Showing Posts For Alliestiria.8193:
During Halloween Mini pet packs were a big seller. Mostly because they were the only sure-thing Halloween item in there besides costumes. So during the next event those are taken from us and put in random chests. It’s transparent and disgusting.
To be honest, as soon as I looked at the gem store I thought this exact same thing. Even if this conspiracy stuff isn’t true and it’s people from Anet doing the cash shop still this is an extremely shady move. I feel like someone thought, “Hmmm, the weapon skins being in the chests didn’t make quite as much as I had predicted. I guess these players don’t like weapon skins that much. What sold well during Halloween then? OH! minis!” Then bam. Lotto chests for minis.
Well, I doubt a thread with us yelling yes or no will make Anet change their mind. However, I vote yes. As I posted earlier in the Patch Feedback thread, this is why:
This new dungeon also makes it even more painfully obvious that the current lfg system is a mess. Whenever you go into Lion’s Arch now the only thing you can see is people spamming in chat LFG and LFM. I’m not sure why the developers think the current lfg is sufficient, but it’s not. Something needs to be done. Ideally, A cross server lfg system (similar to WoWs) would be put in place. Originally I wasn’t even in support of this idea. I wanted just a server wide listing system. In that system a player (or group) could list themselves under a certain dungeon and then could put something in the comment section (i.e. lf fractal lvl 5). However, at this point I think that the population on servers is now going to be too spread out to support this. We need a system that will make it easier to find groups for all of the dungeons and their levels/ modes (and the older ones are already being run less frequently). Currently, it might be possible that only two people on your entire server want to run CM story mode. This is why the new lfg must span all servers. I now support it being similar to WoWs dungeon finder because with the lfg spanning all servers it’s going to be difficult for people to search through the long lists that this may create for some dungeons. This could potentially decrease the feeling of server communities and it could potentially decrease some player communication, but I honestly feel it is our best option now.
Alliestiria said: “Even if this new Ascended armor stays and is implemented exactly as is currently planned (adding more and more armor pieces each patch) this HAS to be the last tier of gear.”
Not good enough. What are they going to do, promise it’s the last? Already been down ANET’s “promise” road. The only way to begin restoring trust is take them out or flatten their stats.
I know, I know. I really do agree with you. I guess I was just so excited about this game that I’m not willing to give up yet. I’d like to give them one more chance. If a new tier of gear is introduced after ascended (promises or no promises) the bf and I will be quitting for good. I know it’s not as impact-full as it would be to quit a sub game… but yeah.
Edit: Also, thanks for taking time to read at least some of my posts! My feedback ended up being even longer than I had anticipated… and I’m not sure if I actually said everything I wanted to.
If ArenaNet is willing to do this big of a change(progression), what’s to stop it from adding more content then locking in people to the released product(basic) for free and then charging a fee for more?
See, this is the problem I have with ArenaNet being able to step over a line they said they’d not step over, you just don’t know what other lines they’ll cross. Even if they only retain 500k people, that’s 7.5 million dollars a month they could get by just “changing” their thoughts on free to play. Not entirely bad but it will split up the player base just like this gear progression will do.
Well, if they do go down that road then we will not be paying/playing.
Let’s be honest here folks, this game is buggy and they’re not fixing it. If this was a sub MMO I would have quit already. I find the game world captivating and the combat engaging but that’s not enough to keep me subbed to something. People are still having issues with the camera and the FOV. The game annoyingly selects new targets for me when I’m using my right mouse button to control the camera. My pets (ranger) like to stare off into space for no reason half the time (this game has the worst pet control options for a pet class of any MMO I’ve played so far). The culling issue is terrible. I still see broken events frequently. I’ve sent in tons of bug reports for the dialogue in my personal story because it frequently has typo’s or refers to things that my character never did (I guess they’re part of the other branches). The other day my camera got stuck on a catapult while I was doing personal story. I’d had to use the catapult as part of the story (risen attacking vigil headquarters for anyone who’s done it) and after I exited my camera was just stuck… I could move my character still and use spells. I could watch her running around from afar. I was able to complete the story step because I had my bf with me directing me (“Make her move forward some more, now to the right, Ok, the npc you need to talk to is right in front of you”), but if he hadn’t been I would have had to start the whole thing over.
