Guild Wars 2

1. Role-playing support
2. Time-gated content
3. Armour clipping

Yes, its an MMORPG.

The problem with the “RPG” element of games these days is that developers interpret it as “Role-play according to a static, pre-defined story that we wrote for you”.

There is no support for role-playing according to its normal definition, and there won’t be. It doesn’t put money in Anet’s pocket.

Crystin Cox is the responsible individual at ArenaNet, OP. She’s their monetisation manager or something like that. It’s basically her job to selectively slice up new features and make them only accessible to paying customers.

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Meleagar/112012/24237_NCSoft-Sold-Arenanet-and-GW2-Out-For-Nexon-Investment

You’re right in your complaints OP.

Unfortunately a vast majority of the personal story was filler content. The converging paths needed to blend together, seamlessly or not. What you’re seeing with the magically-disappearing-warband thing is one of the largest seams in the converging plots.

As with all things, don’t expect Arenanet to patch it.

As with all things Charr, expect Arenanet to say “we won’t fix it because nobody plays [the poorly implemented race] in the first place”

5. Anet added the new tequatl and didn’t include any back-story to save on development costs and leave you guessing under the guise of “mysteriously unexplained lore”

Quick Mouse.7635:

It really only matters to people who like to role play

As someone who role-plays a lot, I can assure you the personality mechanic means nothing to the vast majority of role-players.

As it is, arenanet have provided minimal role-playing support.

That doesn’t explain it at all. Why should I suddenly lose a load of money because an item had MF stats? Where is the logic in that?

So I had about thirty exos sitting in my inventory of one of my lesser-used characters. About 1/4 had MF stats on them.

So when I go and try to sell them all today, they’re account-bound and I cannot sell them to the trading post?

Can ArenaNet please explain this?

Time-gating isn’t done out of ignorance.

It’s done to get as many people as possible playing the game as frequently as they can, such that Arenanet can claim “We have X people logging in every day!”, and so that they can get as many view hits and purchases on the gem store as possible.

It’s the same reason the Living Story is time-gated. Arenanet have never managed to explain why, because they don’t want you to be aware of why they’re making it time-gated.

Dailies and Monthlies are tolerable, they don’t unlock exclusive content or offer some special advantage, but this latest change of making content borderline-exclusive to frequent players is just getting stupid.

To throw in my 10 cents:

The remaining Arenanet staff who continue to work on Guild Wars 2 are tasked with wringing as much profit from the game for the NCSoft overlords. To do that they need two things:

1) Add gem store content.
2) Maintain and improve gem store view counts and purchases.

To get gem store view counts, you need to remind players of new gem store content, as well as get them to log in and view the gem store. This is where the Living Story comes in, and serves the entirety of its purpose – getting players to log in! Personally, I don’t know what the average activity of a player is, but it can probably be broken down into people who log in on patch day and people who log in every day. Living Story content caters to both groups, and daily gated content (world bosses, daily dungeons, daily achievements) caters to the more frequent gamers. Achievements themselves enhance the addictive aspect of the game (to keep you logging in before the living story event is over!) and players acquire reward items from the living story story achievements. Notice how they’re all account-bound, un-tradeable and are rapidly filling the corners of your inventory? Hey, you better buy more bank space for only 400 gems, matey. Oh look! New items in the Black Lion chest! Better buy BL keys and hope you get a ticket. Hey look, another musical instrument keyed to a different note!

The living story is little more than a mechanic to get players to log in frequently and purchase gem store content. NCSoft don’t care about the lore or telling an interesting story, they’re a business. And we all quite willingly vote with our wallets. Don’t expect an expansion pack until player numbers start dropping off significantly, and even then its unlikely. I don’t doubt there are good developers at Arenanet who want to add meaningful content and lore to the game via the Living Story, but the project managers dictate who works on what, and adding well-explained lore takes money. Money which could be better spent on flashy new content like a new race of enemies that will hold the attention span of the playerbase’s majority for another two weeks.

Undercutting: What is the problem?

Why should people be punished for being smart?

Grinding isn’t fun, and it doesn’t require you to think. On the other hand, trading is somewhat more proportional to one’s knowledge and skill at a complex, multi-faceted task. Diss the traders all you like, but it still takes more skill than whacking mobs or grinding CoF/CoE all day long.

Pretty sure it’s not Rox. Doesn’t have the normal neck a Charr has, and her face is all… human?

I can see some parts where it looks like Rox, but it more looks like a hybrid between Rox and a human.

How can we be expected to support a Charr when ArenaNet developers have quite openly stated they are no longer supporting Charr-compatiable content in future releases?

Rednik.3809:

Invisty.6435:

I can fit practially anywhere.

Hmmm… Blanc Fireclaw?

A name once used, now, no longer.

I can fit practially anywhere.