Guild Wars 2

Just my personal opinion, I have no problem with people using it as a commander tag, but I think considering it’s purpose (you know, to teach people things and provide information), it should be limited on a zone-by-zone basis.

In other words, you can’t turn on your mentor tag in a zone until you’ve 100% said zone. That way when someone asks you a question, you should actually have the information they’re probably asking about. Which would help with the random people leaving it on in the HoT areas when they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing :P

Xanowrath.7901:

Posting “me to” like some brain dead AOLer.

Love this. Now I’ve got the whole thing running through my head.

But yeah, having the same issues. Can get to character screen, but not any further.

Linfang.1087:

I followed and stalked a Anet Developer once in game… Judge said I can’t be within 5000 range from them now :-\

I think we may have creeped her out a bit. In that last shot, right before I jumped off the cliff, it looked like she was trying to press into the cliff-side and disappear!

Doggie.3184:

I didn’t know there was a cellphone version of GW2. :o

Ha. I have dual monitors, so taking a screenshot sometimes causes weird issues. Might just be on my end. I use Gyazo’s Capture Image tool to really quickly drag a rectangle to snap. Gaile was moving so fast, it was pretty touch-and-go between keeping up and getting the shot in time. :P

That moment when your inner cat emerges…

https://i.gyazo.com/557b8af108282bb5d24ec432554a6e53.png

“Wait… is that…”
“Holy crap…”
“RUN, CHASE!”

https://i.gyazo.com/faddc4c67e23f97ca8e0886fc386d1e7.png

“She’s gathering stuff and she’s still faster than us!”
“Over the hill! Around the cliff side! Through the ettins!”

https://i.gyazo.com/775c3075ef6bf4ef77bc2e135c82f00b.png

“Where is she? Wait, she’s going up to the strawberries!”

https://i.gyazo.com/99a1c3676864d76563bcda4b66d94eea.png

“Caught her! She has nowhere to go now!”

https://i.gyazo.com/02769ea5b9252ab98f33133e794db673.jpg

And then I decided to try and jump off the cliff into the water below.
Didn’t make it.

Ran halfway across Kessex on a hunt for the red spot. Was probably the most fun I had all day. Thanks for the entertainment, Gaile!

…and sorry about the creepy stalkering. :P

Many.8419:

pifil are you a developer for gw2? how dare you telling me how this game works. you are noone. I want a red post to clarify if this is intended change and if it is, why isnt it in patch notes and why are they trying to hide such changes?

I want to say that everything Pifil explained is common knowledge, but then you get people who simply don’t understand, or are too self-entitled and caught up in themselves to see past their own experiences. Yes, Many, that is how software development works. That’s how a lot of things work. Regardless of the medium, there are steps and priority lists to everything.

As for the sheer amount of changes from that patch that weren’t documented (and shouldn’t have been affected considering that changes that WERE documented), it’s also possible that somewhere along the line, something may have been mixed up and they gave us a beta patch for HoT instead of what they intended. With the complexity of something like a video game, particularly one that’s played online with tens/hundreds of thousands of players, when problems like these happen they need to run with it and fix the problems going forward. A rollback IS an option, but generally saved for actual game-breaking issues. The game is still playable. Maybe with some nasty inconveniences, but it IS still playable.

Actually on topic, I have to agree with liking the stronger downscaling. It sounded absurd to me when I was reading the threads about it, but a quick swap to an 80 to play with a much lower level friend changed that opinion quickly. People are over-exaggerating. Yeah, sure, I couldn’t one-shot things anymore, but at least to me that increases the enjoyment of it. It was really boring to steamroll through zones, soloing every situation without a care. I actually had to play, and while I was certainly still stronger than the appropriate leveled people, as you should be, it just wasn’t overwhelmingly.

It’s nice! =D But then again that’s my OPINION, coming from someone who likes to actually feel like they’re a part of the game, and not an unstoppable god.

Jana.6831:

Felis Noctu.9081:

People will always complain, and traits are on the forefront of everyone’s mind

True, they will always complain but that shouldn’t be a justification for a bad idea, right?

