Guild Wars 2

Happy to see general map story dynamic events coming back more akin core tyria then meta specific like HoT. Didnt see any event chains hope there are later on

PoF seems more solo friendly then HoT but still not too easy which is good. Rapter fells amazing, would say realistic but didnt really ever ride one IRL to say. Didnt like that salvaging unidentified gear without identifying it first doesnt give any luck or Etco as far as I can tell. Map seems to reward truckloads of mats, worried this might lead to more material inflation in future recipes.

Overall it felt great!

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

The loot system needs an overhaul in general as it is just to much clicking and space management as is. Having stacks of loot by rarity would be great but using a vendor to ID them ONE AT A TIME is just madness. I would be fine treating exotics one at a time, but everything lower than that should be quickly and easily salvageable, with ectos potentially coming out of rare loot.

Just to clarify, you dont have to ID them 1 at a time, you can ID all at once. essentially you buy the ID and just like buying anything else in GW2 you can type in the quantity. IE if you have 250 unidentified thingies you can just type 250 in the quantity amount click buy and they’lll all get identified.. not sure what happens if you dont have enough space in your bags. I assume it will not allow you to buy that many IDs but i didnt test it myself.

Mervinas.9482:

The need to PAY FOR IDENTIFYING is unbelievable and unjustified. Why do you have to pay for identifying such enormous price? What benefit brings this for player? I’ll better deal with inventory space myself than agree with this ripping-off. In current system I can do with loot what i want: I can salvage only specific types for materials (for example medium armor for leather), some others I can sell and get some money, some weapon types I can keep and throw into MF (for example all green staffs to get rare staffs and then those again to gamble for exotics – in such way I made quite some money and even got precursor the Legend).
Now new system is removing all control I had and even takes MONEY to identify!
No, this alone is turning me off preordering PoF.
Just imagine if they would make changes like this to looting in main game and HoT…

From what i saw and more so from what has been posted in this thread the reason for charging us is because they have improved loot drops and thus need to control inflation.

Whitworth.7259:

I struggle to see how anyone thinks risking a salvage of a precursor or exotic is a good thing. The only way this can work, if they truly introduced it to try and save inventory space, is for the unidentified gear to show its rarity and have one stack for each rarity type. Even the system in GW1 gave us the privilege of knowing what we were salvaging before we ID’d it.
Just seeing this in the preview has stopped me from pre ordering PoF. It’s one thing that really irks me. I’d rather have all the clutter than have to deal with this, it isn’t convenient in the slightest. I personally wouldn’t risk salvaging unidentified gear and miss out on rarer items so it’d be a case of IDing everything and then salvaging everytime, adding yet another stupid step and cost to a system as fundamental as an MMO’s loot system.

Please get rid.

Its not that simple i am afraid, on the surface it may seem a good idea to split them by rarity but keep in mind things dont happen on a wim there is a reason why Arenanet decided to create this gold sink and seperating it into categories may actually make it a lot worst.

First of all why have a goal sink, generally its to have more meaningful rewards but without risking to overwhelm the economy.

some people as reported in this thread saw many rares drop when identified these things. I personal had 1 rare out of 20 thats way more then i generally get playing the game. They can do that because they’re also taking some of what they’re giving away. Like in my case the total value of these drops was 28s + say 30s for the rare to an approximate total of 58s. however arenanet took away about 32s out of that bring it back down to 24s of profit. Now if this was the regular game, and I had 20 drops that would be generally what? maybe 12 greens 8 blues? for an approximate value of 25s, so at the end of the day nothing changes in terms of economy .. still 25 or so silver were added to the game but what makes you happier? getting 12 greens and 8 blues ? or getting say 6 greens, 4 blues and 1 rare?

now to do the same thing but splitting rarity categories they’d also have to charge differently to identify different raries.. IE say 60c for blues, 1.6s for greens, 25s for rares, 1.2g for exotics and if they do that it will pretty much kill the fun for getting any drops in my humble opinion because the whole point of being happy with a drop is that you got value out of it, if you get an exotic drop and there is like 40% chance you’re going to loose money to get it and another 30% chance you’ll only make a few silvers profit would you really be excited for it?

so yeah dont think there is an easy solution for this problem.

This is most definitely a gold sink and to be honest i am not sure how i feel about. i tried to id a group for 10 using 147 magic find and then do it again with about 277.

first batch netted me about 8 silver (vendor price) of item + 1 rare weapon
2nd batch got me about 12 silver no rares or exotics.

thats a total cost of 33s 60c to identify every with a return of 20s and 1 rare weapon.

as it is i dont see this worth identifying. I have a feeling the price of rares is going to fall because it is pretty easy to earn rares. Got a total of 5 this weekend and i didnt get to play a lot.

my biggest issues isnt that you have to unlock a heart now and then to id stuff (if it bugs you that much you could finish off a stack or 10 of unidentified gear and then do it all at one go, dont think thats a big deal really. Honestly I think thats a good thing actually keeps old content alive… my issue is that like others have said this is just another gambling system which i really hate but perhaps worst yet is salvaging these unidentified greens doesn’t even net magic find and I assume much less will it net ectos should some of what salvage be rare or exotic.

The leaves materials, pretty much what this will do is cause a huge flood of materials and added to that the many other ways you have to get even more materials I fear what consequences that will have… I hope we dont end up getting uncontrolled inflation in crafting rather then in the economy. To be honest I think we’re already there with some of the ridiculous amounts of mats some things need. Just to add a bit of humor imagine if this were to happen in real life… say take nightfury for an example, to build an item thats like what? 150cm cubed? you need something like 10 truck loads of ore and dust. 300 liters of oil, some 6 liters of blood, 8.5kg of coins, 2 truck loads of leather
just to build something that fits in your hand… it used to be you needed maybe 3x the volume of the object you crafted in materials… now we’re in the 100s of 1000s range for sure for some things

gabrieluk.9037:

hi friends, i am new in gw2. I bought the game and first impression was really good about the game until i reach lvl 35 and i joined ascalonian catacombs.Then i saw that pve is very diffrent in this game.In short terms 1 hit (boss) 1 dead (player). I found this very boring , the mechanics are very bad made….i mean at least the bosses should have a kind of warning before they cast a spell so i can know when to avoid damage but nothing….i can t even do damage and i am already dead…and the traps on the floor another bad idea.I am very dissapointed and i just quit the game because of pve mechanics…

Also apologies cause i forgot to give you the most important tip of them all.

You said you really enjoyed the game while leveling to 35 and then Dungeons killed it for you, well be aware that during development this game had 1 important core pillar and that was that you should be able to play the game like you want to. Arenanet delivered on that and thus if you dont enjoy dungeons you dont have to quit the game you can simply quit dungeons. There is nothing in dungeons that you need. This is not like other MMOs there is no best in slot gear locked behind any type of content. All that you get from dungeons is a set of unique skins per dungeon and even then you dont even need to give up on that if you choose to ignore dungeons, there are other ways you can go to earn those same skins.

That being said my suggestion would be play the content you enjoy until you feel confident with your profession enough and then try dungeons later, you’ll find them much easier.

gabrieluk.9037:

hi friends, i am new in gw2. I bought the game and first impression was really good about the game until i reach lvl 35 and i joined ascalonian catacombs.Then i saw that pve is very diffrent in this game.In short terms 1 hit (boss) 1 dead (player). I found this very boring , the mechanics are very bad made….i mean at least the bosses should have a kind of warning before they cast a spell so i can know when to avoid damage but nothing….i can t even do damage and i am already dead…and the traps on the floor another bad idea.I am very dissapointed and i just quit the game because of pve mechanics…

When we first started playing we too had a hard time in dungeon… we’d die a lot but as you get used to the game and learn to play your character properly it will change, now a days most runs no one gets downed much less dies. Also look a bit at your gear, because I dont believe any boss in any dungeon should be able to 1 hit. If you’re having that kind of trouble and all your gear is level appropriate you might consider picking something with more toughness stats.

