Guild Wars 2

emma.5967:

Cyninja.2954:

No, that is the problem of your limited analogy. You omited the “unfun” parts to make it sound in favor of a point you were trying to make. I was simply pointing out the flaws and omited facts in it.

Analogys are limited most of the time. It’s in their nature. … I omited the server costs etc., because the game was sold without later costs.

You ommited more than just the server cost though, and that is all that I was pointing out. You left out significant aspects of arenanets business model and benefits players have who never spent more than the initial purchase price on the game. Thus the analogy was biased and faulty.

emma.5967:

Cyninja.2954:

Yes, if you payed for the game 4 years ago you are entitled to free future content, patches, expansions and basically slave labor off of the deveopement staff. Just how communist are you?

I found no one here who wants to be entitled for free content or expansions. I think nearly everybody here is fine with paying for new maps or story. But a paywall for existing content is like a subscription fee backdoor.
Slave labor the development staff? I don’t know the prices in Seattle, but software engineers are payed quite good most places.

All the while you left no room in your analogy for the oh so well payed software engineers (or how the toystore was supposed to pay for them). I suppose they get their kingly salary out of that onetime game purchase 4 years ago.

The things you say do not match the real world situations you describe. Software engineers only get payed well if the company they work for does not go belly up.

This entire thread is littered with people commenting on faulty pay2win arguments and people complaining about having to buy the expansion. Not sure how you did not notice this.

Cyninja.2954:

Thus the analogy was biased and faulty.

I don’t think so. But we’re not going anywhere here I guess.

All the while you left no room in your analogy for the oh so well payed software engineers (or how the toystore was supposed to pay for them). I suppose they get their kingly salary out of that onetime game purchase 4 years ago.

You don’t need to ridicule my statements just because you don’t like what I say. So you’re saying that the customer is responsible for the salary of the employees at the company where he buys something?

The things you say do not match the real world situations you describe. Software engineers only get payed well if the company they work for does not go belly up.

http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
They are doing fine. They are working on the next expansion. Which I believe will also sell good. And again. It’s not the customers duty to care about. Or do you go to every business where you were customer once and buy there something (even if you don’t want to have it) just to get sure the company is still doin’ fine?

Cyninja.2954:

This entire thread is littered with people commenting on faulty pay2win arguments and people complaining about having to buy the expansion. Not sure how you did not notice this.

I did notice it. Yes, that’s the crux of the matter. How do you define what’s part of the expansion and what’s part of the core game. And as I said, I think nearly everybody is fine with story and maps as an expansion. Some other parts we’re discussing here about.

Okay, maybe we need some more perspective on this:
I am not in the slightest angry that people without HOT don’t get any benefits from the guild hall, the new story, any story updates or any of the new PvE maps.
That’s all part of the expansion. I am also not really angry that people don’t get to play elite specs or Revenant in PvP… In principle. Whether those are available in PvP or not is up to Arena.net to decide and compelling arguments can be made for both sides of the discussion.
Where it breaks down for me is one simple principle: Arena.net promised that the new builds won’t be stronger than existing ones, but look at what they delivered. Elite specs aren’t simply new playstyles that differ from existing ones, they are a very powerful playstyle that eclipses a lot of the other viable builds.
And it often is not a power issue. Incidentally, I can think of a couple core builds that remain competitive up to a certain level even against elite builds. The problem is in the KIND of builds that remain competitive:
There is no way, with any core build whatsoever, to out-value an elite build. There is no way. It used to be celestial builds being the jack-of-all-trades, useful in every situation, kind of builds. Now it’s the elite builds.
The only viable core builds are pretty much all the same, either hardcore roaming dps machines or hardcore bunkers. I have yet to see a balanced build with good sustain against both damage sources, good damage output, some cc and team support. Those kinds of builds have been taken over by elite specs and there is no way to outperform them in general utility.
I can still wreck face with my greataxe warrior. It doesn’t work as great as it did during the initial chrono-bunker craze, since now the opponents actually fight back, but ultimately it performs like a slower thief with more staying power. It comes in for a quick +1, dishes out massive cleave damage in team fights and spends the rest of the match decapping empty points and running away from 1v1 fights.
The build itself is fine and perfporms well, just as the wide assortment of other builds, I have to choose from. But when I am at the beginning of a match, check the team composition and fight something lacking, there is nothing I can do.
Ultimately, even with 4 professions standing ready with a build, that on its own is totally fine in the current meta, all those builds differ very little, since all the group supporty stuff got relegated to HoT builds. My choice is basically whether I want to burst opponents down with glass canon a, glass canon b, glass canon c or glass canon d.
While certain builds may perform slightly better than others, none of those builds helps me, when I queue into a match and find my team have 2 dragonhunters and a thief.

