Guild Wars 2

I would rather have a list of tasks I must complete than have a grind or a farm. Even if it’s a long list.

This is a fantastic patch, I 100% agree. However, looking at it in context, it’s been what… almost a year since they released their xpac and now it’s playable? I hope this is a sign of a new direction and a blunder like this won’t happen again. I am hopeful, but cautiously optimistic.

Why is his complaint being trivialized? This is ridiculous, he has a point. Agree, or disagree, don’t just tell him “oh think of it another way.” The fact is he spent money on something that he could have gotten later for much less money. Kinda how I feel about heart of thorns… but I digress.

I personally don’t agree with him, but I won’t trivialize his argument.

Vayne.8563:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Consistency in a product. When you buy coca cola, you get coca cola. If you buy it again you get coca cola. Sometimes, they have different flavors. If you buy vanilla coke, it tastes like vanilla coke. Point is, coke never discontinues classic coke. They add flavors, and they give what’s advertised, but the core product doesn’t change.

Let me explain what is wanted: If something is advertised, we want what’s advertised. They need to seriously think about weather they should advertise what they can’t make. They also need a core product that is consistent. Core Guild Wars 2 hasn’t had any updates to what the base of it is.

Now while this is being done, we ALSO want new stuff. What is wanted is both, not one or the other. Is this unreasonable? maybe, but it’s what was advertised.

I think you should say I instead of we.

Raids were advertised, but I think it’s obvious many people don’t want them in the game at all.

I don’t think anyone would complain that raids were in the game if they also delivered on everything else.

Consistency in a product. When you buy coca cola, you get coca cola. If you buy it again you get coca cola. Sometimes, they have different flavors. If you buy vanilla coke, it tastes like vanilla coke. Point is, coke never discontinues classic coke. They add flavors, and they give what’s advertised, but the core product doesn’t change.

Let me explain what is wanted: If something is advertised, we want what’s advertised. They need to seriously think about weather they should advertise what they can’t make. They also need a core product that is consistent. Core Guild Wars 2 hasn’t had any updates to what the base of it is.

Now while this is being done, we ALSO want new stuff. What is wanted is both, not one or the other. Is this unreasonable? maybe, but it’s what was advertised.

Rising Blade.9206:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

As a GW lore buff, I could make a list of unfinished and abandoned story lines. However, I think I’ll hit the character limit. I think I’ll just make a short list of the most obvious ones.

- Eir took Magdaer from the catacombs of ascalon, then Eir dies, and nothing is done with Magdaer.

- In GW1 the Scepter of Orr was picked up by Livia, aaaaaaaannnnd nothing.

- The personal stories at the start of the game, the ones that are unique to each story line have loose endings, almost none of those have been explored; including but not limited to: The Sylvari from the Maguuma jungle, the feud between the human throne and the ministry, any of the asura inventions, the list goes on.

- Anything with the captains council the lion guard was surprisingly absent after they rebuilt lions arch during the mordremonth attack. I didn’t even see them, with their new ships, providing any relief. It’s as if the lionguard was totally forgotten.

- Orr being purified, it’s been a few years and there has been 0 progression on that front.

- pretty much ANY of the dungeon stories, story mode or explorable stories. Crucible of Eternity, Arah, Citadel of flame, ect.

- We still have no idea what Fractals of the Mist actually is or is about. We had one short story when the Thumanova Reactor was released then nothing.

- Anything about the human gods. Seriously we have no idea what happened after the exodus or why the hell they stopped talking to us.

I think I’ll cut it there. The list would go on for a while.

but. but. they don’t have our favorite flat stus Destiny’s edge 2.0

you forgot HoT story, rushed to hell, too many loose ends, rytlock is an example of chekov’s gun and malyck is missing and forgotten. and somehow they forgot about our role as commander of the pact during season 1, HoT was an exception and the last few episodes of season 2 but it was kitten terrible on how they handled it.

I said it wasn’t an exhaustive list =P It’s just sooooooooo many things that haven’t even been touched, and not that they haven’t been touched for a few months, or even a year….. they haven’t been touched for YEARS.

Zergs.9715:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

As a GW lore buff, I could make a list of unfinished and abandoned story lines. However, I think I’ll hit the character limit. I think I’ll just make a short list of the most obvious ones.

- Eir took Magdaer from the catacombs of ascalon, then Eir dies, and nothing is done with Magdaer.

- In GW1 the Scepter of Orr was picked up by Livia, aaaaaaaannnnd nothing.

- The personal stories at the start of the game, the ones that are unique to each story line have loose endings, almost none of those have been explored; including but not limited to: The Sylvari from the Maguuma jungle, the feud between the human throne and the ministry, any of the asura inventions, the list goes on.

