Guild Wars 2

Caeledh.5437:

Argon.1563:

Neither of you are right.

No I’m pretty sure Bruno is right.

If it does work like that though then Revenants would have no real build options at all beyond weapon and legend. Your bar would literally just be weapon on the left and legend on the right. It defeats the entire point of having slotted skills.

Admittedly it would make Revs incredibly easy to balance in comparison to the other professions… maybe that could be why. :/

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Conncept.7638:

There is one thing still very confusing to me about this blog post.

It sounds like the Revenant may get less customization than other classes. As per usual your first five skills are determined by your weapon, but unlike other classes they said your second five skills are determined by your legend. Are they determined only by your legend? As in, you pick a legend and get the five skills that come with it? Or will there be a selectable loadout of skills within each legend? And if so how many per legend?

This is what concerns me too. I’m fine by having only weapon skills being restricted to a predetermined set, but your weapon skills AND your heal/utility/elite skill? Seems like there is very little build variety that way.

It looks to me like it functions exactly the same as how Elementalist attunements affect some of their utilities. In other words the Revenant has x number of skills to slot and each skill has one of x number of different effects based on which stance you’re in. Essentially each utility, heal and elite will have a core effect and purpose and the stance will give it a twist to suit that legend.

Take that skill that turns the Revenant into an avatar of Malyx for example (obvious Dervish reference there). I’m expecting that skill to have a similar effect in every stance, turning you into an avatar of that legend and granting you some maintained buff specific to whichever stance you’re in when you use it.

To me this would be the most logical way to implement it. Build variety would be the same as every other profession in the game but Revenants will have twice as many considerations to make since every slotted heal, utility and elite actually counts for two skills.

Mike Lewis:

The number of bots reported every hour worldwide has dropped from more than 2,000 in October to a much healthier 20 as of this writing..

I had to laugh at this in the article. The reports have dropped because a lot of people have left the game since then and everyone else gave up reporting them. It doesn’t say anything about how effective their bot culling actually is.

I swear I have never seen any dev studio spin stats like Anet does. We have to put up with it enough from politicians…

Ojimaru.8970:

Needless to say, higher level maps from 70-80 need to have new content and and better drops added to bring players back to them.

Better drops to counteract better drops? How is that a good idea?

Game going downhill because the old higher level zones are less populated? Why won’t these new players go for the newer content? Did WoW tank because Onyxia and Karazhan became irrelevant?

Strawmen in fields only scare crows.

Are you seriously trying to compare WoW’s obsolete raids with an open world zone?

Colin Johanson

The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

Just quoting this again to make sure the OP gets the message that he’s wrong. This statement explicitly states that the rarest items (ascended) are not more powerful than other items (yes, they are).

I’m sure you could come up with some way to deliberately misread it to suggest they didn’t say that but at that point you’re being willfully ignorant.

They knew the people reading this stuff were mostly GW1 fans and what they were describing was the GW1 gear system. You could take those words and apply them to GW1 perfectly. They knew full well that everyone would read it as the game having a gear plateau with horizontal progression like GW1. There were countless discussions about this on forums, including the official forums during beta, and not once did any dev correct anyone.

I honestly feel sorry for you defending ANet at this point. Regardless of what you actually think of the changes are you really so blind as to not see this for the obvious deception that it is?

Tachenon.5270:

If this has been asked and answered I apologize, I haven’t seen it, but was there was any mention of Ascended Gear and/or vertical progression before the game was released? I mean something specific that would have let people know without a doubt that another tier of gear and/or vertical progression was coming, and that it was part of the overall plan all along? Are there any quotes out there from before launch stating this?

No there wasn’t. They made it pretty clear pre-launch that the game’s entire progression model was built around aesthetics instead of stats. Everything that’s being said in the AMA is PR spin, that’s why Chris has to keep disappearing between each answer- so the PR team can edit his responses.

He keeps pointing out that the stat increases are on a shallow curve as if to imply they don’t matter. If they plan to keep making incremental stat increases (like he claims they do) then the size of the increments is irrelevant. Eventually the gap between a hardcore player and a new/casual player will be large enough that they won’t ever be able to catch up. That’s completely ignoring the fact that new content is inevitably going to be balanced around the higher end of the spectrum meaning that these ‘shallow’ increases will gate content regardless.