Atazae.7208:

Well… VAT isn’t a good reason cause 29.99$=25.41€

VAT is 20% so without VAT (29.99€x80/100) the game would cost = 23.99€

As a european, I feel scammed by Anet here…

And i was only talking for the standard version.

Deluxe version : 54.99$=46.59€ 54.99€=64.90$ (like 10$(8€) more cause i’m european)

Ultimate version : 79.99$= 67.78€ 79.99€=94.40$ (like 14-15$(11€) more cause i’m european)

You’re doing it the other way round though. $29.99 is the price without vat so the EU price without vat should be 25.41 now adding Vat to that depending on the country say 20% that would mean 25.41 / 100 × 120 = 30.5 euro. so if you’re in a country with 20% vat you’re actually betting a good price.

that being said some countries have lower VAT in my country VAT is 18% and price should be a microscopic amount lower then 29.9 (29.983)

if we do the same with the ultimate edition
$79.99 = 67.80 euro / 100 × 118 = 80 euro

so prices seem good to me

it will be just like HoT, PoF will be its own thing then 2 – 3 months later LS4 starts

AzureWolf.9150:

DeadTreeJig.6714:

The only thing I have concerns about are the mounts. I hope there are limitations, like there are with gliding. The video showed a nice, small group with mounts in a vast world. But how will it really look when all you see around you are jackalopes and floating manta rays.

Makes me wonder if Gliding will be disabled in the new zones, or if you can do some combo thing….like use a Mount to jump you high into the air and then switch mid jump to a Glider to coast a distance?

Gliding works in the new zones.

Businesses adapt to their customers wishes. Lets be fair here when Anet said HoT would come free with the next expansion they were selling expansion at $50 Just like back then the expansion included the game for free.

Customers feedback to that was they felt they were being scammed because they felt they were not really getting the base game for free but were rather being forced to pay for a base game they already owned.

In response to that they created a discounted version for people who already owned everything as well as did exactly what they promised IE that with $50 you get everything.

Remember they didnt promise to lower the price for the next expansion only that you’d get everything with the purchase. You cant cherry pick factors to consider.

The art in Guildwars has always been top notch, thank you for your amazing work Daniel and good luck in your future endeavors!

Congrats to Horia, eager to see what comes next!

Siobhan.5273:

Galen Grey.4709:

skullfaerie.7203:

Galen Grey.4709:

once very 100 years is a regular interval just saying.

If I may butt in, and I might be going out on a limb here, but I suspect you’ve never heard of terms such as ‘reasonable expectations’? Sorry for interrupting. Please continue arguing semantics

no please interrupt away, I dont mind

of course the 100 years was an exaggeration to prove the point, I am not expecting a legendary weapon every 100 years nor have Anet indicated they have the intention of doing it.

was merely meant as a reply that Anet commited to a timeline by using the word regular interval which clearly is not the case.

Wrong.

They committed to reasonable timelines for release of “items” they advertised before launch of the expansion, for this expansion, yet they already have a team working on the next expansion? A bigger team than is allocated for the deployment of the content of this NOT yet finished expansion content. I call phooey on that… and phooey on what they both (Colin and Mr. O’Brien) stated as their “expectations” for this one according to this video. Watch from: 6:50 to end.

I disagree,

1. where did they commit to a reaosnable timeline exactly?

2. they have 70 people working on the expansion, 120 people working on the current game + 30 people supporting both teams how exactly do they have more people working on the next expansion?

I guess everyone hears what they want because what I hear in that interview is “is stay true to who we are as a game” “having a truely living breathing involving world” "everything together builds 1 cohesive unit and any one piece not being that doestn bring it all together "

isnt this doing exactly that? clearly they hoped HoT would keep people busy until the launch of Season 3, clearly it isnt, shouldnt they do something about it?

Mirta.5029:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Mirta.5029:

reported you to the trading standards of UK and hopefully the rest of the people in this topic will report you to their country trading standards too.

On what grounds? Do you know the meaning of the word indefinitely? It means on hold for an undetermined length of time, in its most basic use. Mo has had the brass ones to tell us this. They could have just given us a, it’s taking longer than we though, they’ll be here “when it’s ready”, then just given us “soon” .

Trading standards are not going to tell ANet they have to make the new legendary weapons asap.

All ANet have to tell trading standards is that its a technical design problem, and they full intend to honour what they said, and point out that they did not give us a time frame of when we would be getting them all, only that they would start after the launch of HoT. So in legal terms they have done nothing wrong.

ANet have not said they will never go back to them, and the dream is dead. What they have said is that after the next one, they have no time frame on when we will be getting more, as the team that was working on them has been pulled to work on other projects.

There is nothing trading standards can or will do.

on regular intervals. The first one took 4 months, meaning the next one has a max of 4 months to be released, else the interval is not regular.
That being said you can say that your kickstarter project development is on hold indefinitely. That doesn’t mean that you’ll escape a trade ban. The moment you’re not keeping your word with what is inside the product that you shipped you’re a prime target for a trade ban.

let me be a bit pedantic here… you release 3 at 4 months, 2 at 3 months, 1 at a year, 3 at 4 months, 2 at 3 months, 1 at a year, 3 at 4 months etc…

isnt that releasing at regular intervals too?

sorry for being pendantic but seriosuly regular intervals doesnt dictate a time frame

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The altenatives where’s it’s between keeping your word and not keeping your word?

Gosh. Let me think on that one.

Not keeping your word can be the immediate, cheap way out of a problem, but be the expensive path later when everytime you promise something or everytime you sell an expansion the time(s) you didn’t keep your word is remembered. The sale of HoT was not as good as they liked. Unless they have these Legendaries out, how well do you think the next expansion will sell when people are questioning every item thats in it, and deciding to wait to buy.

Cheap now can be expensive later.

oohh come on, you seriously think Mike is going through all this trouble just so he doesnt keep his word?

This isnt about keeping your word or breaking it and you know that.

This is between no content until season 3 releases or have some content people can play.

Its not so easy to say what is cheap or expensive here either.

So sure, break your word people might not buy next expansion because of that. Fair point.

Do you think having no new content until Season 3 hits any cheaper? Dont you think people will not buy the expansion based on that too?

How about all the people that didnt buy HoT ? they dont get any new content until Next expansion hits do you think they’re not factored into this as well (provided the interm content they will be working on would apply to them as well)

This is not as easy as a decision to make as you seem to think. Sticking with legendaries does guarantee success or player loyalty.

skullfaerie.7203:

Galen Grey.4709:

once very 100 years is a regular interval just saying.

If I may butt in, and I might be going out on a limb here, but I suspect you’ve never heard of terms such as ‘reasonable expectations’? Sorry for interrupting. Please continue arguing semantics

no please interrupt away, I dont mind

of course the 100 years was an exaggeration to prove the point, I am not expecting a legendary weapon every 100 years nor have Anet indicated they have the intention of doing it.

was merely meant as a reply that Anet commited to a timeline by using the word regular interval which clearly is not the case.

@IndigoSundown

Disappointment wise I completely agree, was only rebutting the legal stuff.

All true but lets not forget Mike didnt say he’s going to get the 6 people working on legendaries, fire them and take the money for himself, he is merely redeployment them to get us more stuff to play quicker. Over all we’re still getting the same value just in different packages so to speak.

