Guild Wars 2

Atonement.8021:

I would personally love to see Tengu introduced but with everything seeming to point towards a Crystal Desert focused expansion (time will tell), I don’t think it’s likely for the next expansion unfortunately.

However to all those saying that a new race probably isn’t worth the effort – you can point to a number of other MMOs on the market where they are one of the most central selling points of a new xpac. There is a lot that feeds off from a new race and it’s a pretty huge pull to bring in previous gw2 players to at least try something new.

I agree. HoT had it’s selling points, a totally new mechanics never seen in game like gliding, new class or specializations. This time they can not go with specializations alone, because those are not new anymore, so they’re introducing mounts (according to leaks). I get it, expansion or its features haven’t been even announced yet, so I’m only speculating. It could even turn out that mounts are a little small feature usefull only on a few occasions. But…

Every expansion needs to have something totally new, because of marketing reasons alone. Mounts used to be big “no no, we have waypoints” before, but now it seems they are introducing them. One way or another. Why? In my opinion, it’s just a way to increase sales, nothing more. I doubt they’ll change out gameplay too much. So, how long before Anets is left out without ideas and introduce new race. We have raids already. We’ll have mounts. What’s next? Player housing seems viable, of course, but if GW2 stays long enough, we’ll should get new race eventually.

@Trevor Boyer.6524
I’ve seen my share of hell:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Anet-we-need-to-talk/first#post6529458

But I was honest to myself, I changed class to unfamiliar one and probably that was the reason.
Of course, that’s my experience, but I’ve seen way too many people failing to say the whole truth.

From my experience, there’s no such a big difference between gold and platinum players. I fought platinum players myself and, to be honest, there wasn’t such a big skill difference to me. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, like always. A very few times I encountered pvp gods that played truly spectacular, but I couldn’t say they were only on enemy side, no. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes I don’t, but I can’t complaint that I’m getting matched with terrible teammates. Enemy has terrible players too, so I focus on them…

I get it, that on higher ranked levels, your loss starts to cost a lot. But! It goes both ways. There’s only one 1st place, so the higher you go, the more costly the loss should be. It couldn’t work differently. Every player has the same chance to be matched horribly, so you must be really exceptional to stay high. And this is how it’s supposed to be. And even if you do get a perfect matching, you have to rememeber human factor. A little a sneeze and you might drop in ranking. There’s not really a lot a dev could do here.

Also, one little note, builds do matter. Even the highly skilled players could get matched against the team with same classes but different builds and get blown away, just because they were countered. For example, as a power engie I avoid cond engies, because they melt me to fast…

In short, it fine! At least for me.

I’m rank 47, mid gold, EU player. Mediocre player. I usually play just a few games a day. And for some reason, this season, almost every match is a nail-biter, ending at least 500 – 400+. A lot of games ended in such a way, that in retrospect – if I hadn’t screwed that one time, we would have won. Lately, I’m kind of wishing for a few blow-outs, because matches like this tend to become too stressful.

And I really don’t get it, why there are so many complaints about the match-making? Is it because you are not winning more than 50%? But that’s kind of how match-making is supposed to work, doesn’t it? For every game you win, 5 guys lose. And if you are not climbing up, well, maybe you are not THAT good?

I rarely get matched with rage-quiters. In fact, in my last game, only two raged if I recall corectly (one from my team and one from opponents). Is it because I always stick to the last second and I’m getting matched with the people like me?

What I’m trying to say is: are you, those who complain, being really honest with your complaints? Maybe your teammate dced just because you dced a few games ago? Maybe you are really not the sharpest knife in your team after all? I had one temamate who told me “to delete” after a close loss I’m partly responsible of. Well, we got matched against each other next game and I “deleted” him from that game. In my experience, the guy who complains the most is the guy least usefull.

My point is, are we really reasonable with all the complaints or we’re just being salty, because, you know, we lost a match or two and for some reason it’s someone else’s fault.

Edit: grammar

Vayne.8563:

Darknicrofia.2604:

Vayne.8563:

Vegeta.2563:

heh, half expansion Mike. Yeah this should be interesting :P

I don’t know, missing legendary armor, so far, and a bit over half the legendary weapons. The only other thing even mentioned was Fractal Leaderboards. Everything else was delivered, so I’m not sure why people think that’s half.

Aside from that, I think Mo is doing a good job with the game. I agree he’s made some tough decisions, but I’m pretty sure tough decisions had to be made.

The real poof either way, will be the next expansion.

For all we know the rest of the legendary weapons and legendary armor might have been already released and we just don’t know it yet because Mo refuses to say kitten to build hype.

Sure, but that’s not relevant to what I’m saying. It’s far far more than half of what they announced. Probably over 90% of it.

You must admit, 92% expansion Mike doesn’t sound as cool as half expansion Mike.

I had such a losing streak as well (in fact, you could still find my picture in forums).

What I learned from it, is that, if you see another thief or mesmer in your group, you should switch to something more tanky. The moment I started doing that, my groups started to feel more well balanced.

I understand that you probably want to score some wins as a mesmer, but sometimes getting a win on something else, may bring a luck back to you.

choovanski.5462:

did you offend a witch as a child? you could be cursed!

please try & find out, i am very concerned for your safety.

To be honest, I was cursed by a gypsy on my friend’s wedding but that was like two or three years ago

Is this supposed to happen? (See attachment)
I had two wins in a row just before this “unlucky” streak. I accidentally even joined unranked on one occasion and guess what, still lost.
Thing is, I get a feeling that we’re going to lose even before the match starts, just by looking at the team composition.