These answers are full of so much PR spin it’s quite honestly insulting.

Crysto.7089:

ANet has also made it clear that there will be many ways to get Ascended gear other than through Fractals. An informed player would not feel forced to do FotM unless that person was also impatient.

ANet also made it clear that ascended items would never exist in the first place. I don’t think many people give much value to anything ANet says at this point…

Kiviar.7063:

Its natural for long term games to lose population like this. I bet if you went and look at WoW’s xfire profile it would have a similar drop since the last expansion came out.

If you take a look at NCsoft’s stock over the last year, things are not looking super happy fantastic however. I expect a lot of pressure is going to be put on the Anet devs to produce profits as quickly as possible to stop their 4th quarter from being a total disaster.

Gnerally speaking when a gaming publisher wants a quick profit it means only bad things for whatever games they have a hand in. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that was the entire motivation behind the latest changes as well.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

There are other things besides FotM (Fractals of the Mist). People have this mentality that MMORPG’s are all about having the best gear. There are other things that players can do in GW2:

1) Help other players
2) Complete all achievements
3) Finish all Jumping puzzles
4) Obtain lv400 in all crafting disciplines
5) Craft unique items using mystif forge
6) Level up all character types
7) Join a guild and beat all dungeons pathways
8) Fill all crafting slots with 250 items
9) Get all mini pets
10) Have fun!

The point is people pay too much attention to getting the best gear, which Anet has provided via FotM and Ascended gear – but you are still not happy about it because it requires grinding/commitment.

Most of the stuff on your list there would also require ‘grinding and commitment’ so that’s a pretty weak arguement.

When better gear is made available it is optional in the same way that levelling is optional. You don’t technically have to do it but if you want to have full access to the game’s content you will eventually be required to. The blogs by ANet staff have made it clear that they are planning new content based around ascended gear. That means if ascended gear is ‘optional’ to you then you’re not going to see very much of that new content.

Most players understand this, which is why they feel forced to run fractals. If you genuinely don’t care then good for you, but don’t deride other players for being frustrated about having to do content they don’t enjoy just to keep up with future releases (a situation this game was promised never to have).

juiceman.2870:

Lets say there is no vertical progression. What then is the end game that keeps people playing? Without any better gear or items assuming people are wearing cool looking items what reason do they have to actually log in for end game?

Horizontal progression ala GW1. This included:

*weapon and armour skins
*titles
*reputation grinds
*skill unlocks
*heroes

There are probably a lot more but I can’t list them all right now. The trouble is GW2 was supposed to be built on horizontal progression but the only thing it really offered from that list was skins. Titles can’t be clearly displayed in this game so they have no prestige value. You generally unlocked all your skills before the cap whereas in GW1 you still had HUNDREDS of skills to track down in unique locations after the cap. It probably didn’t help that the story wasn’t at all engaging and no forms of housing made it in for launch.

Horizontal progression is all about having things to do that offer progression through variety rather than statistical improvement. A GW1 monk with 8 skills could stand up to a monk with 400+, he just had fewer build options. GW2 lost all of that somehow.

It’s probably worth noting that your use of the term ‘end game’ suggests you likely were never the target audience to begin with though.

nachtnebel.9168:

The Lost Shore patch divided the community and a lot of players are pissed cause Arena Net broke a very important promise. In addition, you now have to spend a lot of your time sitting in Lion’s Arch and spamming “lfg/lfm” if you want to do the new dungeon, which is the only way to get the best in slot gear. You can’t level your twinks if you are wasting your time spamming stupid text messages.

This basically.

ANet (or more likely NC Soft/Nexon) introduced a gear treadmill to appeal to those types of players who were leaving the game in droves (why did they even buy it?). The whole thing has backfired though as it’s left the loyal fans betrayed and the grinders are just going back to their previous games because they already do gear treadmills better.

