Showing Posts For Oblivion.9032:
Other than it being an infusion, it’s purely cosmetic. I have it, and it gives your character’s skin and hair a nice icy/frost look. From what I’ve seen, it hasn’t really affected any armor I’ve worn. It’s different from the refractors in that it doesn’t affect the shade or tint of armors or clothes.
Your hair turns different shades of blue depending on your character’s current hair color. Your skin turns a shade of white, coupled with a few snowflake twinkles and glints. When you run, you leave behind cloud particles that disappear within a second or so. As for it being worth it or useful, it’s entirely up to you. If you plan on making an ice-themed character (whites and blues), the Winter’s Heart Infusion is definitely a good buy.
TL;DR: This is a long post. Here are a list of things that are – in my opinion – currently wrong with the game. Here is a list of improvements (dream or not) and constructive feedback I am giving Arenanet so they can understand and handle the unified frustration players are experiencing.
1) Bug Fixes. This is first and foremost what needs to be done. Meta-events that sometimes freeze or don’t activate. Never-ending events because of a bugged mob. Items that don’t handle the way they are supposed to be. Though Arenanet is somewhat fixing some of the broken material in game, the problem is them trying to fix what is clearly not broken. Of course, they can put in an argument for disabling certain things, but the communication between Arenanet and their playerbase is extremely slim. It would be better if Arenanet could give players a full update on what is to be changed that is considered broken or not working. Personally, I feel that if something is not collectively decided as a group to be broken, it does not require fixing (e.g. Warhorn audio, auras and shields, the elementalist’s fireball).
2) Old content/skins. This is my primary focus. Why does Arenanet feel that it is necessary to take away things that are fun and rewarding? Because they don’t fit well with the story? Because it’s too much for an MMORPG of $50? This game used to be so prospective with amazing visuals and concepts like the Super Adventure Box, the Queen’s Gauntlet, the Festival of the Four Winds, or Dragon Bash? Players loved the content and gave feedback that it was something they would immensely enjoy playing in the future. To this day there are still people begging for this quality of an event. There are players who want old gem skins like the bunny ears or aviator sunglasses that Arenanet refuses to re-release for reasons I can’t comprehend.
Now, we’re given events or content that introduce nothing new or breathtaking, nothing near the quality of gameplay that Arenanet had produced before 2014. The game has fallen to a painfully average rating and I am sure Arenanet knows it at this point. The problem is they have done very little to fix or reverse it.
The way to a successful business and appreciative community is not with this descent to microtransactions and bundle-selling in the gem store, but to bring back old, themed content that were here for only a brief moment to let the newer players experience what Guild Wars 2 is really about. It would be amazing if new players could experience the Super Adventure Box and tell their friends about the game, giving them a greater incentive to buy it. Why take away something that was successful? Why not bring it back, or better yet – expand on it?
3) Nerf, nerf, nerf. Dungeon rewards, fractal rewards, instances, why? When John Smith introduced the concept of scarcity and the importance of scarcity to the economy, the dungeon rewards were nerfed, and players could only make a handful of silver per day from doing these dungeons. Not to mention rare skins such as Nightfury, the Invisible footwear, are painfully difficult to reach, as the prices virtually rival that of legendary weapons. This forces players to find an alternate means to earn money to buy something they want, but Arenanet seems to nerf rewards left and right. How can players earn money to buy the rewards they want if they only earn a little bit of money per day? This makes getting weapon skins a grind and already the no-grind philosophy has slightly been broken. An argument could be made that Arenanet isn’t forcing players to do anything, and that is absolutely correct. But it could be handled better by making things doable with less grind. Make them token rewards? Story rewards? Instead of taking away rewards and forcing them to RNG, maybe make rewards that can be adequately achievement-based? There are a multitude of possibilities.
The solution would be to reverse what was done, at least let players do dungeons with the old, adequate rewards system so it feels…rewarding. Rewarding content is supposed to be rewarding.
