Actually… HoT failed because of depending on existing customer kludges to make the game playable.
The expansion was/is highly dependent on a server system that was broken and dependent on a player workaround, and instead of fixing that first… ANET released a group dependent expansion and still, to this day, expect players to use a broken LFG system to get to populated maps which they discover by being ridiculed for not knowing on the forum or chat channel.
That is the most unbelievable failure of game mechanic implementation I’ve ever seen in a MMO.
It was a scam from the first hype and this game will never recover, quit kidding yourselves.
I spent nearly 4k hours in this game, truly entertained. I don’t know what you are talking about.
I’m talking about the expansion, the subject of this thread. Don’t derail with generalizations.
The hype for this expansion was duplicitous, the over-arching nerfs to multiple game modes was devastating, and the fact that they’ve started hype for another expansion after failing so miserably to implement the original promised content, coupled with a tight-lipped denial of issues far too long to be reasonable, is a startling clear signal that the game’s massive and obvious population losses are not a big concern to physically address.
The scam is the fact that they oversold the rewards and methods of obtaining rewards without acknowledging up front the huge gameplay changes, necessary or frivolous, that would accompany the content, if it ever even manifested. And my opinion, which seems to be widely shared, is that the loss will make it impossible to ever have anything but those lonely experiences that don’t satisfy or reward that plague every mmo that’s ever had such a terrible upheaval.
Yes, every game has a shelf life, but it’s rare in a modern game so widely popular to both wait 3 years for an expansion and have the first expansion be the franchise-killer.
It was a scam from the first hype and this game will never recover, quit kidding yourselves.
They could turn this game into Roblox alpha and there’s at least 2 guys who would spend a good chunk of every day defending the changes. When there are so few people posting that you know commentors by name, but not seen a friend in game for a year…
This has always been a cosmetic game, not a complex one. But I agree that GW2 pvp is an under-developed tragedy: I think the PVP and WVW “were” the only things that truly set GW2 apart from a typical free mmo, and the only future of the game if there is one.
It’s advertised and begins as casual because more people with buy it and use the store.
It’s grindy at the top so the grind-lovers will buy it and use the store.
eg: Why does Tide say “Faster Acting!” when Arm&Hammer works more quickly? lol
We played the BDO beta last weekend. It’s pretty awesome, but who knows what we’ll get in the end with any game.
Gw2 is certainly one of the better current MMO’s, but suffering from bloat, microtransaction dependence and lack of direction just like every other MMO.
In eSports news, though… TF2. Why do I feel like an 8 year old fps game is going to skyrocket past GW2? =P
The problem with big MMO’s is that after 2-3 years, half the game mechanics are a “response” to the millions of players that pushed each original mechanic far past what was intended. Bots, farmers, bugs, exploits and cheats are the “real” beta testers that create the long-term slope of difficulty (or “grind”) necessarily to re-balance in the short-term for typical players as things advance.
After an initial launch, dev is geared toward survival of the franchise, not creating wonder for early adopters. Thus, the best modern game experiences are had not by playing an MMO long-term, but by guzzling content at around launch times per game, then moving to the next, newest MMO that isn’t poisoned by reactive dev yet.
That behavior is encouraged by modern game companies (and gaming media) in order to sell initial games and in-game items with retail hype to overcome the kneejerk post-development before the inevitable decline of the franchise. This is also why MOBA’s are rising. It’s easier to keep the core game intact while changing “champions” game play, and cosmetics are truly cosmetic and seem to be as or more popular nevertheless.
There’s no better way to insure quality than giving money to people who have already taken your money and disappointed you. Logic, move over, people gots money got burn.
HoT is the first game/expansion I’ve ever returned for the money in my entire life.
Not since the migration from Everquest to WoW have I ever seen such a drove of people disappear in such a short time from such a large franchise from such heavy-handed, irrational changes.
John Smedley would be proud.
Edit: removing valid info, this is a slap fight between 2 mediocre PC users lol
(edited by Loxias.2375)
Check the forums now and then.
Endorsement of bad drinking habits...10.000!