ANet had a niche audience with this game by offering a horizontal progression system. Someone got greedy though, made some changes, and now the game offers nothing unique. Most people have moved on already…

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

Asglarek.8976:

Bvhjdbvkjf.1987:

Iruwen.3164:

Alastar.2863:

if you know how to maneuver around or an opponent and dodge or know how to build up your class to counter theirs then the gear really doesn’t matter as much.

What if the other player also knows how to play his class? People are always assuming you’re playing against weaker classes or clueless players when it comes to this. Losing against an opponent in WvW will always have that “was he actually better or was it only his gear” feeling in the future (assuming ascended gear won’t be as easy to get as exotics).

The gear is going to give them what… 45 extra points towards his overall stats? If the battle isn’t won by a landslide, then the loser should just assume there was a way to win and that they should find it for next time.

Wondering if it’s gear that made someone else win is an excuse for people to continue not being the best player of their class… one should always strive for better and if you think that’s not possible then there should be nothing to worry about.

Because if you did your best and can’t think of any improvement and still lost, the devs have yet to finish balancing this game and it’s more likely their fault than any gear difference.

if everyone starts out with a baseline of 100 or a 1000 total stat points 45 more is a huge difference maker whether its 50% or 10% matters not the difference is the same.

Heres an example simplified so even a laymen can understand. You take 2 players same class , same trait distribution, same everything cept gear put one in full exotic and put other in ascended now simultaneously hit each other using same attack the person with the higher power, crit and health pool will always last longer no if’s and or but’s.

Standing still sure… but I’ve performed better than people with a full set of exotics when all I had was masterwork – and now that I have a full set of exotics I’ll still perform better than people with a full set of ascended. Trait distribution doesn’t matter – this game isn’t about automatically generated die rolls. If you want to be good at your profession you have to earn it not calculate it and that is where you will constantly fail if you choose to not get better.

‘performed better’ implies you were more skilled when the guy you are replying to is being quite specific that both have the same skill. I don’t know why you’re talking in circles because he’s right, in a situation where everything else is equal even a minor stat increase WILL decide between a win or a loss. There is really no discussion to be had about it. If skill and build are equal then stats are the only thing left to decide the fight.

El Hefe.2814:

tigirius.9014:

Well for one thing, if you were paying attention you would know that the complaints weren’t about grinding, they are all about forcing a single gameplay style, making crafting obsolete and useless, making all the material that we need to craft even the infused runes drop solely in a single dungeon, and breaking their word (manifesto).

GW2 players don’t mind the grind as evidenced by the large number of people buying this game to farm mats to craft, farm karma to buy gear. People don’t mind running dungeons as an OPTION either. It’s when it’s the ONLY option that it becomes a problem.

That’s the issue. Not that they added a new tier (because there was a gap).

the content is optional. no one is forcing anything. if you don’t want to do it, don’t. they’ve also stated that there will be other ways to obtain the gear. just do what you find fun. the gear doesn’t matter. it’s not required.

Horizontal progression is optional, vertical is not. If you refuse to follow the vertical progression of the game you will eventually be unable to play new content due to power creep. This has happened in EVERY MMO that has ever released with a gear based progression system.

What you’re suggesting is like sitting in your back garden drinking tea during the next world war. If you just do what you find fun and ignore what everyone else is doing it won’t affect you right? Sure…

The massive decline in zone populations other than LA has shown that this patch has had a massive impact across the game. Even if you don’t do fractals, everyone else is, and that’s fewer people for you to play with.

juiceman.2870:

What exactly does an end game over years of time look like without any kind of gear or vertical progression of items or stats like say wow does? I mean how do you keep players playing the game without any kind of gear progression or items or anything? End game is a different ball game then the journey to get there even if lower zones scale why would anyone bother?
Maybe arena net thought maybe gear treadmill is the best way to do an end game since most casual players will get bored and quit regardless so end game gives more serious players a point to keep playing? I dont know but I would hear suggestions on an end game with no item progression like how you do that.

If you played GW1 you would know the answer to that question. Go look it up.

I haven’t played in a week. The recent changes combined with the countless other issues I’d previously been willing to overlook have just pushed the game over the edge for me.

I’m still following the game to see if they wise up and back down about these changes but I’m not hopeful.

