Guild Wars 2

Gwen.7981:

Does anyone else get the feeling that they are herding all of the negative posts into this one particular thread just to ignore us?

No, they just want to keep the forums clean. I actually do think that they’ve already understood that this townclothes disaster has to be fixed.
Let’s just hope they don’t run into “technical issues” again they can’t fix. Or so they say.

I can’t get behind this decision. I can’t remember one single event which is worth farming because of the loot you get at the end. All in all I think ArenaNet should work on making eventfarming more desireable to compete with dungeonloot.
Reducing the current abysmal poor loot is definitely the wrong way.

After reading the first question of this interview, I have to settle this once and for all.

Cliffhangers do not work in a MMO, especially not if you try to tie new gameplay to the story.
It is clear why you’re using cliffhangers, they’ve been working great for films, books or series. They create tension and let the person reading or watching this cliffhanger urge for more, which ensures that the person will come back if this story is continued.

To understand what the problems with cliffhangers in MMOs are, we have to understand what the differences between a MMO and a regular story are.
If a regular story ends with a cliffhanger, the story, the whole universe the story takes place in, is on halt. Nothing will happen until the story get continued. This keeps the tension high and ensures that the person experiencing this cliffhanger will come back unless he/she gets bored of waiting.
An MMO however is never completely on halt. The story may be, but the MMO isn’t.
This creates the immersion-killing situation, that you’ve just experienced the story progressing and now it’s on halt for two weeks. The tension flattens out because it seems like nothing is happening, which is simply unrealistic. This gets further incentiviced by the necessity to deal with this – now on halt – story through achievements and stuff. You get permanently reminded that the story is on halt while the world itself should progress, which creates dissatisfacion.
So the the cliffhanger gets not only undermined by the fact that the world should still progress, it looks also much more like a flat slope due to the achievements and other activities, which are loosely tied to the story.

I can’t say how you could get around this effect, other than stopping the episodic nature and releasing the whole story at once, so that this effect can be avoided.
I’m not saying that this is a great suggestion but I can tell you that I loathe the current system and that I don’t feel invested in the story at all.

We are not watching a movie, we are playing a game. A game has to be consistent. An inconsistent, episodic storytelling does not fit into a game.

Vayne.8563:

Why is it that people who criticize assume they’re right while people who like stuff are wrong? Why isn’t it possible that someone can like a game without being a white knight?

Where did he say that he’s right and everyone defending it is wrong? It is his list. His list about things he hates. And there are already some posts that say that he is right.

In most games, you level by going quest hub to quest hub and that’s pretty much what you do, until you get to a high enough level to go to the next quest hub, afterwhich you do dungeons then you raid. That’s the PvE experience of most themepark MMOs.

This isn’t most other games. This is GW2. And prior to the changes the OP listed, GW2 was great for the most part, atleast for me. Now it’s not so much.

dancingmonkey.4902:

This was evident the second you cry about the fact that you can no longer fail an event and intentionally exploit it. Which speaks volumes about the character of the complainer in this case.

Which speaks volumes about the content that is being delivered by ANet if buggy events are the only thing that pleases the players.

They would like to have a word with the devs regarding the Ready Up episode 15.
And since the ranger sub gets kindly avoided by the devs, I felt the need to remind them that there are people down there that care:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Balance-Philosophy/first

Thank you for your attention.

A repost from another thread because I think this should be seen by the devs.
Bare with me, the post is rather long and english is not my native language.

The (First World) Problem of GuildWars 2
The real problem with GW2 is that the flaws are multi-dimensional and sometimes that big, that they affect nearly every part of the game. Many of these flaws are so huge that they probably can’t be removed until ANet is willing to rework huge portions of the game to please players who have played this game a long time now, the non-casual gamers.
And I honestly don’t think this will ever happen.

Some initial information:

I’ve played this game now since release and dumbed more than 4k hours in this game. Thus, I wouldn’t describe me as casual player. All “flaws” I am going to list and analyze will only become obvious after multiple, multiple hours in-game time. If you’re new to GuildWars 2 or if you don’t want to stay “forever”, you can happily ignore my concerns, since you wont be limited by the “flaws” I’ll list.

But let’s look for the flaws:

GW2 Manifesto
No Grinding! That was one of the promises GW2 tries to achieve. But how?

1. Currencies as reward instead of items. There is no content dedicated to farm special items. This bares the risk of dominating currencies. We have the problem with gold. Except of fractal skins, everything can be bought with gold or requires no preparations at all.
2. RNG Drops. You can farm everywhere and nowhere because the RNG assures that you always have the same small chance of getting what you want.
3. Diminishing Returns. This actively prevents anyone from farming anything effectively.

