Guild Wars 2

Amurond.4590:

Two have sold in the last few weeks. The API for the shield item seems to be completely broken, you can’t track it on any third party site and on the trading post it doesn’t show up even when there are some posted. You have to untick ‘only show available’.

See above. The skin is available but the API is bugged and thus hidden from the wider community.

The other important fact is this: Not many people forge shields to try and get the shield precursor. The greatsaw and scythe staff have the big advantage of their respective weapon types having popular precursors. People forge greatswords and staffs all the time. Given this the actual Ghastly shield is probably much rarer than the skin itself and may well never have a significant impact on Ghastly shield skin item.

How do you know if 2 were sold in the last few weeks if you can’t track it? I am aware that you can uncheck to show what has shown up on the TP but that doesn’t mean there are any actually on the TP. I’ve checked sporadically and as I said before I haven’t seen one since they were first “leaked”. And there were many showing up.

As for your other points…I find it highly unlikely that the reason it’s not showing up is because it’s broken on the API. Plenty of people forge every day, both shields, and four random weapons. Both of those would have a chance to spit out the shield.

In the 2 years since it’s been “added”, there haven’t been any since the that first week from what I can tell. Not to mention the fact that the ghastly grinning shield skin keeps going up. If there was a steady supply feeding in then it would stabilize at some point much like the other skins are.

This is why I question if it actually still drops. What you are saying and what we see on the trading post does not add up.

CETheLucid.3964:

Roquen.5406:

Do you have proof of this?

No.

I understand what you’re asking, that it’s a masterwork shield with the ghastly skin. Maybe they closed it up as you said.

Can I please get a Dev response on this?

CETheLucid.3964:

They can be pulled from the forge, but they are somewhere in the precursor level of rarity, so you should expect to get a precursor just as well as getting the skin you’re after.

In other words, not likely, else not without a large investment.

Do you have proof of this? Before this change was made known tons of skins flooded the market. I’m talking about the one’s that are masterwork quality with stats, not just a skin. There are still greatsaw skins of that variety but there haven’t been any from the ghastly grinning in quite a while.

Shortly after a dev acknowledged it was released earlier than intended, the supply seemed to dry up and has been ever since. In fact the regular skin is actually going up. If there was a steady supply I would think that would not be the case…

The fact that there are 0 of those skins on the market are what makes me question. Has anyone in the recent past pulled one of those skins from the forge?

Hi,

I believe it was around last year that you guys reintroduced a way to get the old Halloween skins via the mystic forge. Did you stealth remove or nerf the recipe?

Can anyone confirm if these can still be pulled from the forge? Thanks in advance.

I can if I don’t think the conversation will go anywhere but I will reply so that I don’t leave you hanging.

I don’t think you need to be a pro to reach legendary. I just feel more often than not I am fighting a flawed system. Most of my matches consisted of me banging my head against the wall and that’s tiresome.

I sit there fighting with my own team and the enemy team…
Aka,
Me – “Hey can you grab home then decap far if open?”
Them – “I know how to play my class, don’t tell me what to do…”
Proceeds to rush mid as thief and dies within 5 seconds
Spends the rest of the match dueling off point
Me – Hey please hold…we have 2 points and are up by 100…they cap and run off…and we end up losing.
“Please focus targets”
“Please stomp”
“Please take out treb”
“Stop running mid to die 1 by 1”
“Play sides we are feeding mid”
“There are 3 thieves on our team…can 2 of you swap?”
etc..etc…

And before anyone says it, I know I am not the perfect or best player and I make plenty of mistakes but I do know half the time I am fighting things that are outside of my control.

Anywho /shrug I’m probably just talking in circles at this point.

Not everyone “can” reach legendary. If the matchmaking favors you sure but there is only so much you can carry solo. You can even watch someone like sindrener (since you guys like to quote pro leagues), doesn’t matter how well you play there are matches you can’t carry. And if you are solo and not as “pro” then you have even less of a chance. It doesn’t matter what class you play as if you are facing any competent team you cannot solo carry wins. If you team up – sure you have much better odds but that is a different story.

