Guild Wars 2

Manasa Devi.7958:

maddoctor.2738:

I say it’s the best thing they could do, to provide something for everyone.

So why didn’t they do that with HoT?

And why are they still not doing it, 5 months after?

Will they be doing it in April?

Actually they did add something for everyone, just not ENOUGH for everyone. They added elite specs for every professions. You may or may not like an elite spec, but that was definitely something for everyone. They added combat mode. They added a story (which some say was too short, but it is something for the more casual player base). The added a mastery system in core Tyria. The made Fractals MUCH easier and allowed you to pick which one you want. That’s all stuff for a more casual crowd. Even the Shatterer revamp that came later was received pretty well.

I don’t think they have the capacity to deliver stuff to everyone all at once in quantity and that’s the issue. They can deliver raids for the hard core crowd, because its’ three bosses and done. It’s not as time consuming or resource cosuming. The new zones, like them or not, took a lot of time.

They added collections, too for those of us who like that sort of thing, PvP seasons and a new map for WvW. Everyone got something. Not everyone likes what they got however.

Vayne.8563:

Manasa Devi.7958:

maddoctor.2738:

I say it’s the best thing they could do, to provide something for everyone.

So why didn’t they do that with HoT?

And why are they still not doing it, 5 months after?

Will they be doing it in April?

Actually they did add something for everyone, just not ENOUGH for everyone..

Exactly this. HoT added a lot of things for a lot of different playstyles. But it was rather short as a whole which means it added a little bit for everyone, but it DID add something for everyone.

I don’t know what is surprising here – it’s exactly what hardcores want after all.

That’s a very sad way of looking at things. You don’t want people to get things they like, you don’t want people to like different things than you. It’s really sad.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Manasa Devi.7958:

You know, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, people can start watching their movies at any time they want and pause them whenever they want.

You might want to look into that, it’s really amazing what’s been accomplished since the 1960’s.

Since the 1960s people have gotten increasingly more free time to do more things with their lives. You might want to look into that.

Yeah, it’s great. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to give up this freedom to a game that would dictate you when you can play.

FrizzFreston.5290:

While you can indeed start and stop a movie, I wonder how many people actually do that. People often take time to go watch a movie with friends, hang out with friends for hours hang out with family, etc. loads of people binge watch TV series on netflix. No time is a poormans excuse for “I rather do something else with my time” and then say GW2 is not for casuals anymore. It’s just that people don’t want to do GW2 over those other things.

To say you don’t have 2 hours in a week or two weeks time anywhere, then you mismanaged your wallet. You obviously shouldn’t be investing in a game that is more for people who play a little bit longer than just a small hour in a week, or at least not when you expect to see the whole game. We’re not talking about Farmville here where you login play a few minutes and get everything the whole game has to offer. This is an MMO, people tend to spend more time on it. Hell have you ever played a boardgame that you stopped midway through just because you had to “live your life”.

You’re arguing against a point I wasn’t making. The problem isn’t having to spend 2 hours, the problem is not being able to decide when you want to play if you want to play some piece of specific content.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, that’s not a new thing for HoT. World bosses are like that too. You know what? I complained about that too. Search my message history. Nothing came of that and I dropped it, and just stopped playing world bosses. Small sacrifice, I never enjoyed those anyway except during off-peak hours pre-megaserver when you had to tackle them with just the handful of people still awake on your server. They were an insignificantly small part of my gaming experience and no big loss.

HoT however, is completely steeped in this ridiculous itinerary-based play and totally not worth it if you’re not willing to submit to that.

Vayne.8563:

Manasa Devi.7958:

maddoctor.2738:

I say it’s the best thing they could do, to provide something for everyone.

So why didn’t they do that with HoT?

And why are they still not doing it, 5 months after?

Will they be doing it in April?

Actually they did add something for everyone, just not ENOUGH for everyone. They added elite specs for every professions. You may or may not like an elite spec, but that was definitely something for everyone. They added combat mode. They added a story (which some say was too short, but it is something for the more casual player base). The added a mastery system in core Tyria. The made Fractals MUCH easier and allowed you to pick which one you want. That’s all stuff for a more casual crowd. Even the Shatterer revamp that came later was received pretty well.

I guess I’m looking at “for” from the other direction. Like when you look at something and decide “that’s not for me”.

Just because something can be used by someone, doesn’t mean it was “for” them. I could’ve done without the elite specs. I don’t like or use most of them. They are not “for me”. (I don’t even know what “combat mode” means, so I can’t comment on that.) The story, that was supposed to be “for me”, but it turned out it wasn’t “for me” because it was terribly paced, stunted and badly acted.

