Guild Wars 2

Okay so maybe my negative opinion wasn’t quite as dissenting as I thought. Sounds like new LA has more detractors than supporters.

The central problem is definitely the theme-parkiness. Anet, we’re not six years old and niether are our characters. For those of us into roleplay, I cannot imagine why any serious-minded character would take this city seriously. For OOC players, there’s very little to draw us in and immerse us, even just with the aesthetic. I have expect there to be a slip-n-slide coming out of those nautical creature buildings.

Man. I hate to say it, but… there isn’t much I’d suggest to improve on it, other than going all the way back to the drawing board, and I’m pretty sure that’s not in the cards. So we’re up the creek and stuck with no Lion’s Arch anymore.

Anet destroyed it more thoroughly than Scarlet could have ever dreamed.

I am seeing a lot of praise for the new Lion’s Arch, so I realize I may be representing a minority opinion when I say that I am strongly disappointed in what appears to me to be a very questionable (or outright misguided) design philosophy in making this new city.

A lot of what makes Guild Wars 2 so easy to get into is the world feels lived-in. Now, this is a Theme Park MMO, so of course it is not lived in, nor can it be really. But it’s important to provide that illusion so the player can, even for a moment, suspend their disbelief and imagine that Tyria is a world where lives happen, where people settle down and have jobs and shop for food. It makes the world feel like its worth fighting for, defending, exploring, and falling in love with.

The old Lion’s Arch had this. It looked old, creaky, patched together and well-settled. It felt a little dirty, a little sleazy. It put on airs as old cities with rich histories tend to do, even as they slowly decay with time. You could almost smell the rotting wood, the salt water, the miasma of human occupation. It felt like a real place, a city that grew slowly over time as necessity dictated. It wasn’t the easiest on the eyes but that was part of the charm.

The new LA is a big step away from all of that and all to its detriment. I cannot decide if it looks more like a college campus or a theme park for kiddies, and neither are positive comparisons. I’ve settled mostly on theme park. It’s clean, it’s colorful, its huge with lots of wide-open, poorly-used space. There is almost no ecumenical sense of use of real estate. It doesn’t feel like a place where people have to actually live. It looks, and feels, very fake.

The buildings shaped like sea creatures is a baffling design choice that absolutely stumps me. What are we, grade schoolers? The bank is a cutesy-wootsy octopus? The Traders is a seashell, the crafting station a starfish? The harbor is a lobster? What? Are you kidding me?

This isn’t a place where serious people go to do serious work, this is a place where 6 year olds get cotton candy from a carny dressed like a pirate. This is a place where you go to get a selfie with Captain Hook. This is a place where tinny sea shanties are played over speakers hidden in fake plastic trees. There’s almost no space for people to live in, there’s no flow to how the city is designed. I say city, but of course, it’s a video game hub zone. I can no longer suspend my disbelief, I’m no longer in this world but instead I am sitting at my computer staring at a pastel-colored hub zone designed, apparently, by Disney World architects.

LA as it currently stands is what happens when the people in charge of designing the world and environments of the game lose focus on what made their locations so iconic in the first place. The new lion’s arch is a travesty. I’ve been there once, had a look around, and I feel absolutely no desire at all to ever go back. I thought Disney World was fake, kitschy and annoying when I was eight. I have even less patience for that candy-coated disingenuous tourist-trap theme-parky manufactured-fun nonsense now than I did then.

The new Lion’s Arch is instantly forgettable. I could say I miss the old one, but what I really miss, in my heart of hearts, was the dedication the art team had for crafting living, breathing worlds. That is what I miss the most, because none of it is to be found here.

So every match was a blowout and the winners were all completely undefeated?

So, basically what I could have predicted before the season even started? Great to know!

Of course not. After seeing how poorly Season 1 was handled?

Season one was terrible. More than a disappointment, it killed my interest in the game, and the rewards… well, haha, they’re a joke, and a funny one at that.