- Anything with the captains council the lion guard was surprisingly absent after they rebuilt lions arch during the mordremonth attack. I didn’t even see them, with their new ships, providing any relief. It’s as if the lionguard was totally forgotten.

- Orr being purified, it’s been a few years and there has been 0 progression on that front.

- pretty much ANY of the dungeon stories, story mode or explorable stories. Crucible of Eternity, Arah, Citadel of flame, ect.

- We still have no idea what Fractals of the Mist actually is or is about. We had one short story when the Thumanova Reactor was released then nothing.

- Anything about the human gods. Seriously we have no idea what happened after the exodus or why the hell they stopped talking to us.

I think I’ll cut it there. The list would go on for a while.

This is actually excellent list. Each race has some sort of antagonist through which we are familiarized with the struggles of that race, but they aren’t leading anywhere. There’s enough potential story material there to last for years.

I wouldn’t even mind a small update. Just… anything. Some lines of text off an npc, a blog post like they used to do, even a small graphical change or some npc chatter somewhere. ANYTHING, doesn’t have to be huge, but just something that reminds us that they still think about the loose ends in their story.

Zergs.9715:

Anet has yet to prove that it’s capable of finishing ANYTHING they start working on. These are issues that are dragging on since release. So before moving on to another thing I suggest you turn around and take good look at what you terrible lack of consistency and discipline left in its wake. These are too big to be left in a state they are in right now!

1. Ascended crafting.

• No 500 jewelcrafting
• No jewel socketing on ascended, of course
• No 500 cook.

2. Still no sign of full core skill sets that were promised eons ago.

• Elementalist (conjure heal, arcane elite, signet elite)
• Warrior (banner heal, physical heal, Mending undefined, elite stance, elite shout)
• Ranger (signet heal, elite trap, elite signet)
• Necromancer (spectral heal, elite signet, elite well)
• Guardian (spirit weapon heal, consecration heal, Shelter undefined, elite spirit weapon, elite consecration)
• Thief (trap heal, elite signet, elite trap)
• Engineer (gadget heal, elite gadget)
• Mesmer (glamour heal, Ether Feast undefined, clone/phantasm heal, elite mantra, elite clone/phantasm)

3. Everything related to underwater left in shambles

• No second Revenant underwater weapon.
• Ton of skills not working underwater across all classes
• discontinued production of underwater skins

4. Legendary weapons dropped

5. LS season 1 still missing

6. SAB never going to get finished

Probably I’m missing more stuff that’s just dropped unfinished into the game, but to me these are the biggest, most glaring issues that need to be addressed.

As a GW lore buff, I could make a list of unfinished and abandoned story lines. However, I think I’ll hit the character limit. I think I’ll just make a short list of the most obvious ones.

- Eir took Magdaer from the catacombs of ascalon, then Eir dies, and nothing is done with Magdaer.

- In GW1 the Scepter of Orr was picked up by Livia, aaaaaaaannnnd nothing.

- The personal stories at the start of the game, the ones that are unique to each story line have loose endings, almost none of those have been explored; including but not limited to: The Sylvari from the Maguuma jungle, the feud between the human throne and the ministry, any of the asura inventions, the list goes on.

- Anything with the captains council the lion guard was surprisingly absent after they rebuilt lions arch during the mordremonth attack. I didn’t even see them, with their new ships, providing any relief. It’s as if the lionguard was totally forgotten.

- Orr being purified, it’s been a few years and there has been 0 progression on that front.

- pretty much ANY of the dungeon stories, story mode or explorable stories. Crucible of Eternity, Arah, Citadel of flame, ect.

- We still have no idea what Fractals of the Mist actually is or is about. We had one short story when the Thumanova Reactor was released then nothing.

- Anything about the human gods. Seriously we have no idea what happened after the exodus or why the hell they stopped talking to us.

I think I’ll cut it there. The list would go on for a while.

I would be happy with an acknowledgement that HoT was a mess, and promise to make it right. They did it in FF14, and it’s worked out well for them. However, all we got was “HoT was a full expansion” and no acknowledgement of the mess they gave us.

It all depends on the direction of the game. If they go back to dungeons, if they make some meaningful single player content, if they have some rewarding rewards to what’s done, if there’s something else to do in the game other than make legendaries, I’ll think about it.

Currently, if you don’t care about legendaries… there’s nothing to do in the game.

Obtena.7952:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Obtena.7952:

Manasa Devi.7958:

maddoctor.2738:

So where is the mastery gating again? Where do you need to grind for masteries?

The moment you venture into VB you’re confronted with all kinds of mushroom. Speed, adrenaline, bouncing. And interacting with them gives you a pop-up telling you you can’t use that content. That’s mastery gating.

