Guild Wars 2

I want to be able to say yes, but I still need to know a lot more about it before deciding. LS completely turned me off to the game, so the expansion will have to win me over as a returning player to earn a purchase.

What do I still need to know?

Price.

Number of zones added and the size of those zones.

Number of Dynamic Events added and will any new events appear in existing zones as part of the expansion?

Who headed up the project? Were some of the “missing” high profile talent like Eric Flannum, Ree Soesbee, Jeff Grub, etc… flying under the radar publicly while working on this expansion? Or, were the people who influenced the LS strategy also in charge of expansion development?

Not a deal breaker, but is Revnant the spiritual and mechanical successor of the GW1 Ritualist, or have Ritualist fans had their hopes crushed?

Other details, I’m sure, oh, and an announcement that there will be no new seasons of Living Story and that it’s time to devote live development to making the existing game world relevant again would go a long way towards earning my purchase. In fact, even though some of the answers to questions above may earn a single purchase from me even if another season is in the works, maybe, I will never, ever buy a copy for my second account as well, unless the end of LS is part of the bargain.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Fiontar.4695:

The new system is suffocating and the reward often isn’t even a miniscule of additional breathing room, it’s smoke and mirrors rewards or giving you a crumb of the player experience they decided to hide behind level locks.

If reactions to these changes aren’t a litmus test between fan and blind devotee, I don’t know what would be.

The mental acrobatics needed to defend the system is amazing, I will give it that.

I’m still slowly working through it, after starting my new ranger late last night. Hopefully with some days off coming up I can do more than just poke at some stuff and get past level 9. So far, it’s not been too bad, especially once remembering I can get weapons from Hoelbrak if I really need them.

Also, new appreciation for the raven as a pet. Might have to start using it.

I have to admit that I had a moment of weakness and level from 9-14 via crafting because the inability to do Skill Points was driving me crazy. It addressed that one annoyance, but the additional five levels did little to make the play experience any better or make my character feel less kitten.

I also have a ranger and bought additional weapons, but I was actually surprised how much I missed unlocking weapon skills the old way. The further delay of weapon swapping and not having any control of my pet for several levels also seemed like annoyance for annoyance sake.

BTW, to Anet, I’m still trudging through a new character so I can speak with first hand knowledge as to the impacts on game play and character progression. I really hope you don’t take my blip in your metrics as evidence of how well your changes are working. It has been far from enjoyable so far and more akin to surveying the scene of a mass catastrophe than something done for enjoyment.

Aside from some ui changes I appreciate, the only thing I’ve liked so far is the additional challenge level of doing content in Kessex Hills with a progression kitten character. However, I have to believe the jump in difficulty, in stark contrast to starter zone kiddy land, sends a very mixed message as to who your changes are meant to attract to the game.

The new system is suffocating and the reward often isn’t even a miniscule of additional breathing room, it’s smoke and mirrors rewards or giving you a crumb of the player experience they decided to hide behind level locks.

If reactions to these changes aren’t a litmus test between fan and blind devotee, I don’t know what would be.

The mental acrobatics needed to defend the system is amazing, I will give it that.

I also have to admit I have trouble believing the comments on how this was tested. They haven’t been able to manage a Public Test Realm in two years, exactly how, with whom and when did they manage to test a new system like this? If it is to be believed, then we must have to believe as well that they’ve actually tested most of the flawed or horrible changes to the game in the last year with secret beta testers and still managed to step in it at every possible opportunity?

As far as where it was tested and for whom it was developed, didn’t Collin state a while ago that the NPE was developed for China and was just now being adapted for the West? Now we are supposed to believe that it had nothing to do with China at all and it was just coincidental?

Official word on subjects of controversy have become as insulting to our intelligence as the NPE changes themselves. To say NPE was designed for 5-year-olds would be an insult to today’s tech savvy children.

It’s mind boggling.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Well, as amateur surveys go, this one is probably one of the better-worded ones. That is to say, the questions are less likely to skew results, although some of them would still need work. The other issue is that the sample population is not representative of the game’s population, it’s representative of the population that visits forums. As such, I would expect the survey to reflect the desires of the sample population. Given all that, the number that surprised me most was 42% “satisfied with the present direction of Guild Wars 2’s development and updates.” What this suggests is that in a sample representative of the whole population, the satisfaction rate would likely be much higher.

I’d usually agree, but with the game populace having shrunk so much, I think people in these “sub-communities” represent a much higher percentage of current players than in most games.

As far as sample bias, clearly these sub communities contain a very high percentage of current players and a small fraction of former players. Since retention of a dwindling player pool and even recapturing a large portion of players who own the game, but no longer play, has to be a massive priority if the game is going to have any chance at reversing current trends, the sub-community polled should be considered as overly representative of the target audience most happy with the current game, rather than the opposite.

Only ANet or NCSoft could broadcast a poll to the audience that most needs to be reached, which is all GW2 owners, but I think they are too afraid of the potential results and what it might say of their post launch efforts to ever do so.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Or, it could be NCSoft directing them to implement said design decisions.

I don’t really believe that, but it’s just as plausible as thinking what they do is contrary to NCSoft’s wishes.

ANet is touted as the most autonomous studio with in NCSoft, while being the only studio with which such a high degree of poor design decisions can be attributed to.

The autonomy is great, a long as the studio is productive. When a trend seems to be developing were quality of work product continues to drop and major missteps become more frequent, eventually something has to give in the relationship between the parent and the child.

IMO, at launch, GW2 had about 80% of what it needed to become an MMO with sustained growth rates and $billion potential. The path towards increasing that percentage were obvious and the core game was very conducive as a foundation for future success.

In the two years since launch, ANet has ignored the obvious and committed to a path for the game that has diminished the game’s financial potential to a massive degree. Instead of growing, the game is shrinking or even imploding. When you start out with the best MMO is a decade and turn it into what it has become, you start attaching dollar figures to those failures that could realistically equate to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenue.

I don’t know that NCSoft taking a heavy hand in trying to force a correction would make things better, but it definitely couldn’t make things worse. ANet seems in serious need of an intervention and with the voice of fans falling on deaf ears and a blind eye turned to the financial consequences that quantify their degree of failure, NCSoft is probably the only one that has any chance of turning things around.

Things now seem completely dysfunctional and one can’t expect to continue on in that state and achieve better results.

Tera Rising seems to be thriving since the switch to F2P last year. I don’t think their cash shop is perfect, but I think it’s much, much better than what we have in GW2.

They have boxes and keys for boxes, but you seem to get much more of worth from each box, even if some may spend too much money chasing a rare drop from those boxes.

They have found a way to continually produce cosmetic items that are quality, desirable to the community and usually only offered for a few months to provide some exclusivity.

