you think that paying 50$ once every 3 years is a lot, and then you proceed to get countless hours of gameplay and fun out of it then you should get another hobby maybe. Buy a ball and kick it around. i’m sure you will get more bang for the buck. Saying 20-30$ worth of content is pretty insulting. The content you got needed countless hours of human work to be done, and more will be added without any cost. Comparing this to many other games you got much more than 50$ worth of content. Much, much more.

They may have dropped the ball when they did that thing with giving core game for free, but they redeemed themselves. And it was a kitten good redemption if you ask me.
You seriously can’t expect to get expansion completely free after 3 years of playing core game for 50$. Be realistic.

You should be realistic as well. I think you will find that quite a few of the forum posters buy gems whenever they can. I know that ive personally put 10-20$ into the game whenever i can afford to. No they havent redeemed themselves with that either, if they would have added an option for people who already /had/ the base game for 20-30$ they would have redeemed themselves. (Maybe they did, i bought the ultimate one because at the time it was the only one worth anything)

Compared to other games? Im only comparing this expansion to the only GW1 expansion EOTN, we get less content here than we did there. Now of course this game i will play for hundreds of hours, but ya know what, i played GW1 basically non stop for 7 years as i said earlier, it was nice being able to earn just about everything in that game, in game, thousands of hours, over two different accounts. This one? after three years? i havent played anywhere near as much as i played GW1 in three years simply because there isnt alot of stuff you can earn in game(most of the stuff added thats been skins has been added to the gemstore). Jeez ive played world of tanks more than i play this game because of the same reason. Earning gold to convert isnt earning to me so buying things off the gemstore that way is hollow and meaningless.

Sure i /could/ buy them i have gems on the account right now, but id much rather earn it by doing things in game. Thats kinda what i thought the whole thread is about, we would like stuff to earn by doing in game things, that arent farming gold to buy off the gemstore.

Which the expansion added some things, but i was honestly expecting much much more for 50$ and i wont be buying the next expansion ahead of time, or at all because im utterly disappointed in the amount of content or lack there of we got for that price.

martin.1653:

Did you ever do rigging and animation? If you did then you would understand why this happens. Most armost like that wouldn’t be usable in real life with all those acrobatic stuff going on in game. If you do a dodge roll in any kind of heavy armor… actually just doing that dodge roll in itself is impossible.
Animations can’t be changed for every specific piece of armor, so stuff like these must happen (although I didn’t really notice any clipping and stretching, but then again, I didn’t nitpick about it).

I have done 3dmodeling and its not very hard to cut kitten in something for a tail to go through, animating i have no clue about, but kitten for a tail on a beast race isnt to big of a thing to ask for.

Edit: actually thinking about it, i much preferred the GW1 gemstore(cashstore). You bought outfits..face make overs, total makeover kits…and thats it really that i remember, i think you could buy boosters too? but it didnt contain EVERY single new thing added to the game every two weeks.

you know, I don’t mind putting FANCY, FABULOUS, OUT OF THE ORDINARY glider skins on the gem store. but also put some normal, not out of this world, wings made of paper and cardboard (if you have to) into gameplay as rewards.

or even better yet, put ALL the skins as collections (since a-net seems to love collections) and put glider trails as gem store upgrades.
- fire trails
- rainbow trails
- fairy dust
- clouds

i can come up with 100s more glider trails. im sure A-net has the manpower to brainstorm many more.

All of the people who paid for the feathered wings before HoT where given FREE a matching glider. They could have charged us for that, and most would have gladly paid for it, but instead they made lots of people like myself very happy. So technically that was three skins with HoT, not one. If the Exalted skin was dyeable I would buy it as well for some other characters and I would prefer to do that rather than having to wait until I have gotten tens of millions of experience.

Masteries give you actual abilities, not bling.

RollFzzlbeef.4092:

PopeUrban.2578:

Faab.8049:

PopeUrban.2578:

Lack of armor skins I attribute to all the people that complained about no alternate race selection in GW1. Congratulations. You got more races, and made it harder to push out lots of armor quickly.

