Showing Posts For Kojast.6304:
Why does the new Rooster Statue decoration use the basic version of the rooster backpack model rather than the colorful upgraded version?
See for picture:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5ok4lr/guild_hall_rooster_statue/
Considering the Scribe recipe to craft the decoration requires the more expensive upgraded version of the backpack, you would think the guild decoration would use the nice upgraded colorful model. Is this a mistake? If not, why choose to use the blander base version while requiring the more expensive recipe?
We experienced major problems today:
1) Guild bounty: A few people did not get their rewards even though they had tagged the bounty and did not do the mission earlier this week.
2) Guild trek: Only those who interacted with the trek locations got credit despite many other guilds saying that all their guild members got rewards.
3) Guild missions then completely broke. We tried to re-run trek so others could get rewards and the mission froze. It is stuck with 0 seconds remaining but not finishing. Clicking Abandon Mission does not do anything. We also can no longer Launch any other mission.
@OP
I’m not saying some of your reasons aren’t valid, but for someone who claims to be loaded and cares about the game, also says in the same breath they haven’t spent a cent in the gem shop to support this game (a basically free to play game of such high quality as gw2) is rather contradictory and really does not earn you the right to complain about neither game, nor gems shop you obviously haven’t supported.
I have spent a lot of money supporting the game. Still do on a more limited basis. I fully support OP and his opinions. While I am not as harsh on the game as he is, I think he has articulated my general feelings very well. Perhaps I am guilty of investing too much in this game—I tend to stick to something I like and defend it to the death—but that isn’t such a bad thing for the devs, is it? I don’t regret my purchases and I treasure the memories from this game, but if I had the chance to do it again, I would hesitate about jumping in, and that’s not something people like to think of something they’ve spent 2000+ hours of their lives in.
It is not so much the flaws as how they were addressed. We were sold on a game premised on dynamic events. The Living Story feels like a complete bait and switch. Rather than letting the world ebb and flow by adding more dynamic events in ever longer and more complex cycles, we get virtually no new permanent events and a story of the week which sits static for weeks at a time. Instead of an evolving world, we have a fractured one where NPCs and the personal story reference a Lion’s Arch that no longer exists. Town clothing was an interesting feature but rather than expand on it they blew it apart. The personality choices and branching personal story had promise in establishing an intimate story for your character but that was thrown aside too. Horizontal progression was promised but all new full armor sets go into the gem store except when they added a new vertical tier of progression.
To me it feels like they never even tried to make the flaws work. They sold us on the premise of them and then ripped them out mere months after release. Forget asking what happened to the GW1 devs, this game doesn’t even feel like it’s being updated by those who released GW2.
Yes, the casuals and bad players will complain but there is more than enough content for people who want things easy.
Let’s flip this statement around and say “elitists have more than enough other games for those who want to show off beating content.” Does that sound ridiculous? If so, then so does the statement about casuals and “bad” players.
I personally like Guild Wars 2’s general level of difficulty. I have Liadri, I have no problem with Tribulation mode and I have access to groups that beat Tequatl and Wurm, so this isn’t me being bitter. Yes, despite sinking lots of hours in the game, I would consider myself casual, so I’m biased, but that doesn’t mean my opinion is less valid than yours.
Now that said, I think a variety of difficulty is good. I think rewards in this game in general should better reflect what the player has directly done and be less reliant on luck, grind and money. But I don’t agree that we need to devote extra developer resources for more content that’s specifically designed to exclude as many people as possible just so those who were “skilled” enough to practice a PvE rotation until they could do it from muscle memory get to show off.
TL;DR: Better rewards recognizing dedication in every niche of the game (RP, exploring, PvP, WvW, hard PvE) is more important than specifically focusing on challenging content.
PS: The hardest part of Liadri was seeing the red circles on the grating and dealing with the lag from the zerg below. The most time consuming part was farming tickets and waiting in line. If that’s what passes for skilled content, then no thank you.
Since I’m posting, I might as well reiterate that the default town clothes should be made into either armor pieces or (preferably) an outfit. It’s bad enough not being able to mix and match pieces anymore, but not being able to dye them because they’re tonics (with a temporary duration for Grenth knows what reason,) is extremely frustrating.
Can all the tonics be converted to outfits? They seem to work the same way now in that they are one set that overrides your armor. Is there a technical limitation why they have to be tonics?
Now that the patch is live, I was wondering: Can you please consider converting the tonics to outfits as well?
The tonics functionally behave the same as outfits. They are one cohesive look that prevent clipping/compatibility issues with other armor pieces, they have one set of dye channels, they work with all the combat animations (you can still use weapon skills while in tonic form) and cosmetically they look just as appropriate for combat as the cook’s outfit or Wintersday outfit. Given that this is the case, is there an objection to just making them outfits? This would give the game a lot more outfit varieties and resolve some of the concerns regarding tonics by freeing up some inventory space and allowing us to dye the pieces once more (albeit as a cohesive set).
If there are technical reasons for preventing this, then I suppose I understand, but making the tonics into outfits would go a long way to making this change much more palatable to me. I was ready to demand a refund for all of them, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the looks for the tonics (much more so than I do the outfits). I’d be sad if I had to request refunds for them simply because I knew that I would not ever use them due to them taking up space in my inventory and not working in combat when, if they were outfits, I would happily take the whole set and probably use them on all my characters.
Guess I have until June to decide if I want to keep the tonics out of sentimental value or send everything to hell and get gems… to buy useless things from their Gem store again (or trade them so other people buys them). Sigh….
At least we can get rid of the outfits and tonics if we don’t like how they work, I guess somehow they listened to us. I HATE the idea, but they deserve we all asked refunds for them. Even if I don’t plan to do it by now…
Just ask for it now. Waiting just lessens the impact for them compared to everyone asking now. If they change the system down the line (again) to make it more in line with what we wanted, do you really think they’ll give up the chance to make those sales again? The stuff you want will be available for sale again if that happens. But they probably won’t fix it, so don’t hold your breath.
You can always convert the refunded gems to gold and fill out the rest of your wardrobe.
After having had a night to sleep on it, here’s my attempt at constructive feedback.
Can the system be modified to be this?:
- Town clothing system and tab as it exists today stays the same
- Outfit implementation as planned in the new patch stays the same
- Headpiece and other convertible armor conversions are added to the wardrobe as planned in the new patch but also retained as town clothing pieces. Toys are converted to inventory items as planned in the new patch.
- Make an announcement that no future updates will be made to the town clothing system. Add a disclaimer to the tab if you like so newcomers get an explanation for why it is there.
In other words, move forward with all the proposed changes (in no way do I want to affect people who are happy with the change) but also maintain backward compatibility for town clothing exactly the way it works now.
Is it technically possible to restore the old system as an unsupported grandfathered feature while still moving forward with the new system?
Again, I understand it’s not a pretty solution, but it seems a solution that would make everyone happy. Those who love the new combat functionality get it, those who love the old town clothing keep it. The only downside I can think of is that there’s a vestigial unsupported feature left in the game, but should design philosophy outweigh real world customer concerns?
(edited by Kojast.6304)
As for Wintersday… that’s harder for me to explain other than maybe they did all that development in one lump package, but that is admittedly a stretch.
