Guild Wars 2

I don’t get it I’m loving Hot I like the mastery system the new maps and new legendaries we can craft. The only thing I didn’t like was raids being hard core only ,world of warcraft realized they were making content that only a fraction of there player base was seeing and implemented lfr (looking for raid). Minus that little hic up I’m enjoying Hot and for what we get for no sub fee I don’t understand all the negativity ……….. Anet your doing fine keep up the good work just hope you guys at some point make raids a little more accessible to the masses.

If it makes you feel any better, not everyone is complaining. Those who play and enjoy the game daily rarely post on the forums. Some people enjoy complaining about every little thing they can find, heck some people complain about things they heard someone else complain about. This is a MMO there will always be content that not everyone is happy about. The good thing about this game is there are a lot of things to do, so if you don’t like one aspect, you have other choices.

it’s normal. most of the discussion on game forum are either strategy or complaints.

since gw2 is rather simple in turns of strategy. there is only complaints to talk out.

Another thread where a player complains about other people complaining….

So, besides the stuff you listed, revenant and elite specs, what else is there to play with?

For what I play, anet has removed/destroyed more content than that they have added.
The no-sub fee is nice, but anet is doing the utter least amount of effort to keep players like me to continue playing their game. So yeah, I’m gonna complain then.

I would play WvW but they ruined WvW. I would play open world PvE but I dislike HoT maps. So yea, I complain on the forum instead.

Once Anet manages to fix either of these game modes, I will leave the forum, stop moaning and play the game again.

Let me guess, you are playing for less than 2h/day and not in a serious guild?

i get that you are complaining about people who complain….
wait…ermm..what…nvm

Dashingsteel.3410:

Another thread where a player complains about other people complaining….

Asking “Why…” and saying, “I don’t get it.” is not complaining.

Americium.7182:

Let me guess, you are playing for less than 2h/day and not in a serious guild?

I’m playing for more than 8 hours most day. Don’t know what you mean by a serious guild. And while I have my complaints, I’m still enjoying the game.

OP, people are complaining because they’re angry with changes to the core game. Dungeon runners are mad because rewards to their favorite content was nerfed. Fractal runners, some of them, don’t like the changes to fractals. Small guilds feel like they’ve been left behind. Casual players feel like theres’ too much grind in the new zones to get anything done in a short amount of time.

There are all legitimate grievances.

In any industry, regardless of performance, you’ll get more complaints than compliments. People have motivation to lodge a complaint.

A lot of players didn’t like the “New Player Experience” when it was unveiled in 2014. It basically brought gated content ( couldn’t do certain stuff that you could previously do until you reached a certain level) and lessened the “play your way” concept by attatching traits to specific events.

HoT is kind of like the NPE on steroids. Gated content everywhere. Mastery and hero points funnel you to specific content thus forcing you to play Arena Net’s way…. Good old experience just doesn’t cut it anymore….

This along with Anet taking away core content and repackaging it in HoT…. the cynical gold sinks(Guild Halls anyone???), bigger emphasis on platforming gameplay, beautiful but tedious maps, minimal amount of new skins, etc.

These are some things that players don’t like about HoT. I’m sure I missed some things but just wanted to give some examples.

Because of reasons
http://www.carrotonastick.com/massively-multiplayer/mmo-survey-says-players-never-satisfied-no-one-surprised/

Wvw people received a legit eotm map…. (copy past whatever you want, its still Just 1 silly map no one cares about)
Pvp people received 1 map aswell, stronghold (and some random nerfs no one was asking for)
Pve people didnt received the New dungeons/fractals they were asking for (but atleast they received more then 1 map)
Grind halls was a surprise for everyone. Revenant and elite specialisation is something that I beleave its has to be free for everyone.
Ofcourse people are complaining after all this.
But hey, atleast we have gliders….

Raziel.4216:

Because of reasons
http://www.carrotonastick.com/massively-multiplayer/mmo-survey-says-players-never-satisfied-no-one-surprised/

lol… I hope it wasn’t Anet who funded these guys for 25 years.

Bottom line : I purchased a Guild Wars 2 expansion and instead got a Metroid game with a Guild Wars skin on it…. I hate back tracking during a first play through a game and now it is just a back track simulator now. I’m sorry Samus… you cannot go through that door… got grind for a upgrade… I mean jump in your space ship and fly to the planet you just cleared and find the upgrade then fly back.