No it’s not. A gate limits your progress. Those aren’t gates.

That’s not the definition of a gate. A gate limits access to something, not necessarily progress.

Then having gates in MMO’s isn’t really a problem in the first place because you can define almost everything as a gate, including:

1. Levels
2. Not starting out with gold
3. Not knowing how to play
4. Not having instance access to all content

You’re complaint is quite ridiculous in the context you define ‘gates’; ONLY complain about the gates you encounter in HoT, and not any of MANY MORE you had to overcome in Core? You’re arguments just aren’t logical.

The issue with gates like levels, is as you pass them, your character gets stronger, you get more abilities, it actually has a reward for completing the gate, and the gate can be completed in a reasonable amount of time.

Masteries, on the other hand… it’s a grind for a skill that you barely use. The grind takes a VERY long time, and the content is NOT engaging at all. In core tyria you had a BUNCH of maps to level on, in HOT you have…. 4. That’s the problem, it’s not the grind, it’s the fact you feel the grind.

If you don’t want to grind out legendary armor or weapons… you don’t like pvp or wvw… what is there left to do?

I quit because there’s nothing for me. I don’t like the grind for legendaries… so there’s no need to do raids, or those crazy grindy collections, and WVW/sPVP aren’t really for me in this game.

So the question is… what’s left? When I found the answer to be nothing, I moved on to much greener pastures.

There were options before on what content you could endgame. The original idea of GW2 was everything is endgame.

Now, if you don’t like doing content where the rewards takes a very long to get, example: legendaries, there’s nothing to do. If you’re not into raiding or legendaries, you just get to farm money to spend on nothing.

My complaint is rewards. There isn’t any meaningful rewards in the content they’ve added. It’s the same problem GW2 has had since the start. You remove gear giving you better stats as a rewards. Great, what do you replace it with?

nothing.

We’re really starting to see the effects of that now. You have content that feels like it has barely any rewards to it, because there aren’t really any rewards to be had.

It’s why we see these huge inflated prices for stuff. People have all this gold and nothing to spend it on. If you’re not interested in legendaries, there’s nothing for you to do.

I think the primary complaint i see here is time gates. It’s like spreading too little butter over too much bread. There isn’t a lot of content, it just takes a very long time to get to the little content you have.

Then when you get there, the rewards are not fantastic.

I have 0 problem with raiding in GW2, I just don’t like it. I understand i won’t get legendary armor, and I’m fine with that.

My only issue with HoT is things feel like a chore. To get those masteries I have to do the same events over and over and over and over, even the legendary crafting system is just time gated crap behind other time gated crap. Make content fun, I don’t want to feel like I left work to just go do more work.

I think it’s pretty clear what’s wanted here:

A declarative statement of what the philosophies of what the game will be. It’s clear the manifesto is old news, that was clear a long time ago. We as players need to know where the game is going in order to invest our time into it. A philosophy for Guild Wars 2 would go a looooooooooooooong way to helping us out in determining if this is the game for us or not.

Look these are the bottom lines:

- You can’t cater to both hardcore and casual players. Anet needs to make a decision what kind of game it’s going to be and build from there. If you try to make both happy, they’ll both just leave to a game that targets them more specifically.

- You can’t come up with content, get people to enjoy it, then just abandon it. Anyone remember the crab toss, sanctum sprint mini games that cycle every day? yeah me either. They haven’t added anything to it at all. Dungeons haven’t seen a change since day 1. It goes on and on and on.

- Most people play MMOs for rewards. They want to feel some kind of progression in their character. Small bits of progression should take a small amount of time, while large ones should take a large amount of time. You got rid of the gear treadmill, great! what are you going to replace it with? There needs to be a feeling of character improvement for people to feel invested in the game. Every game has needed it for an RPG, MMO or otherwise.

- Legendary skins and what not are totally fine, but you need SOME KIND of endgame PVE other than that. If people don’t want legendary armor, what reason do they have to do raids? If anyone says “well it’s fun!” please refer to my previous point.

Obtena.7952:

It’s not as complicated as you make it seem. If you are bored and you think the game is time-consuming and don’t think there is anything left; the question isn’t what’s left, the question is why are you still here.

I’m not. I lurk occasionally, read blog posts, and hope and pray the game I’ve loved and the company I’ve been invested into since day 1 of prophesies will go back to what made them great.

When it does, I want to come back, and I don’t want to miss a minute of a better guildwars if it ever gets here,

I see a lot of people saying “well you don’t have to get all the masteries, you don’t NEED ascended gear, you don’t HAVE to raid, you don’t NEED legendaries”

Praytell, when you get rid of everything that is time-consuming and boring to do, what’s left? HoT has been a busy work expansion, nothing of substance anywhere.