The town clothing items mentioned as no longer being in the gem store were removed from the gem store in mid December. The official reason given was “streamlining” the gem store and players then rushed to buy them on the assumption that this was their last chance to get limited time items.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-December-10-2013
As you have said, it’s a bit of a stretch to believe they did not have the outlines of the feature patch known by December. If they did have this change planned by then, the best that can be said of the way they removed those items is that it was deceptive. If they knew they were being removed because their functionality was being radically altered, they should have said so rather than going with the excuse of “streamlining,” putting up countdown timers in the gem store next to each of the items, and specifically stating in the patch notes that “Players who previously purchased these items will still retain the ability to use them” which any reasonable person at the time would have read as a reassurance that no significant changes would be made to the items.
We try not to allow too much ‘hoarder’ design where we just keep stacking more and more options on leaving lots of unsupported things hanging around.
Before I launch into my rant, Curtis, I want to thank you for taking the time to respond as well as any team members you may have had to consult in order to formulate this response.
However, what I am hearing from this is essentially never touch the parts of the game that are not massively popular and central to gameplay. I will keep this in mind next time ArenaNet tries something new, because if it ends up being unpopular, there will be no continued support even if I paid money for it.
I will continue to acknowledge that ArenaNet is one of the better video game developers I have encountered in how much their developers seem to care, how responsive they are to feedback, and how much they learn from their past mistakes. That is my firm opinion, based on their past work in GW1 and how much GW2 has evolved.
However, I will admit that I also feel deeply misled in believing that I could play how I wanted and that ArenaNet would take care of niche customer bases. This is the second time I have been burned by supporting unpopular features in the gem store. The first time was with minis—each time a major upset occurred with gem store minis, the (limited, because minis are not popular) outcry was met with silence. The second time is with town clothing. Both times, I found enjoyment in a niche part of the game and paid real money to ANet to support a feature that I believed they would iterate on and improve. Both times, I have seen no improvement, no resolution to complaints, and in the case of town clothing, a massive step back in functionality.
Frankly, I am tired of spending real money on features in the game only to see things implemented that negatively impact me and then be told that I should take a backseat because I am not in the majority. I am sure no disrespect is intended, but I certainly do not feel respected either. While I understand the developers are under resource constraints, I also expect the leadership of ArenaNet to recognize when they are spending resources to make experiences significantly worse for a subset of their community for no apparent reason.
Why can you not implement outfits and other town clothing armor skins while leaving a vestigial and unsupported town clothing system there? Sure, it would have been weird and ugly to have this extra tab that never sees another update again, but at least it wouldn’t have removed the very things people paid money to use, and I doubt it will interfere with your future plans for outfits.
At the end of the day, GW2 does not feel like a customer friendly game. Items are removed from the gem store rather than the gem store interface being revamped to enable customers to browse an ever-growing inventory. Everything is possibly limited time, BUY IT NOW OR MAYBE NEVER SEE IT AGAIN. The Living Story is temporary, so you have to play now or miss it forever. Permanent content is removed, like Twilight Arbor F/U, rather than fixed to make it more appealing. Systems that do not work are removed for the sake of clean design without regard for customers who paid specifically for that functionality. New features always start as grindfests (soulbound dyes, soulbound WXP, soulbound fractal levels, new currencies for each update even though people have been talking about currency overload for over half a year now) and then made more friendly down the line after players are done sinking time and money into them despite the fact that feedback indicated players wanted the more friendly system from the start. Forgive me, but after spending thousands of dollars on your game (I could have straight out bought 4 legendaries off the Trading Post by now, but since I preferred minis and town clothing and trying to help out smaller guilds by purchasing guild mission unlocks, I guess I have only myself to blame for getting no attention) and buying copies for all my friends to try it, I think I have earned the right, as a customer, to display some cynicism when I am essentially told that all the money I have spent does not matter, the things I bought will be removed at whim and without notice, but hey, if I have enough faith in the developers, it’ll get better.
I will continue playing the game because people I care about still enjoy it. I will probably even spend more money in the store, not least because I do really love the other changes you have made in the feature patch, but I will be exercising a lot more caution in what I buy, and I most certainly will not be buying the new outfits. I have no intention of giving this new experiment a try because I no longer trust that ANet will continue to support the things they start.
(edited by Kojast.6304)
Everyone, I’m just as upset as most in this thread, but can we please keep it civil? As devs have said in the past, they care about the game and they do not make changes to “slap the community in the face.” Can we please not threaten them with any sort of violence and refrain from assuming they are out to spite or ignore the community? Even if you feel this way, it is not productive nor will it help the situation.
As others have said, it is likely this change is going through as there is not enough time to implement and test any alternatives. But if we can get some sort of communication about why the change was made or whether improvements will be made in the future to restore functionality, that would be greatly appreciated.
Pretty much everything that can be said on this topic has been mentioned at some point, but I feel compelled to add my 2 cents as well. Namely:
1) The wardrobe changes are great. The streamlining of the UI and the ability to collect skins is fantastic and does a lot for my enjoyment of the game. The way it was implemented frankly went beyond my expectations in a positive way.
2) The town clothing changes are the only part of this update so far that do not sit well with me.
As it’s clear what you did right regarding the wardrobe, I’m unfortunately going to spend the rest of my post trying to explain why I am concerned about town clothing.
First, I didn’t mind town clothing being available only out of combat. While I don’t quite understand why the distinction was made given that you could fight in a wedding dress in GW1, I nevertheless was ok with it. Maybe I am in the minority, but it was fine. It was something fun. Moreover, it was something I enjoyed enough to spend a significant amount of real world money on back when new town clothing items were one of the few consistent updates on the gem store.
Second, I really liked the option to mix and match. There is no way to say it except that this new system is a step back from where we are now, which is that we can put different items together, dye them, and equip them without losing additional space in our inventory. Now, we have to carry around tonics and toys in our bags, cannot dye the (tonic) outfits, and cannot even pick what other clothing items go along with them? Can you really honestly say that is an improvement? Moreover, do you think this is a good precedent for items that were exclusive to your pay store and that were largely purchased by early adopters of the game to support a highly optional part of the game?
I don’t want to stand in the way of positive change. Clearly there are a lot of people excited about outfits and that will hopefully lead to more sales and more support for the game. However, if the problem was town clothing not mixing with combat armor, I don’t understand why you didn’t just enable town clothing to work in combat. That way, players still have to choose between their town clothing look or their combat look, but at least the customization within both realms remained the same.
As it stands, this change makes me question the integrity of the gem store. If I can’t trust that things I buy with cash will maintain at least a recognizable semblance of the functionality I purchased, then why should I ever spend more money to support the game? I understand the Terms & Conditions indicate that all content is subject to change, and we accept those terms every time we play. But you took something that was functional and removed everything I liked about it (customization and unique looks that could not otherwise be obtained with combat armor) in order to make it do something that I never needed it to do (function in combat). In any other part of the game, that’d be disappointing but acceptable. But this was part of the cash shop. It would have been nice if the community had been solicited for their opinion before such a major alteration.
I realized I often only come to the forum to point out the stuff in the game that I dislike, so I thought I should point out parts of The Nightmare is Over that I thought were really cool above and beyond what I normally expect from the game.
So thanks for a really impressive cinematic after the story instance. It looked great and felt epic. I also appreciate how elements of the Nightmare Within got preserved beyond the 4 week time frame of the release such as the Tri-key chest and Dee’s shop. I like the direction the Living Story is taking in its balance between temporary story content and permanent rewards. And of course, it’s always nice to get more banter from Marjory and Kasmeer.
I was about to come here and make this exact same topic.