Casual Friendly! What it did to the game:

1. Easy content. Anything can be completed with every profession or gear. It may take longer but it’s not impossible. This leads to the fact that there is no challenge in the game and many people get bored quickly. It also limits build diversity.
   Since there is no defensive required, everyone is compelled to maximise their DPS and there can be only one build for each class offering the most damage.
2. Simple AI. Stacking in corners. Nuff said. If I’m recalling correctly, mobs used to walk out of AoEs as example. But this got scrapped before the game shipped.

Balanced Economy! This is how it backfires:

1. Limiting item/currency creation. This ensures that the economy doesn’t get flooded with gold. But because of this, events grant almost no reward and dungeons also grant low reward. Entire PvE maps become redundant because there is nothing to do that grants acceptable reward.
2. Everything can be traded. This also leads to the dominating role of gold. Everything can be bought with gold.
3. Gems can be converted to gold. This, in combination with the dominating role of gold as currency and in combination with the low reward from in-game activities, leads to the fact that it would be more rewarding goldwise, to work in RL to buy gems, rather than to farm in-game to get what one wants.

ArenaNet as company
There are also issues related with the way ANet works as a company:

1. Small Staff. We can see this being an issue on the basis of patchcyles and the age of the content. New content gets only developed in small bits, no huge updates since release, bugs remain unfixed for several months.
2. Balance. This would also apply to the small staff, but it deserves a separate bullet point. The amount of skills got reduced drastically compared to GW1, yet the balance is still a mess. Countless traits and utilities remain completely unused, there are only one or two “competitive” builds for each class and broken builds like HamBow Warrior, Decap Engie or PU Mesmer remain untouched for far too long.
3. Wrong Ambitions. ANet tries to go it’s own way, tries to push PvP into ESports, tries to satisfy the PvE community with temporary content aka. Living Story, rather than working on popular modes like GvG or delivering permanent content for PvE. Most people would even pay for more PvE content. Not to say ANet shouldn’t be allowed to aim for those goals, but they should address the issues the game has, like old, stale content by delivering new content, rather than to stave off the community with half-baked temporary content.
4. Missing Professionalism. I don’t want to upset anybody, I just suggest to read following thread: Biconics can’t carry GW Franchise.
5. Unloved aspects of the game. See Dungeons. They almost never got (and probably will get) any love.

These are the reasons I think this game suffers. If you want to correct me or add something, feel free to do so.
One can see easily that fixing those flaws requires heavy investments, so I’m not very optimistic to see any substancial changes.
I don’t like some map design decisions either, but I think that is personal preference.

Repost from the “Communicating with you” thread:

What I don’t like about the NPE:

Personal Story
One thing I always hated about the Living Story was that it feels like timewarping every two weeks. The Personal Story on the other hand was able to win me over because I could decide when I want to drive my story forward. Now that is gone, now the story comes streamlined and packaged in small bits every time I level 10 levels.
The biggest gripe I have with the new system was that the old system was almost perfectly fine and could’ve been made perfect with just small changes. There is no need to “protect” the player from the story.
And if the rumors are correct, then they’ve cutted out part of the story and rearanged other parts, so they don’t even make sense anymore…

Weapon skills
Same as the Personal Story, I think that the old system was perfectly fine. You unlocked the skills by using the weapon, not by leveling your character.
The old system made more sense, was intuitive and gave us the possibility to use more skills quicker.

Level-up bounty
I really dislike the way they are going with this. They’re locking things we had previously to give them us back later as “reward”. They cut the maps in order to do so and the loot they give for leveling up gives the player a false pretence of how the game is meant to be played. They think that the game centers around getting your character as fast as possible to level 80, when in fact the game should encourage you to explore. Again the old system did this just fine.

Simplified maps
Some key parts about every map gets locked away until you reach a certain level. Skill point challenges, vistas, gathering nodes and goods the heart vendors have to offer.
This again gives the player a false pretence about how the game is meant to be played.

Learning curve
All this changes where introduced to flatten out the learning curve. Someone obviously thinks that a new player is most likely overwhelmed by the game if he first starts. There would be a sight better way to introduce new players to the game:
Tooltips. Lots of them. As example, the downstate shouldn’t be locked until level 5 but should be explained before the player can be downed the first time. There should be a tooltip what the downstate is and what the 4 skills do. The evade mechanic should be explained with tooltips, the map completion should be explained with tooltips, the gathering should be explained with tooltips, everything should be explained with tooltips. And the best part about tooltips: They would be optional.

The reason for all these changes?
In my opinion, ANet aims for getting this game eC or E rated to attract new players.
This would also explain why new Sylvari aren’t naked anymore when they leave the Dream. Young children could obviously get the wrong message…

leman.7682:

Everywhere. Literally all you’re doing is wrong.