RhysSebastian.7651:

This isn’t a sandbox MMO, where you can go outside and do wtf you want. Its a themepark game with a progression system. If you want sandbox play go play Eve online, tibia, or darkfall.

Sigh, you’re example of the very people that caused ANet to think this catastrophe was warranted.

Guess what? ANet explicitly advertised this game as NOT having a progression system. Most of the people at launch bought this game specifically for that. It was what made this game unique and allowed it to coexist in the MMO market because it wasn’t directly competing with WoW and its clones.

Now look at it? The people that wanted a game with no stat progression are leaving in droves, and many of those favouring the change are quickly realising that WoW still does it better. This change has led the game from appealing to a niche audience to appealing to very few people at all.

Since this patch GW2 actually has no unique selling point.

Leonard.2867:

Ruby Orichalcum Ring of the Beserker
+67 Power
+48 Precision
+3% Critical Damage
w/ Exuisite Ruby Jewel
+ 25Power
+ 3 Critical Damage
+ 15 Precision

Total:
+92 Power
+63 Precision
+6% Critical Damage

vs.

Vine of the Pale Tree (Ascended Ring)
+103 Power
+50 Precision
+8% Critical Damage
+18 Vitality
-Unused Defensive Infusion Slot

Posted this on wrong thread. Anyways, I don’t know about you guys but even a +2% Critical Damage and 180 Health is a HUGE increase.

Don’t forget stats like power, crit chance and crit damage have a compounded effect as well. That’s not just +2% crit damage extra because you’re critting more often and it’s scaling up from a higher base damage.

DegoLocc.5976:

Columba.9730:

DegoLocc.5976:

Columba.9730:

DegoLocc.5976:

Columba.9730:

DegoLocc.5976:

Columba.9730:

Please make your voice heard. flood all online buying sites with comments and reviews. If you don’t like this patch, say so. If they don’t sell anything over the holidays, someone will get fired and the direction will change.

Nice logic, lol.

Shame on you for wishing for someone to loose their job in this economy because of your personal “entitlement”.

Lol, business isn’t a charity, son. If you mess up, you deserve to lose your job so that the rest of the employees can keep theirs.

So you’re saying you didn’t get your 60 bucks worth of content and hours of playtime?

Sorry about your luck.

Also I am 31, so unless your in your 50’s you can refrain from calling me “son”. It’s insulting and snide.

What does me getting my $60 worth have to do with an incompetent wrecking this game? My apologies. Your logic and language implied a much younger age.

My language?! Look at my posting history, and look at yours. Who is the one who is immature? Who is speaking rationally, and who is raging like a child who isn’t getting his way?

Now that we have that straightened out. On to your point. You implied everyone should go make rage posts on consumer review sites, in hopes that hard working people at Anet lose their jobs.

My point back to you was that you got your moneys worth, what do you have to complain about that is valid enough to cost someone their job.

If you cannot look at what you have said and see the problem or issue with that, then there isn’t much hope for you as a human being.

Best of Luck!

So let incompetent people keep working so that the entire business goes under. Oh THAT makes a TON of sense. No, I don’t think that people who wreck a business should remain employed at said business. That’s rational. Besides, the world needs ditch diggers too.

Show me financial evidence that they “wrecked their game”. Or that GW2 is “going under”.

Or are you basing your entire argument on your personal opinion? If so, then many lulz.

See you six months from now, when GW2 is trucking along just fine. Still making money. Not missing entitled players like yourself one bit.

Like I said, best of luck with life, and growing up.

If you still want that proof they’ve wrecked the game go look up NC Soft’s stock… they’ve been falling for a while but they took a nose dive after this patch was announced.

Garo.5304:

Sort of an irony is that Anet would of never existed if WoW didn’t. Anet started out as a culmination of blizzard and blizzard north, possibly from seeing WoW in the making and abandoning ship. I’ll never know, however I noticed from a web graph it(Anet)started about the time WoW was near the end of development. Is there a correlation there? I guess only the people who have been with Anet from the start could tell the tale.

Either way though, if WoW never happened. The MMO world would be a better place. It’s honestly nothing special, it was a right place right time and already had large fanbase from the RTS series.