Yeah people love throwing around the word should have been there all along. What they never consider is stuff takes time to build, if Anet waited till it build all the stuff that should have been there all along the game and I mean core GW2 not HoT wouldnt have launched yet because I have no doubt more stuff will be released in the future that people will claim should have been there all along.

- We have seen 5 (well we will once the new bows launch with the next update at least) and thats not counting the original Legendaries that went through the same threatment. Scope of Living story has been changing and amount of people assigned to it has been changing. That not considering that if they intend to keep the quarterly releases most likely they’ll launch all of season 3 at once which means they’d have to finish 6 weeks x2 + 3 monthkittenus amount of work before launching who knows, its hard to say why it took so long before actually knowing the content and how it was released.

- I wouldnt say its failure to estimate impact.. Gw2 has always tried experimental stuff rather then going with tried and tested concepts, that carries risk. No matter what they do they’ll never make everyone happy so what remains is course corrections when they go too far.

- This goes both ways though. If your players arent willing to cut you some slack does that mean you dont try to fix issues? Like when at launch people complained about there being no vertical progression and they’ve put in ascended armor should they have kept doing that ? When Season 1 was temporary and people complained should they have stuck with it anyway? No game can do game design by vox pop, they have to take a decission go with it and then react to the outcome, that means sometimes they get it right sometimes they get it wrong. Problem is people are very bad at remembering the times they got it right and so quick to remember all the times they got it wrong.

-

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Galen Grey.4709:

Jushiohara.9140:

The apologists here defending bad business baffle me. Yall can make excuses for this crap all you want but most of us will speak with our wallets and not keep paying for scams.

The apologists aren’t defending bad business. they kinda think its a good idea to have some new content to play in the next 6 months as oppossed to having 3 more legendaries to craft in the same time frame.

It baffles me that you think it would be better having no new content to play for the next 6 months but getting 3 new legendaries to craft instead in September.

Ohh and btw, yes I’d rather they make decisions for the good of the game that can be considered bad business practices rather then stubbornly hold the course even if they know its going to result in a disaster just for the sake of keeping their word.

just for the sake of keeping your word….

How the world has changed where keeping your word is now so meaningless and easily abandoned, but I think not necessarily for the better.

They should have reconsidered the Legendaries, not dropped them. Made them a drop and crafted by the old system if the precursor crafting took too much time and effort to do. That’s where they should have retrenched. They should have bitten the economic bullet and hired more people if that was what was required to keep their word.

The repercussions to a company or a person can be profound when people believe they can’t be trusted to keep their word. If you don’t think this won’t be thrown in ANet’s face at every turn, every promise they make now, if you don’t think this won’t impact the sales of the next expansion then I think that you don’t understand how people react when someone doesn’t keep their word.

Okey wait a second… who said this was an easy decision… all we saw is the communication, we have no clue what went behind it and how long it took for Mike to come to this decision.

Second, which communication did you read? Mine said put on hold indefinitely not dropped.

I know hiring more people may seem the simple answer and while I have no idea what the situation is at ANET I bet its far from that simple. Most likely like many other companies their owners give them a budget and thats all they have to work with. They can try to argue their case with NCSoft but since HoT didnt do that well most likely they tried and got a no. That leaves them with 2 choices… do nothing or reshuffle resources but there is no economic bullet they can bite to hire more people if they just dont get the budget.

Yeah I think we all know how people react at each issue Arenanet face. But what is the alternative really?

AysonCurrax.3254:

Galen Grey.4709:

Jushiohara.9140:

The apologists here defending bad business baffle me. Yall can make excuses for this crap all you want but most of us will speak with our wallets and not keep paying for scams.

The apologists aren’t defending bad business. they kinda think its a good idea to have some new content to play in the next 6 months as oppossed to having 3 more legendaries to craft in the same time frame.

It baffles me that you think it would be better having no new content to play for the next 6 months but getting 3 new legendaries to craft instead in September.

Ohh and btw, yes I’d rather they make decisions for the good of the game that can be considered bad business practices rather then stubbornly hold the course even if they know its going to result in a disaster just for the sake of keeping their word.

and that change in workforce changes what exactly? new content wont come any sooner, and by putting legendaries on hold, you actually will get less content to do in the same time frame. In addition to that you get bad business practices. bad practices are the stellar opposite of being good for the game, or preventing a disaster, for that matter. much rather, they cause a disaster.

Did you even read Mike’s posts? yes it will change that “This team of developers will instead shift their efforts back to Living World style content, building new journeys and events for everyone to participate in.”
Sure we will not get a full expansion, we ill not get Living story season 3 sooner either no doubt but we will get most likely some new dynamic events and new things happening in the world.

Why would Anet do this if they didnt think they’d be some positive out of this? Do you think they love these PR Nightmares or something? Besides 2 new legendaries are coming with the next release so even if they keep working on legendaries you wouldnt have the next couple before july either.

Jushiohara.9140:

The apologists here defending bad business baffle me. Yall can make excuses for this crap all you want but most of us will speak with our wallets and not keep paying for scams.

The apologists aren’t defending bad business. they kinda think its a good idea to have some new content to play in the next 6 months as oppossed to having 3 more legendaries to craft in the same time frame.

It baffles me that you think it would be better having no new content to play for the next 6 months but getting 3 new legendaries to craft instead in September.

Ohh and btw, yes I’d rather they make decisions for the good of the game that can be considered bad business practices rather then stubbornly hold the course even if they know its going to result in a disaster just for the sake of keeping their word.

Siobhan.5273:

Galen Grey.4709:

AysonCurrax.3254:

Galen Grey.4709:

Mirta.5029:

Galen Grey.4709:

how about all the other things that were never promised yet they still came like gliding in central tyria, Shatterer revamp, squad revamps, those dont count for anything?

of course it doesn’t count for anything. If you’re buying a product you look at the list of features and those features better be in it, as you’re buying a product based on it.
If you looked to buy a third person RPG with an open world and 100 different skills to level, you won’t be happy when you find out that the product that you actually bought is an isometric view RPG with instance based world and only 88 skills. And it won’t matter to you if afterwards they said “but we added bunnies and we never advertised them”!

What Anet did here counts as fraud. And because of that I urge everyone to report them to trade associations.

you know what the irony is here… none of this were actually listed part of HoT
dont believe me, just check heartofthorns.guildwars2.com and try to find where 16 new legendary weapons is listed. its not. This was content that was promised along side HoT not part of HoT.

Not that I am suggesting its okey for Anet to back on their word, they should still honor it of course and its not like they said otherwise either but it certainly does mean its not fraud so lets just shelf the heavy words and focus on the issue at hand.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/maguuma

might want to scroll down to legendary weapons then where it clearly states 16 then.

do you even ctrl + f, bro?

I stand corrected it is there though again it doesnt promise by when the’d release the full set

• Additional legendary weapons will be released in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of 16 has been added to this game.

once very 100 years is a regular interval just saying.

AysonCurrax.3254:

Galen Grey.4709:

Mirta.5029:

Galen Grey.4709:

how about all the other things that were never promised yet they still came like gliding in central tyria, Shatterer revamp, squad revamps, those dont count for anything?

of course it doesn’t count for anything. If you’re buying a product you look at the list of features and those features better be in it, as you’re buying a product based on it.
If you looked to buy a third person RPG with an open world and 100 different skills to level, you won’t be happy when you find out that the product that you actually bought is an isometric view RPG with instance based world and only 88 skills. And it won’t matter to you if afterwards they said “but we added bunnies and we never advertised them”!