I want a legendary that is entertaining, not a chore to make. I want gear that’s fun to get, not a grind. I want masteries that don’t require me to do the same kitten over and over and over to max out. I want 100% distilled fun. That’s what GW2 pitched itself to be. No waiting around to have fun.

I miss dungeons, why haven’t they added more of them? I liked epic feeling world bosses, they added one. An entire expansion… they added one. I liked the old connections to GW1 stories and lore, where did that go? Does it seem to anyone else that the philosophies of this game have changed from when they first made it? Does ANYONE else feel bait and switched?

Is one single cohesive philosophy to the game’s development too much to ask for? You play any other MMO, they improve on what they had, they add more of it, and life goes on. GW2, it’s like… a madmans mind. Lets try dungeons! OH WAIT lets try Living story! BETTER IDEA! lets do gliding! Now Jump pannels! now… LETS DO MAP METAS! How about some masteries! yeah that’d be cool! Oh what about this new story!

Why don’t we build upon the old ideas, why don’t we finish the old stories, why don’t we stick to one idea, flesh it out, then once we’re done with that… move on, while still building on what people like. Make what the community wants, not what Anet wants.

Things/Changes I don’t like:
Lack of a coherent philosophy to the game. When the game started it was casual friendly, simple easy to get into content. No grind unless you wanted legendary weapons, overall very casual. The hardcore gamers left the game when they saw it was casual, some stayed but the bulk moved on to greener pastures. Now HoT came out, and it’s a total opposite of that core philosophy. Game started with dungeons, nerf dungeons make no new ones. Game had some larger than life world bosses, they added one. Game required no grind, now it requires getting 1-80 SEVERAL TIMES OVER to finish all your masteries. Result? The hardcore gamers that already left don’t care, and the casuals that loved the game are in the process of an exodus because it’s not the game they signed up for.

Pick something, build on it, keep building on it, quit trying to make up new ideas before you finish old ones.

I have two issues with HoT:

1) the content being produced is more busy work than actual content. Repeating the same thing over and over to accomplish a task rather than just enjoying different aspects of the game. (grinding events for masteries for instance)

2) it is a complete departure from the mentality of the core game. The mentality they had in the core game was accessibility. Make things simple so people can have fun. Nothing takes to long, and yes people will exhaust the content, but they just make more with things like the living world. It was supposed to be very casual friendly. Now HoT requires so much time to grind things out people are getting overwhelmed. It feels to quite a few people like a bait and switch. We expected more core GW2, we got HoT instead.

If you liked the core game, HoT is not for you. They go a completely different direction with the xpac. Previous maps were easy to explore where as these are a chore. The masteries requires a lot of time and grind, and there aren’t any new dungeons. Raids are entertaining, but that’s about the only thing in HoT that I personally enjoyed.

Again, it’s just not anything like the core game.

Spider farming may be boring, but how many times can you do dragon stand before you want to claw your own eyes out. Masteries require repeating the same content over and over.

Hammerguard.9834:

The problem with GW2 was that literally the whole core game was too casual. The second they do something to fix that people start crying.

yes because they signed up for a casual game. If you have a game that’s casual for 3 years, then you change it… people are going to be upset. It’s not what they wanted.

Vayne.8563:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

I think the underlying thing here, what everyone is trying to vocalize but it seems to not be worded correctly is as follows: in base GW2, you could play for 2-3 hours a day and feel like you accomplished something meaningful. You played some dungeons, did some pvp, did some world bosses, whatever. In HoT, 2-3 hours doesn’t seem to make a dent in anything. It makes things seem overwhelming.

That’s what I understand from the conversation anyway.

Guild Wars 1 was the same way though. Once you had everything in the base game done, the stuff you had left to do was like a long, slow crawl. Survivor title, Defender of Ascalon title, the kurzick/luxon progression, the lightbringer progression, filling books in Eye of the North….sure when you start a new character you get stuff like achievements really fast.

And then you get most of them and it takes a long time to get the next thing.

The problem isn’t that people can’t make progress. They simply can’t make the specific type of progress they want. They want masteries to be a short term goal when that wasn’t intended. But there are plenty of achievements that are easy to get. You can get through the story pretty fast (in fact that’s one of the complaints about the game).

So yeah. I get stuff accomplished every day. Now I play a lot more than most players. Then again I"m level 55 mastery and have a ton of the new achievements done.

Yes, but in GW1 titles were just vanity. They didn’t bar you from content. In HoT, not having masteries can prevent you from exploring the map.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Only factions offered anything new in way of PvP. Which was the second game released by ANet in the Guild wars series, or the first xpac if you played Guild wars.(I know it wasn’t an xpac in the traditional sense, but it was to me as I played Guild wars first.).