I would not go that far. In fact, I’m disagreeing with you.
The problem isn’t that “everything is wrong”. That description does neither please the complainers, nor the devs.
The real problem is that the flaws are multi-dimensional and sometimes so big, that they affect nearly every part of the game. Many of these flaws are so huge that they probably can’t be removed until ANet is willing to rework huge portions of the game to please players who have played this game a long time now, the non-casual gamers.
And I honetly don’t think this will ever happen.

Some initial information:

I’ve played this game now since release and dumbed more than 4k hours in this game. Thus, I wouldn’t describe me as casual player. All “flaws” I am going to list and analyze will only become obvious after multiple, multiple hours in-game time. If you’re new to GuildWars 2 or if you don’t want to stay “forever”, you can happily ignore my concerns, since you wont be limited by the “flaws” I’ll list.

But let’s look for the flaws:

GW2 Manifesto
No Grinding! That was one of the promises GW2 tries to achieve. But how?

1. Currencies as reward instead of items. There is no content dedicated to farm special items. This bares the risk of dominating currencies. We have the problem with gold. Except of fractal skins, everything can be bought with gold or requires no preparations at all.
2. RNG Drops. You can farm everywhere and nowhere because the RNG assures that you always have the same small chance of getting what you want.
3. Diminishing Returns. This actively prevents anyone from farming anything effectively.

Casual Friendly! What it did to the game:

1. Easy content. Anything can be completed with every profession or gear. It may take longer but it’s not impossible. This leads to the fact that there is no challenge in the game and many people get bored quickly. It also limits build diversity.
   Since there is no defensive required, everyone is compelled to maximise their DPS and there can be only one build for each class offering the most damage.
2. Simple AI. Stacking in corners. Nuff said. If I’m recalling correctly, mobs used to walk out of AoEs as example. But this got scrapped before the game shipped.

Balanced Economy! This is how it backfires:

1. Limiting item/currency creation. This ensures that the economy doesn’t get flooded with gold. But because of this, events grant almost no reward and dungeons also grant low reward. Entire PvE maps become redundant because there is nothing to do that grants acceptable reward.
2. Everything can be traded. This also leads to the dominating role of gold. Everything can be bought with gold.
3. Gems can be converted to gold. This, in combination with the dominating role of gold as currency and in combination with the low reward from in-game activities, leads to the fact that it would be more rewarding goldwise, to work in RL to buy gems, rather than to farm in-game to get what one wants.

ArenaNet as company
There are also issues related with the way ANet works as a company:

1. Small Staff. We can see this being an issue on the basis of patchcyles and the age of the content. New content gets only developed in small bits, no huge updates since release, bugs reamin unfixed for several months.
2. Balance. This would also apply to the small staff, but it deserves a separate bullet point. The amount of skills got reduced drastically compared to GW1, yet the balance is still a mess. Countless traits and utilities remain completely unused, there are only one or two “competitive” builds for each class and broken builds like HamBow Warrior, Decap Engie or PU Mesmer remain untouched for far too long.
3. Wrong Ambitions. ANet tries to go it’s own way, tries to push PvP into ESports, tries to satisfy the PvE community with temporary content aka. Living Story, rather than working on popular modes like GvG or delivering permanent content for PvE. Most people would even pay for more PvE content. Not to say ANet shouldn’t be allowed to aim for those goals, but they should address the issues the game has, like old, stale content by delivering new content, rather than to stave off the community with half-baked permanent content.
4. Missing Professionalism. I don’t want to upset anybody, I just suggest to read following thread: Biconics can’t carry GW Franchise.
5. Unloved aspects of the game. See Dungeons. They almost never got (and probably will get) any love.

These are the reasons I think this game suffers. If you want to correct me or add something, feel free to do so.
One can see easily that fixing those flaws requires heavy investments, so I’m not very optimistic to see any substancial changes.

They didn’t do this intentionally, but this looks to me like:

Players: “We want the game to be fixed and balanced!”
ArenaNet: “… Who wants cookies?”

This thread serves no special purpose, I just want to demonstrate how odd the most weapons of the ranger are.

So, let’s begin:

• Greatsword 1: The dodge on the third AA. The devs said they’re looking into this, we’ve seen no changes.
• Greatsword 4: Roots when triggered. This got mentioned dozen times now, we even got a response from the devs that they want to work on this, still no change.
• Longbow 1: The range penalty is a solid idea to compliment the ranged combat, yet it’s just hindering the weapon. Combined with the huge trait-requirement, this weapons is useless under competitive aspects.
• Longbow 2: Harldy serves any purpose. Got mentioned dozen times also.
• Longbow 3: Too unreliable. I liked the old one better despite the fact that we now have atleast some sort of defense.
• Longbow 4: Not directly a problem with the skill but the knock back gets bugged at uneven terrain almost every time.
• Longbow 5: Roots.
• Axe 4: Unreliable if the enemy moves just one bit.
• Axe 5: Roots.
• Sword: Just a mess. They overloaded this weapon with movement skills. The sword has 6 skills and 5 are moving the character. Not to mention the trouble the AA is creating.
• The general lack of distinct weapondesign. Half the weapons are hybrid weapons, which can be nice in PvP but is useless for PvE.