VaaCrow.3076:

Instead of complaining about your servers doing badly and moving to higher tier ones, you should build up your community and DRAW people from tier 1-2-3 servers to your low pop servers because you have a nice community and NO QUES/little lag….

Funny how people are so willing to tell other people to do this, and yet so few actually will.

Admit it. You don’t really think it’s plausible for any random person to start a Grassroots mega-campaign to revitalize their server, do you? Long before it gets to that point, they’re likely to just jump to an overpopulated server, exacerbating the problem, or leave the game, ditto.

People just say “Naw, you just gotta turn into a community organizer the likes of which gaming has rarely seen” because it saves them from having to say “Yeah, WvW in general and this league in specific are poorly planned and designed, fundamentally.”

Part of the reason we complain is because we care.

I used to love WvW. That’s why this league nonsense is so offensive. It vastly exacerbated the problems WvW has, and now that they’re doubling down on it, they have to fix what’s broken.

It’s great that you are having fun. The problem is, if significantly fewer people than the majority are enjoying themselves, the community will taper off. I used to adore WvW and I’ve logged into it all of once this entire past week, not because of time constraints, but because it has legitimately stopped being fun.

Can you imagine how much this community would blow up if we discovered there was a numbers disparity in the population caps of the WvW zones? There’d be hell to pay.

Visiroth.5914:

Boredom + queues haven’t made T1 destack yet. Will the population really take care of itself?

No.

If the players could be trusted to even the teams themselves, they would have done so by now. This is why so few games leave it up to the players.

Ask Anet. They designed them that way.

Sometimes it is VERY difficult to believe that the sides are numerically equal. You have to just sit and wonder, is it really possible that there are SO many of the enemy zerging like this, and we have just as many people but they’re all off faffing about? Doing what? PvE? How come I never see them?

What a stupendous, rousing failure leagues have been.

“Think that your world is locked into its position and your contributions don’t matter?”

Yup. I sure do.

The only thing that remains to be seen is whether or not BG or JQ win in NA. TC couldn’t win if the planets aligned. Everyone knows it, the devs know it, and this simpering, mewling marketing letter they’ve published is insulting to the intellect.

Lord Kuru.3685:

The leagues were bound to end up like this because Anet implemented them before addressing the real serious issue:

Every server only has probably at most three other servers that are competitive with it.

And even then, in many cases, those servers can only make it close. It’ll still be a blowout, just less of one.

Based on their track record, I’m thinking one of two things is going to happen. Either Season 2 will be abandoned until sometime in the distant future, or they’ll go ahead with it without fixing very much.

So what if Devon has the stats that we are all blindly theorizing on? Obvious those stats don’t help him because he’s come to US asking for solutions.

Think about that. He’s got the numbers. We don’t. And yet he’s asking US for ideas. He’s a guy with two working eyes asking a hoard of blind people to lead him. Why would he do that unless the numbers were meaningless?

He wouldn’t. Numbers are meaningless. The only thing that will solve the population imbalance is an understanding of human psychology and a change to the mechanics of how the game is played.

Make numbers not an advantage on a mechanics level. Break up the zerg and design the game so that just because you have more people, doesn’t necessarily mean you have any meaningful advantage. Abandon the idea about messing with server transfers. If players were going to self-regulate one way or the other, they would have done so by now. If you locked all the servers down and allowed ZERO transfers, you’d still have massively overpopulated servers that would be guaranteed locks to win. You’d still have the blowouts every-single-week, because WvW is designed poorly for “serious” league play from the ground up.

1. Abandon the league concept, it is fundamentally broken.
2. Break up the zerg. The “crowded” debuff is the best idea I’ve got to resolve this, but other people might have better.
3. Change the capture mechanics so that a small force can effectively defend against a large one. you know, kind of how things are with defense in every human conflict ever fought anywhere across all of human history.

Fiddling with the knobs on the server transfers is a waste of time.

Server transfers aren’t going to solve the problem.

Players will never sort themselves into even teams. This is why most games don’t leave that up to the players. They have mechanics in place to make sure the teams are even; mechanics that were not implemented before the implementation of this league play.