Now why don’t I buy HoT? Partly because of financial reasons, but partly also on principle. We were promised a certain quality of product and HoT has yet to live up to that promise.

Sirendor.1394:

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Or, wait for it, wait for it, you support the game you play? How about it, buddy? You get core game for free, it wasn’t free a year ago, and you still dare to complain?
How about core game would once again become buy to play, together with heart of thorns? Don’t buy – don’t play at all. Would be way less whiners around here.

?
We bought core game mate. Free accounts can’t post on forums.

And it’s not about the money. It’s about PvP being balanced and diverse, which it isn’t.

Then buy the expansion.

Free to play people have no business making demands or complaining about anything. They can buy the elites just like the rest of us who bought HoTs. I personally don’t care about balance or diversity for free to play accounts. I bought the core game at launch.

drcraig.9403:

I bought the core game at launch.

So did a lot of the people who are now complaining.

naphack.9346:

drcraig.9403:

I bought the core game at launch.

So did a lot of the people who are now complaining.

Care to elaborate? You’ve quoted a single sentence so I have no idea what context I should use to make sense of your post.

high socks.7628:

Much like Call of Duty, and the hundreds of other games that offer DLC’s, console games separate players who have paid for the DLC from accessing new maps, new gear, etc.

Now GW2 needs to either:
1. Disable the Heart of Thorns special builds from PvP
or
2. Separate players who have paid for Heart of Thorns and people who have not.

Preferably, PvP adjusts all the armor and weapons so nobody has advantages, GW2 needs to block these special builds, why?
Because it’s simply UNFAIR.

Ok I know what you’re thinking, yeah this kid is complaining so what we’ve been hearing this for months, just get better…

Doesn’t it bother anyone that you have to PAY for be better?
1. It’s discouraging playing PvP with the Heart of Thorns build.
2. It makes me feel like I’m not valued as a player.
3. I feel like it ruins the overall competitive spirit of the game.

Thoughts?

Buy it or don’t buy it. It’s a choice. Sometimes life isn’t fair and it’s ridiculous for you and people like you to think people need to conform to make things fair. Anet should do nothing to help you in your predicament.

1.You make it discouraging because you choose not to buy HoTs

2.Loyalty is a 2 way street. If you don’t value GW2 enough to support HoTs why should Anet invest time and resources in “blocking these special builds”, or making a special queue option for people without HoTs. It costs money to do all of these things.
( I have to admit that your comment about not feeling valued was hilarious!!)

3. It doesn’t ruin the overall competitive spirit at all, it helps it. I can say that because I paid the $50 and bought HoTs.

drcraig.9403:

naphack.9346:

drcraig.9403:

I bought the core game at launch.

So did a lot of the people who are now complaining.

Care to elaborate? You’ve quoted a single sentence so I have no idea what context I should use to make sense of your post.

You stated that “free to play” people have no business complaining, yet as far as I know free to play people can’t post in the forum in the first place.

Also, a lot of people, I can’t speak for everyone here, don’t complain about not having access to HoT content, but rather about the appalling effort that went into balancing elite specializations.