There are also numerous quality of life improvements that need to be added for this game to be sub worthy such as; LFG, a build Saver (a full blown multi-spec tool, preferably), More storage space (yes, I have already maxed out my bank space and use alts as mules… it’s annoying), a better way to save my favorite item skins (I saw a wonderful post about that on the forums a little bit back), more crafting materials in the collectibles pane (what’s up with the new stuff not being in there?), a better way to store/ use minis, a better way to store the many different types of currency (why isn’t there just a currency tab in our hero pane that everything goes into?), player to player trading (every once in a while my things get lost in the mail), a more customizable UI would be nice, and I’m sure that’s not even all.
What really gets me is that I remember seeing them state that they are not working on any more features (which would be those quality of life things I just pointed out) and are instead focusing on developing new content. Fix your game first. Get it up to par with the sub based MMOs I’ve played and then add new content. I’m worried they are so content focused right now that they’re going to ignore the core issues with their game.
Sorry, that’s a bit off topic. Your comment just made me think of it. I know it’s not really feedback about this patch… but this patch has brought these concerns to mind too.
Alliestiria said: “Even if this new Ascended armor stays and is implemented exactly as is currently planned (adding more and more armor pieces each patch) this HAS to be the last tier of gear.”
Not good enough. What are they going to do, promise it’s the last? Already been down ANET’s “promise” road. The only way to begin restoring trust is take them out or flatten their stats.
I know, I know. I really do agree with you. I guess I was just so excited about this game that I’m not willing to give up yet. I’d like to give them one more chance. If a new tier of gear is introduced after ascended (promises or no promises) the bf and I will be quitting for good. I know it’s not as impact-full as it would be to quit a sub game… but yeah.
Edit: Also, thanks for taking time to read at least some of my posts! My feedback ended up being even longer than I had anticipated… and I’m not sure if I actually said everything I wanted to.
(edited by Alliestiria.8193)
(Part Five of Five)
Ascended Gear Cont.
What can be done to fix this mess?
Ideally- Flatten the stats. Ascended items are now the same as exotics, but with an additional slot for the (non-stated) infusions. Also, decrease the cost to make them. They shouldn’t be as time consuming and expensive as a legendary.
Less Ideal- Leave in the Ascended rings and back pieces, and maybe add accessories. Don’t add in any more. Ascended items are now specific only to those slots. This is how you must get your agony resist. They can still have inflated stats but the effect is mitigated because it’s not an entire set of armor. You still may want to decrease the cost a little bit, but it’s less important because the players won’t eventually be working toward an entire set of new armor.
What has to happen?
Even if this new Ascended armor stays and is implemented exactly as is currently planned (adding more and more armor pieces each patch) this HAS to be the last tier of gear. I’m worried that no one at Anet is willing to comment on whether or not they plan on implementing more tiers of gear after this. If there are more tiers then the entire manifesto (the ideas that sold me on the game) may as well be scrapped. These recent changes have upset me and my bf. We do not plan on asking for a refund because we still enjoy the game world and we believe we have gotten our moneys worth already, but we do not plan on supporting this company any more with gem store purchases or through the purchase of any planned future expansion packs unless something is fixed. We will reconsider this decision if we see that any of my above fixes are implemented, or if we see an official statement promising no more gear tiers. We will also not be buying any random chance chests from the gem store. If you want our patronage you need to make actual THINGS available not just the promise of a chance at a thing.
(Part Four of Five)
Fractal of the Mists Cont.