I think one thing that works great for them is the decision to make almost everything on the cash shop “bind on equip”, which allows an alternative means for people to acquire rare items or convert gold into cash shop currency indirectly.

They also have a proper wardrobe system. Though outfits are character bound on use, you don’t have to pay more to use them ever time your stat armor is upgraded.

Another thing that seems to have helped the game is that there are elements that encourage the redistribution of wealth with in a free market. Items bought with log-in rewards currency are also bind on equip, so a casual who needs gold more than cosmetics or boosts can trade those items for gold to a veteran player with plenty of gold, but limited daily log ins.

There are also fairly frequent seasonal or special events that often include special daily login rewards, or random drops in the game world that hold equal value, regardless of the level of the player acquiring them. There is usually something of value here that is unnecessary for lower level or new players, but of value to veterans with plenty of gold to burn.

It makes for a robust economy, very healthy cash shop revenue, more players happy with, rather than frustrated at, the means of acquiring rare skins and other exclusive loot. That there is also great churn of wealth, giving casuals and lower levels an occasional bite of the apple, in a free market, is just gravy.

It is possible to combine exclusivity and fairness in a cash shop model and it’s much more conducive for long term revenue than systems that leave people feeling like they are being ripped off.

Of course, you need to be able to pump out quality cosmetics / exclusives that will possess adequate demand, which is something the GW2 cash shop has largely failed to do, (though it might have become marginally better in recent months).

Cash shops can work, they can make loads of money and they don’t have to rip off players to do so.

Monad.7210:

As much as wed like to see a rollback, it will never happen. There is no way a company would voluntarily admit to the gigantic mistake theyve made and let itself go of any respect and value it held. No, they (and we….if we choose) will go through with it, whatever the cost.

Sadly, you are probably right. ANet has shown a pathological resistance to ever admitting they are wrong and will just double down on failed strategies hoping that somehow, in the end, it will all just work out.

I like most of the ui changes, including the trading post, (though I can’t believe they made order now, rather than buy now, the default).

The concept of better delineation of level up benefits and rewards is a good one, but absolutely ruined by back loading real character progression and delaying core elements just to have something to award players during early leveling.

The NPE does nothing to teach new players the game and just makes the level 1-20 progression a horrible experience. That characters are still kitten once they reach level 20 and don’t really start to gain a sense of wholeness until level 40, greatly diminishes the enjoyability of the first half of the leveling curve.

If character progression were restored to exactly what it was 18 months ago, trait system and all, with the level “reward” system re-tuned with worthy rewards and supplemented by an actually tutorial, (that doesn’t just brush over game mechanics and actually helps to acclimatize new players to GW2s mode of content delivery, exploration and game play), something positive could be derived from the current mess.

However, ANet seems incapable of the degree of self realization needed to understand what’s wrong or how to fix it. Combined with their well beyond stubborn inability to admit they were wrong, it’s hard to see any hope for the game moving forward.

How ironclad is the purchase agreement between NCSoft and ANet? How far does the game and the studio need to fall due to continuous, unnecessary, self inflicted wounds before NCSoft just says “enough”? I think it’s not just the fate of the game in the balance, but the fate of the studio and if they are unwilling to make the corrections, in house, needed to get back on track, won’t NCSoft eventually have to step in and do it themselves?

I still remember that my first session in Queensdale during the first beta knocked my socks off and hooked me on the game that I had been following intently in the years prior.

Even a few months ago when I logged in for an hour or so, Queensdale was packed, as it was still a fun zone for many.

This week, even with Megaservers, I’ve found it depressingly dead and it’s not to much to assume it’s because many share my view that the changes have been to the game’s great detriment.

The first deeply groan worthy thing I noticed was that ANet now seems to think that Water Buckets and Cow Feed are just to complex a concept for their target audience. Things just went down hill from there.

I know from discussion with a number of people that some people were a bit confused coming from games like WoW to a game where things are much less linear and a bit more inquisitiveness is expected from players. Some, even after reaching mid levels, found the lack of clear direction on what to do next something they were still having a bit of trouble adapting to.

So, yes, the game could have benefited greatly from not only a more extensive tutorial, (not only of function, but teaching players what the game world expects of them in maximizing content). However, the game definitely did not need to be dumbed down and especially not in such an inane way. I also remain flummoxed that they felt the need to remove or spoil Dynamic Events in the starting zones that made the initial game play so memorable and inspired.

I realized after a short session tonight that the level rewards updates and the Heart Updates are a nice touch, it’s just tainted by the fact that the item rewards are horrible and the feature unlocks seems to have been implemented just to try to instill some illusion of character progress at earlier levels now that Traits and Skill Points have been pushed much further up in the level progression.

In case my opinion on the feature update is unclear, I think pretty much the entire thing is a major head-scratcher and massive disappointment, (even in light of my ever diminishing expectations for the Studio after the slide began in late 2012/ early 2013).

The first MMO I played where the term Toon was used widely for Character was Anarchy Online, back around 2001. I also remember it being used in SWG around 2003. I didn’t hear it much in Early WoW, but by the time of Burning Crusade I noticed some guildies were starting to use it. I understand it’s widely used there today.

Interesting to see that it went even further back.

Chuo.4238:

It seems to me that ArenaNet are booting their existing community in the hopes of replacing them with a new one. They’re doing almost nothing to address longtime criticisms – and when they do communicate, it’s largely platitudes and lip-service.

So at this point, I think it’s clear that they could give a rip about the community – they’re just going to try and make a new one.

Rather like they did with the original Guild Wars community…

I’m really starting to think something similar. I think they realize they have been killing the game in the West, so they’ve devoted all their effort into retuning the game for the East, in hopes that market will save their bacon. Current customers that can stomach the changes are welcome to stay and everyone else can just get the heck out.

The problem is that I don’t think they are any more capable of developing for the East. If NPE is a real indication of how much they seem to feel they need to dumb down the game for China, I have to believe that many Chinese are going to be very insulted when they realize how much ANet felt they needed to dumb down the game for them.

It’s as good an explanation as any. To me, the missteps have been so great that I still have trouble comprehending how the studio that made such an awesome game has become so fail since launch.

Look. These mobs were NOT too confusing for newbs. They were properly balanced to slowly introduce new players to the concepts that provide more challenge as the level of content increases.

The only reason they had to be nerfed was to bring them in line with the character nerfs resulting from the delayed introduction of skills and traits under the NPE. Changes which were also utterly unnecessary and greatly degrade the early level play experience.

The game could have provided a much better introduction for new players through a thorough, optional tutorial system. Not only to introduce the mechanics, but to provide hand holding guidance for those who felt overwhelmed by the non-linear, non-quest hub driven content.

Instead, we have changes to early game that are fun killing, frustrating and still don’t address most of the issues that even intelligent players new to the game were having adjusting to the game’s design.