A lot of people view the people who are complaining as spoiled brats, who aren’t loyal to the game. They act like we demand the HoT content for free.
From my experience, a lot of the complaining players are, like me, people, who really love the game and care about it. A lot of the people don’t complain out of spite, they complain out of concern for the health of the game, they love so deeply.
Let’s be frank here, the HoT release was a desaster, a lot of features were missing or bugged and because the release was rushed, they simply made the elite specs as awe-inspiring and phenomenal as possible, without any care for game balance. The basic formula was that as long as it has stunning graphics and impressive abilities, people will buy it.
Fast forward a couple months and we still see the problems with some of the design decisions that went into the elite specs. Some of those abilities are so over the top, they are really hard to balance in a reasonable way.
A lot of people see this and voice their concern, yet their only way to actually get through to Anet is to withhold buying HoT on principle until the quality of the content matches the price tag… Or the price tag matches the quality of the content, whichever changes first.

I mean, seriously, someone who didn’t love the game would have just walked away and given up on the game entirely after the desaster that was the HoT release.

But it’s no news that Anet has no clue, how to balance their own game. Just look at turret engis: There was a couple of builds that ran on celestial amulet and wrecked everything and a build that ran on sentinel amulet that wrecked those builds. Instead of just doing away with those tanky amulets, they chose to nerf turrets to the point of being unplayable and keeping the celestial builds in place. Then after the HoT release brought some truly degenerate builds like chrono bunkers, they finally caught on that having those kinds of extremely tanky amulets in pvp poses a problem… Instead of just removing them when turret engis ran rampant and fixing the problem that way.

Name one game in which expansion content isn’t better than core. Whether they promise or not they need to add incentive for you to buy the expansion. It’s not pay2win, it’s buy2play. And this is how ANet is making money.

I know, most of you believe that servers operate on hot air and whatnot, and the people at ANet work there day in and day out for giggles and kitten. But that’s far from the truth.

Whoever is complaining about should really cut off the kool aid. I know it sucks but business is business and they need to provide incentives for the players to pay. Other MMOs deal with this through subscriptions or increasingly P2W cash shop. Gw2 has none of that, so I kindly prompt you guys to cut the crap.

If you want to be playing with the top dogs, get the expansion, support the game and most importantly, have fun.

What incentives are lacking?
On paper, there is a lot of incentives to buy HoT. The only people who are left are those who wouldn’t buy the expansion regardless of the content and conservatives, who really dislike the way, their game is heading and refuse to buy the expansion out of principle.

For me, the story itself would be enough reason to buy the game, but the lack of polish and quality clamps down on the product so hard, I can’t bring myself to buy it. I don’t want to incentivize Arena.net to become complacent or lazy. The HoT release showed a real lack of care about the quality of the game and I found it highly alarming.

What incentive does it make, when you blackmail the players into buying the game by devaluating their existing stuff? If the expansion was advertised as such, if the principle of the game was an endless grind for better gear and higher power levels, then obviously that wouldn’t be a problem, but the philosophy of Guild Wars 2 has always been one of vertical progression: When maxed out, everything will remain relevant and the only progress is in new play styles and new skins.
People were even concerned about that before the release of the game and thus, Arena.net proclaimed that elite specs won’t be any stronger than existing builds. And they said it at a point, where it should have been apparent to them, that elite specs will be monsters, that outclass anything in existence in general utility and in some cases will render core classes obsolete entirely.

naphack.9346:

What incentives are lacking?
On paper, there is a lot of incentives to buy HoT. The only people who are left are those who wouldn’t buy the expansion regardless of the content and conservatives, who really dislike the way, their game is heading and refuse to buy the expansion out of principle.

For me, the story itself would be enough reason to buy the game, but the lack of polish and quality clamps down on the product so hard, I can’t bring myself to buy it. I don’t want to incentivize Arena.net to become complacent or lazy. The HoT release showed a real lack of care about the quality of the game and I found it highly alarming.