When rewards have been nerfed to downright near-nothing, this destroys the incentive of players to want to do them, to the point where several players only log in for the daily login reward until they can find something that is challenging, fun, or worth doing. Why does Arenanet not want players to play the game?
4) RNG. I don’t like it when my playtime is resorted to a dice roll or selected from a random number generator. Precursors- sure, because the concept of scarcity arises again and players want legendary weapons to feel legendary. Rare items ought to feel rare. But small exotic things that are RNG-gated feel very tedious. The Mordrem Saber and Invisible footwear are at ridiculous prices – from 1,000 to 2,500 gold – and offer low drop rates for players who grind to get these. It’s not a fun mechanic, and it isn’t the least bit innovative; it is annoying and something Arenanet should not endorse. Ascended and legendary items, maybe should be RNG gated, but adequately. But exotic skins should not be downright unattainable. Please remove the invisible boots as an unfair, unattainable RNG-drop and just make it a slot or a gemstore skin. Make Heart of Thorns rewards attainable through purchases with tokens from specific maps for the Mordrem Saber or the new exotic Mordrem greatsword. There are a multitude of better alternatives than the RNG-gated ones now that Arenanet could be better off with, and in return make their playerbase happy to support the game.
5) Bundles and gemstore. The bundles have to stop. The players are smart enough to know what to buy and when to buy them, and hate being forced to buy several things that are bundled together when they want one thing. What if I want just the outfit, and not the dye kit, total makeover kit, and glider? Separate them. Bundling is just unnecessary and players can figure out what kind of business Arenanet is “evolving” into when this kind of thing happens.
Along with the bundles, if Arenanet intends to want players to spend real money on gems, it would be good if they thought up interesting gemstore concepts. What happened to the instruments? Why not expand more on them? There are just multiple skins of infinite gathering tools that really do nothing new or innovative. Toys like the broomstick or dance books? Bring something new and innovative to the table!
Arenanet, stop trying to encourage players to convert gems to gold. To me, this doesn’t feel like a smart move, as it is Arenanet bluntly telling the players to “pay for ingame cash to buy items.” I’ve seen the advertisement in the gem store that endorsed the conversion from real money to gems to gold. It’s not worth it, and only messes up the in-game economy more.
6) Outfits. At the rate this game is going, I see virtually one outfit per week. Some I do like and some I don’t. The problem is the lack of customization. By halting the release of armor skins, customization is virtually non-existent. I like to be able to see what kind of armor combinations players come up with to make their character stand out and feel individual. I don’t like seeing several players dressed in the same [Name] Regalia everywhere I go. Customization needs to supported. Stop releasing uniforms. It isn’t good to hinder customization as players love feeling individual, and at the rate the game is going, customization is extremely limited.
7) Precursor crafting, masteries, etc. Players have been complaining about this for a while. There are items that are unattainable for players who are taking the longer, tedious, and more expensive way of obtaining a precursor for their legendary. Perhaps this could be looked into a little more by reducing the cost of certain items or not quantifying them.
8) e-Sports. There are some players who enjoy watching them, yet others do not. In my opinion, I feel that Guild Wars 2 is trying to attain a reputation for being a “famous, televised e-sport.” It’s not. There are parts of Guild Wars 2 that are competitive, but at the end of the day to me, it’s an MMORPG with rich, fantasy lore. I feel as though Guild Wars 2 is trying to be something that it isn’t, and in doing so – by pushing the game towards the e-Sport category – it will ultimately hurt the game. Personally, I’m not interested in watching e-Sports and in no way condemn or hate them, and would not mind if they took the focus away from e-Sports to better other parts of the game.
9) Gem-gated content. Living Story particularly is gated behind a gem paywall. To access the content, you need to pay Arenanet yet another fee to play. This doesn’t completely break the “buy once, play forever” promise, as the content is not necessary for progression, but it is sad to see Arenanet do this practice. While I am unsure of Arenanet’s current state as a business and how much money they are able to budget for separate gaming quarters, I’m slightly mixed about removing the gem gates. It would be great to see them go and have players access the story content whenever they please, but being a player who cares about the state of the game financially, I am unsure whether this is viable.