In one way, it’s not as bad as the SWG NGE, because the impact on existing post level 40 characters is negligible. However, for the level ranges most impacted by NPE and the effects it has on the first impression experiences of new players, or alt play for veterans, it’s actually much worse than the much maligned SWG NGE that sunk that title.

I’ve only made it to level 18 in my tests and I found it the worst introductory leveling process of any MMO I’ve played in 20 years.

I didn’t find a single positive, a ton of unnecessary frustrations and no more new player guidance than previous. In fact, I think the process will now be even more confusing.

It’s a horrible introduction to the game and I have trouble believing most newbs will make it to level 20 before concluding the game is pure junk.

As to tomes of knowledge, etc… just accepting that a quarter of the game is now so un-enjoyable that people not wanting to be treated like simpletons should just skip it should be all the proof one needs that these changes are an utter failure.

The number of merchants was likely considered too overwhelming for new players and thus were removed, along with buckets of water, cow feed and tameable Ranger Pets.

When people say these changes must have been catered to five year-olds, I think they are selling today’s kindergartners far short.

Ummm… shouldn’t the fact that players may now feel compelled to skip the leveling process be proof of how messed up these changes are? The game is short on end game content and, originally, the idea was that via level scaling, the entire game was a form of end game content.

I’ve been testing the NPE this weekend and despite my original plans, I found myself using crafting to skip ahead from 9 to 14 because the gating of Skill Point Challenges was so annoying. The removal of tameable Ranger Pets from the starter zones also led me to rage quit for the evening last night.

What made this game great was the leveling process and all the content you had to level off of. Right now, I can say that the current level 1-20 play experience in GW2 is probably the worst I have ever played in over 20 years, and that includes a lot of games that were complete stinkers.

Yes, the game needs to make money. The irony of your point is that it’s because of poor ongoing development issues and major missteps like the NPE that financial viability even comes into question.

GW2 was the best MMO of the last decade at release. To thrive with existing customers, the games strengths had to be built on. To broaden the appeal, the game needed an optional system to provide more direction for those having trouble adapting to a non-linear, exploration based title.

Living Story was a huge misstep that led to the abandonment of Dynamic Event content and the game world that needed to evolve for the game’s core concept to thrive.

To address the difficulties that some new players used to less choice, more guidance and a shallower mastery curve were having, ANet started down the path of dumbing down the game, rather than building in better guidance to teach the game to those players. When initial efforts to dumb down the game failed to have much positive impact, rather than getting the message and putting in the much needed guidance, they produced the NPE.

NPE has not only dumbed the game down even further, but it actually makes the game more confusing and more frustrating. I finished completion of Queensdale this weekend with a fresh character and if that had been my experience with the game back in 2012, I would have called the game out as being pure trash.

There is no more guidance on how to experience the game or enjoy the zone than previously. Fun, unique elements of the starting zone experience have been removed entirely. Gating the display of POIs, Vistas and Skill Point Challenges on the map removes important clues and the inability to access SP Challenges until level 14 becomes extremely frustrating.

Personal Story was actually a decent mechanism for introducing players who chose to follow it to the flow of the zone, but now that isn’t unlocked until level 10 and following it is now even less obvious a choice for a new player.

The pace of weapon skill unlocks was tedious at launch, but the pacing adjustments last year had pretty much corrected that. Even as a returning player, unlocking weapon skills would have provided a welcome sense of achievement and reintroduction to each weapon skill in an intuitive manner. The NPE system is obnoxious and, once again, actually counterproductive from a “helping newbs learn the game” perspective.

Pushing back skill unlocks and traits makes for a boring, frustrating start to the game. The game starts to get more challenging post level 20, but now, rather than having several levels of gradually increasing challenge to learn your skills and the dodge mechanics, plus the role that traits play, players need to learn these things just as encounters start to really require them.

The “level rewards” are transparently bogus and even most newbs will realize that the first 20-30 levels provides them with almost no actual character progression. What they may not realize is that the game never used to be that way and this system was implemented because ANet apparently thinks that the problem attracting new players was that new players were too stupid to grasp the game, to the point that a better tutorial would have been pointless.

It’s an utter mess that’s just near impossible to deny no matter how devoted a fan one might be.

There has been no evidence in the two years since launch that any of the changes to the game, or the waste of resources that has been Living Story, have in any way reflected the input and desires of your players.

The last two years have provided an ongoing string of changes to game systems/content and to the game’s original core philosophies that have degraded and gutted what, at launch, was the best AAA MMO produced in the last decade.

When the vast majority of your efforts would have been strangled in the crib if the ideas had actually been floated ahead of time to the community for feedback, that should be a serious warning sign for the developers.

The lack of communication could be forgiven if it was in the defense of development that might come across poorly to players in concept, but would actually prove to be beneficial in implementation. However, that is clearly not the case. The past two years have been an abject failure for the studio and the majority of the mistakes could have been prevented if the options for ongoing content and feature development had been hashed out with the community during the conceptual stages.

It’s not an issue of floating cool stuff you might not be able to deliver on. It’s clear that the current studio has completely lost touch with the player base and all sense of what makes good game design. More communication could save you from further disaster, though it would also provide less cover for incompetence if the feedback is ignored and the resulting product proves disastrous.

GW2, at launch, was a work of genius. Like anything ahead of it’s time, many consumers in the early stages may have trouble adapting to the paradigm shift. There are many ways the game could have been improved to ease the transition and make the game more comfortable to those who have been shaped by WoW and a decade of it’s clones, WITHOUT compromising on the game’s overall design.

When faced with an audience where a fair portion just were not equipped to adapt to your product with out additional guidance, you chose to make a knee jerk reversal that rejected what made the game so great and instead chose to neuter your product.

Unfortunately, it has been a butcher’s job of a surgery and the entire game is now facing a potentially fatal infection, with the strategy seeming to be to just cut off more appendages, rather than trying to restore the game to a state of health.

The road ANet chose to take in early 2013 has likely cost the game hundreds of millions of dollars and has bled the player base and the game’s reputation. Rather than look at the disaster of your own making with an eye at identifying the plethora of mistakes and finding a way to reverse course, there seems to be a pathological need to double down on failed strategies in denial of those mistakes.

In most cases, the shrinking core of loyal fans has provided just enough positive feedback to feed the self delusion, but I think it’s clearly now time for everyone to wake up to the realities and try to find some way to undo all the damage that has been done before it’s too late.

Another point brought up in the thread: “Some people find the freedom of GW2 overwhelming and prefer a game that provides them a well marked, linear route through the world”.

You know, that’s a fair observation. It took a friend of mine several months of wishing for just that before he came around to appreciating the freedom the game offered. I personally think that if the game world had actually evolved via Dynamic Events, more people would have realized the benefits of GW2s content delivery strategy and would have been willing to take the time needed to adjust.