What incentive does it make, when you blackmail the players into buying the game by devaluating their existing stuff? If the expansion was advertised as such, if the principle of the game was an endless grind for better gear and higher power levels, then obviously that wouldn’t be a problem, but the philosophy of Guild Wars 2 has always been one of vertical progression: When maxed out, everything will remain relevant and the only progress is in new play styles and new skins.
People were even concerned about that before the release of the game and thus, Arena.net proclaimed that elite specs won’t be any stronger than existing builds. And they said it at a point, where it should have been apparent to them, that elite specs will be monsters, that outclass anything in existence in general utility and in some cases will render core classes obsolete entirely.

kitten ed if you do, kitten ed if you don’t. If they made the elite specs equal to the core specs, people would have complained that they have absolutely no reason to play them. HoT brought a very slight increase in difficulty and even with the current powercreep to the elite specs, people are complaining that it’s hard. That’s what 3 years of faceroll and braindead content does to a playerbase, but that’s another story.

Even though the elite specs are stronger in PvP, you are exaggerating. They do not make the core classes obsolete entirely, especially true in PvE. Other MMOs are much more restrictive to PvP – from locked gear slots, inaccessible gear or level cap and grinding to be viable. I’d love it if they made a completely separate client for PvP, with its own pricing and budget, separate from the core game, but as it is, the game is not a Moba, it’s still an MMORPG.

I won’t argue with the fact that the expansion is kinda lacking, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the availability of the content.

They literally had no choice in this. I’m pretty sure the next batch of elite specs will be in line with the current ones, people will have a choice and they will still be relevant. It would’ve been ideal if they released an elite spec for the core owners and one for HoT owners, but they have problems managing and balancing one set of elite specs – I can’t imagine them juggling with 2.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Name one game in which expansion content isn’t better than core.

That is a slightly stupid argument, since every expansion in an MMO also comes with a level increase.
This is the problem with these HoT specs. It’s lv90 players fighting lv80 players in an environment that’s suppose to be leveled and balanced without any gear advantage.

I can’t think of a single MMO with this same situation. Every MMO divides it’s core and expansion players with levels and different pvp brackets, simply because the expansion players have a huge gear and stat advantage.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Whether they promise or not they need to add incentive for you to buy the expansion. It’s not pay2win, it’s buy2play. And this is how ANet is making money.

I know, most of you believe that servers operate on hot air and whatnot, and the people at ANet work there day in and day out for giggles and kitten. But that’s far from the truth.

Whoever is complaining about should really cut off the kool aid. I know it sucks but business is business and they need to provide incentives for the players to pay. Other MMOs deal with this through subscriptions or increasingly P2W cash shop. Gw2 has none of that, so I kindly prompt you guys to cut the crap.

If you want to be playing with the top dogs, get the expansion, support the game and most importantly, have fun.

Actually it is pay2win.
sPvP is built on the foundation that we’re playing on even footing. Whether you were a f2p player or Core player, week old player or 2year player, none of you had an advantage over the other. Now, however, HoT has a huge advantage over the rest of the players. This advantage is hiding behind a pay wall, making it a clear pay2win option.
Anyone who actually argues against that is just in denial and doesn’t want to accept that you’re streamrolling “noobs” because of your HoT spec, not skill.

I get that whole incentive to buy argument. I do. But it’s the wrong kind of incentive. It should be incentive enough that they’re adding gameplay variation, more content, quests etc.

“Pay2win, streamroll everyone who hasn’t bought the expansion yet”, should never be an incentive. That only brings toxic to the community, because we all know who flocks to these kinds of things, and catering to those kinds of toxic players is detrimental to bringing in new players. Especially in a game with a F2P option.

The thing is, in PvE and WvW, I don’t really mind having the elite specs be stronger. Simply because those environments are already based on levels, gear and player advantages.

My issue comes with having them dominate the sPvP scene.
It’s a game mode that’s suppose to be based on skill and building the right spec for yourself. Having one, clearly stronger and better spec, locked behind a pay wall, destroys the whole concept of the game mode.
Instead, it becomes a pay2win gear advantage.