I actually think the original ANet team evolved from the Diablo team at Blizzard, not the WoW team. The original GW1 plays a lot more like Diablo than a normal MMO as well.

Girjon.3560:

I do not agree with you.
IF you dont like events, simply dont play gw2. Its a normal thing for GW to have winter event and snow fights in major cities, candy farm etc. I do want snowman and want some a’la haloween event again.

I’d suggest you read the OP before posting… they’re not requesting the removal of events…

Masterpyro.4310:

I don’t understand what peoples problem is about a “gear grind”. After max level, full exotics, what do you expect to do? A gear ladder is simply the only way they can continually reward players to keep playing. The gaming industry has conditioned gamers over the years to expect reward for doing a task, so this is what it comes to. Gear ladder is the only option, don’t like it, why the hell are you still playing?

In the case of ascended gear however, this argument is even less valid as the gear ONLY pertains to the fractals dungeon. Agony doesn’t do anything outside of fractals. Ascended Gear stats are therefore equal to Exotics with a gem on them.

As for gear in WvW, by completely replacing the gear system like sPvP, that leaves pvpers no reason to play any pve content ever. You should be able to kitten on people if you spent more time getting better than them, thats just how things work. Saying everyone should be on equal grounds is like saying a newly hired 9-5 worker should get the same salary as the CEO on day 1. Earn your stripes.

People’s problem with gear grind is that ANet explicitly stated pre-release that they would never do gear grind.

Once people hit max stats they were supposed to spend their time working towards new skins, such as the legendaries. This is how GW1 worked and it was successful enough to spawn this sequel, so don’t try to imply stat progression is required because it’s already been proven false.

(By the way have you even SEEN an ascended item? The stats on them are MUCH more powerful than exotics, and the gem with agony resistance has other additional stats on it too).

People like you, saying we NEED stat progression, are the entire reason they’ve implemented this and it’s corrupted the very core of the design philosophy this game was built on. What’s disgustingly ironic is that despite them doing this to try to draw back the WoW crowd, all this will do is scare off the loyal GW1 players because there are plenty of other games that offer end-game gear progression that is many many times better.

Sabo.1485:

In my opinion World of Warcraft is one of the worst things that has ever happened to MMOs or to computer gaming in general. Blizzard somehow managed to get extremely lucky and hit paydirt, and every developer on earth noticed and only saw dollar signs. Blizzard put greed into MMO development and pretty much stifled any creativity or thinking outside the box that might have happened over the last several years. I’d rather be playing a game in a moderately successful niche genre that I really enjoy, than playing a game in a massively successful money machine that I can barely get into.

This basically.

WoW showed investors how much money there was in the MMO industry and those investors have been interfering with development ever since. I think we can all name a whole slew of MMO that were promising in early development then gradually either changed to be more like WoW or were forced out the door too early due to investor schedules.

The boom of the MMO industry has done nothing but hold it back.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

It is Anet’s apostasy that has sucked the fun out of the game. There’s no cure for that, whatever they do or don’t do in future.

It’s not that which makes me feel dirty, and I’m not even really convinced ArenaNet is a swindling company. What makes me feel dirty is enjoying playing the game when I’m clearly doing it wrong.

I don’t think ANet is a swindling company at all in reality. There’s a nice post over on MMORPG.com that highlights a number of little references in the latest patch to the effect that Nexon has taken over. Clearly at least some of the staff at ANet are not happy with what they’re being forced to do…

Champions need to drop a chest and the lvl 80 ones should have a guaranteed rare at least. Chest should only be able to be opened once a day per account. Done.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Columba.9730:

I do. most games aren’t retired…and if they are too thick headed to listen, then perhaps the game should be closed.

It’s not the developers you have to worry about, it’s the funding behind the developers. Investors can be very fickle these days. It won’t matter if they got the message, if all the negative buzz created scares off the funding. If you hit them in the wallet, the wallet makes the decision, not the head.

To be honest it would be for the benefit of the entire MMO genre for this to scare Nexon so bad they don’t invest in any MMOs again. It’d even let me feel that GW2’s death wasn’t in vain if Nexon got burned bad enough by it.

The industry as a whole would have a LOT more variety if the corporate suits weren’t interfering with everything to maximise profits via the ‘WoW clone’ path.