Of course not, but it’s a fact of life, especially in the western MMO market. People will always find some reason to complain. Now on the other hand, when you have several months of solid complaints at all hours of the day, it becomes less about the complaints and more about “oh… maybe we DID do something wrong”. I’d like to think they’re working on it. Hell, I haven’t even been here for most of it, and just as quick peek into the game earlier today shut me down entirely. Like so many people have said, this has gone on too long. If I was annoyed with it within a couple minutes (and I like I think I have a decent amount of patience), I have no idea how people have lasted months.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Personally I think if the devs are thinking about Traits and what to do with them . . . every time they hear about this topic they move it to the bottom of the list knowing no matter what they do it’s going to be complained about.

Even if it’s a perfect, ultimate fix which makes Traits all sunshine and roses . . . “why wasn’t this done sooner?!”.

So, no, I expect they are thinking about it. I also expect like any person, they are reluctant to touch something they tried to fix and screwed up “so horribly” there’s a seventy page thread with a lot of shouting back and forth arguing not whether it’s broken or not . . . but how broken it is.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a means of getting someone to quit. “You’re gonna work on Traits.” “Screw this, I’m outta here.”

This is exactly why I wasn’t sure if I should post what I did in this thread, but decided it was the best place for it. People will always complain, and traits are on the forefront of everyone’s mind, but they aren’t the only problem. Your impression of the result of the “perfect, ultimate fix” is very accurate, it’ll definitely happen, it always does. It’s the loud minority that screams and yells, and a lot of us sit back thinking it but not saying it. We’ve been burned before, many times. While the traits are the big red hot button of the moment, a lot of us have lost hope from continual disappointments, not one large change.

Gaile Gray.6029:

And thanks, from me to you, for not being nasty about it, or throwing a golem-sized boulder in my direction. I know that what I posted isn’t the substantive information you’d like to have. I can say that from all I hear it shouldn’t betoo long before there is some info we can share. I’m not saying “this week” but I’m definitely not pointing at Q2 2015!

Gregori.5807

Heh, the situation is irritating… not you.

So, no boulders your direction.

Major thumbs up. (And I can take off this heavy armor, which is so unsuited for my class. )

This is exactly why I’ve admired you since Guild Wars 1. You take it so well. You’re in the horrible position of standing between people’s poorly aimed weapons and the intended recipients of their rage, and you handle it beautifully. It’s why I don’t envy your position at all. Don’t let them get you down, Gaile. Forgive them, for they know not what they do! :P

Jana.6831:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

Colin Johanson and I had a chat about this thread today. He actually brought it up because he wanted to make sure that forum members know that the dev team is very aware of the concerns that our players feel about traits, and also to let you know that the devs read and refer to this subject (and particularly this thread) quite frequently. We’ve said it before, but it remains true: Your voices are being heard and your input is valued.

We wish there was more to say today, but please take heart that this subject is part of current development team discussions and we’ll let you know more as soon as we reasonably can do so.

It’s been nearly a year – I gave up hope, I really did.

This, honestly.

Despite writing that whole essay up there, I had hope for GW2 for a very long time. From the moment the first small annoyances started creeping up, continuing into when bugs that could be considered class breaking would continue to be overlooked for some reason (for instance, pets/minions/illusions were pretty lacking when I left, and from what I can tell there hasn’t really been much progress in that area), to seeing these major overhauls that it seems very few people agree with in lieu of the things that are requested.

It’s been too long. People can only be burned so many times before they stop trusting. And let’s face it. While ANet may be willing to change for us (are you really?), I don’t think NCSoft would be willing to accept the failure and acknowledge a bad decision. They’ve proven that time and time again. I don’t have a problem with ANet, honestly. I’m biased, and I’m pointing my finger at NCSoft. They’ve burned the western market too many times for me to not think they’re responsible. Even if they aren’t, they need to take the blame anyway and learn to deal with a different culture. It’s a skill they obviously lack, and every choice they make to save face only serves in marring their reputation even more.

And saying that to Gaile Gray herself just hurts that much worse, at least to me. Your ship is burning, and I don’t envy your position at all right now. Not in the slightest.