ANET did add Codex Arena some time after EOTN released, so Factions wasn’t the only time ANET added new PvP modes. Just the only time they did it with an expansion.

Another thing that Factions did that Nightfall and EOTN didn’t was that factions is the only part of GW1 that had any content for 12 man parties. Factions gave us Alliance Battles, The Deep and Urgoz Warren. After Factions we never saw any more content designed around having more than 8 characters in the party, with 8 being the standard party size in GW1.

Any speculations about why ANET abandoned 12 man content after Factions ?
What does your speculation say about the likely future of raids ?

to difficult to balance around. That’s pretty much all of GW1. The game was too hard to balance since there were tens of thousands of skill combinations in the game.

Casuals were catered to before, hardcore players are being catered to now. You can’t cater to both, or you risk alienating both.

My issue is the game has been casual, it has been a game I can take a break from for 3 months, come back, and still do any content I want. Now that’s changed, and it shouldn’t. They should pick one philosophy and stick to it.

Harper.4173:

If it meant closing down existing dungeons – pretty much.

With the current implementation LS has gone from something that was free for everybody to something that’s only for HoT buyers.

that’s new living story that will be for HoT players. They’re not locking old content.

Behellagh.1468:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Behellagh.1468:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Not everyone is arguing about bugs. Some people have problems with the direction of the content.

And that’s something players have little control over as direction is dictated by ANet’s vision for the game.

True, players can rail, plead and on rare occasion present a cogent and well written argument as to why something should be changed but at the end of the day we’ve signed up to be led by the devs through their vision of the game.

A B2P game has more in common with a movie than a restaurant. If you don’t like the restaurant you can choose not to go back. If you don’t like the movie you paid for, oh well, that’s two hours you aren’t going to get back.

Well, talking about it on a forum that they read might have them take a second look at their direction for the future.

Yes but it’s a no win for them. They do nothing and they aren’t listening to their players. If they do something and change direction they are once again abandoning some portion of the game. But the majority of the complaints I’ve seen on these forums are “I want to do X as soon as I bought the game” or “you moved my cheese”. Now X could be fully unlocked elite specializations, completed masteries, crafted precursors, map complete, etc.

And moving cheese, yeah, big end rewards were trimmed back and redistributed across dynamic event rewards, hero challenges, etc. instead if a very visible “big chunk of currency”. Nobody likes it when their printing press removed.

Well, so why not just add more of what players liked? Why move stuff around. Players like dungeons, add more dungeons. The playerbase has been screaming for new dungeons since release. Instead, they gave us the HoT maps which are partially locked behind masteries. Parts of the maps can’t even be accessed unless you have a certain mastery. This just seems like adding busy work to keep players in the game.

I almost agree on how they’re in a catch 22. However, I think if they picked one philosophy, said they were going to stick to it, then went back or kept on their direction people could at least decide if they wanted to stay in the game or not. At the moment some people are in limbo. They stay because they think the game might get better, but they’re not sure… there’s no direction or communication.

Razor.9872:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Now this I disagree with. If they had said right off the bat: we’re going to go in a more hardcore time consuming grindy direction, rather than what Guild Wars 2 has been up till now, I wouldn’t be complaining. However, if they said this, they weren’t blunt enough.

Sorry it took some tieme to find this but:
This is from Febbruary 4, 2014.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/journey-into-the-heart-of-maguuma-in-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns/

Challenging Conten

One of our focuses in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is to provide truly challenging content for our players to overcome. Within the jungle, you’ll encounter entirely new species, creatures, and bosses that are more advanced than the encounters we’ve introduced in the past. These encounters will require greater skills and tactics to overcome, whether you’re adventuring through our jungle on your own or with a party. Not only are we presenting these new challenges throughout the outposts and adventures you’ll find in the jungle, but they’ll also be layered across other types of content experiences. As we get closer to the release of the expansion, we’ll come back and give specific details on the new types of challenging group encounters we’ll be introducing to Guild Wars 2 and explain how these new types of challenges work within the Guild Wars 2 content experience.

Did you expect them to say “you’re going to really hate this…”

I don’t see anything about time consuming grind in there. I have no problem with the level of difficulty. I’m 100% behind difficult content. Grinding out 1-80 several times isn’t what I’d call challenging, I’d call it a chore. Hardcore content, doesn’t mean time consuming. Raids are hardcore content, they’re adding that. I’m 100% behind that. However, I see no mention of “we’re going less casual.”

There is no grind unless you choose to grind for said stuff; grinding is a player made decision, not a forced act. Would you believe me if I told you I have yet to grind a single thing since HoT’s release?