To be fair, I changed from my main class to get an achievement for legendary backpiece, but seriously, is there no way that I could get one more fair win (just won 4vs5 recently, yay)?

Nana.9512:

It’s sad, how this (and almost every other raid threat) strays off topic to a “We want raids gone/nerfed/easy mode…” against “Don’t take our raiding fun away from us by nerfing it”.
I believe there would be much less of this discussion, if there were new content for the “casual” players. But since raids are almost the only content for several month, it seems, they’re just the perfect target to complain about.

Well, back to the actual topic, which I believe is the future population of raids.
I think with new content releases like LS3 it’s likely, that a lot of people will focus on this for some time and probably raid less. They might however return to raiding when there is a lack of content again.
I also believe, that most of the current raides will still try to kill all or as many bosses as possible each week. I can’t really imagine new pve content to take away much of the raiding population, but I might be wrong there.
The bigger problem imo might be future raids. As mentioned, with more bosses, it might be more difficult to find a group doing a specific boss. However, since raids are the only way to get legendary armor (till now) many people will want to get their max LI each week and will therefore continue raiding.

Thank you, decent poster!
I would only add a little worry that some of the raid bosses will eventually be cheesed (looking at you mossman). People would hop in, do the easy boss and forget about the other ones.

Dinosaurs.8674:

This is particular is pretty insane. If people in your community are so cutthroat that they are willing to give up friends to get into a raid group I would say without hesitation that it is a bad community. You’re saying that someone who would do that is only bad because raids encourage it? I have plenty of friends that are god awful at raids and I still enjoy raiding with them because they’re my friends. If we have friends who need clears and our group is full we just get them clears later in the week, or someone drops to let them in. We do this because we’re good people and we genuinely want to be helpful. Honestly if random guildies even say they need X kill in ts then we will probably help them get it lol. There’s no tension about getting into this group or that because the raiding community is full of helpful people.

So, you’re basically saying that you need to be extra nice in order to avoid tension in guild. You need to step back in order for a friend to succeed. That’s the same thing that I’m saying, only the other end of the same stick. Because you can only be extra nice fort a short time. Long term it’s always the average nice, that’s how people are – average.

Dominik.5162:

Nothing will happen, you will leave and others will come, not a lot of people will be sad about it. I certainly wont.

No, multiple tiered difficulty will just make the raiders sad that their content, that they have fought for (for years), to get trivialized and devalued.
Not everything needs to adjust to the players, sometimes players have to adjust to the difficulty of content.
And this is one (the only) of these cases.
Enough people wanna see more of this way of development.

Except it will happen if this raid bashing trend continues. People were asking for a harder content (not necessarily raids, just harder content) for a long time and now they got raids. Why can’t this work via versa?

More than enough people want raids gone or at least adjusted.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Blaeys.3102:

I don’t think anyone can say, with a straight face, that raids haven’t split the GW2 community considerably.

I would say it hasn’t. People argue about it on the forums here a lot, but forums tend to show opinions from the poles rather than the center. Based on my encounters outside of this setting I would say that most players probably just don’t care either way. They certainly don’t care enough to post here about it.

Blaeys.3102:

I do not think raids are a bad idea, but I do not like that fracturing of the community. Extending the raid experience to include a more casual experience (which is more than just a tour of a cleared instance) is the best way to mend that rift.

The only other option I see is to abandon raiding altogether, and I don’t think many people really want that.

Again, this is my opinion – but it is coming from someone who sees this first hand. I have been playing since the first beta weekend, I am the guild leader for a guild numbering more than 100 active players (roster is closer to 400, but I see about 100-150 logging in weekly). We have several ally guilds, ranging in size from 10 up to 400+. Despite the size of this community, we remain a tight knit group. We do have multiple groups that raid every week – and enjoy them (I lead one group and fill in as leader for another myself). But we also have a large number of players getting disheartened and feeling left out of both guild and game activities – and that is the heart of the problem with raids, imo.

I think that saying raids are causing players to feel left out is overgeneralizing what is a more specific problem. I too am in a large guild with many raid groups, and I haven’t seen anyone be “left out” – we make a conscious effort to get newer people into raids and set them up with static groups. However, what has changed is that raids are taking priority over other content. We get lower turnout for guild events because of scheduling conflicts, or because people just want to raid instead. The popularity of raids has certainly has impacted turnout for large-scale group events that we do, and I can see how people might be upset by that, but it isn’t dividing our guild and it certainly isn’t making people feel left out.

If you’re meaning that people in your guild are feeling left out of raids even while your guild has multiple successful raid groups then that isn’t a problem with the raids. That’s a problem with either the raiders not making an effort to help guildies or the non-raiders not making an effort to be included.

Blaeys.3102:

Raiding is the biggest divisive factor ever introduced into this game – but it is because of the exclusive nature of raiding and reliance on the meta. They need to fix that – and I believe (based on my experience leading a large GW2 community) that a tiered difficulty model is the only way to do that short of abandoning the idea of raiding altogether.

This is gross exaggeration. Especially with you being in a large guild…if raiding is feeling too “exclusive” for some of your members then why not teach them to raid? And if they are unwilling to learn then raiding just isn’t for them. And really “reliance on the meta” come on man…as someone leading a raid group you should know this is BS. Do you remember the ridiculous comps people were using for their first kills on VG? When people barely understood subsquads? We were all garbage back then and still managed to make it work with ridiculously bad comps. The “meta” is made by players for players, it has nothing to do with the content itself, and following it or not is up to the discretion of the players.