What Anet did here counts as fraud. And because of that I urge everyone to report them to trade associations.

you know what the irony is here… none of this were actually listed part of HoT
dont believe me, just check heartofthorns.guildwars2.com and try to find where 16 new legendary weapons is listed. its not. This was content that was promised along side HoT not part of HoT.

Not that I am suggesting its okey for Anet to back on their word, they should still honor it of course and its not like they said otherwise either but it certainly does mean its not fraud so lets just shelf the heavy words and focus on the issue at hand.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/maguuma

might want to scroll down to legendary weapons then where it clearly states 16 then.

do you even ctrl + f, bro?

I stand corrected it is there though again it doesnt promise by when the’d release the full set

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Galen Grey.4709:

Mirta.5029:

Galen Grey.4709:

how about all the other things that were never promised yet they still came like gliding in central tyria, Shatterer revamp, squad revamps, those dont count for anything?

of course it doesn’t count for anything. If you’re buying a product you look at the list of features and those features better be in it, as you’re buying a product based on it.
If you looked to buy a third person RPG with an open world and 100 different skills to level, you won’t be happy when you find out that the product that you actually bought is an isometric view RPG with instance based world and only 88 skills. And it won’t matter to you if afterwards they said “but we added bunnies and we never advertised them”!

What Anet did here counts as fraud. And because of that I urge everyone to report them to trade associations.

you know what the irony is here… none of this were actually listed part of HoT
dont believe me, just check heartofthorns.guildwars2.com and try to find where 16 new legendary weapons is listed. its not. This was content that was promised along side HoT not part of HoT.

Not that I am suggesting its okey for Anet to back on their word, they should still honor it of course and its not like they said otherwise either but it certainly does mean its not fraud so lets just shelf the heavy words and focus on the issue at hand.

You can’t craft the new Legendaries unless you have the Mastery that came with HoT, so I would say it’s part of it. If it wasn’t part of it it you could still do it even if you didn’t own HoT.

Doesnt matter, you cannot play an MMO unless you have an internet connection I dont think I can go ask a refund / sue my ISP because everquest next was cancelled on the argument that I bought an internet connection just because I knew I’d need one to play it dont you think?

Mirta.5029:

Galen Grey.4709:

how about all the other things that were never promised yet they still came like gliding in central tyria, Shatterer revamp, squad revamps, those dont count for anything?

of course it doesn’t count for anything. If you’re buying a product you look at the list of features and those features better be in it, as you’re buying a product based on it.
If you looked to buy a third person RPG with an open world and 100 different skills to level, you won’t be happy when you find out that the product that you actually bought is an isometric view RPG with instance based world and only 88 skills. And it won’t matter to you if afterwards they said “but we added bunnies and we never advertised them”!

What Anet did here counts as fraud. And because of that I urge everyone to report them to trade associations.

you know what the irony is here… none of this were actually listed part of HoT
dont believe me, just check heartofthorns.guildwars2.com and try to find where 16 new legendary weapons is listed. its not. This was content that was promised along side HoT not part of HoT.

Not that I am suggesting its okey for Anet to back on their word, they should still honor it of course and its not like they said otherwise either but it certainly does mean its not fraud so lets just shelf the heavy words and focus on the issue at hand.

I just have one question for you all, so we are told S3 isnt due until 3rd wing launch… thats not going to happen until next quarter content update which is in june. Chances are its not going to release the same day, infact if they keep the same rotation chances are S3 will start on the next quarter update after that which would be in september.

Now we know it takes an average of 2 months to create a legendary weapon so are you all really saying you’d rather have 0 new content beyond raid wing 3 for 6 months and get 3 new legendary weapons together with season 3 in September than wait at least till next year to get new legendary weapons but get a stream of new content to play until Season 3 releases potentially in September?

are legendaries really that important to you or am i missing the collective message here?

KittyCat.2059:

Mike O Brien.4613:

Obviously I go into this knowing that some players will be very upset. That’s why it’s such a tough decision.

Ankdarkwolf, Darkmikau, Ballads, Spira, Caerbannog, Cysgod, you each posted a variant of an accusation I’ve seen many times over the past few months on the forums, something along the lines of, “AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.” I take issue with that. We shipped a new region full of content, a new mastery system, gliding, guild halls, a new profession, nine new elite specializations for existing professions, and more. Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Mo

Selling ideas . They are often very intangible and take a certain style of selling.
HoT = ‘How to sell thin air’…

What specifically are you selling?
1. New Legendary Weapons that never existed….all along intangible.
2. Fractal Ad Infini Back still doesn’t exist. Intangible
3. Legendary Armor still doesn’t exist. Intangible
4. WvW overhaul. Never existed.
etc.

You false advertised/bait and switched a product that was incomplete filled with intangible enticements to lure the consumer in.

Ohh please can we stop with all the selective hearing? all those intangible ideas you’re talking about were all made clear that they would be arriving after HoT’s launch. And can we please stop making it sound like all HoT is made off is the stuff that has yet to be delivered? How about all the other stuff that was there at launch, that counts for nothing? how about all the other things that were never promised yet they still came like gliding in central tyria, Shatterer revamp, squad revamps, those dont count for anything?

Look there are a number of issues with the game right now… lots of people are unhappy with the new zones, content drought that is being made worst if you dont like the new zones, lack of new legendaries (obviously this is a problem as well) and others that fall outside this scope.

Now the you dont like expansion issue is a problem for all and the only way to address that is to release a new one thats more in-tune to what people were looking for. Move people from here and that problem goes unsolved for longer and longer.

Living story Season 3 is the glue to connects the two expansion, taking people from this to address the more immediate content issue just wouldnt work because this would be a zero sum game the more immediate content you create, the longer you need to do it for because essentially you’re stopping work on LS3 to do it.

sPvP/WvW ? do we even need to stop and consider this?

Most likely the only options they have open to them is either risk having the expansion issue longer with sever risks to the game.

Ignore the content drought hoping people will be okey with that for a few more months.

Take some resources from somewhere to create some filler content while work continues on S3.

It may be easy to say take people away from the expansion but consider this. The first expansion didnt sell well, no one can deny this. Season 3 will not provide content to people who didnt buy the expansion.

Clearly they are spread too thin and thats with a team bigger then most other MMOs out there. What happens if their revenues fall and NCSoft reduces their budget?

It is easy for us to look at ANet and blame them for taking decisions we dont like but lets not forget who’s fault they find themselves in this conundrum in the first place. Anet was happy giving us all content for free using the living story model but no we demanded an expansion like they had explained in the first year of launch there are reasons why they were steering away from expansions especially in an MMO like this that loves to take risks and try new things. Expansions tie your hands. Expansions fragement your community. Thats not on them, thats on us, they merely gave us what we wanted. What did we do? rather then thanking them for giving us what we wanted, for going to extra mile and giving us base game and future expansions for free where as other companies simply put out discounts, lots of people went on a massive negative marketing spree. posting everywhere that allows why they felt people shouldnt buy the expansion. Well guess what those things have consiquences.. lots of people listened to you, others came to the same conclusion on their own, be it as it may Anet better do something about it fast or risk loosing all those players forever.

This is an MMO people, there is such a thing as the common good, going out and try to steer people away from the game by overblowing every decision they take you dont like way out of proportion to try and force their hand will at some point literally explode. You dont like they’re taking 6 people away from legendaries to give us content to player quicker then they originally intended to ? guess how better you’ll like if they’re forced to lay off say 50 people. 50 people who will not be working on something else like these 6 people will and if those 6 people were deemed to be the most “expandable” when seeking to fix the more immediate issues guess who’d be on the top of the list of those 50 people to be let go?

So once again, consider your actions. You think removing people off legendies is a bad idea, please do say so but consider the greater good, consider the extend you want to take your actions. Things have consiquences.