First, streamlining means making the shop easier to use. I was so excited when I first saw that term because I thought they were revamping the interface to add common sense quality of life improvements that would make shopping much more pleasant, like separating the items into categories and allowing filters by armor type or town clothing. Instead, I see that they are doing what they always seem to be doing—taking the option to access content away from players.
Second, what is the point of reducing the offerings? In real life, you don’t want to keep everything available in a store because there is a cost to inventory that sits there and doesn’t sell. However, this is a video game. The assets are still there and the server still has to process them, so the cost is there regardless of whether you maintain the offerings indefinitely. Even if they’re not selling well, each additional sale is free money at this point since the data for the product is still going to be stored on the server regardless of whether it is available for purchase or not. Real life stores try to get as much selection as possible when it costs them little because they know customers like choice. See Amazon for a real world example.
If this game is about cosmetics and having a wide variety of things to offer, then put some work into the cash shop and give us more things to choose from. Every time ANet removes options from the game, I get a little less attached to the game because it feels like the cash shop is not there to serve the customer (more options whenever you like) but rather to pump as much money from us as possible in the fastest time frame possible (buy now or lose the chance to get it ever again!). I’m not saying this is the intention, but that’s what it feels like to me. As someone who is more than happy to give this game money for a job well done, let me say that this game is making it very difficult for me to justify spending money.
EDIT: Also, if the goal is to goose sales, well that’s not working on me. I was going to buy the sunglasses when I expanded my bank, but now I’ll just do without. And if the plan is to add these items back in at a higher price when an unlockable armor locker comes out, well, I won’t buy any of those either. The items are overpriced as is. Had a locker been released today, I probably would have gone ahead and bought every remaining clothing item in the gem store that I didn’t have but now, no need to spend anything.
(edited by Kojast.6304)
Your answer is located in the patch notes and the preview for the release.
No, it’s not. I cannot find the end date information for the Twilight Assault living story meta achievement (Slick Pack reward) anywhere.
I did a search for “October” and “November” key words under the patch notes, both locations:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/release-notes-for-twilight-assault/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-October-1-2013/first#post2951400
The guide:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/a-guide-to-twilight-assault/
The release page:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/october-01-2013/
Nowhere does it list an end date
The only dates listed are the release notes date, the Minis Set 1 going away Oct. 14, and the PvP finishers going away Nov. 11
So if anyone has an actual source or if I’m blind and missed something, please quote the actual information from your page rather than just telling someone to go somewhere that does not have the information they’re asking for.
Now normally, I’d agree with everyone saying the meta lasts a month. But someone on reddit said that during the dev stream, they said the TA living story achievement would only last 2 weeks. Plus the living story dailies are now gone. So we’ve got conflicting information and no official information.
TL;DR: I cannot find an end date for the TA living story achievement, and all evidence is indicating it ends tomorrow even though traditionally the first-half-of-the-month meta lasts a month. Can someone please link and quote an actual source?
kojast: I don’t really understand your post. I didn’t say Anet was abusing me. I don’t feel abused. I feel slightly irritated that I can not get said Mini by any other means than ebay or going to a convention. This would not be the only mini I do not own in the game. I was unable to defeat their RNG winterdays mini’s and am missing one from there as well. I was unhappy I wasn’t able to get one. I would love a response from Anet on the matter, although I doubt we are going to see one anytime soon at this point.
Sorry for the late response, KOPPER—was out of town—but the “abuse” term specifically was in response to an earlier post claiming ANet was abusing mini collectors. It was not directed at you.
My basic message is this: you are a customer. One of many. The fact that ANet isn’t responding means your needs aren’t high enough on their priorities to be addressed. They’re not out to get you, but other things are more important.
As a customer, you made a good faith effort to explain what you wanted. Your request was simple, does not hurt any other player, does not affect the economy, and increases gem store sales by adding another product to it. ANet ignored you. There’s nothing more you can do to get what you want.
In short, mini collection isn’t viable in this game. Even if they release Mr. Sparkles, what’s to stop this from happening again? Logical conclusion: stop collecting minis. It’s not your fault. ANet was the one who decided exclusivity is more valuable than the cash of dedicated collectors. So be it.
(edited by Kojast.6304)
I don’t understand why you’re still hoping for a response. Even if Mr. Sparkles becomes available, what’s to prevent ANet from doing something similar again? Prizes for contests were another way minis were distributed in the past, or placing in the top percentile of a race. If those are account bound and distributed in game, you don’t even have eBay asa recourse.
Bottom line: this incident should have destroyed your trust that mini collecting is viable in this game. It just isn’t. Even if they fix it this time, the trust is gone.
At this point, ANet isn’t abusing you—that would require they care about your customer desires. You’re abusing yourself. The rational course of action is to stop.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If you still like the game or still want specific minis, buy them. If you still want Mr. Sparkles specifically, go for it! I fully support your request in that scenario.
But stop holding onto the illusion that you can get them all in the manner you desire. They don’t want your money, so why are you begging to give it to them? That’s not how any sane or self-respecting person approaches business. Bad practices deserve to be punished by the people who are affected by them, and if you don’t do that, the blame partly rests with you.
Is it too hard? Respect the awesome work
in Super Adventure Box: Back to School
Posted by: Kojast.6304
Josh, I don’t post on the forums often and everything I had to say about the difficulty has been covered by others, but reading your posts, I felt I had to write this:
You are awesome, your ideas are awesome. Please don’t let the criticism get you down, but also please remember your work/life balance!
The truth is, I was one of the people who found normal mode too punishing. It was long, it had a lot of death traps unless you were paying very close attention, and I basically had to stop at the gong because I was too exhausted to continue. This is coming from someone who tried Mad King Clocktower for 5 hours straight before beating it, and I loved that thing (single best and most memorable moment of GW2, no contest, with SAB being the only thing that comes close).
But you know what? I respect your design so much. As someone lucky enough to play lag-free and mostly bug-free, I think I experienced 2-1 and 2-2 as intended. And every time I died, it was my fault because there was always a tell or always another way to do something. SAB taught me to dodge jump. The assassins taught me to kite way better than any windup tell in the main game. The river crossing with moving logs was such a pleasant surprise (I gasped out loud) because it’s been commonly assumed in the community that the GW2 engine couldn’t handle moving platforms, but you proved us wrong in spectacular fashion.
And that gong? That nightmare-inducing gong run that made me give up? I can’t stop talking about it to my friends because when I realized what I had to do, I thought “No way a dev would dare to ask something that crazy and hard from us!”. But you did, and it’s incredible (in a good way) that you did. I don’t think there’s an achievement for following it down all the floors, but I’m going to try it anyway just to see if I can do it. When I have more energy over the weekend, I will probably try. And it’ll be fun.
And even better, the design of the entire box’s reward structure is great. You have scaling difficulty so everyone can experience the content, you have special rewards for people who beat the hardest stuff, and you don’t lock anyone out of the basic rewards just because they can’t beat the hardest stuff.
World 2 may have been a bit too hard, but other than that, it’s so well designed. I just want you to know that even as someone who had a hard time with it, you have my complete and utmost respect as a developer (and I’m normally a bit of a sore loser). SAB is incredibly impressive. I don’t know if it matters for your metrics, but I’m going home tonight and buying all the new SAB gem store content just to show my support even though the infinite coin was the only thing I originally intended to buy.
To make mistakes is to be human. Keep on being an amazing human!
And why should they listen to your part of the community more than to the part of the community that likes the fact that they are rare?
The part of the community that wants items to be rare is deriving their enjoyment from the disappointment of others. I personally want others to succeed. I am happy when other people can get what they want. If this community is dominated by people who disagree, then this community is obviously not for me.