I’ve said before that I don’t think tiered raid content is a bad idea but all this stuff about raids being more divisive than any other content ever is BS. People within your guild being excluded by raids is BS. You want your guildies to not feel left out? They’re not being left out by raids, they’re being left out by other players.

Raids does actually make people feel left out. Because you can’t take everyone who to raid to your 10 man squad. Because can’t take two chronos, since you only need one. Because you can’t take a break from a game, since your spot in a raid squad will be taken. You could argue with details here, but point stands, raids does indeed produce tension in guilds.

Not players, raids. Players are always the same. There are no good or bad communities. Game’s mechanics is the deciding factor if your community will be friendly or not. GW2 was making the content which encouraged cooperation. I love the game for that. Raids does encourage cooperation, but also competitiveness among guildmates. Because you want to be taken to the raid squad, not the guy you used to call friend.

Vinceman.4572:

We were running dungeons, that were harder at the beginning at least.

We were running fractals, that were harder too before HoT.

And we made our own challenges, be it speed clear tournaments (btw. with more viewers than the PvP tournament ^^), be it solo/duo/trio running and some were playing PvP and WvW with great success.

Plus, we have had several threads about players that came from other games just for joining the GW2 community to play the raids.

One special thing is that the combat system of GW2 is a really good one and it was disappointing to see that it was only used for content in which you don’t have to use it all the way because you simply press 1 and you are successful.

I believe that’s what people had in mind when they were asking for harder content. Melting world or dungeon boss in 5 seconds is hardly fun. They started to fix that issue (Tequatl for example), but for some reason stopped in the middle and shifted they focus. Dungeons are completely abandoned by developers and raids are now a thing. From one extreme to the other and people are still complaining…

Vinceman.4572:

And just one single thing according to your “raiders have more content released”: Most raiders just want to raid but they also had to do map explore and get the masteries. While I am not complaining about that, there are raiders who got offended by this. Additionally, raiders are less interested in the LS3, so next big update will give the casual more content released – much more the raiders got with their 3 wings.

Most raiders just want to raid? Ok, just to get this clear, how can there be people only interested in raids?

Game launched in August 2012, raids only in November 2015. What “most of the raiders” where doing for 3 years? Played a game they don’t like? Or played some other game and only joined recently? And they are already offended? It’s like coming to the vegan restaurant and complaining that there’s no meat in there ^^

Reading this got me thinking “so this is the fun raids provide?”

You had to do research (read guides, watch videos), learn some dude’s rotation, try for 2 days, fail, watch some videos again, on the 3rd day basically beg for a raid spot, fail a few times again, only then get your first VG kill and you call yourself somewhat lucky?

This is one of the saddest stories I’ve read in a while. How can anyone call this a “beautiful story” or a “raid success story”?

I get it, the fun part is to achieve something, but c’mon, after this, the biggest prize in raiding would be to never do this again.

Vinceman.4572:

Well and Bobby said that those assisting people weren’t an issue to prevent LS3 from being released at the time they are going for.
This was the doubt people had because they persisted on the assumption that raids lead to content drought for all casuals and that is 0.0% true.

I never stated nor tried to prove that.

Despite the official statements, the reality is that LS3 is still not released. Raids are. People will look for a scapegoat, so raids are naturally taking all the heat.

What is more, LS3 eventually should be released. When that happens, player population should increase, since a bunch of players (me including) are not logging in so often during content draughts. If everything goes right, people will enjoy LS3 but raids will still remain their thorn in a side as the end content they want to do, but for various reasons can’t. If the lore in LS3 continues the storyline of raids, expect even more heat put on raids.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0nwad9?context=10000

That’s what I meant saying that raid team “borrows” other people. Please, close this case. And apologize for making me look.

Vinceman.4572:

No need to turn my words to your favour!
I’m fine with discussing and also speculations as long as they are kind of rational and well thought. But if a company said “No” several times and there are no indications that the reality is “Yes” there is no need to bring out untrue things and also pretending these untrue things were confirmed to be true only to cater to your argumentation.

What seems irrational to you? That PR tries to translate only the best to the public? Or that raid team borrows more people from other departments?
On what account did company said NO several times? And even if they did actually say something, it’s still vague enough to interpret it in many ways. What I’m saying is, contrary to your statement, even if there are YES or NOES from time to time, they still leave a huge grey area for people to discuss and speculate.

Please, for once, don’t stray off topic telling people how to discuss, I really hate when discussion goes this way.

Vinceman.4572:

There is no “connecting the dots”, he was just coming up with something he doesn’t know. We all don’t know and so we should stop any speculation and take it for an argument that is supporting the own discussion strategy or goal.
It’s more than iniquitous, it’s cheap and not the right way to lead a proper argumentation!

You should also stop talking about “believe” because we all don’t know anything more like we are told. Of course, you can follow your own conspiracy theories but I’d rather accept the statements that sound legit and true to me instead of building something into it because I have weird reasons to do so.

And your statement about more working on raids is just plain wrong. Anet already adressed that. Sure, musicians and some other employees are connected with the raid team but that’s not what’s stopping or slowing the release of other content.
Again, please stop making things up you don’t know and speculate about things while we have clear statements from the company, ty.

Make me!
Like it or not, forums are there for people to discuss and speculate. If you don’t like this, you should only read “Dev tracker” page.