I blame the same people for outfits. It’s easier to craft one set of “armor” that all characters can wear than the expected three weights with gender and racial variants.

Not quite, although it does require resources.
In GW1 each new campaign added some 6 armour sets per profession per gender. Thats 120 (6×10×2) new armour sets by the time they got to Elona. Sure, some where reskins, but that is no different in GW2.

In GW2 the armour sets for Sylvari, Human and Norn are shared (Scaled). Charr seems to be scaled as wel, but perhaps with more clipping issues so lets count that one as well. Then they need to adjust for the Asura. But even then the base design is already in place, so making the models is what remains. So thats 3 armours to design.
Then they have armour classes, so each of the three armour class professions share the new skins. This means per class you only need one set, reducing the amount of work.

So that means that one armour set (bladed for example) needs 3x design for armour classes, 3x design for races, 2x for gender, but only for 1/3x professions. That means that one design set for a complete line requires 3 × 3 × 2 x 1/3 = 6 sets to design for 9 professions. Thats 1.5 per profession, as a comperative metric.

With the current 4 unique sets (correct me if I missed one) that translates to 6 designs added in terms of workload from Anet. For all genders, races and professions.
Now i get that having multiple races introduced issues with clipping and the complexity has increased as well compared to GW1.
But even then, 6 design workload as part on an ‘expansion’ is rather thin. The original launched with dozens of armours to choose from. Dungeon sets, karma sets, crafted sets, racial sets etc etc.. Sure that took time to make as well, but comparativly…

So, Tl:dr: Comparitively very few new armours for the expansion.

They also spent more than a year developing the core game. a lot more. From what we were told HoT had a production cycle of about a year.

Also keep in mind that from a technical standpoint developing GW2 armor is a bit more work intensive than GW1 armor. The animation rigging is a bit more complex, the shaders and dye channel systems are likewise a bit more complex in terms of texture iteration, and in many cases you’re looking at developing a much higher res mesh to build a low poly cage and bake normal maps on to.

I do this sort of work for a living, and doing a model to the visual specifications of GW2, even if it were the “same” model (say, for instance, the difference between the cash shop primeval armor and the ame armor from GW1) in both workflows, you’re probably looking at four or five times the amount of man hours spent compared to the old versions.

Then you multiply that by essentially a completely new model for gender variation, retargeting the rigging for everything that’s not a human, sylvari, or female norn to account for skeletal rig differences, as well as the structural tewaks for male norn and charr/asura biology and that work ramps up exponentially.

The reason we saw so much armor in GW1 was specifically because there were only two variations of any given armor, and that the textures there were all just diffuse maps with the occasional quick and flat specular. The problem with adding unique character started to become apperant as you moved through the campaigns. You had core classes with lots of choices, but by the time you got to nightfall, you were looking at paragons with a fairly anemic number of variations in comparison.

These factors are likely why with GW2, realizing the extra time in the pipeline for racial variants. anet made the shift to the armor weight system and simply created some accent pieces per class.

However, the fact remains that if we had stuck to “humans only” we’d have par more armor choices as a function of basic workload economics.

I’m not saying I hate the option of other races, but you can’t have it all. part of why we see so many stand alone backpacks, hats, gloves, and boots is for the same reason. They’re relatively interchangable as they’re largely non-deforming models that are either completely rigid and bone locked, or have very few points of multi-bone vertex influences in the rig.

and yet with every outfit and armor that comes out, there’s clipping and stretched textures everywhere, body parts are simply removed (yes I’m talking for asura and charr) which shows the armor rigging is only being done for humans, and then slapped onto the other races with a thumbs up and kicked out the door.

That’s not rigging, that’s tweaking the base model’s geometry to fit the sizes and visual anatomy of those races. The issues you’re talking about come from a standpoint of modelling, and it’s pretty obvious where they cut corners there to get more armor out for less work, but is a great indicator of the challenges and time required to push out an armor set that has versions that fit all of the game’s races and genders.

