Showing Posts For Calydro.7268:
I came back to the game after awhile, and when I saw the match-up display which included what I thought was name of the guild from each of the opposing teams, I said to myself “now this feels like Guild Wars pvp…”.
Turns out they are automated names and have no relation to the players in the match.
If you’re going to make up names and assign them to teams, maybe make more than 15 names? I see the same ones every time. It really just feels like a bad joke at this point.
Or scrap the idea because its a terrible idea. If there is no prevalent guild within a team composition, pick a player— Jon, for example, and say “John’s team vs… etc”.
You can’t really ask for anything additional in this game without the forum warriors defending it as if they made it themselves. You guys kitten any progress that could be made in this game. Stand by the gem store all you want, but cash stores ruin immersion and keep content OUT of the game. There was a time when all in-game items were earned through merit. Now you can swipe a credit card and buy armor. Its a depressing thing to look at in any game.
Otherwise i’d be interested to hear how so many have intimate knowledge of Ncsoft’s revenue sources insofar that you could confidently make the claim that cash stores are an absolute crux for the survival of any buy to play game. As far as I know, they don’t release that data. If you want to stand by that claim, i’d really be curious to know how console games were ever successful.
I think the consensus here is that we would rather pay $$ for haircuts. I’m glad we made a decision.
It is kinda ridiculous but there are people who think everything in this game should cost money for some reason.
No one thinks that everything in the game should cost money. A lot of people accept that a buy-to-play game needs to make money from something besides just box sales.
Poor guy thinks in-game stores are necessary
I’d be interested in hearing your proposal for how ANet could maintain its current income (and therefore level of development) without a cash shop.
Are you aware of the period when MMO’s did not have in game stores? It existed.
Did they have subscriptions, instead?
He will not answer your question because doing so will completely invalidate his point therefore I will; yes they had subscriptions.
A nice but arrogant try. Guild Wars 1 had no cash store for years.
You’ve presented two different issues in your title and opening post, making things a bit confusing and misleading. I agree with your title – an in-game npc who cuts your hair would be interesting. How much that npc would cost is another debate altogether, but some cost should probably be involved.
If you’re confused that is on your side my friend. Can’t have been more plain.
It is kinda ridiculous but there are people who think everything in this game should cost money for some reason.
No one thinks that everything in the game should cost money. A lot of people accept that a buy-to-play game needs to make money from something besides just box sales.
Poor guy thinks in-game stores are necessary
I’d be interested in hearing your proposal for how ANet could maintain its current income (and therefore level of development) without a cash shop.
Are you aware of the period when MMO’s did not have in game stores? It existed.
I think you have a complete lack of understanding of the game’s mechanics.
Gw1 and gw2 are completely separate games.
Gw1 had a skill bar of 8, but weapons did not determine any of the 8 slots. All the choices were made by your professions. Which, while provided a much larger palate to work with, left tons of skills that were underpowered and underused some overpowered and overused. Which also translated into certain professions being completely garbage (see ranger).
Gw2 has a much tighter grip on the skill bar. Limiting the first 5 by the specific weapon to the profession. Which makes it much easier to balance but restricts immediate diversity especially for classes with only 1 weapon set. The last 5 are your professions unique utilities, heal and elite. Further explained:
Ranger’s utilities consist of:
Traps
Spirits
Shouts
Survival
Signet
Glyphs (druid)The best and most efficient way to expand diversity is the way they are currently going by elite specializations. Each Specialization can give a new weapon (not always) and a new set of utilities. This way the base game stays balanced which expanding on the player’s ultility possibilties.
Simply “give me more weapons and let me choose all my skills” is a poorly thought out idea that would only lead to further imbalance as well as require a complete restructuring on the current game mechanics.
Yeah, asking for more skills doesn’t in anyway indicate a lack of knowledge about mechanics. Stop trying to make balancing a game out as some herculean task. Its possible.
I think you have a complete lack of understanding of the game’s mechanics.
Gw1 and gw2 are completely separate games.
Gw1 had a skill bar of 8, but weapons did not determine any of the 8 slots. All the choices were made by your professions. Which, while provided a much larger palate to work with, left tons of skills that were underpowered and underused some overpowered and overused. Which also translated into certain professions being completely garbage (see ranger).