I’m sure the WvW-only crowd will have a good laugh when you tell them HoT had something “for them”.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think they have the capacity to deliver stuff to everyone all at once in quantity and that’s the issue. They can deliver raids for the hard core crowd, because its’ three bosses and done. It’s not as time consuming or resource cosuming. The new zones, like them or not, took a lot of time.

Yep, they can’t deliver, that’s the whole problem right there. I’ll be making that a bilateral issue in the future. I won’t be handing them money for lacking products anymore.

Vayne.8563:

They added collections, too for those of us who like that sort of thing, PvP seasons and a new map for WvW. Everyone got something. Not everyone likes what they got however.

Yeah, the Deserted Borderlands sure didn’t meet with universal approval.

Relax folks. Next month they will nerf the HoT content, the obnoxious and rude elitists will leave the game and we can all relax and have fun again. HoT brings out the worst in some people.

Manasa Devi.7958:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Manasa Devi.7958:

You know, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, people can start watching their movies at any time they want and pause them whenever they want.

You might want to look into that, it’s really amazing what’s been accomplished since the 1960’s.

Since the 1960s people have gotten increasingly more free time to do more things with their lives. You might want to look into that.

Yeah, it’s great. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to give up this freedom to a game that would dictate you when you can play.

The problem is that a game is a choice. It simply doesn’t dictate anything. It has rules and since it’s a game world with it’s own time line and days of two hours it does indeed follow a set time schedule. Its the whole premise of an Mmo. That it has a living and breathing world cycle is good. It just needs to have something going on in the map no matter that time schedule. This was the case for the rest of the game too, just not as pronounced.

FrizzFreston.5290:

While you can indeed start and stop a movie, I wonder how many people actually do that. People often take time to go watch a movie with friends, hang out with friends for hours hang out with family, etc. loads of people binge watch TV series on netflix. No time is a poormans excuse for “I rather do something else with my time” and then say GW2 is not for casuals anymore. It’s just that people don’t want to do GW2 over those other things.

To say you don’t have 2 hours in a week or two weeks time anywhere, then you mismanaged your wallet. You obviously shouldn’t be investing in a game that is more for people who play a little bit longer than just a small hour in a week, or at least not when you expect to see the whole game. We’re not talking about Farmville here where you login play a few minutes and get everything the whole game has to offer. This is an MMO, people tend to spend more time on it. Hell have you ever played a boardgame that you stopped midway through just because you had to “live your life”.

You’re arguing against a point I wasn’t making. The problem isn’t having to spend 2 hours, the problem is not being able to decide when you want to play if you want to play some piece of specific content.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, that’s not a new thing for HoT. World bosses are like that too. You know what? I complained about that too. Search my message history. Nothing came of that and I dropped it, and just stopped playing world bosses. Small sacrifice, I never enjoyed those anyway except during off-peak hours pre-megaserver when you had to tackle them with just the handful of people still awake on your server. They were an insignificantly small part of my gaming experience and no big loss.

HoT however, is completely steeped in this ridiculous itinerary-based play and totally not worth it if you’re not willing to submit to that.

That ALL events are tied to the day night cycle is indeed making it so that experiences greatly vary from time to time. This doesn’t mean it’s needed for all events to take place at the exact same time every time, though when things start randomly it doesn’t make much sense either.

Worldboss schedule to me is indeed just that, it makes no sense. I argued against that too. But in HoT everything makes sense regarding the game world. I would suggest that it’s the best experience to have sessions of 2 hours. Which really isn’t that much to ask at all in my opinion.

However, some event chains that aren’t tied to the day night cycle inbetween could definitely help the HoT maps feel better. I just don’t think that tying events to the cycle is that bad an idea. Yes it’s dictating how events span out over a GW2 day. And if you haven’t got a gw2day to spend then you’re out of luck.

Maybe they went overboard by tying everything to that. But immersion wise it does feel pretty good I would say.

Immersion-wise, the HoT event cycles are the worst thing ever anyway. Every cycle, practically all the VB and DS chains rewind the clock to just after the crash and everything plays out again like Groundhog Day.

Silverwastes at least tried to dress it up as a continuing experience where the cycle was an ever repeating “Mordrem forces renew their assault, aaaaaand… we’ve beaten them again, phew!”

Manasa Devi.7958:

Immersion-wise, the HoT event cycles are the worst thing ever anyway. Every cycle, practically all the VB and DS chains rewind the clock to just after the crash and everything plays out again like Groundhog Day.

Silverwastes at least tried to dress it up as a continuing experience where the cycle was an ever repeating “Mordrem forces renew their assault, aaaaaand… we’ve beaten them again, phew!”