To me, for Arenanet to produce painfully average quality gem outfits and horribly RNG-gated skins, they are getting desperate.
It would be a dream come true if any of these could be fixed- certainly not all of them at once. I still stand by what I say in another post. Towards the beginning of Guild Wars 2 and close to the end of 2013, the game was a solid [9/10] to a [10/10.] Truly deserving of its name for its original, innovative, and fun content.
But post-2014 and Heart of Thorns release, a great majority of the f-u-n content has been removed. At best, the current state of Guild Wars 2 in my opinion is around a [7/10.] Again, it is a painfully average MMORPG in my opinion at best. They have definitely done much better in the past, which I am sure why players are frustrated or upset.
If Arenanet can get its act together and listen to player feedback, then it has a chance of surviving beyond the release of the Maguuma Jungle. There are still plenty of unreleased content in Tyria yet, and only 1/5 of the post Heart of Thorns Map has been released. Guild Wars 2 has the ability to be great again, and not presently just average.
B-but…if Guild Wars 2 fixes things for the better, they would be doing something good and actually benefit the players! We can’t have that now, can we? /sarcasm
Since the end of 2014, I feel as if Arenanet has produced more failures than success, both pre and post Heart of Thorns. Certainly the story is something that I enjoy and love, but it all just feels as if the rest of the game has lost its luster.
Here, have a bunch of complaints. These are all my personal opinions and responses to Arenanet’s content, so feel free to ignore them.
1) Gem-gated living story. You must pay to access content. Paywall. Though it doesn’t break the “buy once, play forever” promise, it is quite sad to see this.
2) Outfits. Some players want them, but most of them don’t like them. Style is subjective, but outfits defeat the purpose of customization, and Arenanet clearly hinders or does not support customization with the release of more outfits every update. What happened to armor skins or weapon skins? Oh right, RNG.
3) RNG drops. Example: the invisible footwear is over 2,000 gold on the market. It is nearly impossible to get and requires a ludicrous amount of gold to obtain. While players wanted a hide slot, Arenanet gave players the middle finger and made it a next-to-impossible drop from Heart of Thorns.
4) Mordrem Invasion. I will never forget what a disastrous event this was for one weekend. This was poorly executed in every manner and the developers should be ashamed for even trying to defend this as “good.”
5) Nerfing dungeon rewards. Scarcity is important, but ruining the economy is not a good way to ensure it happens. By nerfing the dungeon rewards, high-leveled players will not want to do them anymore. Why does Arenanet not want players to…play the game? And another thing, pushing for players to buy gems to convert to gold? I’ve seen the advertisement in the gem store for this, it’s disgusting.
6) Outfit bundles. 2000 gems for a glider, a dye kit, an outfit, and other junk I don’t want together is not a very good incentive to buy items from the gem store. I don’t want bundles. I want to buy them individually.
7) “Reducing the visual noise of [XXX].” There are multitudes of bugs to fix, many things to address, an economy to fix, more things to introduce, and Arenanet believes the elementalist’s fireball is “too visually loud.” Players were not complaining about this. I hesitate to even think who would complain to Arenanet among the multitude of other major bugs to say “graphically, the fireball is too good. You should tone it down.” Remember when they changed the warhorn audio noise? Just…why? Why was this changed in the first place? Is this a substitution for innovation?
8) Not releasing old skins/content. Bunny ears, Aviators, etc. No response from Arenanet. What happened to communicating with players? And why does Arenanet choose to find other ludicrous ways to make money with useless items and bundles when players have been demanding these skins back?
Remember the Super Adventure Box? That was fun! But…Arenanet clearly doesn’t want fun, so they took it away. And it’s not coming back.
Arenanet: We need to get more players to buy things from the gem store, how do we do it?
Players: Release the old skins! We will buy them!