Gw2 has a much tighter grip on the skill bar. Limiting the first 5 by the specific weapon to the profession. Which makes it much easier to balance but restricts immediate diversity especially for classes with only 1 weapon set. The last 5 are your professions unique utilities, heal and elite. Further explained:
Ranger’s utilities consist of:
Traps
Spirits
Shouts
Survival
Signet
Glyphs (druid)The best and most efficient way to expand diversity is the way they are currently going by elite specializations. Each Specialization can give a new weapon (not always) and a new set of utilities. This way the base game stays balanced which expanding on the player’s ultility possibilties.
Simply “give me more weapons and let me choose all my skills” is a poorly thought out idea that would only lead to further imbalance as well as require a complete restructuring on the current game mechanics.
Yeah, asking for my skills doesn’t in anyway indicate a lack of knowledge about mechanics. Stop trying to make balancing a game out as some herculean task. Its possible.
no, you want cosmetic things you gotta pay. It helps the devs pay for things like patching bugs
and adding new content.
Poor guy thinks in-game stores are necessary
Do you think they will be looking for challenge, for difficulty, for complication, for requirements that force them into specific content? I suspect that is very unlikely. They will be looking for fun. Plain and simple fun.
This game is so casual and care-bear friendly that the idea of that not being at a sufficient magnitude for you is hardly believable. I’ve had enough of the instant-gratification teenagers who want everything handed to them and (APPARENTLY) the elderly who want the very same. You’ve changed the business model of MMO’s completely and have pretty much ruined it for anyone who derives fun from difficulty and challenge.
You are playing a pvp game, broseph. Sounds like you just picked the wrong game.
Having to dish out real $$ or 100+ gold for a different hair style is kind of ridiculous.
Would it be possible for tournaments to be an actual in-game mechanic? And those who emerge from the crucible and win in the “Hall of Heroes” (or something similar) would gain rank?
It’d be nice because rank is just about time spent in spvp, it has nothing to do with winning. It therefore means nothing. There is no prestige whatsoever to be had in spvp, and I think that is a huge drawback! Give us something to shoot for.
Awaiting the contrarians…
Guild capes were one of the best features of GW1
Adding more things to the cash store and less in-game items a direct dip in the quality of any game.
And adding more skills will make it even more harder for Anet to balance and I guess many skills will be made usless like many skills we have in the utility and elite slots.
Have you played GW1 or WoW? both have many skills that never get touched or put on the skill bar. So for me we don’t need more skills until the ones we got are as close to balance and usless skills are made useful.
Yep, played GW1, and that’s what I based the request on. The variety was fantastic.
One of my favorite parts about gw1 was that there were rare, exiting items that could drop from anywhere. And in the really difficult areas, the rarity and value of loot scaled accordingly. Its not so in Guild Wars 2.
Could we get more skill variety? Would be great to choose a weapon, say a great sword, and have 20 or so skills to choose from instead of the static 5.
Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.
You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.
I disagree. having people pay in advanced for content doesnt keep them around. Case in point, check the forums / reddit. You will find many posts especially around the time HoT launched of people claiming to have quit soon after launch and are thinking of coming back. With the core game purchase price they also got 3 years of free content but that didnt keep them around did it?
I even more strongly disagree with greedy business model. Look at what most other b2p MMOs do. They still cut their content in chunks, because it takes X amount of time to develop or on purpose is something thats debatable fine… but what they do is sell that content for “cheap” at regular intervals. $10 every quarter is most common. Well $10 per quarter for 3 years is $120 more then twice what Anet charged for the same period of time. How is that better?
Besides which modern MMO releases an expansion more often then 2 years?
Additionally were they really less greedy before? You had to pay Box Fee and Subscription. Sure content was less content and quicker to develop and you had an expansion every year which also carried a box fee. 2 years of your mmo back then would end up costing $480 are you really sure they were less greedy?
You’re equivocating. System A is bad but so Is System B, but System A is worse therefore we should exonerate System B.
I laid out the facets of the the game where the greed and underhandedness is evident. You’ve pointed me to prior games that also have a greedy model. Does that nullify the points I’ve made? does it exonerate A-net? Guild Wars 2 isn’t the first game to milk its players, there have been many before and will be many after. . .
Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.
Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.
Is that really a bad thing though?
MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.
Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?
People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.
Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.