Also preemptively cause this always becomes an issue when I do posts like this.. No I am not Gaile Gray in disguise, I am merely a concerned player with no contention to Anet what so ever besides buying their games and expansions + some gems.

ezhcim.3075:

Galen Grey.4709:

ezhcim.3075:

It is content when you use the fact that you will be able to get 16 new legendaries as a leverage point for getting people to drop 50 buck on your expansion.

No that’s called advertisement not content.

It’s called promised content, that’s what games are you know? content.

Imagine if I promoted a game and promised that in my game you are going to have an kitten nal of 30 weapons. Then the game comes out, many people buy my game, but they can only play with 1 gun.

Then you come out trying to defend me telling people: what are you complaining about? you can still play the full game don’t you?

Well I call that being silly, a liar, a scammer, and false advertisement.

You lie to your customers and promise content and features that you don’t deliver.

let me turn that around, I really a game which only “content” is 16 legendary weapons nothing else.. so all you have is 16 models of awesome legendary weapon with those effects tell me how long can you play that game? 0s cause weapons are not content they’re rewards. If those 16 weapons take 32 months (2 months each) to create wouldnt you rather first have a year and halve worth of content first and the weapons later?

ezhcim.3075:

It is content when you use the fact that you will be able to get 16 new legendaries as a leverage point for getting people to drop 50 buck on your expansion.

No that’s called advertisement not content.

Neural.1824:

Galen Grey.4709:

Please… Legendaries are Rewards not content. All the stuff you get to play (content) with the new legendaries is already there and will stay there.

Yet they affect the game just as much. Each of the old legendaries, for example, require a minimum of 250 of each T6 material, if not more (Bifrost requires something like 750 crystalline dust).
Add to this the grindfest that is TII precursor crafting, and legendaries actually have a rather measurable impact on the economy in the game.
I suspect that’s why the new ones got cut. Not enough of a gold sink/not enough of a catalyst to get people to buy gems.

Dont get me wrong, I am not arguing against the importance of legendaires , I am only disagreeing with the statement that legendaries are content, they’re not.

Legendaries are crucial for many aspects of the game, they’re undoubtedly the heart of the economy and are the engine that makes the game work in the longer term without vertical progression.

Unfortunately right now we have been without new content for a long time and unfortunately for a lot of people HoT replay-ability just isnt there. I am glad they have scrambled to build a new expansion but if HoT is any indications that is at least 2 years away (we dont know exactly when they started work on HoT but Maclaine said in a POI about music that he started working on the HoT soundtrack 2 years prior to release. Living story is estimate to come out H2 2016 naturally when that became known people showed their displeasure at having at least 3 more months with no new content to play. Anet listened and when evaluating what they could do they came up with the option of releasing some content at the expense of releasing new legendaries for now. Personally I think thats the right move because while yes Legendaries are essentially for the game so is actual playable content.

Also I dont know why everything has to become a conspiracy theory of how Anet are trying to get more money from us. Yeah bifrost required 750 crystalline dust thats what? 190g ? Nevermore requires 75 spiritwood planks thats about… 750g… in total to craft nevermore had you to buy everything from the Trading post 3 months ago according to a post on reddit it will cost you about 2500g crafting bifrost on the other hand requires The legend, through precursor crafting that would cost 871g according to GW2BLTC, Gift of Bifrost, 343g, Gfit of fortune 940g for a total of 2154g. so no they are no less of a gold sink, they’re at least equal to if not more.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Id hate to be the person responsible for this PR clean up, and if they think its bad on here, reddit is a mine field, I don’t think they where expecting this kind of back lash to be honest, it looks like they have actually pulled the plug on HoT in general now, and moved onto the next project, and anything that is currently bugged isn’t likely to be looked into,

Furthermore why did they choose to post this on Good Friday, with most people probably away for easter weekend, this just allows several days of hate to build up.

They need to make the new pre’s come from the forge also, this would allow the “team” working on the legendary’s to work on,

I feel its been dropped due to the crafting being linked to events that stick or are just broken, and its causing so many issues to try and fix, so its easier to remove it from the game altogether, from reading reddit, you can see there next expansion is going to be a massive headache for the PR team trying to sell it.

The ONLY upside to this is, they have now fix the problem around Amalgamated Gemstones as no one will want them now LOL.

Yeah guess we can kiss the new found communication policy bye bye and who could blame them, why is it so hard to disagree with something without taking it as far as possible. Posting on ever gaming related subreddit calling for people not to spend money on anything, threatening to sue, calling them liars, scammers, asking for refunds and what else. Ironically had Mike not said anything some of us would be cheering for getting new content before LS3 launches after 3rd raid wing.

We just cannot have nice things.

Witte.3160:

Legendaries == content

The story/collection/grind is all content.

its equal to

PvP
WvWvW
PvE
Raids
Dungeons/Fractals

Legendaries might not appeal to some, but that is equally the case for all the other types of content.

If you don’t care for legendaries, so what?
There are people that don’t care for Living story.

Just think if they would scrap Living story, because they want to work on gemstore skins more.

How can you agree to them scrapping out promised content?

I just tried BDO and bought it.
Sorry Anet, I’m out,

Kappa

Please… Legendaries are Rewards not content. All the stuff you get to play (content) with the new legendaries is already there and will stay there.

Kaleygh.1524:

That raven staff was in the game for more than 2 years now. Saying that you cannot create a bunch of models for legendary weapons, while making tons of models for gemstore items is completely kittened. As someone who works in 3ds Max and Maya day by day I can honestly tell you that an item like that takes a day at most to model and texture. I understand you are desperate to make money through the gemstore, but you guys need to understand that you cannot make money when your players are leaving in droves. Also – esports – LOL :P

Who said the issue is the models? the issue is the collections, thats were the bulk of the work goes. Just look at how many weapon skins they included with HoT, all of those had models and textures and they certainly didnt take an average of 2 months each. had that being the case HoT would have taken a decade to come out.

Seems like a lot of people value extrinsic rewards over intrinsic ones but perhaps we can have both?

Like what about cutting back on the legendary collections? It will kill the legendary story which is a shame but again for people who care more about extrinsic rewards thats not going to be a big loss and perhaps we can just have a little blog post with the historic information to make up for it. At the same time we can have a new currency legends that can be part of the map bonus rewards or have a rare chance to drop during events whatever.. May be a good idea to put a limit on how many one can earn per day I know this is not going to be a popular idea but i feel its a necessary evil to keep value up with such a simplified acquisition method. These can then be used to buy account bound precursors from vendors.. lets call them nefarious archaeologists who sell stuff they find rather then donating them to museums That way the legendary team would not have to spend 4 months for a couple of weapons, can focus on creating new dynamic content for the game which content can be enjoyed even by people who value rewards more. In the meantime new legendary weapons can still be created during this team’s downtime.. like there will be gaps when they’re “not needed” say when Living story 3 hits or when the new expansion releases or during festivals etc..

I also think this would make legendary weapons more accessible in that I;d rather have to complete 1500 events then gather from 1500 trees, even if its 5000 events to 1500 trees actually… gathering 5000 wood is something I need to get out of my way to get while everyone who PvEs or does WvW is going to be doing events all the time. That does leave out PvP but I Guess same currency can be introduced there with matches or something.

Would something like this be possible?

With all due respect I feel more then Anet remembering why we play the game OP needs to remember an MMO has many different kinds of players. I am saying this even though I agree with the sentiment. I too enjoy the LS model much more then the Expansion model but its undeniable that for a lot of people that wasnt working and they asked for an expansion, they got one. Going forward its going to be a balance between the two as it should be.

