Guild Wars 2

I’m making an assumption that the armor works like the precursors, where there is tiers. What would be neat is, if you go from say, experimental, to the next tier, to the final precursor, for charr, each tier up adds a 2nd set of cups. That way by the precursor you have 6 cups, for the 6 nipples charr have.

Maybe if you designed armor for women that wasn’t just a bra-shaped piece of metal, this issue wouldn’t be happening in the first place. I understand the need to cater to everyone’s taste, and I’m all for it- if someone wants to wear a battle bikini, let them!- but there are so few options for light armor that DON’T leave their stomachs exposed, for those of us who like something more practical, that the excuse “oh well people want this” holds no water. Yeah, some people want battle bikinis…there are plenty. Give us some armor that ACTUALLY PROTECTS US. Sorry, my main (fem!sylvari) doesn’t really find it appropriate to flash her navel at everyone she meets.

That being said…a good quick solution to this would be, yes, to change the chest plate to the male variant. Remember…six cups, or none at all ;3

Please change it, at least to the male version if not to something specifically more fitting for those races.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• We will be leaving the Festive Imbiber achievement active throughout the year.

That’s not really a solution.

I’ll grant you it’s a bandage job, and a good one at that. Committing to the achievement staying open all year gives you time to fix (all year) it without also committing to a method as to how.

I’ve seen others suggest splitting the achievement, and I agree with them. 1000 drinks for the Masterful Toast item is in line with the other parts of the collection. 10000 drinks for the Spirited Drinker title is in line with other similar titles.

I’ve seen Winter’s Presence compared to Nightfury, but I took a look through the recipe for that item and it has expensive written all over it. The Mystic Forge items for Winter’s Presence come out to about 60g (all cost estimates in this post are very rough, intended only to be in the right magnitude), which is affordable for just about everyone. There’s nothing really rare or difficult to get involved in it. The remaining items are… well… several normal days just playing the game.

Except Masterful Toast. Honestly, I think I’ll chalk that one up as a mistake. I think it’s probable that someone decided to add a title to Festive Imbiber and increased it’s difficulty accordingly without paying attention to what other achievements it affected, or more likely, it was either designed as a nifty title and someone didn’t pay attention to what it entailed it when putting together the Winter’s Presence collection.

I don’t think it’s at all likely that it was designed this way as a gold sink. It’s just too blatant; the items are easy to get, but tedious in quantity. If they wanted a gold sink, there’s three other items available that were already there to do so, and without all this drama, too, as that stemmed solely from the time-limited (and now supply-limited), Festive Imbiber achievement. For example, instead of 50 of each ingredient for those items, use 250. That would bring those three items to about 300g, add another 100g or so for the drinks assuming the achievement is split as explained above, and you have a neat skin at a respectable 400g price point.

This method spreads that cost across four items (and 9 unique crafting ingredients), but more importantly, three of those items can be acquired any time of the year to complete the collection and the fourth is a nearly invisible opportunity cost. A player interested in Winter’s Presence can play the festival normally and acquire the time-limited achievements required over the course of the month, and then gather the materials for the “gifts” over several months, just as we do for other flashy item skins.

As it stands, even with the time limit removed, this achievement is a big gold wall, oddly similar to the old situation with legendary precursors.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and have a wonderful Wintersday.

Festive Imbiber is a ridiculous achievement if you ask me.

Why has ANet adopted this policy of introducing overly expensive or grindy achievements? Why must we pay for achievements with gold or mindless farming instead of earning them through actual challenge or fun events? Shouldn’t Wintersday be fun?

I don’t understand. The game has been taking increasingly worse turns lately. How can you keep making so many poor decisions, one after the other without proper testing or implementation? Did you just think “oh, let’s make it 10 000 drinks because that’s the first number that popped into my head”? Did you even consider the potential costs involved for the player, in terms of time or gold and consider whether it was balanced or viable?

You are forcefully ensuring only a minority will be able to get these shoulders (thanks to resource limitations that will become increasingly worse once Wintersday ends). If your new policy is to make a game that’s rewarding and fun only for a minority, I honestly think my days in GW2 are numbered. I’m becoming very frustrated lately and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Kamui.3150:

Hi Gaile, thanks for this info, it’s a huge relief for me and anyone else trying to complete the Winter’s Presence shoulders. However, I do have a few questions that I would like to ask, and hope you have the answers to.