Now that’s silly, why put out content if you don’t want your players to play it? Either you want them to play it, and you’re creating a grind for them, or you don’t, and you’re wasting your time. You can’t even experience the entirety of the HoT maps without doing masteries. Masteries are an integral part of the HoT experience.

Silly.5837:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

The metas aren’t the primary content of HoT, the masteries are. There’s a huge bar on the bottom of your screen pointing out what you’re working on. Go into any map and ask anyone why they’re doing a meta, gonna bet most of them say it’s the mastery.

As for the second part, I consider it a play style not a mentality. So we’ll have to agree to disagree there. A play style that was accommodated by GW2 before, and is no longer accommodated by it.

You make very little sense, but I’ll try to explain in a way you may understand. Just because other people are farming masteries, it doesn’t mean that’s what you are forced to do. I have a couple guildies who rushed Masteries and already capped them out at 161. So what? I’ll take my time and it may take me a year to get there and I’m not bothered by that at all.

GW2 did nothing to disaccommodate your play style. Your personal goals don’t match your play style. Adjust your personal goals and you’ll be fine.

I don’t think we’re communicating properly here. Let me try to rephrase myself. My 3 hour time investment is not being rewarded now, like it was with previous content. The time vs reward ratio with HoT is different than GW2 vanilla. That’s the complaint.

This has nothing to do with goals. This has to do with what I get out of my 3 hours. Grinding a mid tier mastery for 3 hours doesn’t really get you much. Even if you finish it, all you get is the ability to talk to some merchant half the time. The masteries that do matter, lock content behind them which isn’t cool either. I want meaningful masteries that don’t lock content behind them. The pact commander line is a pretty good example of a well done mastery. There’s nothing locked behind it, but it makes available content easier.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

I think the underlying thing here, what everyone is trying to vocalize but it seems to not be worded correctly is as follows: in base GW2, you could play for 2-3 hours a day and feel like you accomplished something meaningful. You played some dungeons, did some pvp, did some world bosses, whatever. In HoT, 2-3 hours doesn’t seem to make a dent in anything. It makes things seem overwhelming.

That’s what I understand from the conversation anyway.

In two to three hours you can do and complete any of the meta events in any of the zones. How would that not be an accomplishment?

The metas aren’t the primary content of HoT, the masteries are. There’s a huge bar on the bottom of your screen pointing out what you’re working on. Go into any map and ask anyone why they’re doing a meta, gonna bet most of them say it’s the mastery.

As for the second part, I consider it a play style not a mentality. So we’ll have to agree to disagree there. A play style that was accommodated by GW2 before, and is no longer accommodated by it.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

DoctorDing.5890:

The comparison is only fair if you make it at the “end” of HoT’s lifecycle rather that at the start.

I’m expecting loads of new content to be added into HoT over the coming months/years. A living story or two, more gear, more raids, moar lootz etc.
Compare core GW2 with how it was when it started. Today HoT does not seem to offer much (especially to me personally) but it will grow and develop.

Yeah but it’s not really how expansions work.
See – Anet ran with HoT as an expansion – an expansion is a thing that brings a lot of features to your core game at one specific time and that you pay a sum of money to get.

HoT is not living world. HoT is not early access – it is an expansion.

Sure they might add new things to the game (Core GW2+HoT now) but that doesn’t mean these are things that came with HoT since they did not.

Buying a car only to have “features” such as climate control, ABS and whatnot be shipped to you at a later time is not something that’s normal.

It’s a mistake to judge HoT in light of things that will be added in the future considering they marketed an expansion and no early access.

Living Story is already a part of the GW2 franchise and is free for everybody so it cannot under any circumstances be considered part of HoT or considered relevant content that came with HoT – since it did not.

The ultimate problem with HoT is that when they marketed it they went about it like “buy our new expansion and get this and that and this and all these new things” – people preordered only to later find that “some of the stuff will come later after the expansion’s release because reasons”.

I get that they didn’t have all the stuff ready at once – but that should have been known to people on the day they opened up the game for preorder – not in a blog post a while after telling us “uhm yeah, so raids and legendary weapons are going to come after the release of HoT – and you’re only getting 3 new legendary weapons”.

I disagree. The people who didn’t get HoT won’t be getting the new living story for free. We know it’s going to take place in the new zones and we know they can’t get to it.

Hot is like a combination expansion/season pass, just as Guild Wars 2 was. It’s a hybrid model. I’m not sure why some people can’t see this.

Yes – you are correct – but taking LS away only to bring it back with HoT does not mean it is a HoT-related thing. Because it isn’t – it preceded HoT.

So if they added more dungeons in HoT that wouldn’t be expanded content because dungeons already existed?