Hsinimod.5784:

Alberel Leonhart.9640:

Martin Kerstein:

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

The part I’ve highlighted in bold there doesn’t make sense. Martin claims they will not add new tiers of gear to create a treadmill, but this is really just clever use of language.

The treadmill effect is the result of incremental increases to the highest possible stats on a regular basis, causing players to be endlessly chasing better gear to remain equal to the content. Now they might not be adding a full tier every 3 months, but by adding ‘the remaining ascended and legendary items’ over time they ARE increasing the highest possible stats every few months.

Martin has denied adding new tiers yet the gradual release of ascended gear over time functions exactly the same as new tiers would. If they added 2 new pieces of ascended gear every few months now, the majority of players will be chasing that gear endlessly. That is a treadmill.

sigh

They only have back items and rings and such right now. They are adding the missing items of armor. Head, shoulders, chest, etc.

It isn’t a new tier. It is giving us the missing parts. No conspiracy about it.

Please re-read my post. I KNOW they are adding the remaining pieces, the gradual release of the remaining pieces creates the treadmill. By releasing them slowly like this it means players will always be chasing an ascended piece for each slot as it is released. We won’t have a gear plateau at all now until all the ascended gear has been released and all the infusion upgrades have been released. If we’re don’t have a plateau then we have a treadmill.

I agree actually, we need to see some of the events hosted in other racial capitals.

If I’m honest though I’d rather they just cancel all events and get everyone working on fixing bugs and broken content first.

Iina.7035:

One of the bigger things for me is the lack of a skill pool, in GW1 we had hundreds of skills to mess around with for each profession, then secondary profs to make it that much more interesting, it let you cater your class to your play style. Frankly it made things interesting just because of stuff you could do with all these different ability’s for example the 55 monk.

It doesn’t help that most of the GW2 professions currently have a slew of bugged and broken skills leaving them with very few build options.

Strang.8170:

TWMagimay.9057:

Caffynated.5713:

SoR should scale with casting time the way it did with energy cost in GW1.

Fast casts (anything 1/2 second or less) would still heal for ~200 with no +healing, the way they do now, but longer casts would scale proportionally to their cast time.

I’d much rather have it work on hit instead of cast. Would make more sense since ele is an aoe-based class after all…

Would be nightmare to balance.

Thives have a signet identical to SoR that works on hit instead… so the precedent is already there. The ele one is literally just an inferior version of the thief signet…

Helterskelter.8490:

They’re not adding a new tier, they’re adding to one. I don’t think anyone will complain against that.

New legendaries? Sure.
New ascended? Sure, just lower the kitten prices.

My point was that adding to a tier over time functions exactly the same as adding several new ones over time. The stat jump isn’t as drastic but the players are still left running the treadmill for better stats.

A treadmill is a treadmill regardless of how big the number differences are…

Martin Kerstein:

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

The part I’ve highlighted in bold there doesn’t make sense. Martin claims they will not add new tiers of gear to create a treadmill, but this is really just clever use of language.

The treadmill effect is the result of incremental increases to the highest possible stats on a regular basis, causing players to be endlessly chasing better gear to remain equal to the content. Now they might not be adding a full tier every 3 months, but by adding ‘the remaining ascended and legendary items’ over time they ARE increasing the highest possible stats every few months.

Martin has denied adding new tiers yet the gradual release of ascended gear over time functions exactly the same as new tiers would. If they added 2 new pieces of ascended gear every few months now, the majority of players will be chasing that gear endlessly. That is a treadmill.

AcidicVision.5498:

azizul.8469:

AcidicVision.5498:

azizul.8469:

manifesto u-turn. we have been lied to.

Which part?

Here is a link for you to refresh yourself…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E

Give me a quote and a time where they did this supposed u-turn and how it could have never ever applied before the Lost shores update.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Yes-or-No-Manifesto-Represents-the-Game

Right. As I thought. There was no u-turn. The only thing that could even remotely apply was about grind. And there was grind from day one. For Karma, or mats for exotics, or gold for exotics, or for legendaries, or dungeon tokens.

This patch was no HUGE departure from the manifesto and what we already had. So just give it up already.