Like every zone in the game. Drytop has a sandstorm that makes a scheduled appearance. I know for a fact when I go into Drytop I’m there at the time right after the Zephyrites crashed. Orr is locked in time too. All the zone are technically locked in time. It’s just the way the game is.

Saying that the HoT zones aren’t immersive because they’re doing what the rest of the game does doesn’t really make sense.

I mean since we’ve defeated Zhaitan why are we still fighting over temples in Orr?

Of course it works that way. I’m just pointing out that to point to “immersion” as a reason for 2 hour cycles doesn’t hold water. It’s like Freddy Krueger putting on lipstick to look better.

You do these things once, there can be some immersion. You repeat the content and that’s gone. Putting it on a 2 hour cycle doesn’t fix that.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Of course it works that way. I’m just pointing out that to point to “immersion” as a reason for 2 hour cycles doesn’t hold water. It’s like Freddy Krueger putting on lipstick to look better.

You do these things once, there can be some immersion. You repeat the content and that’s gone. Putting it on a 2 hour cycle doesn’t fix that.

At least the major HoT zone events repeat every 2 hours only, for example the different outposts in VB. In the old zones you can do the same event over and over multiple times over 2 hours while the rest of the zone remains stationary. In that regard, the HoT zones are more immersive during their 2-hour run compared to the old zones.

I feel the same kind of immersion problems in both. Time being frozen completely is no worse than the entirety of a zone being stuck in a 2 hour loop. I’d sooner say the former works better than the latter.

Manasa Devi.7958:

I feel the same kind of immersion problems in both. Time being frozen completely is no worse than the entirety of a zone being stuck in a 2 hour loop. I’d sooner say the former works better than the latter.

If the entire map resets every 2 hours you will NEVER do the same thing over and over during that time frame. Events happen, the zone as a whole progress and you can feel and see the change. You can see the actual progress, then it all resets and you start from square one. I feel like resetting the entire zone allows much better story telling and world building than having individual events all over the place with different timers for each one.

Resetting the entire map is the same as starting a new dungeon instance (or any instance for that matter), it provides a better and more cohesive story. Instances in MMORPGs have always been much better for story telling than any kind of open world setting, and resetting the map makes it work like a large open world “dungeon”.

The alternative that happens on many core maps, is to have enough big event chains. But sadly, good enough chains do not exist on many maps but those that DO exist provide some great alternative to a timer, like the Straits of Devastation Balthazar event chain or the entire Harathi Hinterlands zone (but not when Ulgoth is coming)

maddoctor.2738:

Manasa Devi.7958:

I feel the same kind of immersion problems in both. Time being frozen completely is no worse than the entirety of a zone being stuck in a 2 hour loop. I’d sooner say the former works better than the latter.

If the entire map resets every 2 hours you will NEVER do the same thing over and over during that time frame. Events happen, the zone as a whole progress and you can feel and see the change. You can see the actual progress, then it all resets and you start from square one. I feel like resetting the entire zone allows much better story telling and world building than having individual events all over the place with different timers for each one.

It makes no difference to me. I find both types of storytelling equally terrible. If I want good storytelling, an MMO isn’t my port of call. I’m there for the game play and if the narrative vignettes that frame the game play are tolerable, that’s nice.

I’ve never rated GW2 highly on that account and HoT is no improvement. There’s this NPC that delivers 3 lines. The first is calm and collected. The second is panicked and overwrought. The third is calm and collected again. It’s obviously a butchered cut-and-past job of several unrelated recordings. I can’t remember where and when it happens, but it’s toe-curlingly bad by any standard.

maddoctor.2738:

The alternative that happens on many core maps, is to have enough big event chains. But sadly, good enough chains do not exist on many maps but those that DO exist provide some great alternative to a timer, like the Straits of Devastation Balthazar event chain or the entire Harathi Hinterlands zone (but not when Ulgoth is coming)

The back-and-forth battle lines event chains are pretty good, as are some of the temple chains in Orr where the enemy works at recovering lost ground. Those offer the best kind of immersion.

The problem with the raid from my point of view is that it involve stories, lore content, that everyone could enjoy unlike pvp, wvsw (or just very few), those not really impacting pve content…
You could be efficient like in dungeons for better rewards, but you shouldnt obligatory have to be the most efficient possible, because otherwise it would lead to failure, at least not in pve…
Its maybe benefic to lose and learn, unfortunally, since its a game, a failure is often synonym of wasted time.