Besides nothing is totally black and totally white.

While I enjoyed LS more and I loved the old Dynamic Events system with tons of small stories to enjoy in each map much more then the new super structured War path style of events I also love the new raids, finally good challenging content and the new maps are a marvel of exploration.

RubiBayer.8134:

The February 5th episode of our Guild Chat livestream will be about designing creatures in Guild Wars 2 with dev guests Brian Walter (Animator) and Ben Phongluangtham (Game Designer). They’ll be talking about the work process of adding new creatures to the game, using creatures you’ve encountered in Heart of Thorns–Mushroom Bombers, Bristlebacks, and Mordrem Maggots, among others–as examples of how it’s done.

We’d like to answer a few of your questions about this topic, so post them here and we’ll select some to talk about the day of the show.

Thanks for the opportunity, Here are my questions:

How long does it take to make a new creature from start to finish and how many people does it typically take?

Do creature reuse elements of each other? Like do they share skeletons / scripts etc..? or is every creature created totally from scratch?

When Gw2 launched one thing that surprised me was when at one point I tried to run away from a mob and cleverly thought I will go in the water. I thought that since this mob is from a dynamic event surely it doesnt know how to swim… only it did. Is the ability to swim a scripted behavior shared between creature types or do you people really cover every possible scenario a mob might find itself in? Can the new creatures in heart of thorns swim too?

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

Manasa Devi.7958:

What’s sad is that there’s no longer even a pretense that they care about the players. Content that takes 2 hours without even a player’s choice in the matter of when they want to start their 2 hour sessions, that’s insane. There’s no other word for it.

In the age of the rise of on-demand media, this is an abomination I really can’t get my head around. I’d post what I really thought of it, but I’d get infracted.

That’s just ridiculous. They don’t care about their players because they made a meta event that’s long that’s liked by a whole lot of people? That doesn’t make sense.

When you thoughtlessly (or maliciously, I don’t know which) create content that anyone with a shred of common sense could predict will rub a lot of people the wrong way, you certainly don’t care about your players. If some do like it, that’s fortunate, but I file that under “even a blind chicken finds a kernel of corn once in a while”.

You’re way oversimplifying the issue.

You say “When you thoughtlessly (or maliciously, I don’t know which) create content that anyone with a shred of common sense could predict will rub a lot of people the wrong way, you certainly don’t care about your players.” okey fair enough but lets take a minute to look at the opposite scenario…. If you created content just for people who enjoy short bursts of play and always ignore people that like long stretches of content does that make you caring of players? Cause I dont know but seems to me when you create some content for everybody you’re being way more caring towards players then if you had to ignore a subset of players all the time!

Dont forget, this is an MMO, millions of players play it, some players like X some players like Y and more often than not X is opposite of Y.

Its physically impossble for any developer to create content thats tailored for every kind of player. A caring developer splits their effort between content for all their players. Naturally they cannot do it all at one go but its unfair in my opinion to say they just dont care about their player cause they happen to release some of their content targeted at player who like Y when you enjoy X when overwhelmingly the game still happens to be made of X.

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Calydro.7268:

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

I disagree. having people pay in advanced for content doesnt keep them around. Case in point, check the forums / reddit. You will find many posts especially around the time HoT launched of people claiming to have quit soon after launch and are thinking of coming back. With the core game purchase price they also got 3 years of free content but that didnt keep them around did it?

I even more strongly disagree with greedy business model. Look at what most other b2p MMOs do. They still cut their content in chunks, because it takes X amount of time to develop or on purpose is something thats debatable fine… but what they do is sell that content for “cheap” at regular intervals. $10 every quarter is most common. Well $10 per quarter for 3 years is $120 more then twice what Anet charged for the same period of time. How is that better?

Besides which modern MMO releases an expansion more often then 2 years?

Additionally were they really less greedy before? You had to pay Box Fee and Subscription. Sure content was less content and quicker to develop and you had an expansion every year which also carried a box fee. 2 years of your mmo back then would end up costing $480 are you really sure they were less greedy?

You’re equivocating. System A is bad but so Is System B, but System A is worse therefore we should exonerate System B.

I laid out the facets of the the game where the greed and underhandedness is evident. You’ve pointed me to prior games that also have a greedy model. Does that nullify the points I’ve made? does it exonerate A-net? Guild Wars 2 isn’t the first game to milk its players, there have been many before and will be many after. . .

of course because Everything is relative. Words are meaningless without context. Let me illustrate. Is a car big or small? How would you answer that question? You’d look at that car and compare it with all the other cars you have ever seen. If the car is bigger then most of them you’re going to say its big. If its smaller then most of them you’re going to say its small. Does it make sense to call the smallest car big just because this car happens to have larger then normal side mirrors? No.

Same here. You pointed out to one thing that may be caused by greed. I highlight may because while you say its evident we dont really know the reasons. Greed is a possibility, pacing content releases due to lengthy time to finish all the intended content is another. You feel greed is obvious which is fine you’re obviously entitled to feel anyway you wish. Likewise I feel development time is the driving factor, my reasons are that they have the largest development team we know of after WoW. Most other major MMOs have teams that are 100 people smaller or even less. With that in mind why would they employ such a large team if they actually have a surplus of content? Profit isnt just about selling more its also about cutting costs, employees are the biggest source of cost in a software company so why hire more then needed? That doesnt compute in my opinion. you hire more employees only when you have a higher workload. If they are incuring that costs it tells me that it takes that many employees for them to release what they release. no business is going to leave employees doing nothing and no MMO company is going to develop years of content in advanced.

But lets assume you’re right and its just a ploy to earn more money. Wanting to earn more money doesnt automatically make you greedy, every business wants to earn money. Its only greed when you make your customers pay more then the average. If your MMO over all costs less then competing MMOs using the same business model you’re not being greedy just like the smallest car with large side mirrors is not a large car.

If you think about it, using your approach you can call every business greed because every business tries to maximize their income through some way or another. If you call everyone greedy then the word greedy becomes meaningless because words like greed only have meaning when they are used in a scale. Why? because if everyone is greedy than none one is greedy because being greedy becomes the norm and words like greedy describe something thats outside the norm.

Astralporing.1957:

Galen Grey.4709:

Casual doesnt mean what some people believe it means. Casual doesnt mean only plays easy content, casual means you dont have a lot of time to play.

HoT for example is actually casual friendly.

In the context you brought up, it clearly isn’t. Map metas take 2 hours to cycle, and start at predetermined times (so that every instance is at the same point always). Reward system is designed to favour longterm participation. Events are meant for groups (while there are events that can be soloed, there are almost none that are designed with solo/small groups in mind).

You cannot log in at whatever time you find convenient, play 20 minutes here, take a break,. play 20 minutes elsewhere etc.
Well, you can, but you won’t get anything out of it. Someone that plays 2 hours in one day, but split over many 15-20 minutes parts will get rewarded significantly less than someone that can invest only one hour of continuous, unbroken time. In fact, some rewards will be plain locked out from the first player (i.e. bladed armor chest piece).

Whole HoT assumes that not only you do have a lot of time to play, but that are willing to play according to strict schedule. That’s not casual at all.

Like I said I am a casual player, quite often the time I have to play is X amount of time when I wake up to when my daughter wakes up. Most of them thats around 30 minutes some times it stretches to 1hr. Yet I get plenty out of it. Sure its not enough time for a full meta cycle but thats not such a huge problem as you make it up to be. you dont get rewarded just at the end. You can even ignore events and still get rewarded. Besides may that 30 minutes slots in right at the end of the meta event. Nothing is that clear cut here.