You can’t back into it by giving the players a tool and telling them to sort it out themselves. Doesn’t work that way. If server transfers were gonna work, they would have worked by now, because they’ve been available and people have been using them. They haven’t worked. Focus on something else, like addressing WHY it is that numbers always win. Fix that.

Change the mechanics of zerg combat. Change the mechanics of tower/keep captures. Make numbers not as much of an advantage; don’t try to herd cats.

Ranger. Speaking as a ranger.

That being said my damage output in a zerg is absolutely sick. Usually I’ll just pick whomever enemy I first see, drop them, pick the next, drop them…

But if someone runs up and hits me? I just die, immediately. And the pets are near useless.

Kinda ruined WvW for me, actually. I used to be able to rely on WvW for reliable fun. Now its either my server sandbagging because we’re too far behind, sandbagging because we’re too far ahead, or the queue is impenetrable. I havn’t had real fun in WvW since leagues started.

So I’ve gone back to playing Planetside 2 until the league is over and done with. What a failure.

I’d just like to see more content geared toward the elder dragons. That’s what this game was supposed to be kinda about, was it not?

Dragons.

This game used to be about the Elder Dragons, right?

I mean, that wasn’t some sort of fever dream I had?

Plains of Ashes.5941:

I have read thru pages of this thread and I see a lot of complex solutions, alot of gaming the PPTs and buffs. Most of what I see is cures for symptoms. The first step is to separate the cause from the effect, identify the root cause, then solve the root cause.
The population imbalance, the stacking of servers, the fact that coverage defines the winner, the outmanned buff, the week after week of lobsided matches are not the problem, they are symptoms of the problems.

I submit the primary root cause, but not the only one, is the fact that servers are allowed to field unequal number of players. I have never played a game which allows one team to field unequal teams as its default mode. WvW allows you to field 70+ more players on one side than the other. Not even GW2 sPvP allows unequal teams. I cant name a game or sport which breaks this rule.

This i would contend is the underlying cause of most of WvW’s problems. Its a violation of fundemental game design. What flows from this flaw is what you would expect of human nature: everyone stacking the teams because stacking is rewarded with what people want the most: and that is to win. Its simple, if the NFL changed the rules which allowed a team to field all the players on its bench (like WvW), and players didnt cost the team money (like WvW), and the winning team gets a super bowl ring, well, the NFL would look like WvW next season with all the same flaws we see now.

WvW WILL BE BROKEN FOREVER UNTIL SERVERS ARE CONSTRAINED TO FIELD EQUAL NUMBER OF PLAYERS. Without this we will continue to have kludges (outmanned anyone?) and incentives, and the horribly complex solutions to manipulate PPTs and buffs when the solution is very simple. You must remove the incentive to change the behavior, and the incentive is stack a map and win the game.
So how do we fix it?

• limit the fielded teams to equal sizes, just like every other game does.
• make the remainder wait in queues, like other games
• Dont kick in the dynamic cap till the teamsize is over 20.
• if the teams are equal and one server has people leave then this offset is ok, balancing should only prevent folks from joining a team when that team is larger than the other teams (ie nobody ever gets booted for the sake of balane, let normal attrition do this)
• once this is in place, allow matchups between any 3 servers. thats right, for some matches it means HUGE queues (like for JQ vs AR), but that is what it will take to show players that a) stacked servers have no statistical advantage in winning, and b) stacking to a server means less playtime as a reward for their choice. with even teams, skill and tactics will matter more, where now they almost dont matter.
• keep statistics on which servers are cronically limiting the map pop and make a finite number of transfers avalable for free. Keeping statistics will allow ANET to know the specific number of transfers a server needs.

In summary: there are multiple flaws that result in stacked servers, but WvW will be broken until ANET creates a limit which equalizes the size of fielded teams between servers. You cant violate a fundamental game design principle and not have endless bad side effects and kludges.