You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.
It may be the result of a business model, but it’s hardly the result of a greedy one.
Unless you seriously believe that a company can make content faster than people can beat content, there’s nothing about this system that’s greedy. It’s called being competitive.
If Anet gave everything up front. Everything they could. Every single thing they had ready at the moment it was ready, and then people burned through it, they’d leave and go to other games that were trickling out their content keeping people playing.
They did it with the original Guild Wars. Every console game did it. Every MMO did it at one point, until developers discovered how to coaxingly milk players. I’m not sure why you’re advocating this new behavior.
Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.
Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.
Is that really a bad thing though?
MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.
Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?
People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.
Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.
You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.
Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.
No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.
I have to call this out and say GW2 is the most bug-free game I have ever played. I
This game is not dead. It will die sooner than devs think I guess, but not from balance, pvp or anything else. It will die from the simplest bugs. Still there are bugs that imply the unprofessionality of Anet. Still we experience same issues. Still a patch gets fixed at least three times. These will kill this game, not balance. Every game have balance issues, it is normal in MMO’s. But I have never seen such simple yet annoying bugs not getting fixed after months and months (even years). These are simple, yet makes a player feel that Anet is not competent. It feels they are not professionals. Most of my friends tried the game, and said the same thing; “You have these bugs for that long? But these are simple problems?”.
This is how this game will go down, if Anet does not act in haste, simply and quietly.
When I enter a random queue I don’t expect it to be anything other than random.
This is really just a big fiasco of semantics. If you must pay $50 to be competitive, and in ranked you do, you must pay to win. Whether or not its as underhanded as the classical meaning of the term p2w IE. microtransactions, is beside the point. You must pay to be the best.
The new specs are overpowered. They don’t even fit in with the other traitlines. You have a series of traits as such:
Justice
Virtues
Zeal
Honor
then…. Dragonhunter? wtf?
Fire
Air
Water
Arcana
Tempest?
These are nominally out of place. The very names of the specs suggest that they’re overpowered and you can count that the meta will always sway toward these specs.
After going F2P I suppose there has to be some sort of “gotcha” gimmick.
I’m still amused this game doesnt have a 3v3 death match/arena mode.
They barely invest in Spvp, so I’m not surprised at all. The first Guild Wars had 45 different pvp maps. GW2 has 6.
They milk players with micro transactions and have no need or motivation to pump out substantial content. NCsoft feeds off the suckers and screws everyone else.
Make it a death match. Its awesome.
Thanks!
3 times a year they balance pvp?
I remember imbalances being fixed within a week of being noticed in the first Guild Wars. What the hell changed?
bump, still the same amount of pvp maps as there were when I posted this
The idea is for each weapon to have alternate skills to select, much in the way of utilities. Skills would still be tied to weapons, but you’d simply have options.
Reasons: With more variety and creativity, this would tear down the concept of the meta. With our limited pool of builds currently, there are bound to be certain builds that have obvious superiority. This provides for vapid, one-note pvp.
and
for the sake of variety. Something like, “its the spice of life” if i got that cliche right. But more simply it gets pretty boring, using the same skills over and over.
(edited by Calydro.7268)
The big problem with things getting popular (not just bands but entire industries especially) is the values dissonance between the new consumers and the original consumers. Let’s say the originals value branching paths, challenge, a visible impact on the world including destructible environments, challenge, depth, complexity, and mechanical consistency in the main parts of the game (important qualifier since skateboarding or card games could be great optional content) whereas the newer consumers like simplicity, cutscenes, story, and may be socially different from the originals so somethings would be changed to accommodate them, so no ridiculous yet gritty themes for them.
Nothing wrong with a good story but if resources are going there instead of complex level design and the need to develop skills for an intricate encounter then it must have a cause. Even within this game the conflict can be seen, I mean look at how many people complain about Tangled Depths for being too confusing but the potential to get lost and die is part of what makes it such a great map. The story is also good especially the Rata Novus part. The only thing I agree with the casuals on is make the hero points vets instead of champions but tuned to give single players in full ascended enough of a challenge.
When audiences who don’t share your values and even have conflicting values enter your market things change because now companies will keep trying to get their money. Likewise when a band gets popular it tends to lose what made it appealing to the original audience. Instead of spreading an important message to the world and having technical excellence the original audience can appreciate they dumb their sound down and sanitize their message so as to “offend” the least amount of people possible as ordered by their record label.