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Loxias.2375
GW2 is a far worse endorsement of bad DRESSING habits…
The current gaming profit model is based on convincing people that want to earn rewards and people that want to buy rewards that they are both getting an equal achievement, prestige and value.
Why would you potentially open your “buyers” to abuse, when they are your target customers?
QQ generation… that’s priceless!
Wait til you hear about Santa Claus…
In long extended fights with game companies that sold you a game, then changed the game and blamed you for not liking what you didn’t buy… the players always lose. It’s like politics… if you don’t own a Senator, might as well just yell at your TV.
…because you can’t have 20 fake accounts to downvote every negative comment into obscurity on THIS forum…
I’d think that 25-50% of the playerbase made a second or third free account after f2p for guild, mat and tp purposes. That would be a fairly large impact on “active playerbase” if just one login a month counts as “active.”
Selling gamers on the <b>product</b> of “watching other gamers play a game that you believe that you like but can’t or don’t play” is hyper-genius. It makes the “in-game store” concept seem like a square wheel. Just… genius.
Some genius made a killing off selling ANet the idea that GW2 could ever be an esport. Don’t fall for the hype.
Every MMO ever made systematically destroys rangers classes from day one, but forcing rangers to suddenly morph into raiding clerics is the cruellest and most short-sighted punishment I’ve ever encountered in any game toward any class. It’s borderline psychotic. Best of luck with that.
At this point they are throwing modes at the game like cooking pasta and hoping something will stick to the wall. From my perspective, it looks like raw pasta and a messy wall. I’m waiting to buy dinner until they hire better cooks (devs) or cut the price in half.
HOT is designed to encourage players to also purchase LS2 in order to complete masteries. End of story. You won’t be getting any more free stories.
Labjax, you make some fantastic points, and I love that Mona Lisa analogy!
I think the problem is that “guilds” are technically groups of people, and 2-3 people isn’t really a group. They overdid it with the guild thing. Having 10,000 guilds of 2 people is pointless, and likely what’s being addressed here.
I have a 3 year old account, and was issued a refund for HoT no problem, and it did NOT affect my base account, everything returned to normal.
If you bought HoT from GW2 directly within 30-45 days, you can apply and get a refund for HoT only.
I applied for the refund because I don’t have any time for PVE anymore and PVP isn’t affected much. Eventually I’ll rebuy when it’s discounted, but was disappointed at the lack of info on zone exploration gating.)
correction – “huge amount of info MISSING…”
There was a huge amount of info regarding gating and time sinks in terms of exploring PVE. That in itself, for an expansion at this price, for a game that has never had gated PVE… is just unexcusable. On top of that, nerfing older content to force players into a new grind with no preperation is unacceptable. I appreciate the work, but this expansion was designed for WOW-players with 30+ hours of week of free time. Unfortunately, this is GW2. I asked for refund, PVP is enough for my 1 hour a week now.
Ill buy it when it’s $25 or less, but if you just PVP now, seems kind of pointless.
I’ve literally never seen a game announce pre-launch, “There’s gonna be a lot of exploits in the next expansion… please stay poor and tell on your friends, and most importantly, don’t get mad!” Wow.
GW2 requires about 20-25 gigs total, remembering you’re adding a gig a year with updates. Most modern MMO’s or FPS’s take about 15-40 gigs each, with some high end games using 60 gigs.
If your OS is on a SATA drive, you will not see much performance increase from putting just games on an SSD. You need to install windows AND the games on SSD, preferably windows and software on primary, games and data on secondary.
If anything, you’ll see a bigger improvement for OS on SSD and games on SATA if you can’t do both.
I’m betting HoT will be on sale within 10 days of launch, just be patient.
Just report it. Obviously the game can’t ban everyone that offends everyone else, but anything that is abusive will be dealt with. Going on and on about it in public can make you a bit of a target to bullies.
Wildstar is f2p as of this week btw. Fun game!!
I think less than 10% of active rangers will have any desire to play healer for more than a day, and that the new spec will be used by people from other classes that want to build a Druid.