Vinceman.4572:

2. Colin hasn’t “lost” his job. He left for reasons. You can read, just google it.

3. Anet isn’t ignoring the majority of players. The majority of players got HoT, a nice Q2-Update and will get the LS3 soon.
Raids weren’t developed while other content was paused. All three wings belong to the expansion, they just weren’t released at HoT-launch. The raiding team consists of 6 people while the overwhelming majority (more than hundred) is working on the LS3 and the next expansion.
Raids are a niche, a really really small one but with a constant playerbase. We have been demanding for content like that since 3 years and now we’ve gotten it while the huge part of the game is still not challenging at all.
So, please don’t speak about a focus on raids or anything like that if you are simply missinformed.

A little bit off topic, but from PR stand point no one is ever fired. PR would let you believe that everyone working in the company is happy and smiles all the time.
So, no matter if he was kicked out of his office or just really decided to get closer to his family, the official statement would still be about the family.
What we really know is that HoT was not universal acclaim in the community and game director leaves shortly after the launch. You can’t blame the guy for connecting the dots by saying that Colin lost his job and, for what we know, he could be right.

What is more, MO takes over and sees such a state of the game that he officially cancels the legendary production and even addresses the “half expansion” and “fighting fires” thing. Before that, just like you, I believed that raids were finished at launch and only held back a little, but, seeing how some of the promised legendaries were not even started to produce, I’m not so sure now.

About the raid team consisting on 6 people, we already know that they “borrow” people for the raid team in order to produce content. What we don’t know, how much and how often the raid team is being “assisted” by those people. The fact is, that there are way more people working on raids and we don’t know the numbers. By this logic, we might as well say that Colin produced HoT alone, only with the help of a few programers, artists or composers.

On the topic, seeing how there’s a constant stream of complaints about the raids, I’m expecting a few changes coming to the raids.

I believe that they feel so good about what they are going to deliver, that hey can afford to be silent ant even a little smug about it.
So, I am so hyped about the future update, that if they’ll to impress me, I’ll be all out rage mode on forums. Just watch me.

Walhalla.5473:

As long as we don’t get Things like WoW LFR ( Biggest Mistake of Blizzard in Terms of Raiding ) and as long as Anet is learning from every Encounter they create, I see a good Future for Raiding in GW2. Right now they are just scratching the Surface on what is possible and with more Experience they go deeper and deeper and we get more complicated and unique Bosses.

I’ve read a little about LFR raids in WoW and it doesn’t seem such a bad idea (on paper at least). Could you elaborate why puggable raids that prepares people for higher tiers is such a big mistake?

Rashy.4165:

The raid team has pretty good momentum. I don’t see them slowing down anytime soon, and expect to see the second raid soon. The target is one wing every 3.5 months or so, and we’re about a month after Forsaken Thicket has been completed. I’m personally expecting a raid with LS3 to tie in with the open world and story content.

Look for dedicated raiding guilds looking to fill out static teams. r/guildrecruitment is a good place to look. The one I’m in right now does frequent learning raids to get people familiar with mechanics and to spot the fast learners to get into static teams for quicker clears.

And this is what worries me. New raid wing every 3.5 months or so, means older raid wings gets more irrelevant.

First of, I must admit that I belong to the group of players that don’t like raiding or even the idea of raids in GW2

However, since it’s THE high end PVE content at the moment in GW2, I feel obliged to clear that content. I am video game player and that’s what I do, I clear content. Right now I’m back in game after a long time since I was really disappointed with the HoT and the developers curent game direction in general. My guild is dead, the few friends that I had are offline, but I kind of expected that so never mind.

I main as a mesmer, but since usually there’s only one needed in raid squad I’m building condition necro as an alternative. Slowly. And I begin to wonder, in what state the raids will be by the time I finish making my necro.

At the moment, raids are the only time worthy content being released, so I would say, raids are at the peak of their popularity right now and yet, I still struggle finding group. However, LS3 is on its way. If they won’t put the final nail in the coffin (from my point of view), the expansion is coming too. Will raids be even relevant by that time? Harder content is more likely to be abandoned as the time goes by and getting raid group should only be harder to find.

So, more content in the future means less raiding population. And more raid wings means stretching the remaining population even more. Will the older raids be nerfed for more people to attend them? Or the LS3 and expansion will be soon good, that more people will return to/join the game and raids will always be full of squads doing them?

TheNecrosanct.4028:

I’m not asking for proof. We all perceive what we perceive. Personally I have seen responses and complaints about Raids in GW2 the moment they announced it would be a feature of HoT, and not a few either. Because the term Raid is kind of a loaded term, and what it usually implies is not something a lot of people in GW2 like, because the game is/was (debatable, but not here) oriented to casuals. But it depends on where you look what you see.

But yes, the division has been there longer. It was the same in the old dungeon days. Speed clears and “elitist” runs against pugging, playing how you like and just having fun. With neither side realizing that fun is subjective and one shouldn’t force one’s own perception of what’s fun on someone else, who has his/her own perception of it. Perhaps Raids have made that clash more visible than the dungeon meta did, because Raids actually do have prerequisites which you have to meet our you will fail. Dungeons don’t have that. Whatever you take inside will eventually clear that dungeon, but that’s not the case with Raids. The fact that there’s story involved and the casual players don’t get to see that incites them even more, understandably. ANet’s reassurance that they will not be left out and LS3 will fill in any gaps for people who have never set foot in the Forsaken Thicket doesn’t seem to help. The fact that it has rewards only obtainable by successfully clearing the Raid also doesn’t help. There are plenty of rewards in GW2 tied to specific content, but as long as it’s within reach of the majority it’s all fine.