Rigging is the process by which the individual vertices of each model are given weights for how much they follow individual bones in the links in a skeletal animation system. It’s how you set up a 3d model to work with the technical anatomy of a character. I don’t have the skeletons in front of me, as I don’t work at anet and don’t really do the whole datamining thing, but from a purely visual inspection it looks like charr have a few extra spine links, asura a few less, and generally the torso rotations in terms of actual euler angles are pretty drastically different. Humans also appear to have a more complex skeletal setup for the light and medium weights to control skirt/coat bits, while asura seem to link those bits directly to the hip/legs skeletons since they’re so short it wouldn’t be a sensible use of porcessing power to caculate skeletal animations for something that barely moves at all. Asura also seems to have a squash and stretch controller implemented to give them their more bouncy aesthetic, though it’s entirely possible that specific controller is separate from the animation skeleton and applied to the entire model so it may not be an issue at all from a manhours standpoint when animating armor.

PopeUrban.2578:

RollFzzlbeef.4092:

PopeUrban.2578:

Faab.8049:

PopeUrban.2578:

-Snip-

-snipped

-snipped again

-and snipped again-.

That’s not rigging, that’s tweaking the base model’s geometry to fit the sizes and visual anatomy of those races. The issues you’re talking about come from a standpoint of modelling, and it’s pretty obvious where they cut corners there to get more armor out for less work, but is a great indicator of the challenges and time required to push out an armor set that has versions that fit all of the game’s races and genders.

Rigging is the process by which the individual vertices of each model are given weights for how much they follow individual bones in the links in a skeletal animation system. It’s how you set up a 3d model to work with the technical anatomy of a character. I don’t have the skeletons in front of me, as I don’t work at anet and don’t really do the whole datamining thing, but from a purely visual inspection it looks like charr have a few extra spine links, asura a few less, and generally the torso rotations in terms of actual euler angles are pretty drastically different. Humans also appear to have a more complex skeletal setup for the light and medium weights to control skirt/coat bits, while asura seem to link those bits directly to the hip/legs skeletons since they’re so short it wouldn’t be a sensible use of porcessing power to caculate skeletal animations for something that barely moves at all. Asura also seems to have a squash and stretch controller implemented to give them their more bouncy aesthetic, though it’s entirely possible that specific controller is separate from the animation skeleton and applied to the entire model so it may not be an issue at all from a manhours standpoint when animating armor.

You know, I appreciate the detail you explain this with. I realize its not as simple as just copy/paste. I’ve done some 3D modelling in the past as hobby and never really got into animations. Its not straight forward.
So I can appreciate it that making new armour sets takes (more) time to do properly. There are lots of dependencies.

Sure, they had a longer time to prepare for GW2 original launch. Yet they had the time to delevop the armour sets for Crafting, Dungeons, Loot and Karma etc. Dozens of sets.
They also had to make all the zones in Tyria. And the story line. And the professions and their mechanics.

HoT has seen a significantly shorter development cycle that original GW2. That is a fact and what we see now is the result of that.
Shorter story. Fewer armour skins, fewer places to explore to name a few.
I bought HoT for the long term, to enjoy the upcoming content over the next year. But then the armours will have to be released as part of the game, and not as Gem Store purchases.
THat is what mainly rubs the wrong way with me. I would have expected more skins to aquire (crafting, collections etc is fine. The fun is in the chase). Yet it seems a bit lackluster, as if HoT was simply too rushed to get out before the release date.

What happened to the simple little enjoyment of any random crappy skin dropping from new content?

It’s such a minor thing (imo) that in a brand new region / map just the small insignificant drop here and there goes a long way to making me feel like I’m a part of this new world.

This gem store will eat this game if it’s unable to satisfy people with it’s content. I’ve said before, Anet have an end game of skins, people are all too happy to put money into a game as long as it’s only cosmetic. Yet no one has really said (specifically in this game) that this is overkill when the whole point of it is to get skins.