I cleared the story in 3 days…. I replayed LS season 2 to find that it was longer than the content I paid $49.99 I will be back for LS3 to see if that happens to change my mind but I doubt it.

Zerkules.4128:

Bottom line : I purchased a Guild Wars 2 expansion and instead got a Metroid game with a Guild Wars skin on it…. I hate back tracking during a first play through a game and now it is just a back track simulator now. I’m sorry Samus… you cannot go through that door… got grind for a upgrade… I mean jump in your space ship and fly to the planet you just cleared and find the upgrade then fly back.

I cleared the story in 3 days…. I replayed LS season 2 to find that it was longer than the content I paid $49.99 I will be back for LS3 to see if that happens to change my mind but I doubt it.

Except that story doesn’t equate to game. New profession and elite specializations were not in LS 2. Guild Halls weren’t. Gliding wasn’t and a whole lot of people seem to like gliding whether you like masteries or not. The four zones provided in the expansion are bigger than the zones provided in Season 2, with far more achievements. New enemy types, new enemy AI, combat mode…there’s a lot of stuff that came with the expansion that isn’t story.

Your focus may be story but story isn’t the only reason people buy expansions and it isn’t the only thing in the expansion. It’s very hard to compare what the LS Season 2 gives you because LS Season 2 didn’t rewrite core game systems.

Different people have different tastes. Not a difficult concept.

Vayne covered pretty much all the reasons some folk are complaining. The only one to add is that some don’t like the difficulty level. Now you can spend as long as you like telling those folk that they should learn to play, or get better, or change their build, or just work harder at it but if they don’t like it then they don’t like it. And, yes, they are entitled to that opinion too.

I think HoT misses the sweet spot, and thus fails to please most of the people most of the time, but that is just my opinion.

There is simply not enough content to justify the 9 month break preceding it and the (probably) 6 month break following it. Not even close.

In addition, content we were promised for HoT still hasn’t even been delivered yet. PvP has lost all its entertainment value. Elite specs were disappointing and not even close to being a side-grade as promised.

Why should I even log in anymore? There’s nothing fun to do.

tattyana.2356:

I don’t get it I’m loving Hot I like the mastery system the new maps and new legendaries we can craft. The only thing I didn’t like was raids being hard core only ,world of warcraft realized they were making content that only a fraction of there player base was seeing and implemented lfr (looking for raid). Minus that little hic up I’m enjoying Hot and for what we get for no sub fee I don’t understand all the negativity ……….. Anet your doing fine keep up the good work just hope you guys at some point make raids a little more accessible to the masses.

I actually think the mass of players feels the same way you do. They enjoy Open World, the mastery system, crafting legendaries, the ( not calling this a negative thing ) more casual parts of the game. Pretty much most of the game. It is also a common thing to dislike raids for one reason or another across that group.

It works the other way around for a small part of the community. They don’t like Open World, mastery grind, HoT maps or just the more casual parts. PvP and PvE ( mostly raids ) balance is a huge issue to them. They only enjoy a small niche part of the game like raids or high level sPvP.
They simply got much more to complain about than your group does. It ends up being a combination of frustration and boredom.

Not that we haven’t had enough posts demonizing raids from the other side of the community. Complaining is what the internet was made for ( and porn, I guess).

i notice i havent give a proper reply since that sarcastic reply

if players stop complaining or providing any feedbacks, the game dev should start getting worried as it means not as many ppl playing that game any more.

so be glad that ppl are still around complaining, providing feedbacks and criticizing

this is real for mmorpg since only the group that complain or provide feedback cares but once you lose that group, you really lose a whole chunk of players

Raziel.4216:

Because of reasons
http://www.carrotonastick.com/massively-multiplayer/mmo-survey-says-players-never-satisfied-no-one-surprised/

You do realize you are quoting a site that posts fake news, don’t you?

To OP: The answer is simple. People like different things, and that you like something doesn’t mean everyone else have to like it as well.

skullfaerie.7203:

There is simply not enough content to justify the 9 month break preceding it and the (probably) 6 month break following it. Not even close.