Unrelated to Weapons:

• The pet. Is just the pet. Unresponsive and stupid as ever.

I want 218 gems! Not 400! And I want to see the gem:gold history!

Smooth Penguin.5294:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Maybe, just maybe, I’m on the forums to improve the game, so I can enjoy the game for the next year. I’m not on the forums to be told that I have to leave the game to make a change.

And since I have a background in business, I’m here on the forums to educate people that the more profitable and successful NCSoft/Anet is, the more us players will benefit in the long run. If I have to spend thousands of $ over the life of the game to support a company that I like, I have no issues.

If they ask for money to develop new content, I’ll give them money. If they want me to pay for RNG, screw them, I won’t do that.

One could argue that they need the time to sort out bugs and “bugs” with the feature pack.

I want first person camera. I don’t care if it’s broken or not or if I don’t “get a feeling for my character”, I only want to use it in PvE anyways. You could also add a way to see parts of your body, even if you’re in first person mode, just like the most FPS games have (speaking of legs, chest, arms, weapons and such).
On a side note: In the glorious “Real Life”, I’m bound to use first person camera and I think I have a good feeling for my “character”.
The first person mode doesn’t has to be perfect. I just want to use it to explore the world on a new level.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I am up to date with the conversation. We are discussing your thoughts internally and continuing to work on the story steps. Once I have some more new I will update the thread.

Meanwhile I just want to communicate with certainty that NPE was not implemented in order to increase monetization from the BLT. It was designed for brand new players to the game. And it is for that reason that we are working with you to understand how to better refine the system.

Chris

Chris
I know you’ve probably read this already or are already aware about it, but please think about this.
Why has each new character to overcome the leveling process, when you only want to educate new players?
New players might need help with the game mechanics once, but not every time they create a new alt.

I know you want to make leveling more rewarding, but instead you’ve made it feel more like something that has to be done as quickly as possible to become somewhat potent. Leveling feels like work that has to be done before we get to the fun stuff.
Not only that, but you’re even empowering this mindset. It’s like:
“Oh you don’t like leveling? Let’s make leveling quicker, so you don’t have to deal with it that long.”
That’s an easy way to fix the unrewarding and boring leveling experience, but it’s definitely not the best one.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

phys.7689:

I dont dislike TP baroning because they are rich, i dislike it because the game reward systems are too based around the economic style of the Items team, and not enough about game design.

the problem is the things the game are the best at, dynamic events, open world content, instances, etc, are not properly rewarded, or have weak incentives (not just talking about gold here) And while the pittance of copper from events isnt much, its really sad to see events get even less incentive for completion.

Its sad to see that common players who primarily kill stuff will have less available money, and also make less money from sales, (because the bulk of day to day materials are collected by all players) Dudes in the Tp forum even have graphs and equations showing how prices for day to day farmable goods will drop with peoples wealth.
So who wins? The people who dont earn based on drops. The gap between regular play wealth and tp mastery wealth grows, and that benefits no one but TP players. Playing the game feels less rewarding, and i have to run merchant based activities more when i want to make money, which i find boring.

Hopefully the last blogs have something built in that will actually foster some type of progression or reward systems that work to incentivize people to do more interesting activities, but im not too hopeful.

I don’t like TP flipping at all. Those guys do nothing but buying and selling stuff and yet get the most gold out of it, while people who play the game how it’s meant to be played earn less and less gold. Ofcourse, you could argue that making profit out of the TP requires some sort of skill. But I think those guys ruining enough in real life, they don’t have to ruin my game-experience too.

I happily repeat myself regarding that matter.

Vayne.8563:

Stars.2179:

The old system works FINE. Revert ALL the changes except for the level up reward.

Old system doesn’t work fine though. The old system works fine for you. Colin was quite definitely sure that it wasn’t good enough after having tested it. Which means that their testing is greater than any one person’s opinion. Changes had to be made.

All that’s really on the table here is altering the changes, because it won’t be reverted.

So wow, much… wow.
One would expect that they’ve tested their game enough before release and they came to the conclusion that it worked. And apparently it did, that’s why you, I and everyone else are still here. The NPE got, as far as I understood that, developed solely based on opinions from people who didn’t continue playing but participated in a survey why they didn’t continue playing. Those people however, who stopped playing and participated in the survey, are a very small minority of people who tried this game.

You, the devs, have to fix the former town clothes. The new system is totally odd. Some pieces are armorskins now, some are tonics and some are sets, which you can’t mix.
This is broken, no workaround.