Arenanet: Got it, we’ll bundle outfits and other useless items together in an expensive package. That will definitely work. Or gem-gate things. Anything that players really want as a skin…I think 1,000 gold+ is a good amount.
9) E-Sports. What is this sudden push towards e-Sports for? Something only less than a handful of players of Guild Wars 2 I predict watch; why push for this when Arenanet could be fixing bugs? Even in PVP? Rebalancing classes? Nothing? For a PVP e-sports event?
Solution: For the sake of being constructive, FIX IT. Primarily, reverse changes that didn’t need to be made. Stop selling bundles. Stop this continuous chain of taking away content. Communicate with players and actually utilize feedback. Halt the backwards “innovation.” Maybe new instruments? These were great, why stop?
Arenanet, please. Most of the world hasn’t even been released yet besides the content-less base Tyria -in which you removed most of the rewarding content from- and the Maguuma Jungle, and I feel like the game is already going to come to a complete standstill after Heart of Thorns. I’ll most likely still play it still, because I like the game, but I don’t exactly love it as I did much anymore because of these…“new innovations.”
TL;DR Arenanet presently prides itself with quantity over quality. The “10/10” quality of Guild Wars 2 is gone. At best with the given state of the game I would give it a 7/10.
/endrantpost.
Although I do enjoy Heart of Thorns to an extent, I have to say Guild Wars 2 seems to be going on a downward slope ever since its release. I admire and hate Arenanet’s “evolutionary” mechanic when it comes to MMORPGs, but the game has significantly declined in quality since I first got it near its release. Certainly the game has introduced some interesting mechanics since its inception, but in my opinion, Guild Wars 2 is definitely not a 9/10 MMO anymore.
The Living Story is behind a gem paywall. Dungeons and fractals have completely been stripped of their rewards to ensure players will not feel rewarded in items or gold when they complete them; they also leave players with no real way to earn money to buy armor or weapons. Items that could have been released via gemstore or as a new mechanic in-game are very RNG based and near-unobtainable unless gold or converted gems are used to purchase them. The game’s expansion seems to focus more on a grinding philosophy to progress through the story, urging players to earn a full mastery level before they can progress. Arenanet no longer listens to player requests for gemstore items that they want back in for holiday or special events. It’s interesting that a multitude of players request a specific item or skin which is a prospective way of earning money for Arenanet, and yet they choose to ignore the requests and wonder why players aren’t buying things from the gemstore. The Guild Wars 2 Third Anniversary Sales were a huge disappointment, as well as the tedious Mordrem Invasion event the following weekend which was a huge embarrassment in the history of Guild Wars 2. There were several pointless changes to audio, idle poses, hearts, and a multitude of other things within the game that never made any sense to be messed with. There have been more outfits released than armor skins which hinder players’ desire to customize their own character. Several PVE-based armor skins have been removed for little to no reason. Arenanet chooses to remove instead of add, which to me sounds like a puzzling choice.
In my opinion, the game has taken a turn for the worse, and definitely is no longer a 9/10 grade MMORPG anymore. There are plenty of disappointments Arenanet has delivered over the past year, but it’s still not enough to take me out of the game yet. I still remain somewhat hopeful for what Arenanet chooses to introduce in the future. Guild Wars 2 still remains one of my favorite MMORPGs out there, but Arenanet is really pushing me on edge.
(edited by Oblivion.9032)
Although I do enjoy the expansion to an extent, I have to say Guild Wars 2 seems to be going on a downward slope ever since its release. I admire and hate Arenanet’s “evolutionary” mechanic when it comes to MMORPGs, but the game has significantly declined in quality since I first got it near its release. Certainly the game has introduced some interesting mechanics since its inception, but in my opinion, Guild Wars 2 is definitely not a 9/10 MMO anymore.