I will pitch in another root cause for the stacking and that is ANETs attitude of treating the high ranked servers better. Example: we have 3 totally independent leagues in Season 1. why dont they get the exact same reward as a function of where they place in their league? why is the first place silver league reward worse than the gold winner? and the bronze league winner worse still? they dont play each other so why dont the 3 number ones each get the same number 1 prize? cant ANET see this forces players to stack because ANET themselves reward stacking? ANET should make all 3 league winners have the same quality of reward, then there is no reason to say “I gotta transfer to T1 or ANET is gonna screw me out of something worthwhile”

The reason there is stacking (and the resultant pop imbalance) is because ANET rewards it. both in its gameplay flaws, and in the very culture ANET has created for WvW. Pick the simple solution to the WvW problem, not the insanely convoluted solutions ive seen posted – equalized fielded teams in WvW just like every other online game does! that and enable transfers to even out the teams and ANET is on its way to making WvW what it should be.

Just so we’re clear, am I to understand that, for example, in EB, it’s possible for all three servers to be queued, and yet for one server to have more people on the field than the other two?

Or are you talking about the population imbalance where, say, one server can field a queued team, and the other two can’t? Such as during off hours, etc?

I appreciate the grand experiment that has been the “living story”. And while the idea of there being content updates every two weeks sounds amazing on paper, in practice I have been nothing but underwhelmed. The actual gameplay of the content tends to revolve around tired mini-games, or dynamic events that are slightly different from how they were before.

This latest addition introduce a huge, awe-inspiring tower in the middle of Kessex that cannot be interacted with. We’re introduced to it’s sprawling majesty, and then immediately handed a bucket and sent to collect thingies. Why? Who cares. It’s not like it matters. Maybe you get an achievement. Maybe you unlock a special weapon or armor skin you and a few thousand other people can all have.

It’s not good that I can be introduced to the new content update at 6pm and be tired of it by 9pm. Because after those three hours are up, there’s another two weeks to wait for the next three hours of possible entertainment.

The killer thing is, I can tell that there are cool ideas here, and I know the dev team are trying to deliver on some epic-scale stuff. But the time constraints to get this content out so rapidly means that so many corners have to be cut that by the time we get it, it’s hardly even worth having. I feel that most players appreciate the effort, but the actually enjoyment of the new content is rather muted. A sort of shrugging of shoulders as people realize, oh, okay, more stuff to grind. Yippee.

Speaking only for myself, I’d be perfectly happy with waiting a few extra weeks or months, if the content, when it got here, was really good. Something more complex, something with more options. It just seems that more and more, content is coming out and I’m thinking to myself, this could have done better with a little more time in the oven. I don’t mind the wait, if the payoff is better overall.

This is the part where I’d say I could enjoy myself in WvW in the meantime while I wait, but the WvW guys screwed that up with these awful, awful leagues, but that’s a topic for a different forum.

Your heart is in the right place, but your ideas are not very good. Sorry, mate.

x Charlie.4820:

Tbh speaking as a vabbi player, majority of people that play wvw on vabbi are here for the fun + smallscale.

If you want even fights then i’d suggest the gold league, although enjoy the 5hour queues and stuff.

I got bad news for you. The “fights” in the gold league aren’t that great either.

I play on TC. It’s only Saturday and we’ve already given up because we’re up against JQ. Their zerg is too large so the commanders don’t even bother organizing. We can’t keep people interested because we know that no matter what we do, JQ has more people at the off-primetime hours and are a guaranteed win.

In gold league, you’re either sitting in a 4 hour queue, or you get in straight away because your server isn’t even trying. Either way, you’re screwed.

WvW just isn’t what it used to be. And what it used to be was fun.

Prime time on a Saturday night and there’s nobody even trying to lead. TC has pretty much yielded the field to JQ. Just spent about an hour running around, unable to find anything to do, ducking out of the way of the JQ blob.

And to think, there was a day once when I enjoyed spending time in WvW.

It’s not fun anymore. The league has utterly spoiled it. Implemented before WvW’s core problems were addressed, and has only served to exacerbated them.

Stay away. There’s nothing worthwhile there, and won’t be for some time.