In addition, content we were promised for HoT still hasn’t even been delivered yet. PvP has lost all its entertainment value. Elite specs were disappointing and not even close to being a side-grade as promised.

Why should I even log in anymore? There’s nothing fun to do.

Most people like the elite specs. Same goes for PvP, only be cause you don’t like it doesn’t mean all don’t like it.

2 kinds of HoT people.
1. Complaining here in forums about “insert rant here”
2. Enjoying the game

ProtoGunner.4953:

Most people like the elite specs. Same goes for PvP, only be cause you don’t like it doesn’t mean all don’t like it.

I know, right? Would of been great though to have access just to your elite spec without having to pay another $50, especially when you are forced to enjoy everything else in the Patch be fore you can use the traits.

LoL NooBs.5076:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Most people like the elite specs. Same goes for PvP, only be cause you don’t like it doesn’t mean all don’t like it.

I know, right? Would of been great though to have access just to your elite spec without having to pay another $50, especially when you are forced to enjoy everything else in the Patch be fore you can use the traits.

It is quite normal and industry standard that further development of your character is locked behind the paywall. There must be some incentive to make people buy the elite spec otherwise they won’t sell it – especially PvP players have no interest in buying an expansion. And yes before you mention it, it is too expensive, yes, 35-40€ would have been fine.

GW1 had inexpensive (compared to a full standalone campaign price) PvP unlock packs for all campaigns. I don’t remember the exact price because I never bought one, but something in the back of my mind tells me they were around $10 .

Manasa Devi.7958:

GW1 had inexpensive (compared to a full standalone campaign price) PvP unlock packs for all campaigns. I don’t remember the exact price because I never bought one, but something in the back of my mind tells me they were around $10 .

But you had to buy the new campaign in order to play the new classes. The original one had only 6 core classes.

You didn’t even need a single campaign if you bought the PvP Access Kit. Came with all classes from all campaigns included.

Granted, these PvP only products came a few years into GW1’s life cycle. GW2 might introduce them as well someday. You’d think they would, given the emphasis on Esports.

People are going to complain no matter what happens. Use Tangled Depths as a perfect example. It was too difficult before, so they nerfed it. But you don’t ever hear anyone say “I’m so glad this meta event is do-able now!” You just hear people say “They made this too easy. People complain too much now nothing is challenging!”
It’s not that people aren’t happy it’s easier to do, it’s just that the people who are satisfied see no reason to say anything, and the people who are not like to tell Anet why they’re unhappy hoping it can be fixed.

Vayne.8563:

Americium.7182:

Let me guess, you are playing for less than 2h/day and not in a serious guild?

I’m playing for more than 8 hours most day. Don’t know what you mean by a serious guild. And while I have my complaints, I’m still enjoying the game.

OP, people are complaining because they’re angry with changes to the core game. Dungeon runners are mad because rewards to their favorite content was nerfed. Fractal runners, some of them, don’t like the changes to fractals. Small guilds feel like they’ve been left behind. Casual players feel like theres’ too much grind in the new zones to get anything done in a short amount of time.

There are all legitimate grievances.

It’s not just the changes to the core world.

The complaints about HoT are from those who recognize several bad design decisions, even if they can’t quite formally voice why those decisions were bad. (A subset of those are just sort of whining, but that sort will never be pleased.)

Astralporing.1957:

Raziel.4216:

Because of reasons
http://www.carrotonastick.com/massively-multiplayer/mmo-survey-says-players-never-satisfied-no-one-surprised/

You do realize you are quoting a site that posts fake news, don’t you?

To OP: The answer is simple. People like different things, and that you like something doesn’t mean everyone else have to like it as well.

Yes. Did you miss the thread on reddit about it?
Humor usually takes some aspect of reality and exagerates it.

You do realize that pointing it out was unnecessary?

There are a number of reasons to complain.

I used to complain because I cared about the game and something was happening that bothered me and/ or I believed would harm the game. An example of that was the trait debacle.

I was hot and heavy in it for most of its long duration. Gaile and others came in to asking us to keep making “suggestions” or telling us the devs were listening. At the end we learned that, indeed, it was just a hamster wheel; they had decided on a direction and nothing we said mattered.