And this is a logical response from a community of a casual oriented game. But MMO’s attract more than just those kinds of people and for it to be successful it has to cater to all people. And with that you’ll have to accept that not everything they do will be of your liking. But that’s only because not everything is meant for everyone. I don’t see that being any different in any other MMO. And then comes out the argument that ANet wants to be innovative and do things their own way, not the traditional way, and so shouldn’t do things like Raids and gate specific rewards behind it.

So yes, in general terms I do feel this debate has been going on for years now. The content focused on is different, but the same arguments are being used by the same general groups of people. And it’s the Internet, so they can throw in any attitude they want because, “Whatever”. Raids will not destroy the GW2 community. And it didn’t create a divide, it only inflammated an already existing one. That is what I have perceived.

Well, as you said it yourself, raids haven’t really helped in bringing the community together. And that’s my point, divide grows way bigger.

TheNecrosanct.4028:

Manthas.6234:

Doesn’t matter if you are pro or against raids, right or wrong, you have to admit that they created one of the biggest community divide in GW2 history.

Nope. Just nope. That division has been there for a very long time already. The problem isn’t Raids, it’s the lack of sympathy and empathy from one group (the so-called elitists) to the other (the so-called casuals). People who Raid are glad that GW2 now also offers some content that challenges their skills. People who don’t Raid feel left out and that’s never a good feeling. But this game has so much to offer, and all the “casual” content is still there. I don’t where this feeling of entitlement comes from, but it’s misguided. No, you don’t have to do everything that’s in the game. Nobody is entitled to any and all parts of the game being catered to their specific needs. If you don’t like Raids or don’t have the skill to do it, then don’t. LS3 will fill in the story gaps and besides that there is plenty in the game that is suitable for the “I play however I want” way. ANet is not making this game for any one person. They’re making it for all of us, so they have to keep as many of us happy as they can. About 10 to 15% of the game’s population plays Raids, which is a hell of a lot more than any other MMO Raids. These people would’ve been gone. And while some people might have been happy about that, they don’t see how that can come back and bite them in the kitten . Be glad ANet also caters to the more hardcore players. The bigger the community, the better. The only real problem is that people forgot how to be nice to each other, to respect everyone for who they are and what they can do, not berate them for what they’re not and can’t do.

Was there? As far I as can remember, most of the people agreed that GW2 needed more challenging content. Even when the raids were announced people welcomed the news. Only WHEN the raids came out, some people realised that they are not really like some of those ‘casuals’ have originaly envisioned.

Yes, some people may have shared their concerns earlier, but you can’t really compare those few to the posters against raids coming and going for a half a year or more. That’s why I used the key phrase ‘one of the biggest’. And before you ask me to prove my statements, yes, I only base them on my personal observations.

Doesn’t matter if you are pro or against raids, right or wrong, you have to admit that they created one of the biggest community divide in GW2 history.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Miellyn.6847:

The effort for new legendary weapons is much higher than just weapon skins or gliders.

I refuse to believe that anyone actually believes this statement.

Sure a legendary does indeed require more effort than a gemstore skin to create…. there is no disputing that. …but saying the effort is much higher is an awfully generous statement.

Look at the rate at which gemstore weapon/glider skins are released… the sheer amount of them…. and then tell me honestly that it would take that much more effort to add footprints.

The only thing I can agree with as far as effort required is concerned is the precursor collection. …but it can’t be that hard to copy and paste one of the other precursor collection structures, and alter the requirements/quests.

Probably a one-man job if he gives it his full attention for a day…. but lets be generous and give him a week.

I actually believe that designing the scavenger hunt part was the biggest problem in legendary creation. While model designing is relatively easy, getting all those events to work was probably too hard for designers. A shame really and it won’t pass as an excuse to me, BUT comparing legendaries and gemstore skins doesn’t really work here.

Yeah, I’m kind of sorry for bringing e-sports into this discussion, my bad.

All I wanted to say was is, that if a game developer needs to defend his decision by saying “it works fine/helps a lot”, something is clearly not that good.
It’s understandable, that decision might have a rough start and developers may want to give it some time to work. And raids kind of must work, since I doubt that Anet has any more room left for another change of focus.

To some people: learn the difference between PvP and e-sports.

TexZero.7910:

Manthas.6234:

TexZero.7910:

Manthas.6234:

Sarrs.4831:

Manthas.6234:

A few scouts enter the game with no raids, demand them to be added, get them, all the raiders invade, clear them in a week, leave the game for another one with no raids.

Only now I understand that raiders are raiders in a much more literal sense.

Raids are contributing to player retention.

Put that in the corner with e-sports.

Which still retains more players than Silverwaste, so what are you actually trying to prove ?

Prove? Nothing.
Just been here long enough to see, that you can’t always trust developer’s word.

Sure, but i can trust the developers word more than a blind cynic. They have the numbers, they’ve shared said numbers. More than anything any forum warrior certainly has done. So please get me number, or get me a dev you find worthy until then, i know which statement has more weight.

Do not try to bring developer’s word as an argument in a game, where developers themselves said that they’ll be talking less and doing more, since their words and promises have backfired more times than I’m willing to count. Don’t do that and you won’t be met with blind cynicism.

TexZero.7910:

Manthas.6234:

Sarrs.4831:

Manthas.6234:

A few scouts enter the game with no raids, demand them to be added, get them, all the raiders invade, clear them in a week, leave the game for another one with no raids.