Worse. It’s worse by a wide degree.

The League was a terribly executed idea, implemented before the inherent problems with populations and steamrolling and zerg tactics were addressed. I used to adore WvW, and I haven’t enjoyed a second of it since the league started.

Don’t bother.

Gold/1

Season 1 has ruined my WvW experience almost completely. WvW used to be a reliable place I could go for some fun. Now it’s either so queued I can’t get in, or, as things are right now, we’re up against JQ and nobody bothers trying.

It’s sucked for weeks straight, and seems primed to continue sucking for weeks to come. What a disaster.

What happens when you introduce gaming elements for marketing, without thinking things through enough. Cart before the horse, etc. etc.

The only way you’re going to fix population imbalance is if you incentivize the two losing servers to attack the leader. There’s a few ways you could do this.

Make their stuff more valuable. Killing players and taking possessions owned by the leading server should be worth more in immediate rewards than taking possessions owned by the #2 or #3 guys. I’m not sure to what degree, but the loot should be better, the gold should be better, the exp (both level and WvW) should be better, etc.

For the #1 server, rewards for attacking the #2 guy should be greater than attacking the #3 guy. In fact, attacking the #3 guy should be perhaps even less than normal rewards, at maybe a -30% penalty. Nobody’s impressed with a bully kicking the little guy when he’s down.

Basically, rewards should be skewed towards encouraging people to attack the server in the lead more than each other.

Break up the zerg. Make zerging less rewarding and effective. Towers should be easier to take by smaller teams of people, and being IN a zerg should be more hazardous than safe. There’s really nothing an outmanned server can do against a zerg that’s just bigger than they are.

I’m not sure how to do it. Here are some spitball ideas off the top of my head.

• Make proximity to 10+ players grant a “crowded” debuff that lowers your stats.
• Make AOE hurt groups more. Like, a lot more, to discourage people from being groups up in the first place.
• Make buffs harder to stack in a large concentration.
• Prevent siege from being placed too close together.
• Make towers and keeps easier to assault by fewer people, meaning servers will need to spread out more and keep a closer eye on their possessions. Unmanned installations should fall easy.
• Send yaks more often. This will spread out the yak hunters and make more people want to hunt them, since the rewards will be good, and also keeps will get supplies faster, which is something you’d be more incentivized to prevent.

I dunno, stuff like that.

Improve the “outmanned” buff. First, give it to any server that is outmanned by a certain percentage (let’s say, 30% overall or whatever, to just toss out a number) and make the buffs actually provide benefits that would help with BEING outmanned. Increase damage and movement speed, maybe. Gift players temporary abilities to spawn siege and make it hurt a LOT to attackers. Give the outnumbered force a clear benefit to help them compete.

Edit: Additionally, the ‘outmanned’ buff should apply if you’re outnumbered over the four zones, not just in that particular zone. If you’re poplocked in EB, but have nobody in the other four, you should enjoy the buff in EB. Maybe you’ll wreck face there, but you’ll still be losing overall, and it might spread people out more.

Congrats to JQ, Season 1 champs. Well done, guys!

Actinotus.6410:

Guru.1582:

Solstice.1097:

hope your friends keep you company while you’re in queue. meanwhile we can barely queue one map to save our lives.

#nosympathy

Maybe yooooooou should join a different server and stop whining!

See? See how unhelpful that is?

How about rewording it -

“Stop whining or join a different server?”

A fool’s choice. Pretending like there’s only two options. How about option 3: Anet stops putting the cart before the horse and anticipates how its design choices will impact player experience?

There should have been systems in place to account for long queue times they had to know would exist. They went ahead without these systems and now they’re gonna hear about it.

Solstice.1097:

hope your friends keep you company while you’re in queue. meanwhile we can barely queue one map to save our lives.

#nosympathy

Maybe yooooooou should join a different server and stop whining!

See? See how unhelpful that is?

Since it seems we’re prioritizing achievements over customer experience, maybe we can add some achievements for LOUSY customer experience?

