Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to quickly say that I really appreciate ANet trying out new mechanics within living content, such as in lost & found and the periscopes.

I feel that we, the player base, have been giving ANet too hard of a time (too boring, too difficult, too spread out, …) over things when the living story content, right now, is a learning experience. ANet are trying out new things and also listening to our feedback and adjusting content accordingly.

That’s why I believe that the living story content will be better and better each time.

(I also think that getting new content in a non-subscription game cannot be taken for granted.)

I do get a little sad when people come to the forums and post comments like “who the hell cares, Flame & Frost is super boring anyway” and similar. I think we can all sort of see where you’re coming from, but really, cut the guys & girls from ANet some slack for their experimental, adjustable and free content… Please? Thanks.

that is something ive been telling myself itll get better and any feedback positive or negative provides them something which in turn helps make future content better . i give anet kudos they are trying and sometimes it might seem like one step forward and two back but they are learning a lot on thier trial and error. so letting them know what you like and dislike provides some feedback which makes better material down the line and gives the community that they have a voice in how future content and the game goes from now on. i did love alot of the frost and flame material but i think if it left something to the world it might make us feel like we actually did something but what im reading itll all go away.to me that feels like filler content. dont get me wrong i appreciate what they are doing and support them and understand these are growing pains and give feedback hoping to help them out with good and bad when needed

Yup, there is nothing wrong with giving feedback; without feedback, nothing can improve. But some people’s tone :[

I for one am really glad to see they’re willing to experiment with it and try different things to get it right. Partially because there was a lot I didn’t like about the Halloween and especially Lost Shores events, but also because I think it’s never a good idea to get stuck into a certain way of doing things – otherwise you could miss out on all kinds of cool ideas and improvements just because “that’s not the way we do things”.

IMO the pacing especially has gotten far better. Halloween was good but very confusing – I spent nearly as much time on here and the wiki trying to find out what there was to do and how to access it as I did actually playing. And I spent a lot of time in-game passing on that info to equally confused people.

Lost Shores was just a mess IMO. They did a slightly better job of letting us know what was happening but sending everyone in-game to the same location to do the same thing at the same time was a terrible idea and cramming so much into one weekend was horrible. I was lucky that I could devote the time to it, although at the end it felt like a waste of a weekend because I spent most of it waiting for bug fixes and re-starting after a disconnect (and then running back from the waypoint because I’d been killed while the game was frozen). Even when there wasn’t content active I felt like I had to keep an eye on the game and the forum in case I missed a step and wasn’t able to catch up.

Wintersday was a vast improvement. The fact that each section was up for a large chunk of time (and a lot of it was instanced) drastically reduced the lag and disconnects and at the same time allowed a lot more people to participate and the fact that everything was laid out clearly well in advance let us plan it around whatever else we had going on.

And Flame & Frost has thankfully continued that. I was a bit worried when it was first announced that I was going to have to drop everything else I was doing in-game for months to participate and I’m very happy that’s not the case – I’ve been able to do everything over a few nights or a full day and still have time for the rest of the game too. Even when SAB was added as well it never felt as rushed or frustrating as Lost Shores.

I think they’ve finally gotten the balance between content we need to explore and discover on our own and the practical reality that most players can only devote a certain amount of time to the game and can’t always drop everything to come and play when something new comes along.

I’m sure similar improvements in other areas will come with time and hopefully the big pay-off will be when they begin looking at an expansion and can put everything they’ve learned into practice for creating permanent content.

Flame and Frost has been pretty much OK (except for the Stereoscopes), and the new dungeon is really good.

After this new dungeon, I am REALLY looking forward to any future living story content

i really am looking forward to it too. i think the feedback they have gotten will make each step better. i dont mind having them try stuff out to find new avenues of things to do. i didnt care for sab but im glad they tried it out. a lot of people loved it and from what ive read its could be a possible fulltime city mini game.

The Flame and Frost has been great—right up until the last segment that requires a mandatory raid dungeon, with no alternative methods, or alternative support to let you do it by yourself like the old GW1 mandatory ‘dungeon’ type missions did. Given that they’ve demonstrated time and again they can provide instanced missions that can be played by solo and group alike, this is a pretty bad failure on their part. Though learning that the Personal Story ends in a similar fashion makes it somewhat disgusting—if this is how they’re going conduct any future arcs, they shouldn’t bother—put all that creativity and effort into permanant content instead. Stories that I’m not going to be able to finish due to this kind of stupidity aren’t worth my time.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, I am happy with Flame & Frost offering all sorts of different things – from gathering to recon to soloable instances to regular dungeon. With the variety of things available here, I wasn’t overly sad that a 5 player dungeon was ONE of them, so to speak.

On the other hand, if I could have played the Molten Facility dungeon on my own or with my partner, I probably would have.

I don’t mind this one too much though, mainly because the dungeon is SO much more fun than the regular ones (bodes well for the future) and partly because the two PUGs I ran with so far were quite fun and didn’t ruin it for me

And to be honest, if the SAB required 5 people to play, I would have played it significantly less. I ran it solo or with my partner twice a day roughly for most of April, but a proper dungeon run is more of a commitment and there’s no way I would have done THAT twice a day. No time!

(I still wish that story mode in the regular dungeons scaled for 1-5 players. For special events – meh – I can team up once every other month.)

Everytime ANet try something new, there’s the risk of it rubbing people the wrong way; in fact whatever they do, there’s pretty much a guarantee that it will rub some people the wrong way.

Many of the changes were made in direct relation to earlier criticism. (“Flame & Frost was too cryptic? Here, have some journals spelling out the story for you.”; “Don’t like 5 player content? Here’s have a solo instance in addition.”) And the solutions ANet found may not have been perfect, and can be further developed into better future chapters.

Don’t slam them for trying out new things. ANet is kissing many frogs for us because they know that some of them turn into Prince Molten Facility.

Please be constructive in your criticism. This way you also have a much bigger chance that it is heard and processed. There’s really no need to put the devs on the defensive.

:)

I haven’t spent penny on this game yet, except for the standard edition price,
but I don’t mind doing it when I need to. I have one character lvl 80 in full exotic equipment with awesome stats and looks (thanks to freely given transmutation crystals) and other two lvl 20 and lvl 3, I can buy outstanding weapon with like maximum of 5 gold, which is very close to Legendary one in numbers. I have plenty of freely gained boosts, which I don’t use + I have two professions 400 (one is Cook so I have great boosts when I need those).

This game is incredible in how you can play and be mighty without spending any money, farm in this game isn’t hard at all, you can get what you need (gold included) without much effort. Those items Anet selling in their shop never gives someone an edge or obvious advantage over other players, so I don’t see any problem in this, they can sell whateva they like as long as it won’t break game balance, and it doesn’t yet, hope won’t ever.

With policy like this, I’m even feel bad about not giving real money to Anet just as a token of respect. You won’t find ANY mmo game this fair and player-friendly.
Most of them are pay-to-play (if you won’t pay, you’ll be punching bag for life there),
or monthly subscription (which is obvious shakedown IMO).

P.S. On server I play is nice playing communty as well, pretty hard to come by in internet or some games…

The point of the updates is to sell us gem store items. That’s fine and well, I welcome having that instead of a subscription.

However, I find the ratio of their invested time/money/effort in those updates vs their expectations from the gem store sales flawed. They minimize the work/time/money being put into the updates while shelling out some fairly expensive gem store items (that sometimes are done sloppy, like the new sickle functionally being a pick…).

I would welcome it if they dialed back their profit margins a bit in favor of quality releases, the game will be better for it and thus create more profit in the future.