Cuddy.6247:

Cliffhangers work. Never getting around to tying up cliffhangers, however, doesn’t. How many cliffhangers do we have now that haven’t been resolved? Way too many.

I’m soo thrilled to see what’s in the cave we’ve found in the last episode… not.
You’re right too, there are many loose ends but this episodic storytelling kills it for me. Cliffhanger or not, being stuck with the same content for two weeks or more, just to move a step forward in the story to then wait again is killing any tension for me.
That’s why I like the Personal Story more: You can choose when you want to progress (If you’re lvl 80 atleast. Yay for the NPE changes!).

If I would replay the whole season 2, I would need one day maximal.
And the story would feel good and epic but it doesn’t because I needed more than half a year to get as far as I would get in one day if the story would’ve been released at once.

CuRtoKy.8576:

LS Season 2 didn’t even start. And it has been stated that LS Season 2 will have more permanent content. On top of that fact that it has been hinted that there will be new maps since that is where the direction of the storying is heading.

“We will add a merchant and he will stay forevaah!” Something like that?
You haven’t understood what the major part wants. They want new permanent content. They want lots of new, fun or challenging (or both) content. Not some changes in a zone. Not some reheated stuff. No tower of nightmares which is spoiling Kessex Hills. But if things will go the way you’ve forseen, the next city ANet destroyes will be destroyed forever…

CuRtoKy.8576:

As for professions. More =/= better. I think we have enough professions as is and that ArenaNet has its hands full trying to balance and perfect these professions. Adding more is just a burden. People will complain that another profession isn’t used much or viable in dungeons, WvW, or sPvP.

I would agree with you if ANet wouldn’t prove you wrong. They have less skills than GW1 had, yet the balancing isn’t even worth for a game in beta status.

CuRtoKy.8576:

Yoh.8469:

What’s worse I for me is what has been done with professions, which is next to nothing. They occasional get tweaks and balance changes, which is expected, but half the time they when they fix something they break something else or don’t actually fix it.
Many bugs and dead skills/traits have been so for at least 6-12 months, sometimes longer. This might not have been as much of an issue if Anet continuously added content to the professions, since they did go out of their way to future proof it.

Things aren’t going to work perfectly in all game modes. Take the recent Mesmer changes. It was bad for PvE but for WvW or sPvP not really since those changes opened up options there.

Balance is a mess in GW2. A bloody mess. They couldn’t even balance the few skills they had pre April 15th and lots of the new traits are also worthless. They wouldn’t even have to split PvP and PvE if the AI would be more potent. But they’re all like punchbags. And that hasn’t changed one bit. Even Liadri is just a punchbag who’s able to oneshot you. Oneshot-mechanics are the compensation for missing AI.

Vayne.8563:

Actually they may very well care what players think. But some players don’t think the changes are bad and I’m one of them. I didn’t like the initial trait changes, and think they need work. But this recent change is better for me as an altoholic.

OP, you might not understand why, but I wouldn’t want to go back to how it was. I prefer this current method (though the trait system still needs serious adjustment).

You mean spamming 1 all through the inital instance is good? You think that locking mechanics like the downstate until level 5 is good? Do you think locking the unique class mechanics is good? Hell, the ranger still has his pet since level 1, he just can’t control it. That’s utter nonsense. I really don’t see, not in the slightest, how the “A Fresh Start” changes should help anyone.

Fun fact: People feel bored and unsatisfied and are looking for reasons why they’re bored.
They come to the conclusion that there is not enough to do out there in Tyria. “Proving them wrong” wont change their feeling of being bored.

RNG is a way to keep people playing, the longer one needs to get what he wants, the longer he plays. That’s the thinking process behind RNG and it holds true to a certain extend. But as the OP has said, it’s not fun. Therefore I suggest to remove the RNG for high-value objects, like black lion chests, and replace them with a currency. The downside to this is if too many correncies get implemented, the player loses track of all those currencies. But the upside is that if a player needs a certain amount of tries to get one item on average with RNG, the player now only needs a specific amount of tries to get the item.

RNG is bad.
Here is why:

• The time you need to get the item you want is RNG based. This is less appealing than a clear goal you can work towards to.
• RNG limits diversity. Regions in GW2 can’t stand out from one another because you can basically get everything from everywhere. This is one of the reasons why the open PvE feels so utterly redundant.
• RNG is aggravating. If you get Dusk with the first try but spend 1000g only to get the harpoon precursor, you will always remember the 1000g before the Dusk drop.
• RNG creates unwanted loot. This fuels the traiding post. Because everything is on the traiding post, people start to grind gold instead of going for the RNG chance themselves and the game turns into a goldgrind (<— current state).
• RNG gets abused currently. Any bag in the game is RNG². First you have to get the bag, then you have to get what you want. Black Lion Chests are a gamble.
• RNG is a cheap but messy way to bind players to the game. Please prove us this game is worth supporting by limiting RNG.

rapthorne.7345:

There is a vast amount of end game content, but there’s no introduction to it.