Only now I understand that raiders are raiders in a much more literal sense.

Raids are contributing to player retention.

Put that in the corner with e-sports.

Which still retains more players than Silverwaste, so what are you actually trying to prove ?

Prove? Nothing.
Just been here long enough to see, that you can’t always trust developer’s word.

Sarrs.4831:

Manthas.6234:

A few scouts enter the game with no raids, demand them to be added, get them, all the raiders invade, clear them in a week, leave the game for another one with no raids.

Only now I understand that raiders are raiders in a much more literal sense.

Raids are contributing to player retention.

Put that in the corner with e-sports.

Sarrs.4831:

Manthas.6234:

So, no raids at launch -> raiders won’t enter GW2. Why would they enter now?

Because you don’t understand raiders.

A few scouts enter the game with no raids, demand them to be added, get them, all the raiders invade, clear them in a week, leave the game for another one with no raids.

Only now I understand that raiders are raiders in a much more literal sense.

Sarrs.4831:

Rednik.3809:

They are F2P now, but still remaining pretty dead.

Because people either enter MMOs at launch or soon after launch, at an expansion launch or soon after expansion launch, or not at all.

No WS expansion on the books at all. They wasted their opportunity at launch with their pricing model and now the game’s toast.

So, no raids at launch → raiders won’t enter GW2. Why would they enter now?

randomguy.1283:

Manthas.6234:

IndigoSundown.5419:

• On Alienating a demographic: how about the people who like hard instanced content? Aren’t they a demographic?

Problem is, GW2 was never about hard instanced content. There are plenty of other games offering that and there was no reason to cater that demographic. (Of course, falling sales might have been the reason).

randomguy.1283:

“I don’t find pvp fun and anet said this game would be fun so clearly it doesn’t belong in this game.”

^ your argument against raids

PvP was always there, raids have only been added recently. Your argument is invalid.

By that logic anet should never add anything new to the game. Do you guys even read your own posts?

" there was no reason to cater that demographic" Other than you know, that catering to people is the entire point of selling a game.

Not every new thing fits to the demographic you are catering. And you can’t fulfill everyone’s need, you have to choose your customer.

My logic is: add new things, but stick to the original formula or rebrand.

IndigoSundown.5419:

• On Alienating a demographic: how about the people who like hard instanced content? Aren’t they a demographic?

Problem is, GW2 was never about hard instanced content. There are plenty of other games offering that and there was no reason to cater that demographic. (Of course, falling sales might have been the reason).

randomguy.1283:

“I don’t find pvp fun and anet said this game would be fun so clearly it doesn’t belong in this game.”

^ your argument against raids

PvP was always there, raids have only been added recently. Your argument is invalid.

Rising Dusk.2408:

For those asking for the current legendary armor to be made more accessible, ANet will not be doing that (I can say this safely).

You say that like Anet had never changed their policy before.

Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Vayne.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Manthas.6234:

It’s really easy to understand the posts you quote, since those 6 developers managed to produce more content than the rest of the company.

Raids are not more content than the entire rest of Heart of Thorns. Think of the other things that came with the expansion what you will, the HoT maps took far more effort than raids did due to their sheer size, interactions, and the scripting involved. It only seems like raids are a lot of content because the raid wing releases are staggered and didn’t all come out with HoT.

I was talking about the content post HoT release, since, you know, HoT came 5 months ago.
HoT is a thing of the past, we should be moving forward already, but we’re still waiting for additions which were promised to be on HoT.

Coulter.2315:

1) Join a raid guild (remember you can be member of multiple guilds), I log in at raid time and access it within a few minutes.
2) No one can control the rate at which you feel you achieve things.
3) I have no idea what to say to this, it demands the entire game is balanced around your feelings (are you asking nothing that you cannot achieve can exist??)
4) I completely understand this point, I was surprised how late it seems LS3 is coming (from the AMA). I am looking forward to some more content too, but the raid has been brilliant so give plenty of thumbs up to the raid team at Anet.
5) I agree again.

I think your dissatisfaction at no new content for you is causing you to want to drag content designed for others to you, I understand the feeling but it should be fought against. I would suggest starting positive threads asking for more content designed for you rather than trying to warp raids.

Wing 2 was excellent btw (2nd boss a bit meh) and I really appreciate what Anet have done with the raid in general, lots of variety in mechanics and cannot wait for more (such excitement on TS after seeing a teaser of what might be next).

You see, the thing is, I don’t want to change my playstyle and as I mentioned before, core GW2 used to satisfy all of my needs. I view raids as an invader to the playstyle I adore and I believe they don’t have a place in GW2 as they are at the moment.

You could say, that I am selfish perhaps. But from my point of view, raids came here to my perfect game and messed it up.

Absurdo.8309:

Manthas.6234:

Absurdo.8309:

Youd.1375:

Instead of nitpicking on moot points, let’s look at some real things.

1. This discussion exists, and it’s big.
2. There’s a growing “us vs them” mentality.

Doesn’t matter in which camp you are, or if you’re neutral – the problem exists no matter how you try to argue for or against it. So let’s talk about solutions instead of arguing about who’s right or wrong.

The solution that raiders propose is to get better at raids. And that, in my opinion, is the correct answer. I believe anyone, with enough practice, can beat the raids.

The problem is that the other side refuses. So we are at an impasse.

Can you imagine how ridiculous the non-raiders would sound if their reasoning was applied to legendary weapons? Consider the world completion requirement. Someone says: “I hate open world pve. It takes too much time to complete maps, and it’s boring.” Your response would be: “Then maybe you shouldn’t be going for a legendary weapon!”