The Living Story is behind a gem paywall. Dungeons and fractals have completely been stripped of their rewards to ensure players will not feel rewarded in items or gold when they complete them; they also leave players with no real way to earn money to buy armor or weapons. Items that could have been released via gemstore or as a new mechanic in-game are very RNG based and near-unobtainable unless gold or converted gems are used to purchase them. The game’s expansion seems to focus more on a grinding philosophy to progress through the story, urging players to earn a full mastery level before they can progress. Arenanet no longer listens to player requests for gemstore items that they want back in for holiday or special events. It’s interesting that a multitude of players request a specific item or skin which is a prospective way of earning money for Arenanet, and yet they choose to ignore the requests and wonder why players aren’t buying things from the gemstore. The Guild Wars 2 Third Anniversary Sales were a huge disappointment, as well as the tedious Mordrem Invasion event the following weekend which was a huge embarrassment in the history of Guild Wars 2. There were several pointless changes to audio, idle poses, hearts, and a multitude of other things within the game that never made any sense to be messed with. There have been more outfits released than armor skins which hinder players’ desire to customize their own character. Several PVE-based armor skins have been removed for little to no reason. Arenanet chooses to remove instead of add, which to me sounds like a puzzling choice.
In my opinion, the game has taken a turn for the worse, and definitely is no longer a 9/10 grade MMORPG anymore. There are plenty of disappointments Arenanet has delivered over the past year, but it’s still not enough to take me out of the game yet. I still remain somewhat hopeful for what Arenanet chooses to introduce in the future.
(edited by Oblivion.9032)
Complaining over a sale? How would you feel if there aren’t any more sales? Can’t complain about “bad” sales if there are no sales to begin with, and Anet might learn that to our detriment.
I would have been satisfied with 21 days of nothing instead of ArenaNet selling things players haven’t been asking for. They couldn’t even make a day for bunny ears or aviator glasses, and instead, wheeled out something that the majority of players were left disappointed with. A good number of my friends and guildies were frustrated and severely disappointed that ArenaNet never re-released the skins a multitude of players have been requesting for since last year.
There has been some speculation that ArenaNet simply wants to release outfits instead (as it was most likely answered in several other threads), but if they had the potential to re-release the Shadow of the Dragon armor skins for helmet, shoulder, and gauntlets, I don’t see why they can’t re-release the aviators, wide-rims, wizard hat, and bunny ears. With the failed bloom event and the non-exciting “Anniversary” sales, seems like their business goal is to disappoint again and again.
Though the game itself is fun, it’s sad to see the staff utterly ignore gem store feedback.
(edited by Oblivion.9032)
I’m also going to add my voice to the disappointed list. This event, even with a slightly “better” reward rate after being promised a “fix” is still shockingly terrible. It encourages no group contribution, unrealistic grinding tactics, and caters to no one except for players who feel the need to grind endlessly and tediously for these rewards. Event maps seem very spontaneous (like this event), and it hinders players who do not have map completion on their characters who want to participate.
It’s not fun. It’s a chore.
Even IF a player thought this was reasonable and realistic (which it isn’t), the rewards per half hour are meager. Moving from Point A to Point B to kill Mordrem only to receive next to nothing for participation is not a successful way to market HoT. The Mordrem Invasion event ends up feeling tedious, selfish, and painfully grindy.. I don’t want to have to play until the early hours of the morning just to get one skin because of this arbitrary time frame.
Some players don’t even make it to the event zones. They receive nothing but a “sorry, you weren’t fast enough” message at the end of the event. Even if they don’t make it to tag any of the Mordrem enemies…they don’t really miss much. As said before, the rewards are incredibly painful to grind for. I can’t see myself enjoying this kind of content if this is what I have to look forward to in Heart of Thorns.
Hopefully the developers behind this event take a good look at how NOT to provide “interesting content” for veteran, new, and free-to-play players. After a month’s worth of no story content, the less-than-impressive Anniversary sell-a-bration, and this disappointing, grindy event, hopefully Arenanet will not disappoint their players a third time.
I want my ears. Soon, now, anytime. Gaile???
Still waiting on those ears, Anet….