After hitting 80 and completing your PS, there’s no introduction to fractals, dry top, the living story, WvW, PvP, ascended gear, legendaries, etc etc etc etc. I could go on and on

Could you? Because I can do that too.
Open world maps, including Dry Top: Explore them once and you’re done with the map. There is no reason to come back. In Dry Top atleast you have the local currency but after you got everything you want, this map is hardly more interesting than any other map. Fractals and Dungeons? Do them once and you’re done with them story-wise. The only reason to come back is to grind gold to get fluff.
Ascended is one of the fluff you grind for. Legendaries are also fluff you grind for.
WvW and PvP are stale. They’re fun but not interesting enough to keep people engaged for 2 years.

All the content GW2 offers can be divided into 3 parts:
1) The uninteresting part: Open world PvE doesn’t offer anything endgame related stuff.
2) Things you grind: Dungeons, Fractals, Worldboss chains
3) Things you grind for: Legendaries, Ascended stuff, Achievements… Skins

And we could add a fourth category: PvP
PvP and WvW are nice for a while, you can kill people with the fluff you’ve grinded for. That’s nice obviously, but since neihter WvW nor PvP recieved any major updates since release, the content gets old. It’s nice for a PvE player to come to this gamemodes for a while if he gets bored from all the PvE content, but it’s not enough to keep the player interested for long.

Vol.7601:

Not sure why people are kittened at Anet. Key farming was here a lot longer than it was supposed to be. Anet was shooting themselves in the foot by having it in game for so long.

It’s about time we have weapon prices that are now in line with the risk of gambling on buying keys. It was a market inefficiency that had to be corrected.

Yeah, if you want to kill your game most effectively, you should lock all your new weapon skins and armor skins behind paywalls, that’s the perfect way to go.

This is the most brainfarting change I’ve seen in a long time (since the NPE changes)!
I just want to get 100 gems, not 400! Why the friggin hell does ANet feel the need to destroy working systems?

I’m stuck with 482 gems. I wanted to buy 218 more to get the outfit but I can’t because of this stupid change.

Fun fact: Rapid Fire doesn’t deal more damage. It’s just faster. Which gives you the opportunity to dodge almost the whole attack.

The shoulders can’t be hidden.
I know that the shoulders from other outfits can also not be hidden, but since this armor has defined shoulderpads, it would be cool if they could be hidden.

phys.7689:

I dont dislike TP baroning because they are rich, i dislike it because the game reward systems are too based around the economic style of the Items team, and not enough about game design.

the problem is the things the game are the best at, dynamic events, open world content, instances, etc, are not properly rewarded, or have weak incentives (not just talking about gold here) And while the pittance of copper from events isnt much, its really sad to see events get even less incentive for completion.

Its sad to see that common players who primarily kill stuff will have less available money, and also make less money from sales, (because the bulk of day to day materials are collected by all players) Dudes in the Tp forum even have graphs and equations showing how prices for day to day farmable goods will drop with peoples wealth.
So who wins? The people who dont earn based on drops. The gap between regular play wealth and tp mastery wealth grows, and that benefits no one but TP players. Playing the game feels less rewarding, and i have to run merchant based activities more when i want to make money, which i find boring.

Hopefully the last blogs have something built in that will actually foster some type of progression or reward systems that work to incentivize people to do more interesting activities, but im not too hopeful.

I don’t like TP flipping at all. Those guys do nothing but buying and selling stuff and yet get the most gold out of it, while people who play the game how it’s meant to be played earn less and less gold. Ofcourse, you could argue that making profit out of the TP requires some sort of skill. But I think those guys ruining enough in real life, they don’t have to ruin my game-experience too.

maha.7902:

The person meleeing and dying is always better since at least they’re trying to learn the fights.

This is getting silly now. As if someone who’s ranging doesn’t (have to) learn the boss mechanics. It is quite the opposite. I’ve seen many players fail at bosses because they’ve always meleed (through stacking) it. Because of the screenclutter and the simplification stacking offers they’ve never truly learned the boss mechanics.

anzenketh.3759:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

anzenketh.3759:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

anzenketh.3759:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

As for the reward:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-make-the-world-more-interesting/first
This deals with the reward in normal PvE maps.

Dungeons should get a hardmode, where the story got cut out and the bosses get new and better mechanics which can react to skills or tactics being used. The reward for completing those dungeons should be more tokens, new skins and more fluff.
Furthermore, raids should be implemented. This is a topic on its own and I haven’t made up my mind how this could be implemented properly. But this is the direction I would go with this game.