The only fair thing to do, is either lock HoT specs into only queuing with each other, or unlock it for everyone within sPvP.
A possible middle ground would be adding a Gem cost to unlocking the elite spec in sPvP. Something like 200gems per elite spec.
This would make Revenant the only pay2win spec. Which, imo, would be ok. one class that is out of bounds is fine, but having every single class outperform you because of a pay wall is just cruel.

Keeping the current structure in sPvP is just a big middle finger from Anet to it’s f2p and core player base.

Dyze.1580:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Name one game in which expansion content isn’t better than core.

That is a slightly stupid argument, since every expansion in an MMO also comes with a level increase.
This is the problem with these HoT specs. It’s lv90 players fighting lv80 players in an environment that’s suppose to be leveled and balanced without any gear advantage.

Untrue. Have you ever fought a player 10 levels disadvantaged in any other MMO? The difference is vastly greater than the slight power creep the elite specialisations bring (and not even for every class). To even suggest this is an insult.

Dyze.1580:

I can’t think of a single MMO with this same situation. Every MMO divides it’s core and expansion players with levels and different pvp brackets, simply because the expansion players have a huge gear and stat advantage.

You can’t because there is none. Literally EVERY single other MMO puts a vast amount of more (the only exception being Eve Online):

- restrictions on content
- devaluation (up to the point of making items trash tier) of current equipment and new gear and tier grinds
- new skills, power creep, forced leveling

into their expansions. Yet here we are with people who even though none of that was added with this expansion are still unhappy. Now if that is not entitlement I don’t know what is. GW2 is by pure comparison the genre LEADER as far as fair and non-required expansions goes and people are still unhappy.

Dyze.1580:

Actually it is pay2win.

It’s pay to play expansion content. No matter how much you spin this, it won’t turn pay2win because of a 1 time purchase. Hell it even wouldn’t be pay2win if they released expansions anually.

Now if they added a new item slot which buffs all your damage by 10%, required regular real money purchases, then we can talk pay2win.

Dyze.1580:

“Pay2win, streamroll everyone who hasn’t bought the expansion yet”, should never be an incentive. That only brings toxic to the community, because we all know who flocks to these kinds of things, and catering to those kinds of toxic players is detrimental to bringing in new players. Especially in a game with a F2P option.

Agreed, it’s unfortunate that the elite specs are more powerful in some situations (though critics are vastly blowing the advantage out of proportion). Yet I’m sure even at absolutely equal power level there would have been people complaining about the more diverse playstyle and options the elite specs bring to the table.

Dyze.1580:

The only fair thing to do, is either lock HoT specs into only queuing with each other, or unlock it for everyone within sPvP.

Sure, it would kill the already dead spvp community even more. At least this way they will focus on only pve and wvw for the next expansion, maybe remove spvp completely. /sarcasm

Dyze.1580:

Keeping the current structure in sPvP is just a big middle finger from Anet to it’s f2p and core player base.

I doubt they are to concerned with the f2p playerbase. Their business model will be focused around getting as many f2p or b2p players to upgrade as possible. At the same time, the further down we go, the less of interest the buy2play players will become who are behind on expansions.

ANet will always bundle expansion content with all previous content in the “core”.

So if you are complaining now, I guess wait until the next expansion and you’ll possibly play HoT for free

Or they will probably bundle all expacks into the 50$ pricetag ontop of the core game. It might be it.

Either way, F2P/core-only players are too few to make statements like “pay 50$ and steamroll every f2p player” because that’s far from the truth. Most people in sPvP already have HoT anyway. Or at least the ones I’m matched up with.

Elite specializations were designed with HoT and raids in mind, and you are not going to get those butchered.

Two things need to be done…

1. Core weapon and slot skills need to be up to elite specialization standards. Some skills could use a major cool down reductions and/or increased potency. There is not any reason why we need over 20+ seconds on weapon skills and over 30+ seconds on slot skills in most cases for this game.