• Will the candy cane achievement be given similar treatment? It’s not required for the shoulders, but it’s still one that is on a similar progression scale as Festive Imbiber.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement progress the Wintersday meta after Jan 12? This is mainly a curiosity thing, am interested to know if the meta achieve will be locked after Jan 12 is over, even though anyone that really wants the meta won’t need it.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement’s progress carry to next Wintersday, similar to the Grawnk ones did from last year? Just another curiosity deal.

This!

Kamui.3150:

Hi Gaile, thanks for this info, it’s a huge relief for me and anyone else trying to complete the Winter’s Presence shoulders. However, I do have a few questions that I would like to ask, and hope you have the answers to.

• Will the candy cane achievement be given similar treatment? It’s not required for the shoulders, but it’s still one that is on a similar progression scale as Festive Imbiber.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement progress the Wintersday meta after Jan 12? This is mainly a curiosity thing, am interested to know if the meta achieve will be locked after Jan 12 is over, even though anyone that really wants the meta won’t need it.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement’s progress carry to next Wintersday, similar to the Grawnk ones did from last year? Just another curiosity deal.

These need to be answered.

Additionally: Are the devs aware that since the delicate, glittering, unique & pristine snowflake → wintersday gift recipe was disabled there will be absolutely no supply once the wintersday activities are disabled? This will mean massive unmatched speculation in the gift market, and a massive crash in the snowflake market as they’re used for essentially nothing once the event ends.

Easy way to solve the supply issue and the repetitive task for the 10000 beers AP is to make all mobs around Tyria has a chance to drop presents.

This would increase the supply of presents to counter the excessive demand, while not forcing you to do one activity for the whole month.

Another simple solution is to make all the festival beers gran 4 points of contribution instead of 1, like most of the other beers in Tyria.

Many beers in Tyria grant 4 points toward the drunkard title, no idea why this seasonal beer should be an exception.

Labjax.2465:

Okhu.7948:

Its not Christmas for another week. The time you spent whining on the forums you could have spent doing a JP or Bell Choir.

Meh. When stuff like this happens, sometimes it just kills my enthusiasm. I was actually pretty into Wintersday before the collection stuff. Now I don’t even want to give Anet the activity numbers for my account.

There’s nothing like design that is the exact opposite of holiday spirit to kill your holiday spirit for the game.

Pretty much this. I’m really struggling to log in, knowing that I’m being excluded from content because I have work, family and christmas. I don’t mind putting in work to get the shoulders, but this is excessive and unnecessary. It’s just cynically put in to push people into logging hours for Anet’s Stats. I wouldn’t mind so much but they would get people logging in for the events anyway.

New low, Anet. New low.

Please consider having a few Wintersday beverage merchants around Divinity’s Reach who would sell the drinks for karma (account bound of course).

10,000 beverages is a lot, an incredible amount for a time limited achievement. The price of drinks is not going down but up in fact. It is becoming less of an achievement and more a case of who can afford to spend the money (in game coin or real world) or time to farm them out.

It would be a real shame to see people who did all the other achievements for the Winter’s Presence but just couldn’t afford to purchase drinks or farm for the whole holiday for enough drinks. Please consider making this collection more about holiday fun and less about the farm and/or having vast wads of gold.

Please understand I’m not saying you shouldn’t have to do something to earn this achievement, but 5,000 drinks would have been a lot more reasonable and doable for people who are not rich and have a life outside of this game. As it is 10,000 please, please, pretty please do consider this as an alternative that still fits the holiday. By selling drinks for karma, players could go about, do events, have fun, enjoy the holiday and still purchase drinks towards the achievement. Everyone wins!

Doctor.5068:

You are all freaking out over 10k drinks? Wintersday started today and I have already drank 1000 without spending a cent on the Tp. 10 more days and I will have the 10k that is apparently impossible to reach. As with all collections, they would lose their value if everyone had them instantly. So if you are dedicated at getting them, I suggest you start opening gifts instead of wasting time complaining about it on the forums.
Tldr: there is nothing wrong with the 10k of you really want to work for it.

Because not everyone is willing or able to spend more than 3 hours a day farming presents?

To do the achievement I’d need to ignore WvW, Fractals, HoT stuff and focus solely on farming, that’s no fun.