I don’t bother complaining anymore. It doesn’t do any good and, frankly, I don’t care as much after the trait issue.

I dislike HoT, mostly because of too little open world PvE content for an expansion, timers timers timers, grindiness (masteries!), gating (especially gated exploration), the lack of the quirky humor and strangeness of vanilla, changes to vanilla (except gliding… love that), etc. I am not interested in raids or PvP and knew that when I purchased HoT so nothing to complain about there. I enjoy the general difficulty in HoT, enjoy specializations, and the platforming is something I really like. In fact, I would like more JPs in HoT.

I was expecting open world PvE in HoT to be a hyperthyroid SW, which I enjoy. Instead its a hyperthyroid Dry Top, which has limited playability.

However, after the trait mess, I don’t believe anything I have to say matters. So, this is my first HoT complaint post and probably my last.

So I will wait to see if they move the game back in a direction I like while replaying vanilla until I get bored again and sometimes going into HoT to explore. When I get bored with it again, I’ll check back every now and then to see if things have changed in a direction I like.

No, I’m not uninstalling or quitting the game. No, you can’t have my stuff.

Dvantaman.3617:

2 kinds of HoT people.
1. Complaining here in forums about “insert rant here”
2. Enjoying the game

That is incorrect.

Have you played your WvW lately ? Have you hopped on your servers TS (or whatever VOIP they use) ?

There is a 3rd kind that you are not covering, those that just simply left without any comlaining. It is true that currently WvW is an extreme minority game mode, it is because so many players have simply left, there are entire tiers and servers that are nearly empty. I mean, they literally went from fully quing 3 maps+ over the resets + weekends to being lucky if you run into anyone at all on the new BL, or go into EB and be lucky there is a commander there. Triple that if you are not a prime time player.

There was a long time when you hopped on TS and found 300-600 people on it (actively playing and communicating) to the point where the servers could barely keep up, now if you find a group of 20ish or 30ish its a great success.

All those people that left did not complain, the ones that complain are the die hards that have barely anyone left to play with / against. But even they are steadily dwindling down, so the time is coming very soon where there will be no complaints, just like no players on the maps, just crickets ….

Dashingsteel.3410:

A lot of players didn’t like the “New Player Experience” when it was unveiled in 2014. It basically brought gated content ( couldn’t do certain stuff that you could previously do until you reached a certain level) and lessened the “play your way” concept by attatching traits to specific events.

HoT is kind of like the NPE on steroids. Gated content everywhere. Mastery and hero points funnel you to specific content thus forcing you to play Arena Net’s way…. Good old experience just doesn’t cut it anymore….

This along with Anet taking away core content and repackaging it in HoT…. the cynical gold sinks(Guild Halls anyone???), bigger emphasis on platforming gameplay, beautiful but tedious maps, minimal amount of new skins, etc.

These are some things that players don’t like about HoT. I’m sure I missed some things but just wanted to give some examples.

You forgot WvW :p

You just paid for the game twice for mostly new features to use to play the game you already have and a lot of new, almost pointless, grinds. 4 maps with 4 new metas and a raid wing isn’t much content at all. Even the new PvP map hasn’t achieved much popularity; I would wager that has something to do with the game being balanced for conquest for so long.

It’s not also just what we got or didn’t get, but they have pretty much abandoned or neglected the existing game modes. WvW, which was the prime feature of the original GW2 release, the game mode that got the most attention and positive reviews, has been all but abandoned and the player populations have dwindled down to nothing. No new fractals. No new dungeons and the nerf on the rewards eliminated any incentive to them.

In exchange, we got raids, which a type of content that targeted a small percentage of players and is designed to be challenging and require a dedicated group to practice and complete. This is, to some extent, completely contrary to what GW2 was sold to us on which was a game where you were free to play what you wanted and how you wanted.

Players like myself who don’t have any interest in committing time to a dedicated group to complete content, but rather just want to log on, jump in a map meta, pug for a fractal, run a dungeon on the fly with a couple of friends or join a WvW zerg didn’t get much in the new expansion. Even the new map metas have their own issues in their design that make it difficult to just log on and do them whenever.