So what’s the band-aid? A dungeon finder. This new dungeon also makes it even more painfully obvious that the current lfg system is a mess. Whenever you go into Lion’s Arch now the only thing you can see is people spamming for chat LFG and LFM. I’m not sure why the developers think the current lfg is sufficient, but it’s not. Something needs to be done. Ideally, A cross server lfg system (similar to WoWs) would be put in place. Originally I wasn’t even in support of this idea. I wanted just a server wide listing system. In that system a player (or group) could list themselves under a certain dungeon and then could put something in the comment section (i.e. lf fractal lvl 5). However, at this point I think that the population on servers is now going to be too spread out to support this. We need a system that will make it easier to find groups for all of the dungeons and their levels/ modes (and the older ones are already being run less frequently). Currently, it might be possible that only two people on your entire server want to run CM story mode. This is why the new lfg must span all servers. I now support it being similar to WoWs dungeon finder because with the lfg spanning all servers it’s going to be difficult for people to search through the long lists that this may create for some dungeons. This could potentially decrease the feeling of server communities and it could potentially decrease some player communication, but I honestly feel it is our best option now.
Ascended Gear
I’ve got no pros for you on this category. Ascended gear was a terrible idea that I feel was not entirely thought through. It seems rushed and poorly implemented. I understand that you wanted a type of progression specific to your new fractal dungeon. I understand the whole agony resistance thing and it’s not really that bad of an idea. It would have definitely given us a sense of progression to get a new gear set with a resistance to help us stay alive in the fractals. The problem is the stats. I bought a game that was advertised to have no vertical progression or gear grind. This game now has vertical progression and gear grind. You should have just released an armor set with the same stats as exotics and an additional slot for an (non-stated) agony resistance infusion. Because you didn’t there is now the beginning of a gear treadmill and that isn’t even the worst part about these items.
Why are these items so material/ cost/ grind intensive to get? I’ve looked at estimates that predict we need at least 50 runs of the new fractals dungeons to make one… and that’s not even including the cost of the stack of t6 mats. That’s actually worse than the progression endgame centered MMOs I’ve played. Right now if I renewed my sub to WoW I could be level 90 and in full epics in a little over a month. They’ve added all sorts of things (i.e. raid finder) to help players get geared up quickly in that game. WoW is actually trying to reduce some of their gear grind… and now GW2 is trying to increase theirs. (Mind blowing?) It’s going to take me a long time to get these items on my main (if I even try) never mind getting them on an alt. In WoW I could easily gear my main character and then start working on an alt before the next content patch….
I remember reading that these new items were supposed to help alleviate the “legendary wall.” They have not done that. All they have done is create an “ascended wall,” in addition to the “legendary wall.” Now, instead of gearing up in full exotics and then deciding which legendary you want to work toward a player must start working toward ascended items first. The real kick in the teeth is that, unlike exotic items, a player can not work on ascended gear and a legendary at the same time. The ascended gear requires many of the same materials that legendaries do. This means that once you’ve finished working on your ascended gear you’re basically right back in square one, with no mats or progress made toward a legendary. That sounds a lot like a wall to me.
(edited by Alliestiria.8193)
(Part Three of Five)
Event Rewards
Ok, so yes it was really cool to open up that chest and see all the pretty exotics, the 20 slot bag, and the unique trinket. I see a lot of people now who are saying the event was great and totally worth it because of those rewards… Really? It was great because of the rewards? I don’t design games but if I did this is not what I would want my players thinking. The event should have been worth it for the event… You guys shouldn’t have to bribe us with exotics and the possibility of a legendary precursor.
In reality, these rewards were incredibly unfair and unbalanced. Those who did not get to participate, or were disconnected, or who had to leave before the end for work, were denied rewards that could have made them a good chunk of cash. It also made every part of the event up until the last 20 or so minutes of the finale feel worthless. The rewards should have been spread out better. Players should have been rewarded more for participating in the other parts of the weekend long event. I’m talking about rewards that are just as good, but evened out instead of all lumped into one big end chest that not everyone can access. You could have also made the finale shorter and just had it reoccur on a timer throughout the day on Sunday (possibly into Monday).
Southsun Cove
This island is very beautiful. I was very impressed with everything about it. I loved the new jumping puzzles, the new ranger pet, and the entire environment. I hope that now this weekend event is over more dynamic events will continue to be added to flesh out the island. It would also be nice if more areas on the island are used. Right now there are a couple areas in which nothing is going on.
Gem Shop Goodies
Everyone complained so much about only being able to obtain the weapon skins from a lotto chest on Halloween that you guys decided that the best thing to do would be to make it so that everything event related could only be obtained through a lotto chest.