Calydro.7268:

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

I disagree. having people pay in advanced for content doesnt keep them around. Case in point, check the forums / reddit. You will find many posts especially around the time HoT launched of people claiming to have quit soon after launch and are thinking of coming back. With the core game purchase price they also got 3 years of free content but that didnt keep them around did it?

I even more strongly disagree with greedy business model. Look at what most other b2p MMOs do. They still cut their content in chunks, because it takes X amount of time to develop or on purpose is something thats debatable fine… but what they do is sell that content for “cheap” at regular intervals. $10 every quarter is most common. Well $10 per quarter for 3 years is $120 more then twice what Anet charged for the same period of time. How is that better?

Besides which modern MMO releases an expansion more often then 2 years?

Additionally were they really less greedy before? You had to pay Box Fee and Subscription. Sure content was less content and quicker to develop and you had an expansion every year which also carried a box fee. 2 years of your mmo back then would end up costing $480 are you really sure they were less greedy?

nahh its not an endurance test, its actually a self assessement test. What motivates me, Intrinsic rewards or Extrinsic rewards.

If you’re the type of player who looks for Intrinsic rewards you’re golden… Takes 2 years for the way you play to get that legendary weapon done? no problem I will enjoy what content I enjoy and 2 years down the line I can finally craft that weapon I want.

If you’re after Extrinsic rewards well you’re in for some frustration. Takes 6 months of grind to get that legendary weapon and I am unlikely to enjoy more then a couple of hours of it.

Just think about it… .How long do you play an MMO? my record is probably 7 – 8 years…. whats a reward that takes 2 years to achieve in those terms? reward or no reward I’d play multiple times that so its not correct to say 2 years of game play is an endurance test. to be an endurance test it would have to span for far longer you’d play had that specific reward never existed which here is not the case.

Nethod.7068:

- Mechanics over meta play ANET. -

I don’t want to be that guy telling someone “You can’t play because of your gear and class.”

Anet forgot GW2 was about mechanics.
Dungeons are not like this raid, world bosses are not like this raid. Gw2 has always been more about the group preforming acts to complete a task.

Time trial dps on a boss to win with meta-class roles IS WOW’s STYLE, not GW2.

Time trials of “bring the bomb to the wall at the top of the hill to blow it up before you blow your hand off” – Guild Wars 2

Mechanics over Metaplay please, anet.

Time limit is essentially for difficult content in this game.
Everyone can res and everyone can heal.
Do you think the hard world bosses like triple trouble or tequalt would ever get lost if they didnt have a time limit!
No we’d beat them each time if we had all time in the world to finish those events! No one is going to consider them hard if they get to win each time.

Casual doesnt mean what some people believe it means. Casual doesnt mean only plays easy content, casual means you dont have a lot of time to play.

HoT for example is actually casual friendly.

An MMO is not casual friendly when it puts barriers that stop you from playing unless you spend a lot of time playing that as a casual player you just cant. This is generally a side effect of a gear threadmill. You dont need to play a single second before you can tackle any content in HoT ( with the possible exception of raids though there are videos in which full exotic groups did beat the raid)

Open world though doesnt require any gear, all you need to do is know how to play your profession well. Even someone who can play 1 hour a month can do that… there is no barrier there and thats why HoT is actually casual friendly.

I think the problem is the core game was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy to easy. most content can be easily beaten using the 1 skill or skills as they come out of cool down. HoT isnt like that, you need to play your profession effectively. You need to dodge, interrupt, heal, crowd control to ensure your survival.

I am a casual player myself, Cant help it, my free time has been eaten away drastically. Yet I have no ascended weapons, no Ascended armors.. I do have ascended trinkets but those are easy to come by… Yet I have no issues playing HoT, lately I’ve been going after The specialization weapons… As a casual player progress is slow of course, still working on my first one. Part of it involved map completion that requires winning all hero points. Now HoT has a good number of hero points that are group events. Lets not forget group events are designed for 5 people… yet as I am sure you all know unless you follow a train some of these points are so out of the way that you’re not going to get 5 people but you dont need to wait long for another player to show up, so I have been doing quite a few of these with 2 players and let me tell you its great fun and more importantly doable.

HoT is challenging but not impossible, all it takes is to play your profession strategically and leverage all it can do. Do that and you’ll have lots of fun. Dont sell your self short just cause you dont have a lot of time available to play. That has no bearing at all in this game.

Sevans.4619:

I don’t ‘hate’ it, but I’m not happy with a lot of the decisions made for HoT.

Unfortunately, elite specializations seems to obsolete the core professions in almost every conceivable way. I feel stupid for not taking them in a lot of cases, which is a pretty big failure in my eyes; since most elite specs are just a straight upgrade to the base class without any real trade-off.

I was also primarily a WvW player and I don’t really need to expound on that since so many others have voiced their concern with that game mode and I tend to agree with those players.

Thats because so far there is one elite specialization. when there is more it will change. Keep in mind core profession is 66% of your elite specialization anyway. That being said I disagree that the core profession dont have a use on their own. Sure the specializations make your profession excel in the specialization’s specific role. Cant have a better melee necro then a reaper. Cant have a better support Ranger then a druid etc.. But If I want a ranged necro, is the reaper a good choice then? nope How about a DPS ranger? etc.. Your play style is what counts, the elite specialization just gives new a new very efficient play style but your ore profession is still king in every other play style.

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Vayne.8563:

msalakka.4653:

Vayne.8563:

We know for a fact Anet has a QA team that tests things. They have to go and play against each other in say PvP and figure out which changes are too strong, which are acceptable, which work and which don’t.

They nerfed the MtD rework right out of the gate because they “tested it on golems and found it too strong”, so no, I wouldn’t “know” they have a QA “team”.

I say we know they have a QA team because we’ve seen members of them in some videos. That’s how I know they have a QA team. And if you think the number of bugs coming through shows that things aren’t being tested, you’ve never been in a game software testing environment. Are their issues. Sure there are.

But if there wasn’t an QA team the issues would dwarf what we’re seeing.

or any other software environment for that matter. Work with any software company and you’ll know. Do you think Adobe, Microsoft, any other major company dont employ QA? Do you software like say a pdf reader is as complex as an MMO? yet check any PDF reader of any company (not single anyone out here) and check their blogs. each one of them releases patches to fix issues regularly.

It is hard to imagine, I get that but software development is a monster of complexity. When you write a simple hello world program your programming language will access multiple libraries developed by other vendors and join them to your to make that happen.It will then convert all that code into another a different language. A simple hello world program will end up with 100s of 1000s of instructions the computer executes to make it run. And here we’re talking about programs that each element can be used one way and one way only. File → Open can always be used just to open a file, you can never use File → Open to print or to minimize the program. Games arent like that. You change a class walk speed for example and suddenly that has a million implications. Walk speed impacts jump range, it has implications for combat, it may have an effect on your targeting code, projectile code, animations and a bunch of other things people dont immediately think about.

Sure some balancing changes involve simply changing a number but how many systems actually consume that number in one way or another? guess what? each of those systems owners need to be consulted to make sure the change isnt going to adversely effect them. Not all of them are going to be able to give an answer on the spot, some will need to back and test that value to make sure it doesnt break anything. Then once that change is effected all the systems that it effects need to be tested individually and having some experiance in QA let me tell you QA no matter how big are always undermanned which makes the whole process take time.

Again lets assume for the sake of argument the walk speed is effected… it takes a few seconds to change the value sure. how much time and people it takes to test it though?

you have different classes you need to test, different races, combat between different them might be impacted different, targeting is effected by walk speed, projectile shooting, collision detection, jumping puzzles (it may be that with the additional speed some small jumps might be impossible to make, too much distance is covered before you can stop the jump), etc.. etc..