Even Fashion Wars, which was always kind of the goal of horizontal progression, being able to complete collections or events or grinds to acquire new skins and give your character an unique look has been largely neglected. The focus has shifted to primarily legendary items, big ticket items with insane grinds that are designed to stimulate the economy. Very little was added in the terms of more obtainable items that don’t require huge gold and time investments with no payout until the very end. Most of the influx of new skins that give your character an unique look are added to the gem store for real money.

When I first bought GW2, I was hooked by the experience of what was a very free, unrestrictive open world that clearly adhered to a philosophy of giving players multiple options. The experience over time has changed to the slow, steady growth of more and more controls that make me feel more like a hamster in a cage, being forced into playing the game the way Arenanet wants.

In HoT, I think the controls just were a lot more blatant. It was pretty obvious that the reasons for things were not done with my fun in my mind, but rather to accomplish some greater agenda, which was either stimulating their economy or stretching out their content to make up for the lack of it.

I was on the brink of quitting, but my daredevil has been keeping me around lately. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before I get burned out on that and just move to another game, because at the end of the day, it’s just all really fluff and nothing of any substance to keep me engaged.

My general feeling is that Anet has abandoned largely anything they can’t monetize. People will argue they are company and have the right to do that to make money and they are right, in that regard. But if that is the value set of the company, maybe they should look into mobile app development. Designing “games” that are not actually games, but rather giant collections of pay walls and time gates designed to psychologically manipulate you into spending cash seems right up there alley.

MadRabbit.3179:

When I first bought GW2, I was hooked by the experience of what was a very free, unrestrictive open world that clearly adhered to a philosophy of giving players multiple options. The experience over time has changed to the slow, steady growth of more and more controls that make me feel more like a hamster in a cage, being forced into playing the game the way Arenanet wants.

In HoT, I think the controls just were a lot more blatant. It was pretty obvious that the reasons for things were not done with my fun in my mind, but rather to accomplish some greater agenda, which was either stimulating their economy or stretching out their content to make up for the lack of it.

I agree that the HoT experience is a great deal more restrictive than a lot of the game. However, I think the reasons why are a lot more complicated than just the economy and “stretching content.” Those goals have been around a lot longer than HoT and will be around as long as the the game is.

I believe (hey, it’s just me, so ommv) that ANet wanted to produce an expansion that was fun. I think they succeeded, but only with regard to certain groups of players. The base game has a lot more to do. As a result, many types of players found things in the game to keep them occupied.

I think HoT direction was influenced by 4 things.

1. Complaints by people who wanted more challenge. I don’t know whether the motivation was to try to make the game appeal more to these players, to foster returns by those who gave up on the game for that reason, or because the constant insults of “brain-dead easy,” and “face-roll” got to ANet’s pride, or some combination. The problem was (and is) that PvE in an action game is always going to be too easy for some players unless the developer makes it so hard that only those players stand a chance. I notice that while there was a short hiatus in these types of complaints around HoT launch, but I’m starting to see them again.
2. Complaints by people about the game being unrewarding. This has been a major issue in many threads going back almost to launch. The sheer amount of rewards has been creeping upwards, and in HoT it became almost ludicrous. It even has precursor crafting. The thing is, there are still many complaints about rewards, especially about the game feeling rewarding.
3. Metrics. We know that metrics play a role in Anet decisions. On the surface, they look like a good way to know what players actually do. However, they don’t capture the “why” very well. Why did so many people visit Silverwastes (i.e., HoT Light)? Is it because the gameplay there is so much better than elsewhere? Or is it because it was something new after lengthy content droughts while simultaneously offering the best return in the game in terms of farming?
4. Money. The more copies HoT sells, the more money ANet makes, the happier they are and the happier NCSoft is. This last is why I genuinely believe ANet wanted to make HoT fun, because word of mouth sells. They were always going to get the money of the die-hard fans. Getting money out of the rest of us required a good product. I believe they thought they were putting out a good product and that there have been a lot of posts to the contrary surprised them.

I am not responding to all of your opinions, because I don’t disagree with them or anything. Just targeting the stuff I have something worth saying.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I believe (hey, it’s just me, so ommv) that ANet wanted to produce an expansion that was fun. I think they succeeded, but only with regard to certain groups of players. The base game has a lot more to do. As a result, many types of players found things in the game to keep them occupied.