Like, certain amount of time sitting in queue. The more time in queue logged, the better achievements. I know that kinda screws over the ghost town servers, but I’ll tell you the same thing you guys have been telling me: just spend real cash, leave all your friends and server hop!

Or, number of times mashing a skill before it triggers. This might be tough to implement since it would have to be tracked clientside, I feel.

We can even do a “longest time in queue/shortest time CTDing after getting in” achievement. That one can have a title attached!

I feel it would greatly enhance the experience of playing a game that’s a year old and yet feels like launch weekend. We can all feel like winners.

And yes, I did think of posting this thread while I was sitting in queue, for the fourth night in a row, having yet to see the inside of the new WvW.

I like that. “Move your guild to a different server!”

“But what if I’m not in a WvW guild and I happen to like some of the people on my server, and I lack the charisma/mind control powers to make them and all their friends leave with me?”

“Well then I guess your life is going to suck, now excuse me while I take a bath in these gems, aaaaghblghabglhmmmmmmmmh”

I couldn’t give less of a crap that we’re winning, since I’m not getting to play. Suddenly WvW became this sectioned-off realm where only the TRULY DEDICATED and/or people without real-life responsibilities or schedules get to play.

A guy like me: work a 9-5, get time to play somewhere around 8pm EST or so? I havn’t seen the inside of WvW since the season started. Unless you count one night where I CTD’d immediately, or the night before where at 11:30pm I managed to squeeze into our completely-inactive, 100%-owned borderlands.

Fun.

Your positivity isn’t making my queue move any faster, unfortunately.

1. Queues. They suck.
2. The zerg. It’s zerg or die. Makes the battles look lame, simplifies the tacts to “Brute force always wins”.
3. Defense. There kinda isn’t any.
4. Server population imbalance.
5. Thief/Mesmer are demonstrably better at WvW than other classes.
6. Queues.
7. Queues.
8. See #1.

ITT: “Go join a lower tier server.”

So, basically, “Ditch all your friends for one aspect of the game.” I play on Tarnished Coast for the RP first and everything else second. If the game was designed well, I wouldn’t have to choose between whether or not I want to play certain aspects of it or not, just because they didn’t think of something better than “Pay us money and transfer yourself”.

How about, give me what it advertises on the box. How about, you do your job better. How about, maybe I shouldn’t be the one making sacrifices.

BTW, TC is a T2 server. Something we’re reminded of every time we’re pitted against T1 servers. And I didn’t transfer there for the WvW. Oops.

I used to love WvW. For a long time it was this fun little corner of the game, for me. Sure, trying to get into EB on primetime on the weekends was a little difficult sometimes (with queue times of 20-40 minutes or more!) but I could reliably just come home from work, sit down, fire up the game, and have fun.

So when the seasons were announced, I was initially excited. Wow, all this new stuff for WvW, I can’t wait!

I’m still waiting, because I’ve yet to get into EB since the season 1 start. I usually log in, sit in queue for two hours or so, and then log off after getting my daily, when I can be bothered. I got in once, ran with the zerg for about five minutes, hit a huge three-way fight, the server took a crap and I CTD’d.

With the completely blase attitude for RP redusing the RP community, without WvW there isn’t much keeping me playing. Queue v World is boring and I’m actually rather shocked that it apparently was not in the design plan that there should be alternatives or options for people stuck in the queues.

I don’t suppose it’s not too late to just cancel the season and roll back the achievements, is it? I’d kinda like to play WvW again. I don’t have the time to sit in queue for five hours, sorry. Then again I guess GW2 is no longer the game for “filthy casuals” like me (1800 hours of game time played) anymore.

It was WvW, which was queued by the time I got back in. I didn’t have a chance, and I knew it. Once I saw that “LOL U CRASHED! SEND A REPORT NOBODY READS?” screen I knew I was doomed. I melted the paint of my living room with my cursing.

This can be improved.

My tale of woe:

We finally break down the inner gates of Stonemist and we’re surging in. We clear out the defenders and we’re prepared to enjoy a well-earned victory.