There are problems with hardmode and dungeons specifically involving splitting the playerbase.

How would you encourage players to participate in non-hardmode dungeons so they are more accessible for newer players. If you can find a good way to not split the playerbase to exclude newer players I would love to hear your suggestion in “the dungeon subforum” :https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons~

The reason for the exclusion of hardmode is deliberate. In the later years normal mode parties for Guild Wars 1 was hard to come by. It was hard to find a party (even when starting your own) to play in normal mode.

Perhaps something that they can add is a hard-mode to a re-playable version of the personal story with the exclusion of the dungeons tied to the personal story. This will not necessarily split the playerbase as they are repeating content that is already there. In addition to that the content was designed to be done solo so you are not removing members from a party that a newer or less skilled player would otherwise encounter. I think this is what they were trying to do with the Living World Achievements.

The normal mode should be easier with less reward. It should be that easy, that normal players have no problem completing it.

I think you are over-estimating the population of “Normal players” in dungeons. You will still split the playerbase to the point where eventually you will have no normal players to play with newer players. Also rewarding hard mode more would make it so that “Normal Players” that would normally help newer players would not want to do so as it is less rewarding.

Hardmode dungeons should be the endgame, the most challenging place. I don’t expect many casuals to do those dungeons, but If they do, they should’ve already done all the other content. The hardmode should be like fractal50 challenge-wise.

I just don’t see a way hardmode for dungeons can be implemented that would not split the player-base. If you have a idea on this matter I am more then willing to listen. Until that problem is resolved I do not think that hardmode is a good idea and agree with ArenaNet’s current stance on this matter.

We currently have fractals for endgame and the most challenging place. I have also seen effects to where it has split the playerbase. What is wrong with them? Why do you want to add dungeons to the mix.

I want to split the playerbase because I think it carries less flaws than content that has to be accessible for all players.
How do you want to create more challenging and rewarding content and enable casuals to also be able to complete this content? It’s not possible.
I don’t suggest to lock players out of content. Each “hardcore” content should have a “casual” counterpart, so that casuals can experience the content easier but with less reward as downside.
The reward for hardcore runs however should be unique. The reward could be like Pristine Fractal Relics, while the reward for casual runs should be like Fractal Relics.

As you hopefully know, there is a bug when a new page in thread get created. To avoid this bug, I wrote a useless message in a thread, so that the posts get shown as normal. Unfortunately, this post got infracted. I would like to know if someone can “undo” this infraction since it’s, let’s be honest, pretty silly to infract users for circumventing this bug.

Zaklex.6308:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Andred.1087:

I wouldn’t put too much weight on these so-called “cliffhangers.” The writing team probably isn’t sitting around saying “Ooh, let’s drop a cliffhanger in here! They’ll go crazy over this!” More like, “Let’s not show it until next episode, because it’s a nice stopping point.”

Does this change the fact that the cliffhangers, used intentionally or not, are unrealistic in a persistant world like GW2?

Here’s the reason you are having a problem, you need to look at this from another angle. The Living Story is separate from the Living World, take them as two completely individual items and you should have less of an issue with the episodic content for the story, which isn’t necessarily taking place in the world at the same time.

I think it’s exactly the other way around. We have to keep in mind what the Living Story is: A story and no gameplay update. ArenaNet is pushing the Living Story while the players are demanding new maps, new weapons, new races, new classes, new skills, new skins and new challenges. The Living World is ArenaNet’s attempt to please those demands with the Living Story.
I never could understand why people are expecting huge gameplay updates from the Living Story because it’s just a story and not meant to deliver huge gameplay aspects.
I think this misconception comes from ANet’s statement that the “Living Story will be like an expansion.”. A statement which I haven’t heard them using anymore.

The Living World is tied around the Living Story, when the Living Story has flaws, the Living World wont change them. They’re not seperate. The Living World gets updated when the Living Story needs the world to be updated. Look at the giant vines spreading through the Silverwastes. Now it looks cool, now it feels epic. But I wonder what will happen when we’ve defeated Mordremoth. Will the map be stuck with those monsters like Orr is stuck with the undead?

There is no problem directly associated with ToT bag farming but it’s interesting to see how the economy works. People are saying that they make more gold than ever but you have to keep in mind that other people are paying for this. I think this clearly shows how this whole economy fails because gold is way too dominant.
It leaves me wondering how the people who are now buying ToT bags like crazy got their gold from in the first place.

Suggestion:
Simply add Charackter- and Obstacle-collision.

Impact:
If you Fiery Rush against a wall, your character would stop, because he collides with the wall. This would solve all problems with stacking and zerging simply because it wouldn’t be possible anymore.

Precautions:
Ofcourse, some things have to be tweaked, you oughtn’t be able to block paths for other players, as example. Also the bank in each city has to be tweaked, so all players can get to their own safe and events, which meant to be completed by zergs, have to be readjusted.