I have no doubt that people among their employees have passion and want to make a fun game, but still…the areas in the game that got a pretty significant amount of attention are either potential revenue streams or were implemented in a way designed to frustrate you and allow you to shortcut the process via spending cash out of your wallet.

WvW, as I already said, one of those positively reviewed features of the game, got almost no attention and if it could have monetized into a pro league, it would have gotten a lot. But it can’t; it would have even less of a chance of flourishing as an eSport than sPvP currently does. So given that, is all that surprising that PvP got a new map and a pro league while WvW got nothing?

The addition of guild halls and precursors were significant features in the expansion and their implementation amounts to a massive gold sink. Nobody I have talked to finds that fun; like what developer motivated by increasing fun sits down and says “You know what the players will find fun? Grinding out massive quantities of garbage they can shovel into the pursuit of a single item.”

Nah, that was not motivated by fun; that was motivated by their gem to gold conversion system. If you create a massive, frustrating grind that players get sucked into out of our natural psychological need for achievement, when you are 100 gold short of that one piece you have been working on for a month, popping open your wallet and buying some gold gets really tempting.

This is how micros-transactions work. There is like tons of white papers about the psychology of micro-transactions and how people can be manipulated into spending more cash.

Like, you can’t defend that; you can’t like get up and say “We did it this way, because we want you to have fun!” That’s just bullkitten.

The common counter argument to this is that it was done this way, because “Anet wants legendary items to be an item that you acquite slowly over the course of a long time.” But, once again, that’s also bullkitten. I can think of like 10 ways I can stretch out the acquisition of an singular item of importance into parts over a long time that doesn’t involve a pure gold sink.

kitten, WoW did it. They introduced quests for legendary items that stretch out across an entire expansion and do not involve spending in game currency.

But, that’s not the a way they chose; the way they did chose is a way where like 90% of the acquisition of the item is limited by your ability to acquire in-game currency and that limitation can be lifted by opening your wallet and buying gems to exchange for gold.

Hell, they knew what they were doing. They hyped up the precursor acquisition as a fun treasure hunt, but in reality, it turned out to be partly a treasure hunt and mostly just a gold sink. Like where is the youtube or twitch video, when they came out and said “God, I can’t wait to reveal this great feature to you guys! You all are going to be excited and blow away! Get your gathering tools ready, because you are going to have a blast farming 30,000 elder wood logs for The Legend! And that’s just for a collection item; not the actual weapon itself!”

I only started playing during HoT beta so I don’t know how the game used to be like but I like the current state of the game, the only thing I’ll agree to is Anet is hardly communicating with the playerbase anymore, at least that’s what I see so far.

@ MadRabbit

Yeah, I get the thing about mat lists longer than my arm not being fun. The fun part supposedly comes in because the content you’re running to get the mats you want, or sell to buy the stuff you want was supposed to be the fun. The massive mat requirements are about money. That’s so whether one breaks down and buys gems to convert, or whether one takes a long time to gather them by playing, thus extending the content. ANet wins either way.

While there are other ways to extend things like Legendary acquisition, a lot of people complain about those, too. RNG is reviled, as are time gates. They could do it via tying the things to the LS chapters and stretch it that way, but there’d be complaints about that, too. I’m really not fond of the “use a spreadsheet to keep track of what’s needed” school of crafting, but once I decided I wasn’t going to bother, I do appreciate the increase in gold from selling all those mats.

IndigoSundown.5419:

@ MadRabbit
The fun part supposedly comes in because the content you’re running to get the mats you want, or sell to buy the stuff you want was supposed to be the fun.

I would be a little more agreeable to this if they not abandoned the karma concept as a universal currency you can acquire anywhere and then put towards progress in anything. Or if all the non-harvestable crafting materials were part of the same loot table like the original stat prefixes were. The introduction of zone specific currency and items really wrecked that, because you now are compelled to do specific zones you may not even like just for maximum efficiency in your grinds.

Like, the thing is that I think a lot of people underestimate the psychological power of grinding and the compulsion it creates. It’s so powerful that whether or not your game is fun doesn’t always factor into people playing. I can think of 10 people I know right now who are doing content they hate, because they need items it has to complete something they are working on. Once you get caught in the grind cycles, it’s really easy to keep doing it even if you hate everything you are doing.