It’s a mini-pet. Also, do you think threatening them that you won’t buy anymore mini-pets from the gemstore will make them reconsider? It’s not a super strong weapon or piece of armor. If anything, it’s a goodwill gesture to the people who came out to see them at Gamescom. Quit making a mountain out of a mole hill.
Let’s see… I convinced seven other people to try this game and bought copies for 4 of them. In addition to that, I have spent over $1500 in gems as gifts or for myself since December. I’m one customer and I have no illusions that my one opinion matters in the scheme of things. Nevertheless, minis were my reward of choice in the game. I opted to collect minis over legendaries, ascended gear (laurels and guild comms), and armor skins.
As a result of the poor messaging and decision making regarding minis, I have decided my money is better invested in a different hobby over which I have more control. This is not a threat, it is a done deal. It is nothing personal against ANet: from their posts, I think the staff is a wonderful, patient, thoughtful group who have done wonders for the perception of the MMO genre. Nevertheless, it is roughly $200 a month in regular spending they will not see again over this one mini. One company’s molehill is another person’s mountain.
OP
Like for example as some of us already experienced. ‘Living under your Parents ’roof’- for Free, and having a job is Good. Even though your Parenets Doesn’t ask you nor Force you (the son/daughter) in helping to ‘pitch-in’ for the epense bills (including yours and theirs) but in showing Grattitude and Appreciation, you ‘pitch in’..’Arena.Net- The Game and Class Parents, is that Parent.
You are absolutely correct. This analogy is spot on because clearly we depend upon ANet for one of the core requirements of survival. Without GW2, we would be out on the streets of the Internet, roaming search engines and blogs, trolling comment threads and begging for entertainment from sketchy sources like Facebook games.
We as customers depend on ArenaNet for survival, not the other way around. ArenaNet can do no wrong, and we are not allowed to question any of their choices. Whatever they give us, we should eagerly accept and be thankful for. Doing anything else would be ungrateful for the incredible gaming experience that they have so graciously given to us for a one-time price of $40-100, depending on what version of the game we bought (those of us who bought any less than the Collector’s Edition, shame on you!)
You know what, I take back what I said. The detractors have completely convinced with me with their eloquent and well-explained arguments. There are valid reasons why the mini might be rare and unobtainable via in-game mechanics. It would be a fantastic surprise to the most dedicated fans willing to travel to Germany to visit ANet’s booth, and the rest of us who were not that dedicated do not deserve the consideration. If they choose to resell the code on a 3rd party site, well, that helps cover their costs to attend the con and rewards their interest further. It doesn’t matter that ANet didn’t announce the giveaway beforehand because that would just mean any mini collector who did purchase a ticket was purchasing it to fulfill their own selfish desire for the mini and not out of a general appreciation for the game and the company’s efforts.
Mini collectors, think about it rationally. A full miniature collection is worth probably around 1000 gold. 1000 gold could buy over $200 worth of gems. Conversely, it would take $366 to buy that much gold. This is on top of the box price we paid for the game.
Now that I’m looking at the numbers, I personally have realized I don’t believe a license to digital content in a video game (remember, we don’t own any of the content, we just license the rights to it, a license which can be revoked at any time and one day will, when the game is shut down) is worth that much money. I mean, it just fulfills a weird psychological urge for completion.
To those who are still mini collectors, if it’s worth that much time and real world money to you, all the more power to you. I fully support your endeavors and wish you the best of luck, because I think that everyone deserves special consideration. I really hope this mini does become available in game for your sake, even if it no longer matters to me.
However, the rest of us should be grateful to ANet for helping save us time and money by realizing the pointlessness of the whole endeavor. This scare has been incredibly enlightening.
So those of you who kept venturing into this thread to tell us we were wrong in our request, thank you! Honestly, thank you, I’m not being sarcastic (even if my writing may seem that way on first read—it’s difficult to convey emotion via text on the Internet). Thank you for helping me see the light and the error of my assumptions. Thank you for saving me from spending more money on a selfish, silly hobby.
(cont. from previous post)
Argument 4: You’re being entitled for wanting access to minis
There’s a difference between feeling entitled to getting everything with no effort and feeling entitled to have an equal opportunity to access content. Is it really unreasonable to say “Everything that is in this game as a reward, I would like to be able to earn in-game”?
And as for mini collectors being entitled, think about everything that has caused an uproar in this game. Think about all the things people complain about. If there’s ever been something you hated about reward acquisition in this game, chances are mini collectors have done it or that it is some aspect of the creation/acquisition of minis.
- Mystic Forge: Ever try to get an upgrade/precursor out of the Mystic Forge? That’s pretty much the main way to get exotic minis. And while the percent chance to get a precursor per forge is less, the cost of each forge is much higher for minis. At current prices, it’s about 40gold to forge 4 rare minis to try to get an exotic. Let’s assume you get lucky and get an upgrade every 5 tries. There are 7 exotic minis that can be obtained, and assuming you get super lucky and never get duplicates, that’s an average of 35 tries * 40 gold per try or 1400 gold to get all the exotic minis. And that’s if you’re super lucky.
- Buying off the Trading Post: So don’t try your luck Mystic Forging. Buy all your minis off the TP. Again, the prices are comparable to buying a precursor. At this point, a mini collector who used buy orders to buy all the minis would probably need to spend almost 1,000 gold getting the Set minis alone, much less the special edition minis.
- Account-bound RNG gem box gambling: Remember how much people hated the Fused weapon tickets and the like? Mini collectors had to put up with that too for Foostivoo. During Wintersday, mini collectors had to get six minis out of the gem store gamble boxes, all of which were account bound, and they also had to hope that there were 3 unique minis in those 6 to complete the Masterwork set too.
- Beat extremely difficult solo content. Liadri the Concealing Dark. Every single mini collector with a full collection had to beat her. Still want to call us lazy?
- Keep up with limited sales and living story meta achievements. Going to be out of town for work for a month? Better hope it’s not a month where there’s a limited time mini on sale. Better hope it’s not a month where the mini is the meta achievement. Mini collectors had limited time account bound minis to obtain in October, December, April, May, June, July, and August.
- Time gating. Do you hate grinding guild missions or dailies in order to get ascended gear? Not only do mini collectors have to do that, they have to sacrifice getting ascended gear and the corresponding stats in order to finish off their collection. Well, it’s not really a “sacrifice” since I think most mini collectors consider it a worthwhile tradeoff, but that’s what we have to do.
And on top of all that, we get very little from our minis. The collection as a whole cannot be shown off like a legendary. The title can be bought and sold or borrowed from friends. Minis go away if you switch zones or die. A number of minis also go away when you enter water. Minis barely keep up with you when you run. You have to buy an invisible bag to keep them from depositing. And despite all of this, mini collectors still like them. We collect them because we love the minis for being minis, not for any utility we get from them.
So next time you call us entitled, think about that. Someone who wants a full collection of minis has to go through just about every weird reward mechanism the game has to offer. We’ve sunk money into the game. We’ve sunk time into minis that cannot be bought. We’ve beaten difficult content that less than 10% of the player base is supposed to beat. And we’ve done it for something that gets us virtually no recognition and is dismissed by most of the player base. We don’t do it to show off—we do it because we are passionate about it.
TL;DR: All we’re asking is that in-game rewards be obtainable by playing the game. We don’t want it for free. We’re happy to buy it off the gem store or earn it in game while people who go to cons get it for free. I think we’ve more than proven that. We just want a chance to get it.