I feel bad now because when the weapon skins were out for Halloween I didn’t understand what everyone was complaining about. Surely, it was obvious that the chests were a gamble? Why were so many people complaining that they had wasted their money with no reward? Well, I’m a mini collector. I have been in every MMO I’ve played that has minis. I looked into getting the minis for this patch and soon realized that only a measly 10 chests would cost around $20 and it would be very unlikely that I’d get even one mini pet to drop for me. This is ridiculous. It’s a money grabbing scheme that makes no sense. I bought no gems because I don’t like paying for nothing. Just put items up on the shop for people to buy individually. When you put out new content with neat, limited time, skins and minis associated with it you need to just put those up on the shop for sale. I should be able to look at the gem store and see the new mini pack available for a similar price as the Halloween one and the shoulder/ breather/ weapon/ whatever else skins available for a similar price as the armor skins that are already up there. I understand that you feel you can make more money by putting things in a random chance chest, but you need to stop thinking of what makes more money and start thinking about what is fair to your consumer. These chests are clearly anti-consumer and I will not be buying gems until you start operating the gem store more fairly.
Fractals of the Mists
This dungeon is so much fun! It is well designed in so many ways. A lot of the fractals are beautiful to look at. The story seems compelling. The boss mechanics are fun and creative. I actually feel like I need to coordinate well with my team. The only one I have complaints about is the whisp/swamp one which seems a little too based on rng.
However, there are potential problems with this dungeon. As time goes on it is going to be harder and harder for people to find groups for lower level fractals. This will be extremely off putting to new player and aggravating to those who are trying to play alts. I’m not sure how you can really fix this issue. I think that it will always be a problem and that the only thing you can hope to do is to put a band-aid on it.
(edited by Alliestiria.8193)
(Part Two of Five)
Weekend Events Cont.
The event chain that occurred when we got to the island was less than epic. It would have been nicer if there had been multiple chains occurring to split the player base up (once again helping with the culling and lag issues) and when I saw that we could chose between ports that’s what I thought would happen. Instead when we got there I realized that my port choice was entirely irrelevant. (Why even chose then? Pretty pointless.) These events immediately began to feel tedious and pointless. I couldn’t see mobs loading in and so would frequently die from things I couldn’t possibly avoid. My participation felt unimportant with so many other players there. I could have afked for a coffee and everything would have turned out fine. I like big events but I also like to feel like my participation in the event matters. I want to believe that without my character it would have been harder to invade that island. I almost feel like it would have been easier… without my character and a few others maybe the culling would have been better for everyone else. I racked up repair bills and felt like I was accomplishing nothing.
Eventually my bf and I actually left the event because we decided it would be better to just explore on our own then to continue. This event would have been much improved if it had spread the player base out around the island more. The island is actually pretty big and it feels like almost none of it was used during this initial event. I was hoping for several events that would be reoccurring during this phase that would have to do with settling/ clearing this island. Instead what we got was one giant zerg fest that pushed inward. I was also disappointed with how little effect the event had on the world. We cut down trees for roads but then there were no roads… there weren’t even paths.
The BIG FINALE suffered from amplified versions of all of the above problems. For starters this event was telegraphed very poorly. We had no idea what area of the island it would start from. That little mail was nice but when we got it the event was already starting. Next time send the mail before the event starts so that people actually have time to read it and then get to the appropriate area. I’m sure I missed out on some npc dialogue there as well, but who knows. I found the entire idea behind this event to be really confusing. Why did we plant explosives in the hive? The hive didn’t blow up… Were we just planning on using them on the Ancient Karka from the start? What did we use that giant laser for? Why didn’t we use that on the Ancient Karka? Why did the Ancient Karka suddenly appear all the way at the front of the island? Why didn’t we see the Ancient Karka at all during the second phase? It would have been cool if the Ancient Karka was roaming around the island Fell Reaver style (WoW – Hellfire Peninsula) making himself known as a big bad we definitely wanted to kill. What was that weird air thing that briefly blocked the Ancient Karkas progress during one of the reinforcement phases? Why did the bottom of the hive collapse at the end?
