Gift of Battle Feedback [merged]
I mean what’s the point of this discussion, really?
I got a precursor on the 13th, read the patch notes on the 14th and quit the game on the 15th. Haven’t really missed it since then. I mean seriously, when was the last time that Guild Wars was fun?
For a while I was following the thread, but before today it has been more than a week and this will probably be my last words on Guild Wars. And the only reason that I even had Guild Wars on my mind today was that a friend of mine really wanted to convince me to play with her. And I really went out of my way to get her not to.
I mean by now ANet has betrayed all their ideals and manifests. They have proven that their company is not capable of developing a working MMO any more (wildstar).
Their latest changes seem targetted at making Guild Wars more like wow… which puts customers in the situation of having to choose between the best wow or the second best wow. I mean Guild Wars is free, but that comparison is still not going to end well.
Guild Wars had its own niche. Yes, it was smaller than wow, but it was there for a reason (and honestly: I think that Guild Wars deserved a much bigger part of the cake, just people were used to the old way of doing things and demanded that).
As for new customers… just the name “Guild Wars” drove many people from the PvE-crowd away from ever trying it (which is especially unfortunate considering that Guild vs. Guild Wars are not even a real thing in the game).
The effects of this change were known to ANet when they implemented it. It is a simple change. Remove the trader, invalidate the currency. Is there even anything left to do with badges that is worth it? The only use I could find was getting racial skins for a bit less gold (which is pretty meh for a currency).
They had different options of implementing it. Like leaving the trader and starting to hand out a new currency in WvW. So everyone who earned badges prior to the update could still spend them on the same stuff. They just made the wallet so ugly to be able to implement new currencies easily. It would be the obvious solution. If they decided for a different path it is because they wanted it to be this way.
As ANet said in the past: WvW is the fastest growing part of the game (which at this point in time means that people there leave slower). They want to push PvEers into WvW to save their customer base. Personally I think it is the wrong way to go and will just result in PvE people leaving faster (like me) and the situation in WvW remaining much the same, but it is their game. And it is their choice.
And honestly… it’s a sinking ship. Megaserver just covered up dwindling numbers on many servers. No solution they come up with will make that any prettier than it is. I just wished they would have had a bit more grace about it.
I don’t even know why I wrote this…
So goodbye Guild Wars. It was a bad change, but it is not even the reason why I am leaving – just the incentive.
It is not even that there was newer/shinier competition. There is no competition out there that seems particularly interesting to me.
It just feels like you haven’t been there for a really long time. And that’s why I want to finally break up.
899 days (logins, not play time) is a long time if you think about it.
Don’t mind playing WvW, or PvP. I like the whole game so it’s no big deal to me if the devs change how you get the GoB. However, as a person who has put the game down, and picked it back up several times since 2012, the implementation sucks. Had a RL friend quit the game, because he had a char set up with MF gear, took a couple month break for work and family, then came back to have his MF gear stripped off of him, and told he has to farm luck now. He /uninstalled and never played again. Now I have another friend quit over the GoB thing. I would have kept one vendor, and anyone who had been absent since before the change would have gotten an in game letter stating what the change was, and told that the BoH could be taken to the vendor but only once per account. Everyone is happy, and your changes don’t have to wait to be rolled out.
It’s not that the reward track is a bad thing. It’s probably much faster than accumulating the badges via achievement chests. The way that the change was handled, sneaking it into a section of the patch notes that most PvE only players wouldn’t bother to read. And not giving a date or any other notification when the WvW reward track exited beta. It seems very odd.
The big problem, however, is the ill will generated in PvE players who feel cheated out of the Gift(s) of Battle that they could have bought if they had just been given decent notice. And the WvW players who don’t want to put up with all the PvE only players who are just in WvW to grind out the Gift of Battle reward track, pulling down their server in the process.
Being forced into WvWto re-earn something they already could have bought(had they been given proper notice) is IMO a poor introduction to WvW. Being forced to do something is not very good way to get someone to like that thing.
I don’t see point here. Anet is not likely to get a lot of happy WvW converts out of this. And it will likely cause strife between WvW players and PvE/PvP players that have been arm-twisted into playing WvW.
I notice that there are a lot of neat reward tracks in WvW, so that they don’t have to play PvE to earn certain things. Why can’t PvE and PvP get this same courtesy? Why does Anet think that coercing someone into playing another game mode is a good thing. Entice us, don’t coerce us.
Simple: Permanent provisioner. If you have full masteries and 30,000 badges ( like many of us), you could open the permanent provisioner, and buy one for 500 badges as always. If not, you still have 2 ways to obtain it. The permanent provisioner is supposed to be a badge sink anyway. So, put it there. Done deal.
Having to re-earn something you’ve already earned 60 (many) times over is just wrong. I bought three spares, when I realize now that I should’ve bought 10. It’s stupid. You keep taking away things we’ve already earned and it’s disgusting. (I.e. Guild stuff)
I can’t support this… You want to make legendaries, learn to play different game types… perfectly fine with that considering how royally obsolete as a currency Badges of Honor are.
I have something in excess of 30,000 Badges of Honor, all of them from WvW. Changes like this are something I might expect of a dodgy finance company in their terms and conditions. Badges of Honor are not ‘obsolete’ they have been devalued by being used as an EotM currency.
The other side of this is that people who want the Gift of Battle for making a legendary now AFK farm the track. That does not make a good situation.
So, people, if you can’t get in to WvW at peak times cause the border is full of people AFK farming for their legendaries you only have anet to blame.
And even if they don’t AFK farm they will still be WvW Newbies. Who’s guild wants to play wet nurse?
There were quite a few better ways to implement this change..
1) You could, and should, have given Proper Notice. Not one sentence buried in a ‘short story’ of a giant patch note, under a headline that won’t catch the eye of the majority of people it will effect, with no final date, and no information to those not invested in WvW (part of the poll) of when the ‘beta’ would even end.
2) Admit you effed up and return the vendor atleast for a limited time, allowing those that earned their rewards to collect them.
3) You could have introduced a new WvW currency that is not as “devalued” as the Badges of Honor are, and make that currency available ONLY in WvW (not in AP chests, not in Edge of the Mists etc). Keep the original Vendor permanently so that those that already earned the Badges and WvW ranks necessary to “unlock” the Gift of Battle can acquire their Gifts of Battle, since they’re the people feeling cheated by this change.
4) Actually make the Gift of Battle Item Reward Track worth doing.. Currently the only even remotely interesting reward, apart from the actual end reward, is a 90s Molten Lodestone and a couple of Transmutation Charges (but then I could get those a LOT faster by making a new toon and exploring its home city in 10 minutes..).
Atleast throw something even remotely tied to Legendary Crafting into this otherwise pointless crap track, so it feels worth it not doing the other tracks for a few hours..?
Game Designer
Hello everyone,
We will not be removing the Gift of Battle Reward Track or moving the Gift of Battle back to the vendor. However, we will be adding some mystic clovers and obsidian shards to the reward track to help it feel more Legendary themed. A release date for this change has not yet been decided.