Then my screen freezes and I CTD.

After I finish a color string of curses, I log back in to find that not only do I not get credit despite participating in every stage of the battle, but my character is dead so I get dinged for repair costs and a waypoint. Twist the knife.

Why, oh why, oh freaking why, doesn’t the game give credit for an event even if the player is removed from the zone/game? This has happened to me more than once, where at the very climax of an event, the game crashes and I’m left up the creek. It would be at least a little consoling to log in to find myself at least rewarded for my efforts. Isn’t the inconvenience of the crash enough random punishment?

Just wanted to add to the noise a bit and say that I’m very disappointed by the way the guild missions were implemented. Gating the content so that smaller guilds get the shaft, and bigger guilds have it easy, was a very poor way of implementing the content.

Yet another example of Anet shifting away from the core principles of inclusion and out-of-the-box fun that sold the game to me.

This idea is a bad one.

I lead a pretty big guild, but we’re a PvE guild. We’ve never bothered with WvW and as a result, have spent all of our points in other things. Even for a guild our size it will take a lot of time to build the influence to get art of war 5. Perhaps even a month. I can’t imagine what a grind it will be for smaller guilds.

For shame, Anet. This was a terrible idea, and shame on you for hiding it from all your press so as to avoid the backlash you knew you’d get.

A really good example of why I, personally, will never bother with a legendary.

Really, Anet?

Forget what the devs have told you. Legendaries are the epic grind of the game. Grind, grind, grind. Nobody said it had to be fun.

Risen Quaggan never seem to drop much of anything, ever.

Some of us love this game and play it regularly and constantly, but not in the way that would grind gold because maybe we don’t enjoy grinding, and bought the game to avoid the miserable gear grind from other games.

But why should we not also have the good stuff, just because we’re not running that mouse wheel?

So I thought, what’s a good alternative to grinding gold for legendaries, but making sure that they stay exclusive to people dedicated to the game. How about this: players can spend achievement points to buy major components for the legendary. Conversely, players can save up their achievement points to some large total (3,500? 4,000? 4,500? I’m not sure what would be reasonable) and then blow them all to get a legendary weapon of their choice.

After purchase, maybe players could opt to have their achievements wiped so they can basically re-play the game if they wanted to earn another legendary in this way. Maybe such a service could be sold on the gem store to generate additional revenue for ArenaNet.

ElixireL.5190:

Could someone explain in plain English what Legendary weapons are for???

Legendary weapons are extremely fancy weapon skins. They do not in fact possess stats that are better than any given exotic weapon. However, their skins are vastly, demonstrably more fancy and detailed.

Zeldain.5710:

plasmacutter.2709:

The best weapon skins should come from mastering aspects of the game.

Heck, they should be themed based on what you’ve done.

You should be able to achieve benevolent weapon and armor skins by raising downed and dead allies/using group-altruistic abilities in combat, or jumping in to save a pvp allie in critical condition. Maybe some dark and deathly looking ones for large numbers of pvp kills, or aggressive looking ones for boss kills or challenge modes, or very odd technological ones for completing puzzles or discovering easter eggs.

Each of these would be earnable naturally by “just playing the game” and reflect your playstyle in the process. Then you could make similar-styled items that are craftable for people who like the tone of an outfit but prefer some other playstyle.

The gold sink needs to go though.

But their business model depends on players mastering the cash shop

Not exactly pay-to-win but this is monetization design not game design.

Legendaries are not a good motivator for the gem store. I need 200 gold just to buy the necessary lodestones. That’s nearly $250 on its own.

If you converted the total value of many legendary weapons into their value in gems, you’re looking at thousands of dollars in some cases. It’s ridiculous to imagine that any reasonable person can afford such extravagance. At the very least, it is a complete divorce from the idea that legendary weapons represent a “mastery of the game”.

They represent the ability to withstand constant, monotonous grinding and clever exploiting of the game’s systems. Not a magnificent, compelling fantasy adventure in a fully realized and engaging world. It’s crass, outdated, and lazy design.