First off, let me say that I still believe this item will be available in-game. Until we get official confirmation that it is limited to Germany (or conventions), I think any freaking out or ranting is premature.
That said, I would like to refute some common arguments I’ve seen as well as put forward a case why mini collectors would like access to the opportunity to obtain the mini in-game.
Argument 1: Plenty of other games do giveaways at conventions, so ANet can too!
This is true. No one is denying this. However, just because other companies and other games do this does not mean GW2 should.
One common argument is that giveaways drive traffic to the booth and interest in the game. However, one would imagine that keeping existing customers happy would take priority over a bit of publicity. Furthermore, the mini was neither advertised beforehand nor do I see it getting any press. Big feature announcements drive media coverage, not giveaways to fans who don’t even know there is one. Meanwhile, it has caused angst amongst current customers who have demonstrated their commitment to the game and their willingness to spend large sums of cash, both in-game gold and real-world money (more on this later).
Second, most other MMOs out there have a trinity, loot tagging, fixed quests, raids, etc. all of which are things that GW2 does not do. This game is unique and has its own way of doing things. Its way of doing things tends to be more inclusive, offering more opportunity to players and reducing competition. That is part of its appeal.
Third, ANet has proven time and again that they do not want to exclude players. Weapons that were previously account bound in RNG gem boxes have now been made tradable. Many people have claimed ANet stated they did not want to do giveaways again after people were upset about the town clothing T-shirt being available only at cons. We got an apology after the Mad King Clocktower for it being excessively difficult as time limited content. All of this has been evidence driving customer expectations that the game strives to limit the amount of content that is rare and exclusive.
Argument 2: GW1 did it, so why shouldn’t GW2?
This is in many ways a corollary of Argument 1. Nothing about the way minis have been handled in GW2 is a repeat of GW1 (see: birthday gifts and account bound minis), so why should this be? GW2 has iterated and improved on many things from GW1. It is not unreasonable to think that they would not carry over extremely limited mini runs obtained only through out-of-game sources.
Argument 3: You don’t NEED to collect minis.
Everyone has their idea of what makes the game fun. The end game of this game is primarily cosmetic. Some people like getting titles, others like playing WvW, others like getting to the top of the respective leaderboards, others want legendary weapons, others like following the lore of the living stories, others like running dungeons, others like farming… the list goes on and on. All of these are valid goals and ways to have fun. Isn’t that what the game is about? Play the way you want, and have fun?
I think most people are aware that they don’t need to do anything in this game. But what makes collecting minis a less valid goal than getting a legendary? I guarantee that if they made an armor locker available or a town clothing locker available, there would be people who collected every set just because they could. And they’d have fun doing it, and ANet would have a gold sink/real money revenue stream as a result. Everyone wins.
Just because you don’t care about something doesn’t mean other people don’t care. And just because it doesn’t matter to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter at all.
So before you go off about the worthlessness of minis or say collectors have a disease, think about how many hours you’ve put into this game. A video game that has no bearing on the real world and really does not matter except in the passion and excitement it creates in people. Is that passion and devotion less worthy just because it’s about a fictional work? Think about the fact that you are taking time out of your life to go onto the forum of a video game in order to dismiss other people’s concerns as groundless. Think about your goals in the game and how much they matter to you, and then think about how you would feel if something happened to prevent you from reaching that goal and people told you that you are silly or entitled for wanting to accomplish that goal.
(cont. in next post)
If anyone deserves a “God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals” title, it’s probably Gaile Gray and everyone else who interacts with customers on a regular basis. The amount of patience displayed in the face of the negativity of some of the posts on here (of which I admit I am occasionally guilty as well) is quite incredible. Kudos to Gaile Gray and all the devs and all CS. Y’all are awesome.
For me, there’s one very simple reason why I found this update offensive—the difficult content does not feel accessible. I don’t care if content is hard, but I extremely dislike difficult content that does not offer people a level playing field.
My problems with Liadri are:
- The game suffers performance problems even on good computers due to the zerg and group events. I’m on a rig that handles T1 WvW fine (it’s only ever choked during Lost Shores), but I still got lag spikes and skill latency that caused me to get killed. I can’t imagine how horrific it is on lower end machines, and that’s not fair.
- The tries are gated by queues and tickets. This may not seem like a big deal to some people, but for me (and I’m sure there are others like me), this was a huge problem. This is NOT because I’m impatient and NOT because I don’t want to farm/buy tickets. My learning style is that I repeat things over and over without delay. I tend to fail difficult encounters 30 times on end, never getting any further or better, until something suddenly clicks and everything falls into place. When I’m forced to take a break, it completely screws me up. This gated entry system felt like it directly targeted my learning style, as though the way my brain works makes me second class. This ended up pitting me against my fellow players. Whenever some poor person showed up, probably hoping to have someone else around to res them if they failed, I would log out and switch to another overflow until I found an empty one. Every time I ran across someone to res (because I still believe in helping other players no matter what), I was mentally cursing the other player for taking time away from my chance to learn the encounter. I have the skill to beat Liadri (I’ve done it twice, once on a class I barely ever play), but this system felt arbitrarily gated in a way that was extremely player unfriendly and goes against much of the philosophy of the game’s PvE design.
- The content is expensive — Not just in waypoint and repair costs but in gear. I spent over 30g getting gear and runes on different alts trying to figure out a way to beat the content. This was fine for me personally because I had the gold and all the stuff I got can be used for future game play. If I didn’t care about other players, then I’d just write it off and then go farm it back. But there are plenty of players for whom buying even a second set of armor and runes is a big deal. This makes the content seem unfair. If the content were permanent, this would be fine, but…
- The content is time limited — Yes, I know it’s coming back, but I don’t know when, and I don’t know if there will be more bosses when it does. Being time limited automatically puts an extra subliminal amount of stress on the player, urging you to complete it on the game’s schedule, not on your own. Whether this is a good thing is a matter of opinion, but I personally dislike it. Add that to all the factors above, and it makes this an extremely aggravating encounter.
I fit your definition of “skilled.” I’ve beaten Liadri, and I’ve beaten all the other “difficult” content this game has thrown at us. I’ve done every jump puzzle, including Mad King, and I’ve led groups through every dungeon path in the game, including all Arah explorables.
At the same time, I also apparently fit your definition of “entitled.” I collect minipets. That’s been my thing since the game launched. If it wasn’t for the mini, I probably wouldn’t have bothered doing Liadri. But I did. If you honestly only want hard content for the challenge, then you should be fine with there being no rewards, cosmetic or otherwise, to that content. If you want difficult content most people cannot do and also want there to be rewards associated with it, then not only are you also being “entitled,” you are in the minority of people who will ever benefit from that entitlement. You’re being selfish.
TL;DR: If there’s going to be hard content, that’s fine, but make it permanent. Design it so people have a fair shot at completing it. Design it so people don’t view the rest of the community as antagonists who are ruining their attempt to obtain rewards (because it’s a game, and like it or not, rewards are there at least partially to convince players to try things they might not otherwise do). The game got all of that right at launch, yet now the living story seems intent on trampling all over that design philosophy. As a player who’s been extremely loyal to the game until now, my distaste for Liadri is not because the fight is difficult but because its implementation goes against every reason I bought the game in the first place.
I am offering access to all guild missions (bounty, challenge, rush, puzzle) every Sunday at noon US Pacific time / 2000 UTC.