A big problem with the NPE is that while it locks game play and character progression mechanics behind level walls, to the great detriment of game play, it has done absolutely nothing to make the content more approachable for new players.

A tutorial system, that vets could turn off, that would have led new players on a linear tour though each starter zone’s content and explained elements that some found confusing, would have been an ingenious approach to bridging the gap for players used to linear MMO content, while having zero negative impact on those who embraced the GW2 method of presenting content.

NPE neuters the game, removes content and even hides important guide markers; POIs, Vistas and Skill Point Challenges, from the map; along with the removal of a number of enjoyable starting zone DEs that used to really show off the benefits of DEs. Not to mention that the Personal Story, which actually did provide a sort of linear tour of the game zones, has now been blocked until level 10, guaranteeing that even more players will skip it or not even know what it is. (They even have removed most of the tameable Ranger pets from all the starter zones, with the odd hold out likely just missed on the first pass).

A proper guided tutorial, either expanding on the Personal Story, or interacting with and supplementing it, would have made a lot of sense, with out requiring any negative changes to the game, it’s systems and it’s content.

For what ever reason, those currently in charge have been systematically destroying the phenomenal game that GW2 was at launch. The Manifesto has been deliberately gutted and everything that made the game such a standout targeted for destruction. Many have been much slower to accept this reality, which isn’t surprising because the premise sounds absurd in a logical universe. However, I think the NPE has been a real wake up call for many.

When a game would be much better off completely reverting 1 1/2 years of changes and two years of content development have amounted to less content in the world, not more, I think that’s a very serious indictment of those who have shepherded the game since launch.

A Public Test Realm would have made a lost of sense a year or two ago. When the game had enough of a population to support one and enough players still believed that ANet would make a good will effort to take our feedback into serious account. Neither of those conditions can be met today.

OMNIBUS.2913:

TexArmageddon.2497:

OMNIBUS.2913:

Veteran players seem the most upset by this which i dont get. I started since release and its not like i dont hav 8 experience scrolls and 80+tomes of knowledge sitting in the bank. If your a veteran how do you not have any?

That isn’t the point… Imagine if you didn’t have any.. better yet Imagine being someone who just started 4-5 months ago with NONE… Of course older players will be mad.. it make the leveling process stupid

Thats true if u started 4-5months ago. I gues i i considered “veteran” to at least be playing the game for a 1 year.

I played very heavily for the first year and barely at all for the second. I don’t have tomes of knowledge or experience scrolls. So, even if much of my enjoyment didn’t come from leveling a new alt now and then, it appears I’d be SOL anyway.

During my first day of testing the NPE, I ended up having to level from 9 to 14 via crafting, because the inability to access Skill Point Challenges and see POIs/Vistas on the map was just far too annoying. New players would need to buy gems and trade gems for gold in order to skip the new bullkitten, which, I wonder, may be the real point of these changes? Not sure how making the first 20-40 levels so annoying that most will want to skip it helps the game…

It’s not just a dumbing down of the game, it’s the fact that in the process of attempting to dumb down the game it has become not only less fun, but actually more confusing.

Anet tries to present this boatload of poor changes as if the ends somehow justify the means, but it seems to me that it actually fails miserably as an attempt to make the game more “friendly and engaging” for new players.

It’s just another round of horrible game design changes pushing the game closer to the edge of irrelevance.

I’ve played a new character to 16 and plan on leveling to 80 in order to develop an accurate understanding of what has happened to character progression with the changes seen since launch and, primarily, related to the major feature updates.

So far, I’ve found the system irritating, frustrating and apparently aimed at people with an IQ below 85. (Since the NPE was formulated for the Chinese client, I have to assume that ANet has a very low opinion of the intelligence of Chinese players, which strikes me as pretty racist).

It’s no secret I’ve hated Living Story, not only on it’s own lack of merits, but because it took away the resources that were supposed to be spent on keeping Dynamic Event content fresh and making the game feel like it was alive.

However, I could still recommend the game to new players based on it’s core merits, even if I encouraged them to just ignore LS and play the rest of the game. Now, I can’t even recommend the core game, mostly as a result of NPE and previous moves to dumb down character progression to the Nth degree.

NPE fails as a teaching tool. Completely. It kills the flow of the game. (The best way to level to 20 had always been to complete two starter zones and grab at least the Skill Challenges in one or two others, doing DEs along the way. Now, Skill Point Challenges are hard gated prior to level 14, making “play and explore” a non-viable starting zone option). It also is confusing as hell, because while some of the “level unlocks” are hard locked, like skill points, others are not. They seem to be listed as level perks just to make newbs feel like they are progressing!

One of the bullet points is that they’ve “increased the leveling pace from 1 to 15”. Well, first off, I haven’t noticed much of a pace increase and, secondly, since you now have to go back through the zones you leveled in to get those Skill Points, (hard locked), POIs and Vistas, (soft locked), it actually takes a lot longer to complete early progression.

Under the current progression system, real progression, aside from artificial barriers you need to unlock, doesn’t really start until level 30 and, even then, only really happens every five levels or so.

Leveling used to mean something. Now 4/5th of your levels represent smoke and mirrors gains. The current system could be distilled down to 16 levels, the first four being feature kitten tutorial levels, with pitifully little effort.

If NPE and an effective reduction of progression from 80 to 16 levels isn’t a serious “dumbing down” of the game, then I’m Mary Poppins.

I really want an insider to write a book on how a potentially $Billion MMO morphed into the mess it is today. It would be one of the most fascinating business stories ever written and I’m personally dying to know how the same studio that launched the best MMO in a decade managed to then morph it into one of the most disappointing MMOs currently on the market.

Vayne.8563:

There are two answers to your questions OP. Colin explained further some of why what was done was what done and it wasn’t just about teaching it was also about pacing.

Anet did extensive testing over a one year period and this was the version of the build which retained the most players and kept them playing longer.

The entire system is an absolute mess and further kills what, at launch, was the best MMO of the past decade, by a wide margin.

As to “we tested it and this is what worked”, how did they test it and who did they test it on? I find it impossible to believe that they tested it on Western MMO Players and came up with this result. I also seriously doubt they tested it on Eastern MMO Players and got this result. Could it be the best system for a random group of non-gamers off the street? Maybe, but I think most MMO players and gamers in general will find the system not only frustrating, but very insulting to their intelligence.

We know this system was implemented in support of the China release and, unfortunately, we also got it here. The first thing I thought to myself after testing out the NPE was that ANet must think Chinese players are absolute idiots. I was actually offended by the implied racism of the system.