I left a while back, soon after the player experience update, due to losing interest. I reinstalled recently having the urge to pick up an Asura Ranger for whatever reason, decided to look into the traits changes again, and I have to say it, I’m probably just going to uninstall again. It doesn’t sound like it’s worth the pain and annoyance of trying to level a new character, and probably never will be due to the below:

Carighan.6758:

minbariguy.7504:

The mind. It boggles.

Ever since somewhere late last beta when the whole communicate-a-lot-and-early backfired on them badly with tons of outlets reporting on dropped features, they’ve been on the strictest “Never say anything at all”-policy I’ve ever seen in video game development.

It’s crazy, but the management seems to enforce it so harshly in-house that not one dev even personally leaks something under a throwaway account. Nothing. At all.

A bit off topic for the thread, but still something people wonder about. This is probably due to Korean business practice and culture. It came up a lot during a certain MMO shutdown process that NCSoft enacted back in mid-to-late 2012. The shortest (and frankly not as accurate, but close enough) explanation is that Korean business culture essentially expects that users accept whatever decisions are made by the company. It’s a primarily western world thing that the consumer/lessers in the “relationship” will question choices made by their “superior”. NCSoft appears to be bearing down a bit harder on its development teams in the past few years. It’s very apparent that GW2 is being taken back to the standard Korean MMO style of incredibly large amounts of grinding, which is not something that works well with the western audience, but it’s what they know. The problem comes from the environment, as in Korea MMOs are played together, with friends, for long periods of time, whereas in the western market people play alone, and expect to be able to complete the majority content alone if they desire. It’s a case of intent to spend time with people vs expecting a feeling of progression.

Said other game that was shut down in theory was shameful to them, as it was popular and active in the western market, but as it was also a western-styled MMO, and as such they had very little idea as to WHY it was successful. They couldn’t “read” their western customer base. It was an enigma, it was a stain on their reputation, and therefore it had to be removed as it was an inconvenient counter-example to their otherwise “solid” practice. In this way, they can save face and claim that it’s the audience that’s the problem, and not their business practices, and if they just find the right topic or method to transplant their style, we’ll realize how superior it is. GW2 had hints of a more western-style of play as well, but with the Star Wars Galaxy-esque overhaul of the trait system, they’ve edged it back into their comfort zone again. And once again, like their transplanted games and methods, it’s caused a large exodus and lack of interest.

And yes, that’s the short version. The full explanation that I summarized lasted several pages.

It’ll be hard for them to see us as a different market with different wants and needs. They loom over their development teams to make sure the products are keeping in line, and I’d have a very hard time believing that ANet made the choice to implement these changes by themselves, at least in the way it was implemented. Taking it back to similar-to-GW1-style of acquisition? I’m all for that. The amount of grinding they apparently want people to do in order to actually acquire said things? The western market’s never really been a fan of that as a whole, but I doubt it’ll stop them from trying to force it on us anyway. And why would they communicate with us? They know what’s best for us, of course. We’re expected to just accept the decisions of our superiors.

And while this thread comes from an earlier time before the NPE was actually implemented, the direction they were moving in was still quickly becoming clear.

For the higher ups, the facts speak for themselves. Delaying traits, a major feature, until 30, makes people feel a severe lack of progression. Especially when they ask for help and find out that most builds won’t function properly until they have said traits. And once they reach 30 (if they make it that far), finding out that said builds require max level anyway, as well as grinding away in order to either unlock the trait or purchase it with an exorbitant cost. You’re guaranteed to lose customers. You already have, and will continue to do so. You haven’t given people incentive to stay, and GW2 isn’t exactly the most exciting game to level in.

Smokoff.6759:

… Get a better internet connection.

Definitely not the reason there’s lag. When whole zones’ map chat explodes with reports of skills freezing, dying to enemies while being unable to fight back or get away, unable to loot and other such issues, the solution is not to “get a better internet connection”.

This problem has been happening off and on the past couple of days at least. They acknowledged the problem was severe Tuesday on their twitter. It wasn’t as terrible last night, no server crashes, but it was still unplayable for a good hour or so. It seems to be happening during prime-time and somewhat just after during typical server off-hours.

They’re working on it, but from what I know, haven’t actually said what the problem may be. There are some rumors about certain internet groups DDOSing, but we can’t really know for sure until someone comes forward with news.