Well said. Having seen the model change from immersive and hardcore to an uber casual setting that in my opinion is so absurdly simple that it insults the players intelligence (a phenomenon not confined to Guild Wars 2) I originally gave the playerbase the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that the widespread dumbing down by the developers was due to their misunderstanding of their players.
After a little awhile I began to see what you write about… two very disparate playstyles, one new, and one old, one with a whiny proclivity for faceroll content, the other looking for excitement and challenge. And also that the vast majority these days really do want no challenge at all.
Hard to accept that the carebears are having their way, which is why I still try to vie for more hardcore content with developers every now and then.
I can’t be the only one who is seriously jaded with the current circulation of pvp maps. Its possible that I was spoiled by the first Guild Wars, which had a total of TWENTY NINE different pvp maps, and FORTY FIVE if you count the SIXTEEN different guild halls where gvg battles could take place.
I understand the model for MMO’s has changed, and that a lot of $$ is made from the miserly gem store, but the standards have sunk so low.
I think that putting the same developmental effort into this game as was given to its predecessor would only mean good things.
From the loading screens to the concept art, to its translation to actual in-game visuals, the creativity and skill of your guy’s artists are out of this world.
I disagree with you, Blackmoon. I prefer the hardcore environment. Without a sense of risk, and consequence, it is hard to immerse yourself in a game. This is something that Arena Net was very good at in the first Guild Wars. Getting from point A to B (outpost to outpost etc) was an adventure in itself, because of how dangerous the landscape was, and it felt like an accomplishment and a relief to arrive at your destination.
Arena Net forewent that sense of risk with Guild Wars 2, and I’m glad to see it somewhat restored in HoT. Catering to the carebear playerbase is something that no developer should regress to. It is directly related to a drab, uninteresting experience.
Keep the sense of adventure alive, keep the game difficult.
(edited by Calydro.7268)
Legendary armor did not come with HoT. Armor added after release did not come with HoT. What kind of moronic logic is this… honestly. Don’t be stupid.
Then I’ll repeat the question:
Suppose that in some months we will get the second expansion, let’s call it HoT2. Any armor sets released between HoT and HoT2 will be counted for HoT2 or HoT1?
And nice attitude there.
I should have been more clear. I’m saying that those who think armor that is yet to be released counts toward HoT content and the $$ people payed for it are the ones using wonky logic.
When i put $50 down on a game, I don’t expect to have to wait an entire year for that investment to be fully realized. Nor should I have to. The reason that companies do this, and there are several developers who have used this strategy (Turbine comes to mind), is to keep players’ eyes on the future, the months and years ahead. Certainly they (the players) will want their moneys worth, so they will wait for that new content to be released, and Arena net has just turned a player into a long-term micro investment.
Its nothing more than a ploy. They shouldn’t be lauded for doing it and excuses shouldn’t be made for it. That was the subtext behind my original post.
Legendary armor did not come with HoT. Armor added after release did not come with HoT. What kind of moronic logic is this… honestly. Don’t be stupid.
(edited by Calydro.7268)
It is important, in the context of this discussion, to note that, in my opinion at least, there is a significant difference between how many armor sets HoT includes and how many it might include at some undetermined time in the future.
This thread is about what people paid for when they bought HoT. Future armor sets have nothing to do with that $$.
The grind in this game has always been cosmetics. People go for certain armor sets mainly for the aesthetic, as with gem store purchases. The reality is, which I think furthers his point, is that the cosmetics added to the gem store could otherwise be in-game items with stats, rather than serving as a cash cow for A-net and ruining immersion and replacing the incentive to release more content, and to ensure the quality of their content. Hence, 3 new armor sets added with HoT, gated behind a monotonous grind.
But lets not dwell on semantics.
If you played Guild Wars 1, which is a fair comparison I think, as it serves as a good model of what A-net is capable of (which truly is a lot), then HoT might seem as nothing more than scaffolding that’s being passed off as a house, as someone else put it.
(edited by Calydro.7268)
I haven’t checked the gem store but I’m assuming that’s where most of the sets ended up. Is this really the standard you’ve sunk to?
In the backdrop of your past work (Guild Wars 1), this is just inadequate…