Even if there is any truth to their testing claims, how the hell is that a way to design a game? Lucas Arts tried the same thing when they forced SOE to implement the NGE for Star Wars Galaxies. That had focus group testing as well and it was disastrous for the game because of the ham handed way they tried to dumb down the game in an effort to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I think it should be obvious to many that NPE has nothing to do with making a better game or improving the learning experience for new players. The only point of NPE is to provide an artificial sense of progression to cover for a ridiculously dumbed down Trait system that back loads actual character progression and introduces large gaps where there is no appreciable progression.

If you boiled actual character progression in the current game to it’s purest, distilled form, we could have a level cap of 16, with the first 4 representing very negligible gains. 4/5ths of the current game levels are essentially meaningless. Gaining a level used to mean something, now it’s most often just an artificial barrier to essential game functions pre-level 20 and absolutely empty filler post level 20.

The game suffers greatly as a result and, sadly, we find ourselves in a situation two years in where Vanilla GW2 is a vastly superior product to the game it is today. If a game would be better of scrapping two years of development almost completely, that says something and it isn’t good.

Kuldebar.1897:

Same problem here on my new Sylvari Ranger (chose the Hound for starter), only ran into the Pink Moa and a Jungle Spider…no drakes or other creatures in Caledon Forest.

Same in Queensdale. Another pointless change to make the early level experience frustrating, rather than fun. The marketplace is a bit easier to navigate, but there isn’t another feature update I feel has improved the game. The NPE isn’t only horrible for experienced players, but is likely to be a huge turn off for most new players. This update is a mess…

So, basically, the problem with Season 1 wasn’t season 1, it was that all the best parts of season 1 were the parts that had nothing to do with the main story line. So, if they cut out the good stuff that happened during breaks from the main story and ram the story down everyone’s throat in every single live content update, “win”?

Another instance of “what should we as game developers actually do, then do exactly the opposite, just to be edgy”? More likely.

They should have made SAB a permanent part of the game a year ago, then had a small team doing nothing but developing new levels for it. That would have been edgy. Of course, if more people played GW2 for SAB than Living Story, that might have been a bit embarrassing.

Cyan.6904:

Fiontar.4695:

I think the game is no longer being designed for us in the West. The game is dying here, (in spite of being the best “at launch” MMO of the last decade, they found a way to squander it), but it’s very successful in China. I’m sure localizations for other Eastern nations will be the next top priority.

Designing for the East is very different than designing for the West. Expect more difficulty, more grind and a decidedly less benevolent cash shop moving forward.

People still playing here are likely seen as die-hards who will surely swallow anything, thus the risks of alienating the remaining Western player-base must be seen as very insignificant vs. the potential gains from targeting the game for Eastern audiences.

The game’s once incredible potential will never be realized. If it was a “dime a dozen” MMO, no one would care, but it was a once in a million opportunity missed by a mile. It’s about the saddest outcome this fifteen year MMO veteran can imagine.

Boo…hiss…boo…

So, was it really necessary to post the same complaint in 3 topics? But seriously, it’s all the same again. The game is dying in your opinion, I still see a lot of people in game. People with constructive criticism, enthusiastic people, people who can appreciate the way the game is going. Of course, there is also the other side of the spectrum, I’m not going to deny that. That category is most likely even the most active here on the forum, what can give a distorted view of things.

Calling all the people who still play in the west die-hards is somewhat amusing. We have a lot of die-hards then, nice to know. But they will not swallow anything, that is over exaggerating. Your post seems to be a bit affected by your own rage about missing content, what you can get fairly easy without even using real live money. Sure, not everyone will be pleased with that, but there is some flexibility. Missing a chapter is also very easy to avoid.

It has nothing to do with me missing content. It has everything to do with a game I once saw as having $billion potential flush even more of that potential right down the drain.

Ultra-challenging material is fine for those who want it, but when Living Story, which was once meant to cater to the masses, keep everyone happy and provide a key selling point for the game, becomes target at the the elite few, I call that content mostly the die-hards will love.

As far as East vs. West influencing future game design, I really need to offer a caveat. That assumes that they will a.) develop for where the money is at, and, b.) do a much better job developing for the East than they have done developing for the West the last 18 months.

I’ve been playing MMOs for over 15 years and I’ve never seen self destructive, post launch game development on this scale, ever. It sucks all the more because this game was possibly the best “at launch” MMO in the history of the genre and appeared to really “get the market” in a way that should have precluded such a reversal of fortune post launch.

To me, Anet post mid 2013 is the Anti-ANet. It’s hard to imagine they are the same studio.

Sytherek.7689:

I’m pretty neutral on the 200 gem cost.

I am confused by people accusing ANet of requiring real world money for missed episodes. 200 gems is < 20 in-game gold. No real money required. No debit/credit card required. Just a bit of in-game gold.

What’s the problem?

That’s a flawed argument and the minute you accept it, that’s the minute when “anything goes” with the gem store. Why not sell level 80s for 2,000 gems, anyone can convert their gold to gems to unlock an instant level 80. Why not sell a new higher tier of uber-stat armor and weapons, exclusive to the gem store for 8,000 gems a set, anyone can farm the gold and convert it to gems, never being forced to spend real money. Etc…

What happened to only ever selling items of cosmetic or convenience value for gems? Game content is clearly neither.

There are two separate issues here and they both weigh completely against. The ethics of charging extra for content that was supposed to be free; and the fact that putting high visibility, new content, with the potential to tempt new and returning players into giving the game another look, behind a pay wall, is just a marketing and business disaster.

That they insulate themselves against the ire of active players, who didn’t happen to be away from the game at an inopportune time, by giving them the content for free doesn’t negate the glaring negatives. It just gives people an excuse to keep their heads in the sand as the game continues to lose steam in the West.

If I was still an active player, I’d be even more ticked off, knowing that the company is throwing away more potential business during the once yearly window of opportunity that a new season refresh offers.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Fiontar.4695:

Then, I turned to the Season Two living story and found the first two chapters behind a pay wall. That was the end of me giving ANet yet another chance.

Really? Because that was known before they started LS2, they were going to do that; if you logged into a character for even five minutes you got access for free. Otherwise, 200 Gems.

It’s just an illogical, completely unnecessary and very passive aggressive slap in the face for returning or new players, who might otherwise have been enticed by word of this seemingly improved Season Two.

Still better than LS1 “you snooze you lose” . . .

Sorry, but most lapsed players and potential new players did not know about this in advance. Why would you give people late to the game or taking a tentative peak back due to the buzz a very real reason to take a pass? It makes no sense at any level.

It would have been much better than the completely temporary content of S1. If the content itself is up to snuff and new/returning players get hooked on the new content, some will be converted into active, paying customers. Instead, it’s still “you snooze, you lose”, but only for the people they should be focused on winning or winning back.