This means changes to simple variables will still need to be scheduled with QA availability in mind.

Changing stuff in software is never just as simple as changing a number trust me!

another thing worth mentioning that no one seemed to talk about yet is living story. season 3 and most likely season 4 will be out before the next expansion they’ll require HoT to play (not sure about unlock) If they dont unlock without HoT thats like 40 euro worth of content right there you’d get for free. Beyond that without season 3 and season 4 it would be 2 years or more you’d need to wait without any new content before the next expansion.

Disclaimer timelines are my own estimate obviously. next expansion might come out quicker or slower then 2 years as well as we may get more or less living world seasons in between.

Werdx.2059:

Spirited Was Eceni.3869:

I took this from the Eye of the North website:-

The expansion introduces:
41 new armor sets, including rare, stand-alone pieces
100 new profession-specific skills (10 per profession, none of which are elite)
50 new PvE only skills including 3 elite skills
10 new heroes
18 Dungeons
124 new quests
The Hall of Monuments, a place which allows you to obtain unique titles, companions, weapons, armor, and miniatures in Guild Wars 2 based on your achievements in the original Guild Wars.
More than the previous campaigns, Eye of the North is full of easter eggs and “hidden” quests, which are not immediately accessible.

For those who may not know, Eye of the North was the only expansion Anet released during GW1, the other releases were separate campaigns within the same world.

I’ve not delved too deeply into HoT so far but for those that have, how does what we bought compare to the previous expansion in terms of content and value for money?

EoTN cos about 60.000.000$ to make,HoT price was about 250.000.000$

Guild Wars 2 is made pure for money milking.Guild Wars was made out of love.

not exactly sure how your math works but shouldnt it be the other way round? when you make something out of love you’re willing to invest more in it so generally what ends up costing more is considered more of work of love then something that cost less to make.

Dont really personally agree that cost is any indication of love but if it were I’d say the highest cost is the best example of love.

Harper.4173:

Quantity alone is not a criteria but you whole point revolves around a difference between rocks and diamonds – I’ll ask you now – is the difference between the new HoT sets and the old core GW2 sets so big?
Are the sets we got with HoT really that amazing that they’re worth more and are more “awesome” than old sets?

All the numbers you’re throwing out are also real for the Core game – so the proportions between how many “sets” the core game launched with vs how many HoT launched with remain the same – because the more things you take into consideration the more things you have to consider for the core game as well.

It was underwhelming in this regard – and it would’ve been ok if they really didn’t have time to do it – but given the uninterrupted flow of Black Lion weapon skins and gem store costumes it’s clear that they could if they wanted to have diverted more development resources towards this – but that was not the case.

No my point isnt the difference between rocks and diamonds, rocks and diamonds was just an example one picked for a stark contrast by no means am I suggesting EoTN is a rock and that HoT is a diamond. the whole point is there is more then quantity involved.

The core game had 5 years to develop their sets, HoT had like 2 ofcourse you’re going to get less. Then you have resource allocation to consider.. launching a game is different then launching an expansion, Things like armor sets have diminishing returns for a company why? because essentially you only need 1 set in most cases for 1 character. Core game needed armor sets because they were a core need (you need armor skins to dress your characters in) Expansions produce armor sets in terms of rewards not in terms of need. Same thing happens if you compare EoTN armor sets with prophecies armor sets. That being said its also important to consider that Gw2 releases sets in between expansion. since launch and before the release of HoT we got what? 7 new sets, same thing will likely happen in HoT like for starters we know we’re getting Legendary armor we’re not counting those here.

No, whats true for HoT isnt necessary true for the core game. Maps in HoT take a lot more work to create then they take in Core for example. Same goes with legendary weapons because of the new precursor crafting system. We havent yet seen the new Legendary armor but good chance it takes a lot more work to create a legendary armor set then it does to create a regular armor set. MMOs evolve and Arenanet unlike other MMOs love to expand and improve their systems with the negative impact that in doing so they generally raise their work load exponentially. Number have to be considered in that context as well. Like for example, in the core game they created 20 precursors. Back then though create a new precursor didnt involve creating 4 models and a huge collection quest with it. Naturally it takes more time now.

chances are stuff they put into the black lion shop has 0 impact on the core game. the Gem shop is a source of income hence they probably hire dedicated teams for it. (my theory they never said this) but either case you’re mentioning weaponsets here and its not like HoT is lacking in weapon sets. We got 9 sets not counting unique drops and the new precursor models.. hardly lacking.

Ashen.2907:

Arius.7031:

I don’t think the comparison can be made like this and be fair. The two expansion’s had completely different philosophy that can be summed up as: Heart of Thorns is primarily a feature expansion, EotN is primarily a content expansion.

Heart of thorns adds many, many mechanics and concepts to the game that affect it overall and provide a very good base for building additional content in the future.

Eye of the North added a good deal of content onto the already existing game—but very little in the way of actual new features.

So why don’t we compare the FEATURE additions to EotN’s FEATURE additions (and not their content) and see how each 1 comes out?

Heart of Thorns
-Raids
-Elite Specializations
-New class (Revenant)
-Masteries
-Gliding (part of masteries but so substantial that I felt it merited it’s own mention)
-Guild Halls
-Guild Rework (completely different/new guild missions system, new way for advancing guild, new ways of guild chatting etc…)
-Raid UI
-Map Contribution mechanic & accompanying UI
-Precursor Crafting
-Legendary Armor/Back pieces

Eye of the North
-Hall of Monuments

Raids are content, essentially a version of the dungeon concept. More complex perhaps. More difficult perhaps, but still essentially an extension of something that already exists.

Elite specializations are trait lines….such as every class already has.

It is nice to see Guild Halls added.

Yep, listing masteries twice does make the list longer.

Fixing problems with guilds may be a feature, I guess.

Listing elements of Raids, such as the UI, twice does make the list look longer.

Not sure that adding a new way to get something that has existed since launch, a way promised to be delivered two years ago, really counts as a feature. If it does then being able to get drops from mobs on new maps would be a new feature for both expansions.

Not sure that new gear, something that existed in both expansions, counts as a game feature.

And here lies the issue.. I dont know why but people love to belittle what is a tremendous amount of work. You said “Not sure that adding a new way to get something that has existed since launch, a way promised to be delivered two years ago, really counts as a feature”. I am specifically focusing on Precursor crafting simply because its probably the one thing in this expansion that we know how much work was involved in developing. Things dont come out of the ether… well mists this being Gw2…. Its not like someone hit a button and suddenly you had a collection to get precursors… some one had to come up with a backstory for each weapon, items were picked that fit that narrative, models were created to support each weapon construction stage. Icons have to be created, etc… The amount of work to put just a single precursor in that feature which you’re suggesting we just should simply ignore is 1 month… thats not an assumption thats a fact stated by arenanet themselves in one of their broadcast pre HoT launch. Essentially that entire feature took 2 years of work. 2 years…

Essentially that one feature “that apparently shouldnt count” took at least twice as much work as any feature EoTN had.

Same thing with Raids.. yeah sure Raids are essentially like other content but what about the underlying systems that support raids? the new expanded party system to mention an obvious one. Then you’ll like have new systems developed to support the mechanics that are needed to make a raid interesting. etc.. All these things take work and thus time to develop… Its a lot easier to make a lot of the same then it is to make new things that work in a new way.

Like I sure the old precursor system didnt take a whole month of work… for one it was 1 model not 4. secondly there was no backstory / items to consider. no need to create collections etc.. think how many new precursors they could have created using the old system rather then new.

These things matter!