Contact Scolai or Torwen Morlgend (in-game whisper or mail) for invite. Our guild is the Devoured Moon Syndicate [DMoS]
We will usually run, in the following order: T3 bounty (take down only one), Challenge, Rush, and then Puzzle.
Details about our guild:
- On Blackgate (NA) — make sure you can guest if you are not from Blackgate
- Missions coordinated in guild chat — we do not have voice chat. Everyone will see all communication in-game and we call out objectives for guests, but please recognize this also means we need to keep chat clean when the missions are actually running.
- No rep requirements — if you belong to your own guild, you can stay in yours and join us only for guild missions. We do not kick guests at the end of missions, and this will hold true for the first 450 people who join us (then we reach the game’s guild membership cap).
- Please be nice! We want everyone to be able to relax and have fun in a respectful environment. We welcome all experience levels and are happy to answer any questions you might have either about the missions or the game.
(edited by Kojast.6304)
(cont. from previous post)
In the long run, interest in WvW is going to be driven by more major or lasting changes to your incentive systems. WXP was a good step forward. Adding objectives and WvW-specific achievements would be fantastic. Goodness, if you wanted to attract PvE players, you could even have a living story take place in the Mists—just make it so that everyone has an equal chance to participate. For example, maybe one day for a living story zone, you could have a world monster that requires all three servers to work together to take it down lest it wreak havoc across all the objectives. Servers could choose not to participate, but they would risk the world boss causing them to lose ground. If all WvW players hated it, then everyone would cede the map and it would have no overall impact on the score, and as part of the living story, it could go away. Then, tie that into Living World achievements—this opens up both a cooperative aspect and a balancing component that would allow PvE players a fighting chance in a new environment while adding something of concrete interest for WvW players. Maybe I just proposed a totally stupid idea, but it seems something targeted at specific demographics is going to do better than just putting in an achievement that lures people into Obsidian Sanctum and hoping for the best.
TL;DR: When I look at World vs. Kite, I don’t see an achievement with a lot of thought put into it. I see an achievement that looks like a temporary and short-sighted way of driving up player population in an underpopulated zone, and I know your team is capable of delivering a better player experience than that.
(cont. from previous post)
Next, let’s look at PvE completionists. If they are not WvW enthusiasts to date, they either understand WvW and do not want to participate or they have not played and have some preconceived notions that prevent them from joining. The former is never going to play WvW as they have already given it a try. As for the latter, I would say that preconceived notions that would keep people out of PvP include: 1) distaste for dealing directly with other players whether it’s coordinating with them or fighting them, 2) concerns about their personal skills and coming up short, and 3) dislike for dealing with imbalanced scenarios.
Obsidian Sanctum plays upon all the PvE player’s worst fears about WvW while not being true to WvW. WvW itself actually plays very similar to PvE except that the NPCs are now other players. You can run around without saying much, participate in dynamic events, rely on the zerg, and retreat when faced with overwhelming force. It’s actually quite fun and nothing like what many people may first think when told about open world PvP. Obsidian Sanctum on the other hand confirms everything people fear. If you wander in alone, you face duels and lopsided fights with a need for builds and skills with which you may not be familiar. You must actively coordinate with your server and sometimes an opposing server. Detailed knowledge is required of the map when faced with adversity. Sending a player who has not tried WvW into Obsidian Sanctum is like matching a new chess player with a grandmaster or like pitting Ferguson’s Crossing against Sanctum of Rall. They are faced with an overwhelming number of factors, all stacked against them, and told to react by a faceless and unsympathetic achievement panel which is probably taunting them with an almost completed kite meta. For every PvE player who discovers his/her inner fighter, there will be many more who scream about griefing or give up.
So who are we left with? We are left with players who enjoy the PvP aspects of the jumping puzzle and players who PvE and WvW but are not super dedicated to either. The former are going to have a blast because suddenly one of their favored haunts is teeming with activity. The latter are likely to have fun, but their spike in interest is going to be short-lived because the achievement is one and done. They already sample PvE and WvW. They will play where they are interested, but they are not going to suddenly gain more interest in WvW as a result of a temporary achievement. Is this a large enough audience of happy players that it is worth the gnashing of teeth by the rest, especially when Guild Wars 2 sets out to try to give as enjoyable an experience as possible to as many people as possible?
That then leaves us with the question: Did the achievement accomplish its desired goals?
Let’s be honest, Devon, only you know that, because only you have access to player numbers, and only you know what your company actually wanted to accomplish. However, it seems that of the people impacted by the achievement (that is, those who want it), dedicated PvE and dedicated WvW players are both going to end up playing less WvW as a result. Furthermore, of the players who are not active WvW players, you have ended up frustrating and driving away many who sample it through this achievement. There’s a reason Obsidian Sanctum is often the least populated component of WvW, and throwing new players into it is not exactly addressing the problem or putting your best foot forward.
(cont. in next post)
…hopefully going to encourage some of them to stick around and play WvW. If you don’t want to get killed by other players, don’t play WvW. Plain and simple. The achievement isn’t required for getting the meta-achievement on purpose.
Devon, I realize that addressing the utility of the World vs. Kite achievement is not quite the subject of the thread, but since you mentioned it, let’s look at this statement. You have expressed some hope that this achievement will make players play WvW more than they otherwise do. This may be existing WvW players who get caught up in the action and play longer than they otherwise would, or this may be non-WvW players who become interested after trying the jump puzzle.
When releasing any product, the chief concerns are usually 1) Who is the intended audience? and 2) What do you want out of this audience?
Let’s ignore the broader items of player retention and maintaining cash flow and focus purely on WvW. In that case:
Who is the intended audience of this achievement?
You have stated it is not required for the meta achievement. It is therefore not targeted at casual PvE players who only want the meta reward. While there are now rewards associated with total achievement point totals, World vs Kite and the Kite meta are a small contributor to the point total and can be fairly considered negligible for progression purposes. PvE and WvW are both completely separate from structured PvP, so one reasonably assumes exclusive players of that mode are not the intended audience either.
I would conclude, then, that the achievement is aimed at WvW players of all types and PvE completionists.
So what behavior do you want from PvE completionists and people who play WvW?
Thus far, I can see two goals: get people into Obsidian Sanctum and get people into WvW.
But what is the purpose? I assume—and I may be wrong—the long-term purpose is to increase interest in WvW. Yet, we are faced with some contradictions.
First of all, Obsidian Sanctum isn’t viewed as a significant WvW objective. As a result, it is of little interest to dedicated WvW players. Here are the facts to back up my assertion:
1) WvW players demanded its removal from Eternal Backgrounds. Its existence was viewed as detrimental to standard WvW play as the presence of players in the jump puzzle detracted from the server’s efforts in accumulating points and holding ground.
2) Its strategic value as a source of income and siege for WvW players has been consistently reduced. The chest is now accountbound. Whereas a server that owned the jump puzzle could farm the puzzle 5 times a day (more for players with more character slots), this has now been reduced to once. Mesmers portaling in the jump puzzle contribute much less to the server as a result, and their utility is further reduced by their lack of visibility in EB map chat. Furthermore, making siege tradable has put a direct price on siege which (except for catapults) is a quarter to a tenth what you can get from siege vendors. The average price of the contents of the OS chest is around 60 silver at current market prices. Nothing to scoff at but also not that impressive, especially compared to what the blueprints and badges of honor were worth prior to the recent string of patches.