I can talk for hours about this and it’s impact in video games, but it’s why I hate micro transactions in video games. They corrupt the game, because the point of the game becomes not about increasing fun, but rather about psychologically manipulating you into these kind of loops with the goal of getting you to shell out cash. I actually like a subscription only model for online worlds, because it removes this garbage.

Case in point, HoT has taken grinding to a whole new level to the point where the bulk of the content revolves it and I have yet to find a single person who is enjoying this aspect or finding it “fun”, but yet are still doing it anyways. Everyone is working on a legendary; everyone is grinding for ascended gear. They all kittening hate it, but the compulsion to complete trumps that.

I mean, this has always been an aspect of the game and I have largely forgiven it, because it was clear the Living Story content additions were focused on adding really good content. But, HoT is like something completely different. The grinds are the point of it; they are the bulk of what we bought and they trump and eclipse the content.

In my eyes, I see where this is going and what Anet’s clear priorities are from this point out and I don’t see this being the same GW2 I fell in love with from this point on.

MadRabbit.3179:

In my eyes, I see where this is going and what Anet’s clear priorities are from this point out and I don’t see this being the same GW2 I fell in love with from this point on.

Yeah, I’ve been there for a while. Though, I was GW fan. Since GW2 launched, ANet has told me (figuratively) over and over, “We are not interested in presenting updates that you’re interested in.” The part that stinks from my perspective is that I was one of those “…who hate traditional MMO’s…” This means that there just isn’t much out there that I am interested in.

IndigoSundown.5419:

1. Complaints by people about the game being unrewarding. This has been a major issue in many threads going back almost to launch. The sheer amount of rewards has been creeping upwards, and in HoT it became almost ludicrous. It even has precursor crafting. The thing is, there are still many complaints about rewards, especially about the game feeling rewarding.

For some people? I just feel like I get more bags full of other bags full of yet more bags to open. Also the amount of rewards have to be weighted against the sinks they add. For example if you double the loot and quintuple the sinks then the increase is just an illusion.

tattyana.2356:

I don’t get it I’m loving Hot I like the mastery system the new maps and new legendaries we can craft. The only thing I didn’t like was raids being hard core only ,world of warcraft realized they were making content that only a fraction of there player base was seeing and implemented lfr (looking for raid). Minus that little hic up I’m enjoying Hot and for what we get for no sub fee I don’t understand all the negativity ……….. Anet your doing fine keep up the good work just hope you guys at some point make raids a little more accessible to the masses.

I’m a long time fan of the game since day 1. I was almost a fan boy for most of that time. But only 4 months after the expansion I already find myself bored and the only content that keep me in the game is raid. I guess that everybody have their opinion and that our opinion are as valid as your.

Saying that everything is right with the game is as stupid as saying that it’s garbage. My group of friend and I are in the game for the last 3 years and our friendship grow with the game. It will have a special place for all of us for a long time I’m sure. But we all started to do less and less GW2 and almost all of us only play for raid anymore. Dungeon and Fractal are not fun for us anymore, WvW is the shadow of is former self and the 4 new maps ain’t enough to keep us going. If that’s the new direction of the game, then I find it sad, but I won’t cry about it. I’ll continue to raid and it will give a chance to go through my long list of game to try.

Khisanth.2948:

IndigoSundown.5419:

1. Complaints by people about the game being unrewarding. This has been a major issue in many threads going back almost to launch. The sheer amount of rewards has been creeping upwards, and in HoT it became almost ludicrous. It even has precursor crafting. The thing is, there are still many complaints about rewards, especially about the game feeling rewarding.

For some people? I just feel like I get more bags full of other bags full of yet more bags to open. Also the amount of rewards have to be weighted against the sinks they add. For example if you double the loot and quintuple the sinks then the increase is just an illusion.

I would argue this issue from a different angle in that the items being labeled rewards aren’t actually rewards from a psychological perspective. Like shoveling a bunch of items into our bags and labeling them rewards doesn’t correlate to a feeling of “being rewarded”. To me, it’s all just huge piles of garbage and the small amount of value it has is in salvaging it to be a very small part in the obtainment of a single item that when acquired will make me “feel rewarded”.