The only real grind prior to this patch was for legendaries. The manifesto stated the only thing you should grind for is aesthetics. Guess what? Legendaries were purely aesthetic!

So, now we have ascended gear… this stuff takes almost as much effort as a legendary to get but it’s not just aesthetic. There are rather sizable stat increases compared to exotics. So, guess what? The manifesto no longer holds.

So yeah, please, just give it up already.

HogWash.3928:

Hi all!! Have not played in a few and was wondering how the game was? Have they fixed the necro?

Ignoring the fact that they’ve done a 180 on their manifesto and turned the game into a gear grind, they also haven’t fixed the necro. In fact, despite the game being out for three months they still haven’t done much to fix any of the professions at all. They’re all in pretty much the same state barring one or two minor fixes (and a slew of non-sensical nerfs).

Stormleaf.1769:

etiolate.9185:

Stormleaf.1769:

Why should ArenaNet even say anything if everyone is going to call every single thing they ever post a lie or PR spin or whatever, regardless of what they say? This is exactly what everyone is doing to them. Get over yourselves, people. Show a little respect and rationality.

They need a straight yes or no to the question of whether or not there will be new stat-increased tiers of gear beyond between now and the next expansion. If it’s a yes then people will leave. If it’s a no then the whole outrage will die down.

They aren’t answering that question and its only making people more worried.

Pretty sure “we’re not making a gear treadmill” completely answers that question.

The thing is that exact line is already known to be a lie. The fact that infusions have been confirmed to have higher rarities to be released later means that they DO intend to add a gear treadmill.

They’ve just been incredibly underhanded about it by trying to disguise the new tiers as item upgrades instead of actual pieces of gear.

Derk.3189:

Dude they want you to spend your money to get new bank slots.

This pretty much.

Judging by the new direction of the game it would be wise to assume ANet has zero intention of offering any conveniences to players for free now. I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon see ‘material storage upgrades’ to unlock material storage for each individual material at a price of a few hundred gems.

The survey was sorely missing a reference to the new item rarity as well. You’d think given the 11k thread that they might be curious about that one…

I too had a LOT to say in the ‘other’ boxes.

GregT.4702:

IomegadriveOne.5291:

“Do you believe players should be immensely rewarded for being able to do the one time event?”.

This was not a relevant question to me. Players get rewarded for doing special things. Whether you’re in a high end guild with a regular dungeon schedule, or just looking to see the special events, excelling at an MMO means sometimes you have to show up at inconvenient times. And it’s appropriate that if you show up, there should be rewards. The two definining characteristics of an MMO are that it’s persistent and it’s social; both persistence and social imply that it doesn’t run to what might happen to be your ideal schedule. You deliberately asked for that when you chose to play an MMO instead of some other style of game.

Many single player games have great save-state editors where you can dispense yourself whatever rewards you feel you deserve at a time convenient to you. This may be the experience you’re looking for – have you tried them?

How exactly did you ‘excel’ by being able to play at a certain time? That’s not excelling, that’s just being lucky that the time was convenient for you. That’s also being lucky that you didn’t get disconnected, and then again lucky that the chest gave you anything useful.

The problem here is not that some people got rare drops and everyone else is jealous. That happens everywhere in the game so it’s nothing new. The problem here is that the chest had a MUCH higher chance of dropping precursors given the way prices just crashed across the TP, and that much higher chance only occurred once.

Elsewhere in the game if you get unlucky you can try again. In this case you couldn’t. Let’s not even get into the issue of the exploiters who were camping the chest with all their alts and then logging in and out on each character to loot it multiple times.

The reward from this event was insanely disproportionate, and the way the TP has crashed as a result is all the proof you need.

Mastruq.2463:

Loot is random anyway, dont act like you would have gotten a 60 gold item just for being on the other character. Read this very forum to hear plenty of 80s whine just as loud about not winning a lottery. Entitlement is out in full force tonight.

I think you need to look up what entitlement means.

Everyone here put in the same effort on that event, yet some people were rewarded with items worth a few silver whilst some got two precursors totalling several hundred gold or more! That is an insanely huge difference in reward given that everyone did exactly the same thing to get it.

