Guild Wars 2

As many people said already, this should be optional. GW2 had great spell effects, the ones added in the expansion were even nicer and now you are making them look bland, lackluster and weak. Make it optional, then people will play how they prefer.

I’m casual, I didn’t even finish the base game(even though play it for over a year now) and I was happy with the 400hero point cost even though it meant I won’t be able to unlock all traits and skills for my elite spec for several months to come. I had my new weapon, one new skill and it was enough for me. Made me feel I have things to work for and look forward to.

Dear ArenaNet

I’d like to share some of my concerns and thought on some of your recent decisions.

Recently there has been a lot of angry mob feedback about the expansion difficulty, hero point elite specialization cost or mastery “grind”(since some people don’t understand the meaning of the word).

In the past I was a player of GW1 and as you well know it was a lot harder then GW2. Now you released an expansion and from the very beginning you stated it will include challenging content(and luckily you didn’t mean only the raids cause not everybody is fan of that). GW1 was one of the most original and successful MMO’s of it’s time. You weren’t scared filling it with innovative ideas or hard and rewarding content. In GW2 you went similar route when it comes to innovation, sadly as we all know the difficulty changed drastically between the two titles.

A lot of feedback you get on the forums is negative but as you probably know or should know people who are happy or satisfied with the expansion don’t usually feel the need to run to the forums and write “i’m satisfied” “i’m happy”. There happen to appear gratitude posts but they always are in the minority compared to complains etc. Doesn’t matter how the player base as a whole feels you won’t find the answer on the forums, because that is how forums work, here you will find mostly complains. That is why I am a little worried about your recent decision to cut the hero point cost. I don’t say it was a bad decision and as I understand from your recent post you decided to do it cause you felt many people got misinformed about how hard it will be to unlock elite specializations. And I’m OK with that.

All I ask is that you NEVER base your decisions on angry mob reactions on the forum. In the case of recent complains you should very well know that even IF you made masteries faster, monsters weaker, hero point costs lower in one week people would complain that there is no content and everything is easy, boring, they have nothing to do and they want their money back. Because that is how such people work, they want everything NOW and when they have it they complain there is nothing else for them to do.

So as I said, please think about your decisions carefully and if you think they are right then hold on to them. The angry mob will adjust quicker then you know. This isn’t the first community I’m part of and it’s always like this. When people don’t understand something or want something NOW they cry about it. Later when something new appears(like the coming raids) they forget all about what they were crying before and find new reasons to cry. So just ignore the cries, concentrate on your work and on making this game the best you can.

I for one liked the hero point cost as it was and I understood where you were going with it. You wanted each ability unlocked and every trait to feel like an accomplishment and a reward for the player. Similar how unlocking elite skills in GW1 worked, you had to progress to achieve that, and it felt great. I understood and liked it even though I still didn’t finish exploring and playing through the base GW2 content which means it would take me months before I’ll be able to fully unlock my chronomancer. But it was OK. I was able to use my shield and use a well and I had things to look forward to.
As I said if you think that the hero point decision was a good one then I am with you on this. Just do what you think is right for the game.

Thanks for all your hard work and keep it up.