The element of opening a chest and getting some rare item with a cool skin that I find valuable or some unique ability that alters character in an impactful way is woefully missing from this game.

I think this is because the items that are clearly intended to cause that feeling of “being rewarded” just take too long to obtain and are too few in number for the average player.

Like, I just slowly accumulated the parts for Bifrost over the course of two years and then when I made it, I got like a couple days worth of a feeling of exuberance before I was bored with it. I don’t find that time investment worth the reward, particularly when compared to other RPGs and MMORPGs with loot systems that give me that feeling, at least, once per gaming session.

Well I think that complain about the game feeling unrewarding can be categorize in two.

1) The balance between Difficulty/Effort/Reward/Time. Is it normal that gathering by pressing F give you more reward per hours than Raid, while raid is limited to one of week? It’s not necessarily that Raid doesn’t have a good reward, but the ratio is unbalanced. It is normal for fractal 56/67/77 having the same reward as level 98/99/100 while being like 5 times faster and easier?

2) The reward in GW2 is a lot of crap that accumulate to a good reward. But even if the reward is good, it doesn’t feel that way. If you have to do math to figure out if you do decent gold, it’s not a good system if you ask me.

MadRabbit.3179:

Khisanth.2948:

IndigoSundown.5419:

1. Complaints by people about the game being unrewarding. This has been a major issue in many threads going back almost to launch. The sheer amount of rewards has been creeping upwards, and in HoT it became almost ludicrous. It even has precursor crafting. The thing is, there are still many complaints about rewards, especially about the game feeling rewarding.

For some people? I just feel like I get more bags full of other bags full of yet more bags to open. Also the amount of rewards have to be weighted against the sinks they add. For example if you double the loot and quintuple the sinks then the increase is just an illusion.

I would argue this issue from a different angle in that the items being labeled rewards aren’t actually rewards from a psychological perspective. Like shoveling a bunch of items into our bags and labeling them rewards doesn’t correlate to a feeling of “being rewarded”. To me, it’s all just huge piles of garbage and the small amount of value it has is in salvaging it to be a very small part in the obtainment of a single item that when acquired will make me “feel rewarded”.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call them garbage but it does get a bit silly when your character starts oohing and ahhing over a rare or bloodstone dust.

The element of opening a chest and getting some rare item with a cool skin that I find valuable or some unique ability that alters character in an impactful way is woefully missing from this game.

I think this is because the items that are clearly intended to cause that feeling of “being rewarded” just take too long to obtain and are too few in number for the average player.

Well this is the problem when everything about an item is pretty much meaningless except for the skin. There is no other redeeming value.

Like, I just slowly accumulated the parts for Bifrost over the course of two years and then when I made it, I got like a couple days worth of a feeling of exuberance before I was bored with it. I don’t find that time investment worth the reward, particularly when compared to other RPGs and MMORPGs with loot systems that give me that feeling, at least, once per gaming session.

Heh I got the same from getting Spark out of the forge. Except instead of “a couple days worth” it was more like “approximately 10 seconds”. After 3 years of anticipation it just turns into “it’s nice I guess”.

So what should ANet do? So far, their approach has largely been reward-by-tiny-increments. In response to the game-does-not-feel-rewarding complaints, they now drop bags on bags of mats and blue/green salvage bait, with some yellow salvage (or TP those greatswords) items, and the occasional orange that gets salvaged or sold for skin and rarely (if ever) gets used. Those who’ve embraced the item-of-a-thousand pieces system embrace this loot approach because it gets them the item faster. Were the very few desirable drops to become more common, they’d over time become less desirable. I’m not sure what I’d do. Maybe Anet is clueless on how to fix this issue for those with the not-rewarding perception?

I’m also not sure if there’s any long term satisfaction in MMO item acquisition if one of the development goals is to make it possible for most everyone to get the item sooner or later. Most long-term satisfaction I’ve seen referred to comes from exclusivity.

PPL complain if they feel that they didn’t get things what they paid for. I am sorry but I paid for expansion not for small dlc which is unfinished unbalanced and like half of things are coming soon[sup]TM[/sup] (2017) plus gem store updates every week insted of those which I mentioned.