The event itself was plagued with culling issues and lag. I felt even more impotent during this event than I did while we were clearing the island. “Why am I even here?” I kept asking myself. It seemed like I wasn’t even getting credit for killing any mobs most of the time. I died over and over again to unseen enemies. I rezzed unseen allies. I’m sure that the entire thing would have gone just as well without my character. That’s not good. I want to feel like my character is making some sort of impact when I play a video game.
The stages where we had to do something interesting to get the Ancient Karka to move back (blow up steam vents and toss boulders into them) were actually very fun. I’m glad I stayed to see those. The event needed more stuff like this and less like the two reinforcement phases. Those phases just seemed to go on forever. It felt like we weren’t making a dent and everyone was just dying over and over again. If we had been an actual army I’m sure we would have just waved the white flag due to low moral. Everyone was saying negative things by this point.
I think part of the issue with this entire event was the timing. Upon reflection having only a weekend for this event feels too short. I feel like too much story was being crammed into a small time period. You could have done much more with it, expanded some on the actual story line and had more events that repeated so that more people could experience the content, if this had been a week long like Halloween. It felt very rushed.
Overall this event was rather disappointing. The Halloween stuff was so amazing that I was sure this event would be even better. Now I’m thinking that the team that created this event should probably go confer with the holiday event team. They have some lessons to learn.
(edited by Alliestiria.8193)
(Part One of Five)
I really want to leave my feedback about this patch for someone at Anet to read. I’d like to think that it’ll help future content updates be better. I’m going to leave it here because this seems to be the official thread. Hopefully, it doesn’t simply get lost in the 16 pages of other player feedback (some of which I thought was very good.)
The Weekend Events
I can tell that the concept of this big one time event to open up the island was very cool. Unfortunately, I think you guys fell a little flat on the implementation.
The story behind what was going on was a little hard to grasp. I was able to pick up the general idea easily but the details were hard to figure out. This is the first time I’ve felt this way about any of the lore/story in GW2. I hear people complain frequently that this game doesn’t have enough lore or that the lore is too hard to find and I can never figure out what they’re talking about. I’m the type of person who talk to every npc, goes through every dialogue choice, and listens to all the npc conversations around me. Even though I did all of that this weekend I still felt a little lost at times.
I suppose I don’t really have to bring up the fact that everything was so buggy. I’m sure everyone Anet realizes that this was terrible and has no plans of ever releasing content like that again. However, I was genuinely confused about the appearance of many of these bugs because they seemed a lot like bugs we’ve had before in the live game. Inspector Noll became perma-dead because people were able to actually kill him before he turned green again. Well, we’ve had plenty of skill point challenges with that exact problem. A lot of the dynamic events got stuck or broke in ways that I’ve seen plenty of other DEs stuck or broken throughout the world in the live game. It seemed to me like many of these bugs should have been anticipated, but I’m going to assume that it’s not that simple.
The events that kicked off the phases of the weekend event chain felt bad.
When the karka first invaded Lion’s Arch why did they only invade that one small area? It seemed a bit strange and not like an invasion at all. I think a greater sense of urgency would have been created if the karka had been appearing on all of the beaches of Lion’s Arch. This would have also spread players out more which may have helped with some of the lag and culling issues. I also felt like this first event should have kept repeating on a timer (maybe one hour.) The next event was called retaking Lion’s Arch but really Lion’s Arch was never taken. The karka showed up once, we smacked them around, they left. The short cut-scene with the Ancient Karka destroying the lighthouse should have only been played once, but everything else could have easily repeated. Then people would have had more opportunities to participate and it would have felt more like a real invasion. (The karka were trying to take Lion’s Arch again and again.)
The second event was baffling because I honestly had no idea where it was going to take place. I missed out on some npc dialogue (though I had my bf read it to me) because I had no idea where I was supposed to go. This could have easily been solved by putting one of those nice stars over the head of the important npcs so that players could have seen them walking around and run over to them. This event also suffered from the same issue as the first. Clearly we were supposed to be driving the karka out of Lion’s Arch, but they were never really in Lion’s Arch in the first place. This event should have taken place all around the city. It would have been nice if this event had repeated on a timer too. (I can honestly think of no reason for it not to have.) I also didn’t quite get why we had to wait for the npcs to create the catapult. Did they use it? I never saw them use it.