The same reasoning applies here. If you can’t put in the time to learn raids, then maybe you shouldn’t be going for legendary armor.

And there is no statistical advantage to legendary armor. You can have the best in slot gear without raiding.

Getting better at raids has nothing to do with the issue presented. Wasting time while waiting for your raid group to fill in, only to get interrupted by your loving family, is more of the problem presented here. Your solution?

If you can’t find an hour to raid in a week, then perhaps it’s not for you. I would suggest fractals or dungeons.

Not everyone has the same scheduling problems as you. And it’s ok if you can’t commit the time to raid. GW2 offers a variety of content for a variety of players. Please don’t ask that all content cater to your particular situation.

A few points:

• pre HoT I used to be able to access every game mode in a matter of minutes;
• every minute in those game modes felt like I am achieving something;
• feeling that I could achieve everything is important;
• for the past 5 month no new content except raid wings;
• getting new things to do is important.

Absurdo.8309:

Youd.1375:

Instead of nitpicking on moot points, let’s look at some real things.

1. This discussion exists, and it’s big.
2. There’s a growing “us vs them” mentality.

Doesn’t matter in which camp you are, or if you’re neutral – the problem exists no matter how you try to argue for or against it. So let’s talk about solutions instead of arguing about who’s right or wrong.

The solution that raiders propose is to get better at raids. And that, in my opinion, is the correct answer. I believe anyone, with enough practice, can beat the raids.

The problem is that the other side refuses. So we are at an impasse.

Can you imagine how ridiculous the non-raiders would sound if their reasoning was applied to legendary weapons? Consider the world completion requirement. Someone says: “I hate open world pve. It takes too much time to complete maps, and it’s boring.” Your response would be: “Then maybe you shouldn’t be going for a legendary weapon!”

The same reasoning applies here. If you can’t put in the time to learn raids, then maybe you shouldn’t be going for legendary armor.

And there is no statistical advantage to legendary armor. You can have the best in slot gear without raiding.

Getting better at raids has nothing to do with the issue presented. Wasting time while waiting for your raid group to fill in, only to get interrupted by your loving family, is more of the problem presented here. Your solution?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Beldin.5498:

I liked mostly all of the initial ideas from GW2. For me it is no longer great because
with HoT the shoved them all into the trashbin

Esquilax.3491:

I still have no idea why they’ve decided to drop the one design philosophy that made this game unique and drew in their initial audience (lots of open world friendly group content) in favour of adding more generic, elitist crap like raids.

Beldin.5498:

Next expansion will only consist of 10 new raid wings. Why new world content ?
You know what the raiders always say .. you can still play the old content.

These posts disturb me a lot because it tells me that there’s a sharp disconnect between what ANet is actually doing and what people like you think they’re doing. I will point out that there are four new maps released with Heart of Thorns intended for open world gamers, a whole new story that casual players got to enjoy, and that the only reason you’ve seen two raid updates so far is because the entire raid wasn’t available at HoT launch and they staggered it instead. They’re not suddenly transitioning their game to be about raiding; there aren’t even a half-dozen people making raids out of the 300+ working on Guild Wars 2 currently. You’re not forced to play raids, and if you seriously care about the story ANet made it so that you can enter a friend’s cleared raid instance, experience the whole story, and even replay any cinematics therein.

They haven’t dropped their casual-supporting philosophy, on the contrary they specifically stated from the get-go that the players who desire a challenge in-game (re: not elitists, just people who like a challenge) had poor retention and they wanted to add more end-game content. This is why things like raids were introduced, and why fractals were and continue to get revamped, and why the difficulty of the open-world HoT maps is marginally higher than other open world maps. This is not a departure from their original philosophy, simply an addition to it. Future expansion packs will feature new raids in addition to all of the open world events and maps that get added; Mike O Brien confirmed this both in the recent AMA and in the past before that.

Let’s not forget that they completely redid a world boss to be casual-friendly and more exciting than it used to be. The Shatterer update is a great example of ANet catering to the casual crowd, and that is the trend you should expect to see in Living Story 3 and forward (which will be coming later this year).

If you’re still upset even after having read this post, then I would suggest you look into managing your expectations appropriately. It’d sure be nice if every month they released a new open world map or something like that, but such a development schedule is unsustainable and ineffectual. You’ll get more things that cater to the type of player you are, you just need to be patient. And remember, you aren’t paying a subscription, so feel free to take a break and come back when the next expansion comes out. Playing GW2 and other games are not mutually exclusive endeavors by design.

It’s really easy to understand the posts you quote, since those 6 developers managed to produce more content than the rest of the company.

Youd.1375:

Instead of nitpicking on moot points, let’s look at some real things.

1. This discussion exists, and it’s big.
2. There’s a growing “us vs them” mentality.

Doesn’t matter in which camp you are, or if you’re neutral – the problem exists no matter how you try to argue for or against it. So let’s talk about solutions instead of arguing about who’s right or wrong.

I believe that the problem is way more global. Basically, it’s the direction the game is taking after HoT, since it’s quite different compared to the core game.

In my opinion, with the raids, GW2 is drifting towards the more classic style of MMO and this may be a huge problem for players, who wanted to escape from that style.

Having this in mind, it may be not possible to find a reasonable solution to this problem. And absence of any new content with exception of, yes, raid wings, is not really helping.