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Now this I disagree with. If they had said right off the bat: we’re going to go in a more hardcore time consuming grindy direction, rather than what Guild Wars 2 has been up till now, I wouldn’t be complaining. However, if they said this, they weren’t blunt enough.

Sorry it took some tieme to find this but:
This is from Febbruary 4, 2014.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/journey-into-the-heart-of-maguuma-in-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns/

Challenging Conten

One of our focuses in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is to provide truly challenging content for our players to overcome. Within the jungle, you’ll encounter entirely new species, creatures, and bosses that are more advanced than the encounters we’ve introduced in the past. These encounters will require greater skills and tactics to overcome, whether you’re adventuring through our jungle on your own or with a party. Not only are we presenting these new challenges throughout the outposts and adventures you’ll find in the jungle, but they’ll also be layered across other types of content experiences. As we get closer to the release of the expansion, we’ll come back and give specific details on the new types of challenging group encounters we’ll be introducing to Guild Wars 2 and explain how these new types of challenges work within the Guild Wars 2 content experience.

Did you expect them to say “you’re going to really hate this…”

I don’t see anything about time consuming grind in there. I have no problem with the level of difficulty. I’m 100% behind difficult content. Grinding out 1-80 several times isn’t what I’d call challenging, I’d call it a chore. Hardcore content, doesn’t mean time consuming. Raids are hardcore content, they’re adding that. I’m 100% behind that. However, I see no mention of “we’re going less casual.”

JaddynnStarr.5201:

@one prarie…

I dont think its as much about lack of time playing the game that is the issue (or comparison to the state of other MMOs’ expac releases). I think it is more that people expected the game to be more finished, and in line with what they were being told, than it is. Im not so sure bug fixing will alter the foundation in a way that it will turn this game around to be what they originally told us HoT would be. Cuz it is not the same.

I’m fine with the amount of content in the expac. I’ll admit the story was a bit fillery, but the maps are entertaining. I also don’t mind waiting for them to roll out content. My biggest complaint was the departure from what GW2 was pre HoT to what it is now. The two gaming philosophies are vastly different. A casual experience, that you could play for a few hours and feel like you accomplished something, you could take a break from, and boomerang back to vs well… this. It feels like the only content that we can do is this insane xp grind, which is 1-80 several times over. Parts of the map are blocked off behind mastery gates and event gates, which never happened in GW2 before. You could map complete without really having to do the events in the map. Now it seems like you can’t dedicate yourself to one task. It’s do everything at once, or get overwhelmed and go play something else.

Is casual a mentality or a way to play a game? I believe it to be the way I play a game. 2-3 hours a day, maybe take a week or two off to do something else, come back to it ect. However, it doesn’t feel like a short amount of time investment into the game is meaningful.

I think the underlying thing here, what everyone is trying to vocalize but it seems to not be worded correctly is as follows: in base GW2, you could play for 2-3 hours a day and feel like you accomplished something meaningful. You played some dungeons, did some pvp, did some world bosses, whatever. In HoT, 2-3 hours doesn’t seem to make a dent in anything. It makes things seem overwhelming.

That’s what I understand from the conversation anyway.

Ayrilana.1396:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor. Kind of like how a lot of the dungeons were copy and pasted from other dungeons.

the reskins had some things added to them, some of them had different places you could color them. Most were not reskins though. You can look through them, the GW1 wiki was quite extensive.

Re-skins are where you have essentially the same model but just change the textures. The wiki has the comparisons.

Here’s one for warrior.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Warrior_Monument_armor/Male_comparison

I did say most weren’t reskins right? The ones that were, had some slight changes to the models. In the one you linked, the legs and the Boots were slightly different. The helm too. The spikes stick out about 1/4 of an inch more.

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

There are bugs/issues from the Core game that took over 2 years to address. Some stuff STILL is an issue.
Unrealistic expectations with complete inability to see or understand the process.
Why not just ask them to remove the update and revert back to pre Oct.23rd code?

Not everyone is arguing about bugs. Some people have problems with the direction of the content.

And the direction of the content was clearly indicated well before the release of HoT. The feigned surprise is bizarre.

Now this I disagree with. If they had said right off the bat: we’re going to go in a more hardcore time consuming grindy direction, rather than what Guild Wars 2 has been up till now, I wouldn’t be complaining. However, if they said this, they weren’t blunt enough.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

I’d take the four maps I got with HoT over all the maps in EotN any day. The complexity of these maps is astounding.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Eye of the North. But then, we haven’t seen raids yet, and Eye of the North didn’t have expansion content coming in reguilarly either. We have to see what the new content delivery cadence is. Also EotN offered nothing at all for PvP.

The maps – that’s preference. I hate the convoluted mess some maps are.
Still – the fact that we haven’t seen Raids yet is another reason HoT falls short for me – we all paid for the Xpac only to have parts of it held off until later – we weren’t told this would be the case and many had preordered already. See my post above.