2. Balance separately for pvp (spvp/wvw/eotm) modes and pve modes. We only really need 2 sets of balancing for certain problematic things and game mechanics.

Swagger.1459:

Elite specializations were designed with HoT and raids in mind, and you are not going to get those butchered.

Two things need to be done…

1. Core weapon and slot skills need to be up to elite specialization standards. Some skills could use a major cool down reductions and/or increased potency. There is not any reason why we need over 20+ seconds on weapon skills and over 30+ seconds on slot skills in most cases for this game.

2. Balance separately for pvp (spvp/wvw/eotm) modes and pve modes. We only really need 2 sets of balancing for certain problematic things and game mechanics.

There is a big flaw with the elite spec design that won’t allow to bring core skills and traits up to par:
Any significant buff to core traits will ultimately also be a buff to elite specs.
The only way for this to go is downwards and that was already evident at launch.
Some adjustments can be made to truly underpowered traits and skills, but they can only be brought to par with average core content, since anything beyond that will just buff elite specs even more.

naphack.9346:

Swagger.1459:

Elite specializations were designed with HoT and raids in mind, and you are not going to get those butchered.

Two things need to be done…

1. Core weapon and slot skills need to be up to elite specialization standards. Some skills could use a major cool down reductions and/or increased potency. There is not any reason why we need over 20+ seconds on weapon skills and over 30+ seconds on slot skills in most cases for this game.

2. Balance separately for pvp (spvp/wvw/eotm) modes and pve modes. We only really need 2 sets of balancing for certain problematic things and game mechanics.

There is a big flaw with the elite spec design that won’t allow to bring core skills and traits up to par:
Any significant buff to core traits will ultimately also be a buff to elite specs.
The only way for this to go is downwards and that was already evident at launch.
Some adjustments can be made to truly underpowered traits and skills, but they can only be brought to par with average core content, since anything beyond that will just buff elite specs even more.

They are not butchering elite specs due to the difficulty added with hot and raids. The devs are not going to reverse course and go over an entire expansion to match core tyria profession designs…

The problem lies in the core professions that have been neglected since launch.

The problem is that certain things are not balanced separately between pvp and pve.

Players wanted tougher content so we got tougher content, along with slightly improved professions to handle said content. Squashing elites is not going to happen because they are not the problem.

I only play pvp, still think HoT was a good purchase. Its 50$ for a game with no Sub fee like this, hard to find. Its a F2P model, one of the fairest ive seen. Pay once and your done. No rotation for what characters your allowed to play, no hundreds of hours/dollars required to play what you want. Think of the base game like a demo for the real game. Most games dont even give you that anymore.

Everyone still thinks that it is about money. For most of us it is not about the money. I would buy HoT and still complain about the EXACT SAME THINGS I am complaining now. Why I do not have HoT? Principle. Why I buy gems? To support Anet. Is it cheaper? No, definitely not cheaper than buying HoT. Are those " omg you are cheap so kitten" guys shutted the fudge up? Good. If you still do not understand why I do not buy HoT, please contemplate till you do.

The balance is not about paid content or free (paid for core game at its highest value btw) content. Those who argue that the HoT content should be free are delusional. But at the same time those who argue that there should be a power level difference between elites and cores are also not right. If you destroy a loved trait (thief p/p) or completely add millions of things against a single style of play (projectile), or if you still fixed the biggest issue of a profession ( pets for rangers) it is wrong. It should be fixed, that is all. The other arguments that we made are personal for many. But these are necessities. I would buy HoT, heck I would even pay a monthly fee if the game was really on the right track.

I have hopes from the new vigor of the dev team. They seem to listen the players, fix the necessary bugs and care about the professions seperately. I hope they would fix the problems “before” they think about another expansion, unlike the last mentality.

ps: Making an expansion and not fixing the bugs, correcting the problems was the biggest thing that Anet did to lose its player database. I have lost 17 friends at that moment, all left the game. Including my wife.