Vayne.8563:

Dibbelocher.2318:

Well a better game means more people who will buy the game or stay with the game to buy expansions. Also the content we got for the price of the expansion was quite scarce. Comparing it to the core game that is. So the demands I’m asking aren’t too out of place if you take that into consideration.

This is a logical fallacy.

I got an amazing deal for the first product, that as in development for five years. I got less of a good deal for an expansion which might have been in development for a year and a half.

I’ve never ever played an MMORPG where the expansion gave me more or even close to what the original gave me even if they charge a monthly fee and charge for the expansion.

This expansion, Anet said from day one was lighter on content, but it was building the building blocks of the future of the game. New expansions won’t take as long to come out and they’ll likely have more content.

I was happy to pay for the rebuilding of some of the game’s basic systems. I didn’t expect more content, because I was told up front I’d be getting less.

But saying this was a great deal so the new one isn’t worth it, even if it’s a better deal than most games I’d buy is a logical fallacy.

And yet, you present us with another logical fallacy.

A lot of those 5 years for the first product went into creating an engine for a game, combat mechanics and other thing you don’t really have to worry about when creating an expansion. A few tweaks, maybe, but not something from a scratch. So, it’s not really 5 years vs 1 year.

What is more, I would have been happy to receive at least 20% amount of content which was presented at original release. Since the discussion is about the skins, do the math yourself.

But ok, they are building blocks for future, it’s lighter on content, they told us that, we shouldn’t expect more, ok. But what about the things they told us to expect, like legendary armor, backpack? More than 3 months since the expansion came out and we still have only 3 new legendary weapons. Cmon, your expectations can’t be that low!

More on topic: yes, I believe agree with OP, more content should be added as in game rewards. And the argument about separate teams working on separate content doesn’t really hold much, since Anet is kind of responsible for all of those teams. Developers have all the power to manage their resources and at the moment, it seems that most of them go to cash shop.

Akijo.7395:

I’ve never seen as much people on map as now, maybe the people playing GW2 are too busy playing it to complain on the forum?

As the basic marketing suggests, for every vocally complaining user, x amount of users are leaving the product silently. In other words, the more threads of complains in forums, the less users in game.

However, with the expansion, Anet took a huge change of direction and some of those changes were not received well by veteran players (me including). So, while the change of direction may force some of the older player out, it may attract more new players as well. It is yet to be seen how the population balances out in the long run.

Serophous.9085:

Manthas.6234:

Seera.5916:

Not saying that your issue isn’t important (it definitely is and it needs to be fixed asap), but game developers who work on gem store updates are not the ones who fix the glitches and technical problems the game has.

Stop blaming a different team for the lack of progress a completely separate team is making on the issue.

I believe he considers Anet a one big team, which, in my opinion, is the right point of view.
Every company has different branches and it’s the management’s job to balance those branches. If you give too much resources to one branch while neglecting the other, than you’re not doing a good job, right?

Sure, but i’m not gonna yell at the short stop player who is doing his job when the first baseman missed the ball

The way I see it, no one is yelling at the baseman. I believe he blames the whole team for buying a superstar baseman and a rookie shortstop player.

Seera.5916:

Not saying that your issue isn’t important (it definitely is and it needs to be fixed asap), but game developers who work on gem store updates are not the ones who fix the glitches and technical problems the game has.

Stop blaming a different team for the lack of progress a completely separate team is making on the issue.

I believe he considers Anet a one big team, which, in my opinion, is the right point of view.
Every company has different branches and it’s the management’s job to balance those branches. If you give too much resources to one branch while neglecting the other, than you’re not doing a good job, right?

Heart of Thorns presented a little armor piece for every profession, which seems to fit a profession’s/specialization’s theme.
Revenant – crystal dragon’s head, of course!
Warrior – skull helm. Kind of obvious, harder to explain, but barbaric, wildish theme seems to be fitting.
Guardian – gloves with dragon’s head for a dragonhunter, of course!
Ranger – nature theme for druid, fits.
Engineer – face mask to keep face safe while engineering, why not?
Thief – some sort of ninja mask, keeps face hidden, seems fitting.
Necromancer – reaper’s hood for reaper, of course!
Elementalist – shoulder circle with lightning for tempest, seems fitting.
Mesmer – some sort of stylized birds for chronomancer? Cuckoo clock? Those shoulders seems to be more fitting the Ebonhawke theme, but not chronomancer. Am I missing something, does anyone have any ideas?

I vote with my wallet. Bought 0 outfits and at least 4 armor sets from cash shop.

Used to love the idea to no longer add armor sets on cash shop and present them as in game rewards. However, now it seems that they just stopped making armor skins all together. Really a shame.

Azukas.1426:

Fay.2357:

Azukas.1426:

Seriously everyone needs to stop thier kittening. Since June 23rd every big patch has made us top dog in this game.

Haha what?

Azukas.1426:

Think about the actual classes that are hurting (warrior/thief).

You mean the ones that are described as getting multiple substantial buffs in the preview?

I’m thinking your version of reality needs a second opinion.

No multiple substantial buffs were revealed. Stop with the drama. I mean someone stated that thieves will wreck us just by clicking on our names again….seriously they discussed buffing AAs….

The most alarming thing I saw was the buffing of necro/druid. Not feeling that but we’ll see.

So just cut it out and let’s see what happens.

I just hope that you won’t be the one saying, that no one gave a warning before the patch.

I get it, doomsayers are annoying, but I believe sharing those upcoming changes are actually meant to get some sort of feedback from community and see how it reacts. At least I hope so.