I’ve spent hours playing the Wintersday events and gotten maybe 400, 500 if I’m lucky, from the gifts. I can’t imagine doing that every day – I’d burn out.

I would like to echo most everyone’s sentiments here. 10000 drinks is a totally mean spirited way for us to earn the brand new shoulders. Every guild I am in have stated their disappointment with how Anet is proceeding with these holidays. This is more than a lump of coal in our stockings for many of us with limited time and commitment.

This is simply a debacle of epic proportions for a community as wonderful as GW2. Even our die hards in the guilds I am in are mad at these obscene requirements. Please reduce the absurd amount of farming required to obtain the new shoulders. Thank you very much.

Canach’s contribution to the great dream:

If made from wood, don’t wear burning wristbands.

John Smith.4610:

Q.
why are you nerfing the income of players who prefer your old content over your new content? I for one don’t care much for raids but really enjoy dungeons..

A.
We don’t intend to nerf income, just shift where most players derive their income. You won’t be forced into raids in order to earn value though.

Players who enjoy playing dungeons will have either lower income or will have to play content they do not enjoy as much in order to maintain their existing level of income.

The only way you can accurately claim that you did not intend to nerf their income is to state that you intended to reduce their enjoyment of the game instead.

Edit for clarification: I did not mean you personally, but rather the collective of those who made the decision.

Maybe in order to prevent player confusion with idle animations they have incorporated it into the new unlock to gain method to their game play. Once you have mastered being completely immobile while idle for a long period of time it will unlock the not-idle animations?

/s

I love how our character calls the items the vendor has, “relics”. They are forgotten.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Meanwhile, in the Black Lion HQ, each weapon set gets their own unique NPC and a table to display one of the weapons from said set.

It shows Anets priorities. They also lowered the release intervall from 4-6 weeks to 2-3 weeks for black lion weapons.

@briggah thanks so much for your sarcasm. Also your ability to huge how much I play and what modes in which I play. You are exactly the type of person that is wrong with this game. You are ridiculously rude and snarky for no reason. Enjoy your high horse must get lonely at the top of your own pedestal. Anywhoo enough of feedin the trolls right. I don’t know why makes me want to stay more the high cost and low regard of the expansion so far as we know or wonderfully enjoyable people like brigah

Their silence is making this so much worse. You really can’t ignore a mess of this magnitude, but that’s exactly what they’re doing. They don’t seem to care.
Yeah, they’re “reading our thoughts” but that promises nothing. That’s not even fully acknowledging the sheitstorm.

When this whole thing first erupted I kept a keen eye on the forums sure that they would release a statement, something. Wow have I been disillusioned about the whole company.

They are waiting for dust to settle, which ironically will discourage more players who actually want to see change. There’s well over a thousand comments (hundreds very well constructed) here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3a4ktf/dont_prepurchase_heart_of_thorns/ and I haven’t begun to look for any other threads about this. Frankly I’m disappointed in Anet. This should have been a time of excitement, not frustration. If this debacle stretches into next week this will lay a dark cloud over HoT and future releases.

Nike.2631:

Vicariuz.1605:

you’ve missed the point entirely.

No. The blind outrage has missed the point.

The only outrage I feel is about people all around telling me how to feel or what opinion to have.

This is bad.
It looks really bad, intentional or not, this blows my mind.

evoRobot.4019:

And they said they will compensate users within a specific time frame. Stop hating.

No, they didn’t.
1. Their timeframe is one month only (while the info and sales tied to it started from the very beginning of this year).
2. To get compensated you need to contact support on your own (which many people who do not read these forums will not know – Anet doesn’t exactly advertise this fact).
3. Anet would compensate only those people that bought the game directly from them. Many people did that through intermediaries (i.e. Amazon, or game shops), and those will not get an option of upgrading to HoT. At best (if they bought really recently, but see point 1) they might be able to return the game and cancel the sale, but it would mean getting their account closed and starting from zero.

In short, Anet" compensation" offer is not really worth that much.

evoRobot.4019:

Random.4691:

Nike.2631:

Vicariuz.1605:

you’ve missed the point entirely.

No. The blind outrage has missed the point. The expectation that ArenaNet can see through time with perfect clarity misses the point (and is pretty dang laughable considering they still don’t known when they’re going to release but people act like they had this all planned out from the outset…). That people are ignoring that ArenaNet has expressed a desire to make things right for people who bought the game recently misses the point.