Problems that would be solved:

Stacking in dungeons
People complained about the no-skill tactic of stacking in dungeons. That wouldn’t be possible anymore.

Zerging in PvE
People complained about championfarming and zerging as new Metaevent-meta.
This change would solve the problem.

Zerging in WvW
Some people have complained about not being able to hold a fort against an enemy zerg of 100+ men. Well, those zergs would be really hard to coordinate with this change.

Vol.7601:

Because it’s perfect business sense.

A game is not a business. Players can’t be seen as money source. Ofcourse they have to make money. But if they see the player only as a way to make money, the game isn’t any better as a F2P title from EA.

Andred.1087:

I wouldn’t put too much weight on these so-called “cliffhangers.” The writing team probably isn’t sitting around saying “Ooh, let’s drop a cliffhanger in here! They’ll go crazy over this!” More like, “Let’s not show it until next episode, because it’s a nice stopping point.”

Does this change the fact that the cliffhangers, used intentionally or not, are unrealistic in a persistant world like GW2?

They want my money for it, I guarantee it.

John Smith.4610:

Conncept.7638:

but there is no way you have the numbers to claim that the players think so, from a psychological perspective.

You’re adorable.

Economists have ways to measure how much your parents love you and the scariest part of all… it works.

His conclusions are wrong but his reasons are not. Atleast from a casual customer perspective. You’re right if you say that the economy isn’t flawed. But that doesn’t mean that it’s optimal. Let’s take the precursors as example. The economy is balanced, precursors are in demand, thus they’re expensive. The problem now is that there is a minority of players that are extremely wealthy. The supply of precursors on the TP is smaller than the demand for it from such wealthy players. That’s the reason why they are so astronomical expensive. There are enough players that can afford a precursor for that price, yet there are myriad more players that can’t afford that.

So as conclusion, yes, the economy is balanced. But it’s not fair, it leaves the possibility for a small amount of players to dictate, or atleast influence, the prices for the majority of players and the possibility to gain wealth with only the economy itself as limit.

It’s queen Jennah obviously.

Vayne likes it. That would be one…

ANet: Guilty as charged.

I second all of it. Regarding the longbow, all traits affecting the longbow, like “Eagle Eye”, should also affect the shortbow. Even if we break the trait down to its naming, it does make no sense that you have an eagle eye while wielding a longbow but not when you’re wielding a shortbow. Furthermore, for the sake of effectiveness, I’m still a fan of an increased chance for projectile finishers tied to the traits, not as separate trait, but as addition to already exsisting ones.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

Here are a few tidbits from the team:

• A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.
• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.
• You may be surprised to know this (I know I was) but very few people bought gems at smaller denominations than the first one offered in the new system. That’s not to say they never did, nor that there wouldn’t be the desire to do so. But overall, the current options were selected based on player purchases in the past.
• The team is going to listen to your feedback and, if and when it’s practical and desirable, they can look towards adjusting the new system to better meet your needs.

So please keep your thoughts coming on the new system. Feel free to make suggestions but please, keeping them constructive would be very much appreciated.

I bet you’ve installed at least once a program on your computer. There are always two options: standart and costumized. So why isn’t that possible for GW2? An “easy to understand” option for “confused” players and the old option for the regular player.

Well, he only says that the SAB wont appear during the living world. And if I recall correctly, the living world is taking a break now…

I’ve waited for this.
Finally it’s here…

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Cross.6437:

Leablo.2651:

The many objections that players have against this feature pack and Anet’s response to those issues in the weeks to come will show us how well they are listening. I’ll give Mike’s sincerity the benefit of the doubt, but ultimately as a developer Anet can only speak with its patch notes and has to deliver on its promises there. The players have certainly spoken, now let’s see that listening happen.

Yeah, this is the first big patch since everything really hit the fan a few weeks back. How they respond now is going to say a whole lot about the kind of sensitivity they have the to community’s expectations.

I wouldn’t get hopes up they’ll reverse direction on the entirety of the Feature Pack. They put enough time and effort into this to offer it up proudly and without chagrin, so I expect they have an attachment to doing these changes.

If I were you, I’d expect them saying often “we are listening to all feedback” without any particular notices . . . the most I could see them doing is perhaps retooling the “New Player Experience” bits just before Thanksgiving.

Mostly because Halloween and Wintersday both have large events for them which aren’t Living Story related and are probably lighter on effort than LS.

And that all wouldn’t have happened if ANet would simply tell us early enough what they want to do. Seriously, I see the reasons why people think that the “A Fresh Start” thing will help new players, but it makes no friggen sense for me. 5 of 6 new characters are played by “veteran players” and those got kicked in the nuts.
I also don’t like the attempts to tie the gem store further into the GW2 world.