Guild Wars 2

I wrote up this bloody long reply to Devon in that “Lost all faith in the devs thread” and wanted to still post it anyways regardless of the fact that that thread got deleted and this will most likely get deleted as well. Because I feel that an honest answer would help put a lot of my personal thoughts and feelings to rest.

DevonCarver.5370:

Amins.3710:

On top of that, this upcoming “WvW – new content patch” that was revealed was ~EXTREMELY~ disappointing….

I’m quite curious what you are talking about here? The 9/3 build has essentially no WvW updates because we’ve been focusing on completing the content that Hugh previewed in the Live stream. That content is very close to coming out, it was not ready for this upcoming build, but it will be shortly thereafter. I’ve refrained from making large content delivery promises because we know that we don’t have those incoming in the next build. There are some very large changes to WvW in bound, but as with everything, see the memes of me, I pretty much only ever say soon or as soon as possible.

If you want to be disappointed with WvW, that is certainly your prerogative and there is no way we could ever please all the people with the direction we are and have been headed, but at least be disappointed with the reality of what we are trying to do and not with some made up set of promises that we haven’t made. It’s hard enough to meet the lofty expectations we set for ourselves without being held to an arbitrary standard of the wishes of individuals. Believe me when I say we care deeply about WvW and we will continue to work on it with all the passion that we have. It’s my hope, and the hope of everyone on our team, that we will prove that with the updates we have coming in the near future.

DevonCarver.5370:

Amins.3710:

I mean just what I said… the upcoming new WvW content patch.

This patch you’re putting out on 9/3 is not a WvW Content Patch, so this is not the “upcoming WvW Content Patch” that was revealed to us (IE, during the livestream).

Then I politely request you wait until you have any idea what is in that patch before you complain about it. Or if you prefer, I can name some other future dates that you should start complaining about what isn’t in those builds.

Devon, while some of the posters here and elsewhere may be acting somewhat rude and even hysterical I do hope you can at least partially empathize and understand these positions and what has lead to them.

It has been a year since launch. A full year. As players we can only really react to what we see or don’t see and try to extrapolate from that experience. We do not share your foreknowledge of what is on the drawing boards, nor the hurdles involved with bringing them to fruition, nor the limits of the design specs and resource allocation you and your team must work within.

May I tell you what I have seen this past year? I saw a game launch with extreme ease of access to the style of RvR gameplay I have craved and loved for near a decade. A game that for all its flaws; like culling, AoE caps, extreme zerg encouragement, queues, some ludicrously unbalanced builds; overall had a bright outlook. It was nowhere near as confining and infuriating as WoW, RIFT, or SWTOR, and was a lot more active than WAR, Planetside 1, or DAoC.

It was such a breath of fresh air to see how exceptionally easy to gain access to a wide variety of stat upgrades and how alt friendly the game was with its total lack of gear and other advantages locked away behind dull content I had no stomach for or behind tedious rank and currency grinds. I have 9 bloody character slots and 6 80s because the game allowed me that liberty. All I have ever wanted in an RvR game to do is log in, kill people with 4-9 of my friends, and not be severely disadvantaged because of being unwilling to submit to the thought numbing grind of the ‘end game.’ And you guys delivered that pretty well I feel. Though admittedly most of my friends disagreed and left after 2 months. I just made new friends and played with them instead

However, one year hence, I struggle to see why I should care anymore. In a year, what has Arenanet done to my gaming experience? You removed culling, which is obviously a point in your favor, but between Ascended gear and the character bound WEXP system most what has happened is that my experience had degraded.

[cont]

The game of easy access and ‘have fun the way you like’ I was sold, bought, and played last year is no more. Now it is bound within the chains of throttled, time intensive gear acquisition and ‘play the game the way we want you to’ that I so despised in the games that I have played before.

You may disagree with that characterization, in fact I imagine you will, but I cannot think of anything else to label it. When I did the math a few weeks ago I discovered that in order to get a full set of Ascended (rings, accessories, back piece, and necklace) it would require a modestly active PvE player around 1 month and ~11g to do so, but to acquire that same set as a pure WvW player who is uninterested in doing Guild Missions and the like it would require 150 days, nearly 4 months, and well over 100g. How else can I possibly express the notion that requiring almost 4 times as much time commitment and approx 10 times the resource consumption irritates something very fundamental in my soul?

And even more recently you, personally, have dashed all hopes of two other bugaboos getting addressed ever: account bound WEXP and the 5 man AoE cap.

Given all of that knowledge; that many of what I felt were among the games best features have been vastly limited, the dismissal of fixing two major balance issues that deeply effect the way I play, and the utter lack of anything, apart from the aforementioned culling fix, that positively effects my gameplay. I have to ask you: can you conjure up any reason for myself and my ilk to stay or hope that whatever your team has planned will meaningfully improve our gameplay?