I understand your decision not to put a dungeon finder in the game and I agree with it. However, the current LFG system really does need some work. Not only is it hard to find it is also pretty useless. You can’t tell what the people in it even want a group for. If you’re looking for a group for a specific dungeon what map would be the best map to sit in? The map the dungeon is in? Frequently those are under the level of the dungeon. The map most appropriate to the level range of the dungeon? Lion’s Arch or some other major city? Then once you have decided which map you think the most effective one is you can’t leave that map for fear of not being found. God forbid that you may be interested in several different dungeons.
In addition to this, there appears to be absolutely no way to list yourself as a group looking for more. My guildies and I spent at least an hour trying to figure out if we could do that one night and came to the conclusion that it was impossible. Now we never use the LFG system.
I preferred the system that WoW had in the Burning Crusade. If you were looking for a group you could open up a window that had a list of dungeons, select the dungeon(s) that you wanted to do, select the roles that you could fill, and even put in a comment of some sort (“LF fast run, raid at 8:00!”).
This was server wide and would put you in a list of players that groups could easily browse to fill in their missing slots. If there was no one listed as looking for that dungeon then your group could just leave itself listed and as soon as any players joined the list they’d see that an almost full group was ready to go. It was really simple and effective. I always had a high success rate of getting groups quickly even to do lower level content.
The one thing I wouldn’t particularly want (that WoWs LFG had) is a server wide LFG channel. People on my server always just used it as an extra large chat channel to spam with Xbox jokes, trade stuff, and other idiotic things.
Please consider eventually revamping this.
I recently started playing a new sylvari character as well with the shield of the moon/ “all things have a right to grow” story line. Every single cut scene in every part of my story has had at least one (usually several) missing pieces of voiced dialogue. At first I was submitting bug reports after every single story step with as much info as I could remember about the missing voices… but after a while it just became too much to even keep track of.
Last night I was leveling with the bf who has also started a new character (Asura synergetics/ weather machine) and he was missing just as many voice overs as I was. When I suggested submitting bug reports about it he told me he was tired of bug reporting… heh.
I’ll start submitting reports again but I think there must be some sort of huge bug that’s effecting all the voice overs in every story.
This happened to my group just today. We tried logging out and then loading back into the instance but that didn’t fix it. One of our group members was unwilling to redo the dungeon to try again and after he left we all felt a bit disheartened. We felt it was likely to be bugged a second time and decided against reforming the group.
Effected Character: Calinne
My story started getting funky after level 70. I honestly thought that it had something to do with the fact that my boyfriend and I were doing our personal stories together.
During the scene where we had to chose our biggest fear we both chose, “fail at something and lose the respect of my comrades.”
For a bit after that we had similar story steps and then suddenly we were sent two different ways despite never having made differing choices.
I was sent on:
Tower Down
To The Core
Breaking the Bone Ship
These all featured a nice little Asuran dude who really loved his wife and was a genius explosives expert. In the end he sacrificed himself to blow up the bone ship and my character vowed that she would inform his wife of the news.
He was sent on:
Striking Off the Chains
Wet Work
Willing Captives
These involved a norn lady named Apatia and a quest to get some crazy orb thingy from the krait. We ended up discovering a largos lady, retrieving the orb, and Apatia gets captured.
We proceeded to the Battle of Fort Trinity… somewhat confused as to how our two stories had ended up differing but both story lines were cool so we enjoyed it.
My character initiated the Battle of Fort Trinity and the really weird stuff began. She acted like she personally knew the largos (even though that was the bf’s storyline), had gotten the orb, and was sad about Apatia.
After Fort Trinity my story switched to Liberating Apatia. I never got to follow up on my Asura friend and instead ran after some norn I didn’t know.
I find it interesting that these story lines were supposed to be based on our biggest fear. I had no idea… and honestly neither of the stories we played through seemed to relate to failing at something and losing the respect of comrades. Perhaps the bug lies with this choice?
Thanks for the hard work!
(edited by Alliestiria.8193)