It makes zero sense. It may keep short sighted fans happy, knowing they got something for free that those “less dedicated” have to pay for, but it’s horrendous business sense. When you have a game that desperate needs people to give it another chance and you have new buzz worthy content that is likely to bring people for another look, you don’t say “sorry, you missed out, free content is only free if you’ve been playing; want to check out Season Two? Pay up”.

It’s yet another example of ANet finding a way to ensure the fruits of their labors rot on the vine. It’s a clear pattern of self sabotage, but I can’t understand how a studio of over 300 can produce self destructive behavior typically reserved for individuals. No one says, “Hey, wait a minute guys, this makes no sense if the goal is to increase the player base and up our revenue”?

I continue to be befuddled.

lordkrall.7241:

Would love to see a source for this.
Especially since before this update you couldn’t even see the content at all if you missed it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-wars-2-content-update/first#post86706

Johanson discussed the issue of additional Guild Wars 2 content over on the game’s official forums.

“No need to buy them,” Johanson stated, “Gw2 will feature consistent free content updates and in-game events going forward. Our goal is to make it so you get more from Gw2 for free than you get from a game you pay a subscription for.”

“We do appreciate that you’d like to buy lots of new content, but we’d prefer to give a lot of it to you for free, cause that’s what we think a responsible MMO company does.”

This is more recent. From 2010 through 2012, there were numerous Arenanet blog posts detailing many elements of the game and the business model that have since been abandoned. When those blog posts became a thorn in their side, they deleted them and they can’t even be found any longer in the Way Back Machine internet archives.

I obsessively followed this game’s development, played obsessively for many months and was a very active proponent of the game from 2010 through mid 2013. I read everything I could get my hands on and I know with certainty that they clearly stated that they did not want to segregate content behind pay walls, short of a full expansion and that they would never sell anything in the cash shop other than cosmetic items and conveniences.

Giving a paid cash shop item free for a limited time does not make it a free item, it’s a paid cash shop item regardless. If being able to trade gold for gems to buy them makes them “free”, then there are absolutely no bounds as to what they could or should offer on the cash shop, since you could just grind for hours to buy any of them “for free” using in game gold.

The problem isn’t just promises broken or semantics. It makes zero business sense to add pay wall barriers for content if part of the goal of that content is to attract new and returning customers. The price per chapter isn’t significant, but most will bristle at it on principle. For those who look at the game months from now, the cumulative costs will be significant.

The loss in potential revenue from new or returning players who will pass on by because of these ill conceived pay walls greatly exceeds the occasional purchase by a current player who due to circumstance misses the free period for a given chapter. In fact, for those “just barely hanging on”, the “pay for this now, since you missed it when it was free” kick to the nether regions may knock many such players right from the game.

The story about Season Two should be “come on back and see how much we have improved, we’ve worked really hard to earn another look”, not “trust us, living story is much better now, but you’ll have to pay us extra to find out, since you missed the time window when you could have gotten it for free”.

BTW, I spent a lot of money on this game the first year. Much more than the equivalent in subscription fees. I’m not adverse to spending money for a game I like with developers who earn my good will. The first thing I did after patching the game yesterday and loggeing in was to stake out potential gem store purchases, assuming Season Two was able to hook me back in. I found $100 worth of stuff to put on my wish list and that would only cover one of my two accounts.

Then, I turned to the Season Two living story and found the first two chapters behind a pay wall. That was the end of me giving ANet yet another chance.

It’s just an illogical, completely unnecessary and very passive aggressive slap in the face for returning or new players, who might otherwise have been enticed by word of this seemingly improved Season Two.

I feel bad for the content developers, it seems like the business side of things just couldn’t help but find some way to diminish the potential benefits of their work towards breathing life back into the game.

The story for Arenanet post 2012 can be summed up by “One step forward, two steps back. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat…..” When ever someone works kitten the silver lining, others just seem determined to add a heavy layer of stubborn tarnish before it gets released.

I think the game is no longer being designed for us in the West. The game is dying here, (in spite of being the best “at launch” MMO of the last decade, they found a way to squander it), but it’s very successful in China. I’m sure localizations for other Eastern nations will be the next top priority.

Designing for the East is very different than designing for the West. Expect more difficulty, more grind and a decidedly less benevolent cash shop moving forward.

People still playing here are likely seen as die-hards who will surely swallow anything, thus the risks of alienating the remaining Western player-base must be seen as very insignificant vs. the potential gains from targeting the game for Eastern audiences.

The game’s once incredible potential will never be realized. If it was a “dime a dozen” MMO, no one would care, but it was a once in a million opportunity missed by a mile. It’s about the saddest outcome this fifteen year MMO veteran can imagine.

Boo…hiss…boo…

Apparently he can pay to do so. First game I’m aware of that makes you pay them money if you take time away from the otherwise free game play. Seems more likely to drive players from the game than provide any meaningful revenue, but they must think most people still playing are just the kind of cool-aid drinking people who will pay for “free” content they missed.

I decided to return after hearing that some people find Season 2 to be an improvement over Season 1. Giving my long break from the game and the current lack of MMOs I find worth a spit, I was ready to be open minded and see if I could recapture some of the original magic.

I log in and find this.

The tin foil hat theories gain even more credence. For what ever reason, ANet is trying to kill GW2 by any means necessary, even if it’s a death by a thousand cuts. This one cuts a bit deeper than many of the rest.

This is a massive slap in the face to people who take a break and expected ANet to keep the promise that once you’ve bought the game, you can return at any time and have access to all the non-expansion content you missed, at no extra charge. This stomps on the promise that players will not be gated from game content by pay-walls and segregated based on who has what. It’s also guaranteed to discourage new players, make it harder for current players to create friends and to provide a rude tumble in the mud for new players who do “buy to play”, only to find they have to pay extra for content they could have had for free, if only they had bought a few months earlier.

Very sad, even more so because the community that’s left could only fill six pages in response.

China has been a huge hit for GW2, but mid to long term is still uncertain. If it remains a huge hit six months from now, I’m guessing Western players and forgotten promises will become of little concern, and the game will continue to transition to the high greed, “evil” cash shop model.

We all love to see a diamond in the rough polished via hard work and talent into a brilliant gem; this is the first time I’ve ever seen MMO developers launch with the Hope Diamond and then try so hard to transmute that diamond back into a lump of coal.

How we can witness a high water mark in MMO launches and an all time low in ongoing MMO development from the same title continues to be beyond me. Einstein’s definition of insanity strangely comes to mind as I ponder this quandary.

The Who, What, When, Where and Why of it would make a compelling novel, I hope some day someone will have the guts to write it and maybe then, some of this will make some sort of twisted sense from the perspective of those who fell down a dark rabbit hole and never once looked back…

I thought the community had been pretty clear for the best part of the last year that most where sick of zerg based Living Story events? If their solution is a zerg event that requires six zergs, then things would seem to be very broken in the design process.