If anet puts an easy mode mod for raids with far lesser rewards and no exclusive titles, achievement ect…just for the pleasure of exploring or testing without spending month to farm your optimised stuff (because playing the whole content of an MMO should be compatible with work and social life).
I’m just stating that for players with a medium playtime, its still overly long and tedious to complete just a set of stats of the maximum gear, a gear that often come in vision field long after most of the main content have been cleared multiple time…
Rewards/time is mostly awfull, and I presume, for a large number of people, its just a game with stories and content to experience, not a second life…
Acessible for people in exotic (dont put again this kitten video exemple please, it was an exception, with a really invested guild…not “common” players ><), not fully optimised (because new stats remains extremly costly, especially if you want to vary a maximum your experience of the game with rerolls)…pr just remove the enrage timer…
I think I would criticize a lot less the game, for not being casual enough.

I do not want to remove things that are not casual because invested players are considered as a minority, I would like to find a fair middle where both can enjoy every content, with difficulty and difficulty scaling correctly to satisfy a maximum of people.
And I’m almost sure that it wouldnt involve as much changes that creating new content…fractales for exemple, are tje same instance, but with greater difficulty along level increase (even If i dont like the fact that countering agony mechanic rely on gear modification, not compatible with actual ascended stats swapping, destroying infusions…buts its just my opinion).

The future rework of megserver system to a district like system I saw in games like Star Trek online (indicating numbers of players on each maps) would greatly improve the completation of map meta in Hot…this and also more explanations for begginners, sl everyone would know what to do if you want to lead…
Also, each map cpuld have a different timer, and the phase and progression indicated in the server selection menu…

Oh, and make categories for raid in LFG, even with external timers and research tool, its still a real mess to acess map not empty, or with sufficient players to have a decent chance to pass dps check of timers, during final meta events…or simply find a group anywhere else for specific achievements…

This isn’t to do with HOT specifically but the game development seemed to me to take a u-turn at or soon after launch and reading Colin’s goodbye message I think I know the reason why its when he swapped from being a game designer to being game director. I think the game design lost something when he moved. Yes he was still overseeing game design but its different.

you know that trailer Anet made about a living breathing world, you remember the part about events never being the same…..
some living world when everything is the same all the time, some promise with static events that are pretty much forced quests.
it would be the game for the fans, it’s more the game for veteran WoW players and new faces, veteran GW players know this is not what they advertised.

The problem is that model is stupid and doesn’t work. That’s why Anet abandoned it.

Very true. As much as I was finding this living world concept interesting, the problem is that it took a great amount of time to create for a content that you could not repeat as much as you wanted. They modified the formula with season 2 and it felt better and now hot was the last “experiment” in this regard, for which they wen a bit too much overboard imo: they should have stayed with silverwaste design but it really isn’t a 360 degree rotation and a middle finger pointed at casuals. The true problem is the inconsistencies with the megaservers. Edit: please do not nerf he difficulty of mobs in hot

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem is that model is stupid and doesn’t work. That’s why Anet abandoned it.

More like Anet found out they don’t have enough resources to make it work.

Which is funny actually, Living World was supposed to be a cheap alternative to churning out expacs, but it ended out too cheap for many players to appreciate, and yet still too costly for Anet to maintain. So, in the end they decided that going the expac route will still be cheaper. Which, unfortunately, shows.

Even Colin left. What else can be added?

Gw2 must return to be GW2. HoT is not what people likes or want, not old players, no new ones (some people do of course, nothing is black or white, but in any case: not enough people like it, just face it. And most important: fix it).

Astralporing.1957:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem is that model is stupid and doesn’t work. That’s why Anet abandoned it.

More like Anet found out they don’t have enough resources to make it work.

That is what is meant when saying that model doesnt work. In theory, with infinite resources, and a willingness to never recoup costs, Anet could delete every event in the game as soon as it is played for the first time and then add a new event to replace it. This shouldnt take much more than several thousand developers for each player.

Exactly .. it’s very disingenuous to claim that Anet didn’t ‘deliver’ on living world because there are events/content that repeats itself. If anything, Anet is more apt to change their open world more than any other game I’ve played; How many zones have been affected over the last three years because of LS? Quite a few actually. That qualifies to me as ‘living world’, at least to within is was reasonable with finite resources and definitely moreso than any other developer I’ve seen has done.

Astralporing.1957:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem is that model is stupid and doesn’t work. That’s why Anet abandoned it.

More like Anet found out they don’t have enough resources to make it work.

Which is funny actually, Living World was supposed to be a cheap alternative to churning out expacs, but it ended out too cheap for many players to appreciate, and yet still too costly for Anet to maintain. So, in the end they decided that going the expac route will still be cheaper. Which, unfortunately, shows.

I believe not-enough-resources and too-cheap-for-many go hand in hand. It’s hard to believe they couldn’t create a few events and some click-stuff achieves using the four teams that get two months to produce “their” biweekly release. The “crazy” came in when they tried to up the ante with things like the Battle of LA.