The constant destruction and reinvention of the ranger class within an mmo is basically like dark matter. You apparently can’t have a universe without it, but no one could tell you why.
I wanted one badly for months, then I heard it. I still want one badly. To sell.
It’s even funnier that they think they ranger class is going to play cleric.
It’s an “arrow to the knee” of many rangers… which is the only thing rangers have ever gotten after launch in an mmo. If you made a ranger, you’re a glutton for punishment, so you might as well suck up a crappy Elite, it was destiny.
I kind of feel sorry for anyone that cares that much. The game has no competitive community, it’s just a shark tank. It’s also blindingly easy and hard to understand why people need to put so much into it. You can faceroll 2/3 the players with level 20 gear. Whatever.
You have a gambling problem. =/ GW2 is a casino with an mmo-backdrop and a few easy world battles to keep people buying dress-up toys.
There is 0 value in any of those items. How much time do you spend looking at anyone else in the game? Just yourself.
Im beginning to think that luck is being used as a carrot for the gem shop and a currency sink, but regardless, you sir, are 100% right, it is the most moronic system I’ve banged my head against in GW2 yet.
simple fix: all resulting luck is immediately applied to account on salvage instead of converting to various luck denominations. It already produces an icon and you can check the progress under achievements.
since launch of gw2, I have gotten 4. Since the “buff” 0, this is anets money we are talking about, they prolly only raised it 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000001%
Ahhhhh. But I think you’re missing something. What happens next after a few keys drop for Mr Average Player?
Let’s say they did raise it substantially. Let’s say the Mr Average Player who hasn’t been buying keys and didn’t do key runs now gets one key a month as a drop. Some time passes. One day he looks and he has 6 or 7 scraps. All he needs is a bit more and he could have a shiny new weapon skin. What can he do to get those last few scraps?
He could do key runs but at one a week it will take him around 2-3 months to get 3 or 4 more scraps. If he wants to get those last few scraps in a timely manner, he will need to buy keys. If keys drop more frequently but not too often then ANet gets key purchases from people who do not ordinarily buy.
Ive opened a decent amount of chests via key runs and levelling (and chests yielding another key) and the first I’ve ever heard of a “scrap” or “ticket” was last week when they nerfed key runs. Never seen the drop, didn’t know vendor existed. I did get a cheaper node once but nothing else but useless boosters and merchants.
Where did “Mr. Average Player” that doesn’t do key runs or buy keys… get enough keys to even get ONE scrap?!
I find it very counter-intuitive that the interface resets when changing category.
Please consider making the filter choices permanent until “RESET” is clicked and/or the entire BLTC window is closed.
ie: if I choose “Mesmer” “80” “Exotic” then I think I should be able to click any category and get results that fit, or allow me to further edit the filter at will, without a hard reset of the entire filter pop-up after every click of main list (it’s easy to click just below filter window when going fast and get a reset just from that)
Just re-gearing one character requires resetting the filters up to 20 times, when it could be as simple as running thru the main categories by slot once you’ve set filter. Isn’t that the goal? I literally have no idea how some of these heavy traders put up with it.
Thanks for listening. =)
Let me see if I understand this…
you want chest farming, or chest farming maps, or the LFG tool, one or all, nerfed or changed…
even though… literally…
both types of people get their cake
and get to eat it too…
…over and over all day
…because you have to look at LFG for 15 seconds to get EXACTLY where you want to be?
Am I understanding this correctly?!
The future of GW2 is “lock down the game to force f2p people to spend $.” Enjoy.
You aren’t using the gem store as intended to access all content…
If by “turn down” you mean “add more and more particles per armor/weapon/skill slot every month with little to no optimization” you’re in for a treat!
Seriously, though, on my main pc I run ultra+inspector at 32Xsgssaa but on a big monitor it’s lovely. On the 3 other devices I play GW2 on at times, it’s very harsh. I do think that if there was an easy solution that it would have been implemented by now.
Selfish people will literally invent ways to be selfish if all other avenues are removed.
This post is a great example…