Not a good sign for those hoping that ANet might get it’s mojo back with season two…

Living story was over a year of development wasted on really bad story telling and temporary content. It also coincides with dropping population numbers on what had started as the most promising MMO in almost a decade.

The only thing that had any real impact or permanence was the destruction of LA, but that was clearly a desperation move to prove LS did have an impact. To bad it took the idea of temporary content a step further in the wrong direction by actually deleting a significant chunk of existing content and removing the location that hosted what LS content that was reusable.

It was a failure on every single level, other than allowing ANet to by pleased with themselves for pumping out free content at a record pace, (while choosing to ignore that it was quantity at the complete expense of quality).

So, yeah, I think we all should hope that LS gets shelved and ANet instead devotes the same level of resources to adding Quality, Permanent content.

An MMO that cared about a realistic economy would ensure that rarity and usefulness of precious metals would produce realistic values for ore and ingots. Gold ore is plentiful and it’s use in crafting and the value of those crafted items ensure the illogically low valuation. Blame who ever balances these things, it’s bad game design.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Fiontar.4695:

A micro-budget, direct to video fantasy farce that thinks it’s the video game equivalent of Game of Thrones.

That’d be an awesome slam if they had said anything of the sort.

The following is from the Eurogamer interview a few months back, for proper context:

Johanson told me everything that will happen, and the four patches coming early this year – 21st January, 4th February, 18th February and 4th March – will bring about an end to excite even a bystander. Tyria really won’t be the same after it, and what happens at the end will also set up Season Two.

By its conclusion, Season One will have been developing for 15 months. What ArenaNet wanted to create was a complex plot that kept people theorising and speculating in the same way a show like A Game of Thrones (and the book series A Song of Fire and Ice beyond that) does – to have “people realise what the power of having a video game that can tell a story like a television show is”.

There are enraptured super-fans fervently guessing at what’s to come, mind you, and apparently one person in every 10,000-20,000 has guessed correctly. “And we haven’t told them this!” Johanson cackled. "Most of the rest of our fans are all saying, ’You’re crazy! There’s no way that’s what it is – that’s way too cool.’

“It’ll be really fun in three months when the ending happens for those people to be able to stand up and say, ‘I got it right! I nailed Game of Thrones!’”

But what if it doesn’t work? What if this grand story doesn’t have the affect on people that ArenaNet hopes – will it be time to reassess the formula?

ArenaNet has already. The next step, “and we’re heading down that path regardless”, is to keep a big story but colour it with smaller stories that begin and end every month, the hope being to keep less invested players interested. “That would be our next step before we say, ‘Hey, we really need to change things,’” said Johanson.

I’m hoping the silence is a good sign that maybe they really did learn the proper lessons from Living Story and are revamping the entire concept. I’d rather wait a few months and get real content, rather than have a repeat of the rather poor showing they made with Season One!

Even less likely, but more exciting, would be if they were close on a real expansion, the entire studio is working to finish it, and there won’t be a need for Season Two until several months after the expansion hits. If so, I just hope the expansion has nothing in common with Season One, as far as quality of content and story, but rather exceeds the quality of the excellent world content they delivered at launch.

Level scaling and numbers scaling for DEs have been broken for some time now. They should have fixed it a long time ago, but with megaservers they can’t put it off any longer.

Character strength doesn’t scale down far enough doing lower level content, ( which has also prevented them from scaling up rewards to the degree once promised), and mob numbers/strength clearly don’t scale up enough vs zergs.

I get the appeal of mega servers to disguise dwindling populations, but like much we have seen since launch, they didn’t really think things through. Scaling needed to be fixed first, or mega servers threaten to cost more players than they save.

Most old cities in the real world have been built and rebuilt on top of the old dozens of times. A trade hub doesn’t die unless there is no more need for the exchange of goods that were traded there.

Season two better open with the return of commerce to LA and the start of rebuilding, or Living World is going to feel even more like Dead World. The devs broke it, now they need to fix it!

They have to rebuild it and starting very soon. Most old cities across the real world have been built and rebuilt dozens of times on top of the old. Nothing says Dead World more than LA continuing to sit in ruins.

chrispy.5641:

olvendred.3027:

http://tvtropes.Org/pmwiki/pmwiki.Php/main/tropesaretools

that sums it up. Everything is a ripoff of something, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing.

Seriously, if you think that anything to do with zombies, undead, rage viruses, etc. In the last 60 years is ‘original and unique’, you should go read one of the original sources, which technically isn’t even a zombie story (I am legend).

For another example, look at all the modern stories about space marines and galactic warfare….Then go read ‘mobile suit starhammercraft effect 40k : combat evolved’….Er, wait, I mean starship troopers!

All modern interpretations of elves and dwarves are influenced by tolkien’s stories in some way, which also indirectly affected almost every aspect of the dwarves from this game. Its inescapable.

Yet, there is still quality media of all forms each year that manages to be exceptional without being cliche. Living story is made up entirely of blocks of bad cliche, with no attempt at depth, believability, emotional connectivity or quality.

If fiction was just the mechanical assembly of cliches, every book would be a best seller and every movie a blockbuster. Living story has been a really bad outline of cliched story, with no actual substance available to try to make it more than it’s base cliches.

Season one was barely on par with the worst d&d campaigns invented by untalented ten yearolds with fantasies of being an awesome dungeon master. Almost as bad as a Syfy channel Saturday night disaster movie, while being a tenth as fun and suffering under the delusion that it possesses a degree of quality.

A micro-budget, direct to video fantasy farce that thinks it’s the video game equivalent of Game of Thrones.

IMO, the destruction of LA was a childish attempt at providing lasting impact from a story line that amounted to absolutely nothing. The ultimate indictment of the horrible mess that has been Living Story.

More personal story and no living story is my vote. Personal story may have been a bit uneven in quality, but it is actual story paired with actual content. Living story has been light on story and content, being little more than a psychological manipulation of the player base into adventure by checklist, run this treadmill, jump these hoops, get this limited time reward mode of game play.

GW2 isn’t a browser game, nor a smartphone/tablet game. Why are we force-fed content not appropriate for a vast game with mega-tons of content and massive world space?

I’d actually love it if Living Story would become quality extensions to a new branch of Personal Story, in support of new, permanent world content and changes each month.

Despite it’s flaws, Personal Story is a much better delivery of quality story and content than Living Story has been. LS only survives due to the rewards structure. Very little of it has been stuff players would have just done for fun. If personal Story had provided better rewards, it would have been a much more fully utilized batch of content by the player base.

BTW, an original design commitment of GW2 was that all modes of game play would offer equal levels of reward for effort spent. Exclusive LS rewards broke that commitment. LS would be more acceptable if there where alternate ways of earning those same rewards. LS, adventure by checklist content for those who want it, while players enjoying other modes of play could play other ways to earn those rewards.