Also I don’t see how having content coming in via the Living World somehow gets attributed to HoT now.

This stance I consider too far on the harsh side towards arenanet. We knew living world would require HoT, so that is a part of the expansion. It’s similar to buying a season pass.

Behellagh.1468:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Not everyone is arguing about bugs. Some people have problems with the direction of the content.

And that’s something players have little control over as direction is dictated by ANet’s vision for the game.

True, players can rail, plead and on rare occasion present a cogent and well written argument as to why something should be changed but at the end of the day we’ve signed up to be led by the devs through their vision of the game.

A B2P game has more in common with a movie than a restaurant. If you don’t like the restaurant you can choose not to go back. If you don’t like the movie you paid for, oh well, that’s two hours you aren’t going to get back.

Well, talking about it on a forum that they read might have them take a second look at their direction for the future.

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor. Kind of like how a lot of the dungeons were copy and pasted from other dungeons.

the reskins had some things added to them, some of them had different places you could color them. Most were not reskins though. You can look through them, the GW1 wiki was quite extensive.

Kaz.5430:

A lot of people only seem to count armor if it’s an entire set, and for these same people each set also doesn’t count as a ‘separate set’ when applied to a different race or a different profession.

However, the armor total listed on the EotN releases ‘does’ classify the same armor set on a different profession as separate new sets (in the count). When you look at the EotN armor in the same light as is being used for HoT, then there were actually only 3 new armor “sets” in EotN: Asuran, Monument and Norn.

Every other bit of armor was either already available in a previous campaign (e.g. Elonian, Tyrian and Canthan), an incomplete set (e.g. Deldrimor, Dragon, Silver Eagle), or a stand alone piece of armor.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Eye_of_the_North_armor

classifying them as light, medium, and heavy would devalue the fact that someone sat there and modeled them for each profession. The count they gave was for individual looks. Classifying them as light, medium, and heavy, would not be an accurate way of gauging the different models for the armor… but it would be in Guild Wars 2.

Not everyone is arguing about bugs. Some people have problems with the direction of the content.

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

19 days since HoT has been released. I keep asking this and nobody has an answer.
What MMO expansion or otherwise, been released and within a month of release ALL the issues the player base complains about have been researched, coded, tested successfully the first time and released in this very short time frame?
19 days.

I understand the complaints – I think the expectation of immediate fix is amazingly unreasonable.

I’m not making a complaint, I’m making a comparison. You can’t fix the entire direction of content you added. I’m not comparing an unbalanced mechanic or anything, I’m comparing the base philosophies, as I interpret them, from the way the content looks to how it looked in previous versions.

@Eight Samurai.6840

I agree with everything you said, but I think you hit on something I didn’t talk about in my post. The whole herding players to where they want to take them. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? If players like playing dungeons, why not add more dungeons instead of trying to get players away from them?

As for them changing their idea with each update? I think it might be lack of hindsight, or maybe lack of confidence. You saw the result of that with the Sonic the Hedgehog series of games. They kept adding, and innovating, to the point where the base game was unrecognizable from the newer ones. Some times, more of the same thing isn’t a bad thing. If you keep trying to improve what’s already fun for everyone, you’ll end up wrapping everything in bandages.

Einlanzer.1627:

Maximillian Greil.1965:

Yes it is harder to add content to Guild Wars 2 because of the way the game is made up… but is it worth the sacrifice? we have a beautiful living world, with tons of moving parts, but to add anything to it takes so much time, that in any other game you could add a whole dungeon for the time it takes to design just a few events in GW2.

I can’t make a decision as to which one is better, but I do think GW2 has way to many mechanics and too great in scope of an art direction for an MMO. It just takes too long to produce content.

I do think this is part of the problem. Everything about GW2 is so grandiose and over-achieving that developing new content for it probably takes much, much more work and effort than it did for GW1, which was comparatively very simplistic.

Still, it’s not an unfair comparison to make. GW2 has not had an adequate amount of content added since launch for its 3 year lifespan, so Arenanet needs to find a way to make content additions more sustainable.

The hole’s too deep at this point. Either abandon what makes your game unique, or don’t produce content in a timely way. Which gun would you shoot yourself with if it was up to you?

Yes it is harder to add content to Guild Wars 2 because of the way the game is made up… but is it worth the sacrifice? we have a beautiful living world, with tons of moving parts, but to add anything to it takes so much time, that in any other game you could add a whole dungeon for the time it takes to design just a few events in GW2.

I can’t make a decision as to which one is better, but I do think GW2 has way to many mechanics and too great in scope of an art direction for an MMO. It just takes too long to produce content.