3) Obsidian Sanctum plays nothing like WvW. It is not balanced between the three sides (Borderlands are basically balanced in that each side has an advantage in one of them), it is not open for roaming, it does not allow siege, it has one clear objective, and it has highly defensible chokes which requires very few people to hold. If anything, Obsidian Sanctum more closely resembles PvP death matches with the exception that it is highly imbalanced by design.
With those facts in mind, it is arguable that the truly dedicated WvW players may not find this achievement all that interesting. In fact, any attempt to get it actually detracts from WvW time—they must leave whatever map they are on, spend time in the puzzle, queue to return to WvW, and if they bothered to do all that, chances are they want the meta-achievement too and must then play PvE to attain that. For these players, the achievement does the reverse: it actually encourages dedicated WvW players who want to pursue the achievement not to WvW.
(cont. in next post)
Bumping.
This happened to our guild, DMoS on Blackgate, today. We got the quaggan rescue (Deep Trouble), successfully completed the challenge, the dynamic event popped up as succeeded, everyone involved got their weekly chest with commendations and other rewards, but the completion did not register and eventually the challenge ran out of time and got marked as failed. Guild did NOT get merits.
We had a slightly unusual sequence of events that we thought might have messed things up though…:
We started the challenge around 7:50am server time today but did not make a concerted attempt to do it until 5 hours later.
In the meantime, we started a bounty at noon which successfully completed 15 minutes later. Then, we started the challenge around 12:30 server time. We beat it 10 minutes later. The challenge then got marked as failed at 1:50pm server time, 6 hours after activation, even though we beat it less than 5 hours after activation.
A few of our thoughts on what might have caused the issue: 1) letting the challenge sit for too long before starting, 2) doing another mission (in our case, bounty) after starting the challenge but before successfully completing the challenge, or 3) someone in our guild may have ignored our messages and started the challenge without the rest of the guild and then failed it—could previous failures cause some sort of bug that prevents the guild from getting credit later?
Is there any chance some sort of town clothing locker/collectibles tab or other type of management system will be put in place so that town clothing and other gem store purchases do not take up bank space?
I’m not here to demand a solution or make suggestions as to what that solution should be. I’m posting because today’s release of the animal hats led me to the unfortunate realization that while I want to keep purchasing outfits for my characters, I am no longer willing to buy town clothing because I have run out of bank space to store my gem store purchases.
Even if most people do not face this problem right now, I have to imagine that in the long term, anyone who makes gem store purchases is going to run into this wall due to the limit on the number of bank slots an account can have.
Apparently all 4 springtime minis which have been released to date are back in the gem store for 3 days so this weekend is your chance to buy them if you were on vacation and missed one or more that you want.
Has it been considered that this was perhaps an unnecessary fix? Minipets already serve no purpose in the game except to follow you around. They are already immersion-breaking in the sense that there is no lore explaining why you have, for example, a tiny human bandit following you around.
Minipets exist to be seen by the owner. They are already difficult to keep out. They go away and do not automatically re-summon when you switch zones or die. They take up bag space and mini owners go out of their way to craft invisible bag space so that they are not accidentally deposited with resources.
I know there are many times my guild and I have had a lot of fun seeing the minipets underwater. One of my friends has only a few minis and one of them is the plush griffon, which he always gets a good laugh out of when it “swims” underwater in an airplane mode with its wings.
I understand the need to fix bugs in the game and also that some bugs and quality of life features are easier to deal with than others, but to add my 2 cents to EnemyCrusher’s reply, if you can’t add swimming animations for all minis and still want some to stow underwater, then please either add the ability to automatically resummon them when you swim/zone/die and mark the tooltip for ones that cannot swim. Minipets are prestige items and some are worth a lot of in-game gold or only purchasable with real world money. This may have just been a bug fix to you, but as the bug has been in the game since launch, please understand that this is also essentially the removal of a feature for minipet owners.
Well elementalists do get passive speed boosts from signet and air trait, but ride the lightning was a very nice quality of life movement tool in PvE that gave eles pretty much no advantage whatsoever. The cooldown and range reduction seems purely a PvP/WvW balance tool but significantly harms the perception of elementalists in PvE. It seems exactly the sort of skill that should be split.
While we’re on the topic, I would like to request that the Mist Form change also be considered for splitting between PvE and the PvP formats. Elementalists already have the lowest armor and lowest health pool while not putting out damage numbers to write home about (true, you can get some pretty good numbers, but that sacrifices defense even more). Remove the ability to heal in mist form and you’re forcing elementalists to run out of fights to heal during dungeons and the like. The closest equivalent skill I can think of is Endure Pain on the Warrior, and they can still use utilities while their invulnerable is active (and now they can channel too). The two skills are identical in purpose, yet the class that actually needs it to stay in a PvE fight is the one that gets nerfed.
To OP and those that dislike dungeons, I feel your pain. I don’t 100% agree with you but I understand your perspective. Most of you say you like the game but don’t want to be forced into a dungeon, so let’s assume you’re willing to give the designers the benefit of the doubt that the dungeon has the potential to be as enjoyable as your solo experiences. In that case, we can try to mitigate the possible reasons you have to dislike dungeons. As far as I can tell, there are two main reasons to dislike story dungeons.
Reason 1: It is a pain to run with strangers who will probably try to skip the story and rush the experience
Possible solutions: Are you familiar with gw2lfg.com? It is the go-to dungeon group finder for the community right now and allows you to add comments specifying what sort of group you want. Start your own posting stating you want to go through the story a certain way, then confirm with your party in chat once it’s formed. I’ve done this for Arah explorable, supposedly the most unfriendly dungeon in the game, and gotten a group together in less than 5 minutes. While I don’t deny there are people who may ignore your request or insult you, a very large amount of people will respect what you want as long as you tell them.
Alternatively, try to form a group of other like-minded individuals from this thread.
Reason 2: Dungeons are a massive time commitment
Possible solutions: Assuming the designers are correct in their estimate, budget 2 hours for the dungeon to be safe. You won’t need to budget much time for putting together a group, regardless of your specifications, because this is going to be the biggest thing going on and everyone is going to be trying it, just like Tixx during Wintersday. That said, even if the dungeon is difficult, chances are good that within two days of release, you’re going to have a lot of people who have run the dungeon a lot. Again, at this point, using gw2lfg.com, you’re almost certain to be able to find at least 2 people familiar with the dungeon but willing to respect your desire to run the story. My 3-man guild, as one example, would be very willing to run alongside two strangers, assuming we’re online at the same time as you. We’ll almost certainly be able to get you through in under an hour while letting you take the lead, and I’m sure there are others like us out there. This is the friendliest online community I’ve ever seen.
In closing, I’ve never liked dungeons prior to GW2 and I don’t like playing with strangers. I’m not a very social person and GW2 appealed to me because so much of it was solo-able. However, I run dungeons in GW2 quite a bit for the rewards and because I like some of them, and I’ve almost never had a bad experience. Maybe I’m really lucky, but I’ve also found that it helps just to state up front what your expectations are. I’m not looking to convince you that ending Flame and Frost with a dungeon is a good idea, but I’m saying that if you still want to give it a try, there are quite a few ways to make the experience painless and perhaps even somewhat enjoyable. You probably won’t suddenly love dungeons, but maybe you’ll hate them less.
TL;DR: I don’t know if the young karkas are still dropping minis but I’d wait and see on buying a mini karka. Read on for the long explanation why.
1) I’d hope ANet would put a change like that in the patch notes, but they’ve acknowledged the notes don’t contain all changes. However, since no note was included, no one should know for sure, so that should not be the reason for the price increase. Also, the other Lost Shores minis did not spike in price.