If the LS content can stand on it’s own merit, there should be no barrier to this approach. Temporary content would be just as sinful, I’d hope that season two will move away from that, but at least it wouldn’t be a form of content that actually incentivizes abandonment of all the other content in the game.

Living Story actually trained people to play by checklist and to ignore the vast amounts of world content. It wasn’t just the presence of a checklist of tasks, but the time limits and rewards.

People who remember play without LS may now rediscover the actual core game content and enjoy the return of exploration, while some of those who have never known the game without LS may feel a bit lost. I just hope that many will discover the broader game world while they are able to.

The pause has lifted the mice from the maze they’ve run for treats and reintroduced them to the wild. Some will prefer to return to the predictable experience of running a time limited treadmill and jumping through hoops for rewards, but I hope many will realize how stifling LS has been and will recommit to the broader game world.

I also have some hope that Season Two will be less about Adventure by Checklist, time limited, temporary content and will instead use story to provide context for the introduction of new and altered permanent world content. I’m not holding my breath, but at least there is some hope.

I don’t get pushing off trait points until 30 either. If anything, they should have started players on traits earlier than before. With trait respecs free and easy, I would think they would want players experimenting with them as early as possible.

Makes zero sense.

Now that content updates have been separated from feature updates, ANet definitely needs a public test server for testing content changes well in advance of them going live. PTS’s greatly cut down on design issues and major mis-steps by allowing stumbling blocks to be discovered and addressed before they have a chance to negatively impact the broader player base.

Sad thing, though, is that just the feature previews raised serious concerns among players and ANet doesn’t appear to have listened to any of them. Whether or not there is a PTS system, if they aren’t willing to make adjustments based on community feedback, or outcry, then they are just breeding higher churn rates and increasing the negativity instilled in each person who leaves the game.

shogei.8015:

Avelos.6798:

The outfits… they’re not as bad as I thought they’d be, but the stuff I bought with real money being turned into 15 minute tonics?
How I feel about that:
I put them in the bank. Didn’t play Guild Wars 2 aside from finishing my daily.
Fairly disappointed.

If you aren’t going to use them, Anet has already offered to refund the gems.

It’s better than nothing, but indicative of how bad the new system really is. I honestly don’t get how destroying town clothes revenue and then having to refund money already spent on town clothes makes any financial sense. A few changes to the system could greatly facilitate armor and town clothes revenue, rather than killing revenue and requiring refunds.

In fact, the biggest business advantage of a wardrobe system could and should have been to greatly increase the appeal of gem store skins by making them much easier to use and cutting down on unnecessary nickle and dime costs every time a player wants to change their look.

The only logical explanation for such a flawed feature is that someone tried too hard to build added costs into it, to the actual likely detriment of future revenue, by completely missing the mark!

The wardrobe system is a complete mess. I like almost everything else in the patch, but this feature is so deeply flawed I have no idea how it ever made it to live in it’s current state.

Now that content updates are split off from feature updates, I think you really need to take advantage of that and have a public test server to test feature updates well in advance of them entering live.

As far as I can tell, the only reason you guys went with this confusing, complicated and dysfunctional implementation of a wardrobe system, (which other games do with zero fuss), is that you wanted to find a way to maximize revenue from wardrobe changes. I think this system is so flawed that it will destroy revenue once derived via transformation crystals and will probably have a serious impact on armor skin sales. Not to mention that you killed any revenue from town clothes!

What needs to change?

1. Town clothes need to be pieced back out as individual parts and be dye-able. To uncomplicate this, allow what once were town clothes to be used as combat skins, or have two wardrobe tabs, one for combat wardrobe and one for town wardrobe. (I honestly don’t get why they can’t just be combat enabled).

2. Players should only have to pay 1 transformation charge per skin, per piece, per character, to unlock that skin for that character in the wardrobe system. Once a piece has been unlocked for that character, they should be able to switch to and from it in wardrobe with out any further cost. This would almost certainly increase sales of gem store skins, as they would be unlocks on a flexible, easy to use system feature, rather than a hassle not worth the effort. Skins purchased from the gem store would be available to all characters on the account, but the skin would only come with enough included transformation charges to unlock it for one character. (This preserves revenue, while making gem store skins more usable across characters than under the previous system).

3.) Once skins become permanent unlocks, as detailed in the second point, then it should be easy to allow a system for saving one’s favorite wardrobe outfits, including dye choices, for easy swapping. This would also increase sales of gem store skins, as easy swapping, with no additional cost, would incentivize variety, unlike the current system, which encourages players to establish one outfit and stick with it until they are completely bored with it. (You could even monetize outfit saves. Maybe allowing each character two or three outfit save slots and selling additional slots via the cash shop).

These three changes would address most complaints, make the wardrobe system much more user friendly and, best of all for you guys, would maximize wardrobe and skin related revenue with out producing the impression of being unnecessarily greedy.

Win, win, vs. the current system which is lose, lose.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You don’t need a big imposing villain like that, which is where a lot of bad stories go wrong. You really don’t need to hang a big sign on someone going “We’ve got a bad—- here!” in the first five minutes. Identifying the villain? Sure enough, even Game of Thrones did that in ten pages or less.

(Heck, it gave you, what, three of them real fast?)

What’s needed is to show them being effective and believable instead of just “awesome”. That’s where Scarlet went wrong.

I’m glad you put “awesome” in quotes. I’m sure some of the developers thought Scarlet was “Awesome” and to a degree that would make up for all the other absolute failings of the character and the story. However, “Awesome” is not how I would describe Scarlet or her story. In many ways, Scarlet and her storyline are an over the top example of how NOT to design a villain and a believable story. An example so absurd that you would be able to laugh at it and know that no one would be so bad as to actually write such a thing!

I think the best advice for ANet, as a whole, is to stop trying so hard to convince people that the studio staff has been replaced by pod people with about as much understanding of human thought and culture as the Coneheads.

1.) No more one dimensional, mega-powerful, non-believable villains that seem like they popped out of a Power Ranger’s storyline. Developing for GW2 isn’t an excuse to play out your pre-adolescent, make believe fantasies or resurrect your ideas for a “awesome D&D” campaign you detailed in crayon when you were eight.

2.) Show us the story, don’t tell us the story. Focus on quality, not cliche or flash in lieu of quality writing.

3.) Enough with “twists” and “encouraging speculation”, only to sound very disappointed that people speculated right and saw your twists coming. The tactics themselves are cheap and the level of disappointment that they were predictable, by some, implies that the focus for season two is twists so far out in left field that no one will see them coming and events that are so lacking in believability or foundation that no one will be able to predict them. Stop! Put down those gaudy, amateurish and just plain sad writing strategies and write with some dignity.