Asking people to focus on the problem and not get wrapped around the axel that the FAQ stayed current with released information is most definitively NOT missing the point.

That’s just it, this wasn’t some unforeseen future that just crept up and hit them in the face, it was a conscious decision they made. There was no need to foresee the future, they didn’t need to see through time, they said one thing and then did another consciously.

You underestimate the effort it takes to coordinate a games release. There is so much going on, and with E3 that just passed one day ago.. They updated this FAQ as soon as possible and addressed the forums and those who had concerns about already purchasing the game.

People like you won’t let it go and are making so many excuses. If you don’t like the direction of the game / company, then why are you still here? Because your negativity won’t change anything it only makes it worse with this dirty propaganda. You have a choice here, either take it or leave it.

Then why did they not announce it to the community when they changed the FAQ then?

It came down to players retrieving cached web pages before they admitted they changed it.

Nike.2631:

Wait… keeping a FAQ current is now evil?

No. But telling people for months and months that they needed to purchase the game before HoT drops, then on the day pre purchase is announced, give it away for nothing, then try to covering their tracks, is.

Unless you are seriously trying to tell us they made that decision on the day of pre purchase? They knew, and knowingly were deceptive, not telling the community or potential new players – profiting off of that info in the meantime. If people had known, they would have waited.

Nike.2631:

Vicariuz.1605:

you’ve missed the point entirely.

No. The blind outrage has missed the point. The expectation that ArenaNet can see through time with perfect clarity misses the point (and is pretty dang laughable considering they still don’t known when they’re going to release but people act like they had this all planned out from the outset…). That people are ignoring that ArenaNet has expressed a desire to make things right for people who bought the game recently misses the point.

Asking people to focus on the problem and not get wrapped around the axel that the FAQ stayed current with released information is most definitively NOT missing the point.

That’s just it, this wasn’t some unforeseen future that just crept up and hit them in the face, it was a conscious decision they made. There was no need to foresee the future, they didn’t need to see through time, they said one thing and then did another consciously.

Then tried to cover their own butts, if that is not the case then they are failing at making it look different.

Nike.2631:

Wait… keeping a FAQ current is now evil?

That they decided to make the base game a pack-in does leave them with having to deal with customers who acted based on the old info up to a point (because we don’t know WHEN they decided they’d throw in) but keeping the FAQ current with public information is something to be encouraged, not scorned…

You can choose to twist it however you like, people were told they needed the base game, they purchased the base game, Anet took the money, change the xpac to include the base game and then changed the FAQ’s to say the base game will be included. Had they not taken the money, or announced that the base would be available with the xpac then changing the FAQ’s would have been fine. People have bought the game because of those FAQ’s and put time into it, do they plan on compensating their time and progression now on top of the base refund ?

They are a company and should be held to the same standards as every other company, this wouldn’t fly with any other company.

The price is not necessarily the killing point, but as an MBA with some understanding of how companies do pricing, I can basically guarantee you that they are not just handing out the core game for free.

Someone put a spreadsheet together that projected likely cash flows considering [lower expansion price + discounted core price] v. [higher expansion price + free core game] and decided that the second yielded better numbers.

Good on them, but don’t pretend like they didn’t bake the core game into the price. They did.

I would gladly pay $50 for the expansion, provided I got a new character slot (& a bank expansion tossed in certainly wouldn’t hurt either).

There is certainly no incentive to pre-purchase.

Anet’s silence is horrible.

There should have been an official announcement by now.

Kain Francois.4328:

Honestly, I feel $50 is fair for a new expansion. A lot of work has been put into this, it might as well be worth a whole new game entirely.

If you’re bothered by price, just wait a bit. We all know it’ll go down eventually, and this $50 pricetag is only for the most hardcore of fans, who want to play it as soon as possible.

That said, I think people actually aren’t aware why they’re angry. It’s not the $50 pricetag people are consciously angry about, but the $75 and $100 dollar Deluxe and Ultimate editions. Simply by being in eye-view, right next to the other stuff, there is an association with Heart of Thorns having an outrageous price…. But that is a separate issue altogether.

There seems to be a lot of people on here telling us why we’re unhappy. Perhaps you should start a psychic hotline together.

And for the record, you are wrong. People are upset about the $50 price because a.) new players are getting more than loyal players; and b.) we don’t feel the expansion is worth $50 as it is presented right now.