Mind telling everyone what you got from the chest? Most of the people telling everyone to stop whining are only doing so because they made a nice profit from this.

I hope ANet realises a lot of people (myself included) didn’t even bother logging in for this stage of the event because the lag had made the previous two phases unplayable, and there were no rewards given.

ANet should have made it known what was at stake with this final phase if nothing else. Though I agree they shouldn’t have even put precursors in the chests like this. They need to give EVERYONE a chance to get these, not just the lucky few that survived the lag and disconnects.

DegoLocc.5976:

I know EXACTLY what you’re saying, but IF you thought anet was gonna do away with end game progession, you bought into the hype and I don’t feel bad for you.

Hype is based on word of mouth and a marketing campaign. This was not.

ANet had successfully done away with end game progression in GW1. The stat cap never increased, EVER, in the lifetime of the game. The fact that the sequel exists shows that it was successful.

They advertised this game would use the same model as GW1 in that regard. Now they’ve changed that and it’s no longer true. That isn’t buying into hype, that is a genuine outright lie.

Working skills and traits.

Seriously, ANet needs to divert all their resources to just fixing the professions before they add anything else to expand endgame.

I’ve never understood why devs like ANet don’t communicate with their players.

Why can’t they tell us their plans?

Why can’t they explain their vision for a profession and the direction they want to take them?

Why do they outright refuse to acknowledge major community concerns?
(Except for rangers, apparently Jon Peters can communicate with rangers, but no one else, what gives?)

They really need to take a look at the Square-Enix team currently working on FFXIV. The game’s current producer/director (Yoshi) who took over from Tanaka post-launch has shown the best communication with the playerbase of any MMO I’ve seen. He posts monthly letters explaining all of their future plans (even with a project timeline). He discusses issues openly with the community. And he actively responds to player feedback. The game might not have gotten off to a great start but Yoshi’s communication with the community has been enough to keep their trust and keep their faith.

ANet really needs to start doing the same as a LOT of players are starting to get frustrated at being ignored.

Ganzo.5079:

i couldnt agree more, if ppl like us simply are enraged, and they dont care about something, they simply quit, and kitten off…

but its not this the case, we are here, we are screaming because we love this work, but this last patch have a really bitter taste…(some part are very very good, some others are forgettable) and the way the are handle the community and the related problems, are a lot bitter.

This being the free trial weekend also means any potential customers have all seen the game at its worst. They’re not just pushing away their loyal customers; they’re scaring off potential customers too…

Very well said. I agree with everything.

I think it should be said that the same flawed design principles are hurting profession balance as well. Professions are being balanced around bugged skills and traits which is only going to require further re-balancing once those bugs are fixed.

They really need to get their priorities straight and start communicating with their players.

Magiofdeath.2745:

This has been happening since launch. In large groups, I attack a veteran the entire time from full to 0 hp and don’t get exp or loot. This isn’t just happening to this content. It happens when there’s a lot of players doing the same event. I’ve had it happen to me in cursed shores during plinx event several times.

I believe to get credit there’s some kind of percentile of their HP that you have to deal in damage. The problem is that mobs only scale so high and once they stop scaling the number of players doing damage actually means nobody can do enough individual damage to reach this percentage.

This also heavily penalises anyone that stops to revive or otherwise support the group. I’m surprised ANet didn’t do their research on this one because enough other games have learnt their lesson on this kind of credit mechanism.

Your wife wasn’t having any lag? Does that mean only certain people are being affected for some reason?

Desolation has moved into Southsun Cove already but it’s not much better there. The lag is so bad tons of people are just dropping dead instantly because the clients can’t keep up with mob positions.

What’s more frustrating is constantly dying to invisible enemies because the client doesn’t update their location until they’ve already killed you.

They need to implement an option for the team to all vote to return to the last checkpoint if a downed player’s corpse is unreachable. A game should never put players in a situation where suiciding is beneficial (even if there are no penalties for doing so).

They should also make the chest unopenable if a team member is dead.

The mechanics of the fractals are a good start though. This is starting to force teams to actually play as a team for once. It’s much closer to the death and respawn mechanics of GW1.