2) I don’t like to scream market manipulation, but if I’ve ever seen a borderline case of it, this would be it because: a) very low supply item (20 prior to the spike) with no obvious source of additional supply now that people don’t go to Southsun and many Southsun bots were banned and b) it did not look like a natural buyout on gw2spidy because there was no corresponding rise in buy orders until after the spike and even now the gap between buy and sell is much larger than the average spread of other minis
3) Anyone can edit the wiki. If there was manipulation, they could also have changed the wiki.
4) Guild missions will take place in Southsun so if the minis do still drop, we’re likely to see an influx of supply and prices drop as soon as those missions are unlocked.
Now all that said, I may be wrong. The primary argument against manipulation spiking prices is that any good trader able to buy out 1000+ gold of minis should know minis are a very slow market and be aware of the upcoming Southsun event. So maybe other people know something I don’t. It really comes down to how much YOU think they’re worth. If the karka is worth 130 gold to you (or 115-ish, you could probably get a buy order filled quickly at that price) then by all means go for it. If you don’t, and other people don’t, its price will naturally go back down.
For the record, I am also a mini collector. I have only the karka and hatchlings left (and some HoM ones). So I do have an interest in seeing the karka price go down. For full disclosure. That said, I also don’t think it’s worth that much, so I may just have to go with an empty slot in my collection. We’ll see if others like us feel the same way.
Yes, my roommate bought, created and linked a GW1 account to his pre-existing GW2 account last month and has been earning HoM points ever since.
Regarding waypointing, why not make a compromise system where if a waypoint has enemies within a certain radius, it becomes contested and unusable. This brings waypoints in dungeons more in line with open world behavior and strikes a decent balance between rez rushing and no waypointing at all by enforcing a minimum travel time back to any encounter. Any encounter that devs consider prone to rez rushing can disable the nearest waypoint while still leaving farther ones available. This would also give groups an additional risk/reward consideration whether to clear trash mobs that might patrol into the waypoint area.
I agree that rez rushing should not be used to trivialize encounters such as by pulling mobs or bosses to a waypoint, making a full wipe near impossible and requiring little to no strategy at all. CoF path 2 is a borderline case in my opinion, where it provides an alternative strategy that does not fully trivialize the encounter and has a decent risk/reward (it still requires strategy and skill because lack of group coordination can result in failure) but I’d leave it up to ANet to determine whether they want to allow rez rushing in that case or not.
However, waypointing in combat was one thing that made this game stand out for me. Benefits include:
1) Not requiring any person to sit out combat for extended durations with nothing to do
2) Making limited use of rez rushing an additional strategy if the group is skilled enough (eg. assuming half a group dies, if the two remaining players can survive a dungeon boss for the minute or two required for the rest of the group to make it back, I think that does demonstrate some level of skill that should be rewarded)
3) Making many dungeons less frustrating for newcomers, precisely for the above two reasons. As someone who remembers doing AC exp with a full group of level 35s during the first month of the game, being able to waypoint during combat made the difference between spending 3 rather frustrating hours trying to beat the dungeon and quitting in complete frustration. True, you could say exp mode is meant to be hard, get to 80 and learn to play, but more skilled players who don’t die are rewarded with faster dungeon completion and less armor repair costs already, and someone new to the game or to MMOs trying to do a dungeon at a recommended level shouldn’t leave feeling completely crushed. At the time, as a newer player on the fence about whether I wanted to continue doing dungeons or not, waypointing was a massive relief valve that really made me appreciate the game compared to the one other MMO I had tried. It meant that we could make a few mistakes and come back, not make a few mistakes and have to start over from scratch, over and over again with no progress to show for it. And these days, I can run most dungeons without wiping, and I know the strategy for most of the paths I’ve run.
And to repeat, waypointing can and already is, in most cases, balanced by:
1) Armor repair costs for repeated deaths
2) Travel time back to encounter leaving the rest of the group more prone to wiping and allowing the boss to reset
If the above are not considered sufficient discouragement for rez rushing, add an additional waypoint fee if any members of the group are in combat.
TL;DR: This player thinks waypointing during combat in dungeons is a standout feature in this game and rez rushing can be mitigated by disabling only some waypoints to prevent mindless zerging while still leaving some leniency in the system.
No it does not. The number of craftable pets is limited by how many cogs people can get (currently assumed to be a maximum of 500). Therefore, people would still only be able to make 2. Yes, theoretically people could craft 5 tonics and 2 pets vs needing to buy all 5 because they made tonics, but it doesn’t dent the sale of 3 that seems to be the original plan, nor would the 2 minis be sellable to other players since they are account bound, so it doesn’t affect what anyone else would spend either.
Any chance you clicked “Deposit all collectibles” at any point during that? They added depositable slots for shards, ecto, and coins, so they may be back in your bank if you deposited any mats you got from the forge when you went to buy more stones. Not saying this is what happened, but I’m in the habit of doing that and with the new collectible slots, that happened to me yesterday.
+1 for requesting the minis be tradable and not account bound.
The Lost Shores minis and all Halloween and Lost Shores skins were purchasable on the trading post despite initially being RNG from gem store chests. As far as I can think of, the Mystery Wintersday box minis are the ONLY items in the game (excluding possibly tonics) that must be gambled for with gems and cannot be purchased through alternative means.
Seeing as the event has just started and it’s not clear whether there will be more chances at the minis in the Tixx airship rewards, I personally plan to withhold judgment for a few days. However, I would like to note that I too am a little disappointed at the current state of the mystery box minipet acquisition process.
Furthermore, I firmly believe the developers care about their customers and are not out to nickel and dime them. As just a sampling of things I think the developers are doing very right and deserve credit for, look at the completely free content in the monthly patches and the fact that they added more collectible slots to reduce clutter in our bank space/inventory. They have progressively made weapon skins more available with each event and also separated out holiday content RNG from black lion chest RNG, plus clarified the rates at which items drop from these chests. They even made the wizard hat available after concerns were raised about the new Digital Deluxe edition.
Removing the account bound nature of these new minis seems to have only advantages. I do not claim this to be fact, but I would speculate losses in gem store revenue would at least be partially made up by the gold sink these minis would create. Additionally, it would generate goodwill amongst the portion of the player base that cares about minis. It also provides more options to players stuck with many duplicates as well as those who are unlucky.
To add some detail to the scepter abilities:
1. Smack – “Hit your foe with your scepter” – Costume brawl ability is to score a hit on anyone in its range. Animation is a simple swing.
2. Snowflake fireworks – “Celebrate Wintersday with a bang” – AOE range 200 that fears people for 3s. Animation is a fireball launching out of the scepter (kind of slowly). On impact, it explodes into particles that form the shape of something wintery (seen a snowflake and a snowman so far).
3. Wrap it up – “Wrap up Tyria in holiday cheer” – AOE range 200 that dazes for 3s. Animation is gift wrap bouncing toward the target.
4. Snow storm – “Unleash some wintery fury” – Cone attack in front of you that hits brawlers. Animation is some snow- and wind-like particle effects.
5. Summon toy – “Summon a windup toy” – Tooltip doesn’t say it has a costume brawl ability yet unlike the other toy summons, it puts you into costume brawl when you use it. It’s a limited range AOE ability and a wind-up toy soldier spawns at the target. It then walks forward for a couple seconds and explodes.
I agree with Sven that it’s one of the less impressive ones, and none of its effects persist like the cauldron or mad king’s banquet or even the summonable cat and candy corn.