You don’t have to attack to get your point across with antagonistic comments like “Better activate that Fire Shield because a lot of people don’t like what you just said, the ugly truth.” I didn’t attack the OP, I just don’t agree with him/her and they don’t have to agree with me. That’s fine, keep the personal stuff out of it.

That said I don’t have much else to say as you seem to gloss over many of my points just to prove yours. No point in my attempting to discuss this further. Have a good one.

Well, you state that you made a team for yourself, I would imagine it’s a 5 man. If that’s the case then you are now playing 5 organized people against mostly random people. So of course you will have an advantage and you would consider pvp “fair” because it plays in your favor. Try solo queing for 4 seasons and see how lopsided matches are. Either you steamroll the other side or they steamroll you. The even match-ups are so far and few in-between it’s not even fun.

You get matches like:

5 premades vs 5 pugs
3 thieves vs 3 guardians – who designed the game to be paired that way? That’s so lopsided…
4v5’s….
Other stacked classes
Games where you have people facing off against people many tiers ahead of them
Games where people tanked MMR just to breeze through the ratings
Games where your team duels off point the entire game
Games where your team cannot win a single team fight but then continue to feed mid 1 by 1
Games where someone trolls the entire game
Games where people cap and run off and don’t hold
Games where you get cursed out for trying to coordinate
Games where there is a huge disconnect between the skill level of the players on your side and the enemy side

The list goes on and on and on. Yes, I am aware that developers cannot fix everything but they can do a whole lot more than they are doing at the moment, or at least communicate with us more.

I feel that you are a bit biased…

It seems to me that you create a 5 man so you steamroll pugs via premades and then praise the game for being so amazing. Realistically…you shouldn’t be able to play against pugs as it gives you an unfair advantage. But I guess because the population is so low they merged the two to fix queue times. Of course you will enjoy it when it works in your favor but think about all the people you fight against that don’t have a chance. Would you feel the same way if you were playing premade vs. premade? I’m curious.

And just because someone doesn’t have the time to practice six hours a day to dedicate to pvp, doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to have a fair chance. Remember we aren’t in the pro-leagues and many don’t intend to be, they just want balance.

Also, while there is a lot of “rage” as you would say, there are literally pages and pages and pages of constructive criticism that goes un-attended to. It’s a shame that people have to post on another website to get an official response from developers.

Back during beta weekends pre HoT, the class and pvp forums were “flooded” with dev commentary and feedback. Then just as HoT neared its release the forums for the most part became a wastelands again. There is very little response from devs on what’s going on and even less discussion with the playerbase – which can in fact help.

A lot of the changes people suggest are in fact very well discussed and thought out but much of the time anet seems to nerf this and nerf that and call it a day.

I don’t know why they chose a business model of silence. It seems very weird to have your own game’s website/forums and not maintain it. Customer service is a huge part of any industry and in this game it is severely lacking IMO.

I think there will be a bigger issue when people stop being vocal about the inherent issues in this game because that means they no longer care.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I agree with the other things you wrote, except for this.

• However much people have been accused of using insider trading, AB MultiLoot completely dwarfs the total amount of wealth involved. At worst, a handful of people can take advantage of early information before the market catches up, compared to thousands participating in AB/ML.
• AB/ML has a clear impact on the economy: as its popularity has increased, the price of ecto has dropped. While I agree it hasn’t “harmed” the economy, it’s misleading to suggest it has no effect.

Again, I agree with your main point that people are overreacting to the handful of extremely aggressive leaders that might be /kicking folks too quickly — that, alone, doesn’t qualify as toxic behavior. (Annoying to the individuals affected, but not making it impossible for others to ML.)

I don’t think I ever said or suggested it has no effect. People are up in arms that AB/ML is destroying the economy and I simply disagree.

You state that the insider trading only affects a small portion of wealth. But I know of 4 guildies/friends that made about 2k each just from the most recent “leak”. And far more than that profited. Even if there were only 50 people total… That could be well into the 50,000-100,000g range. And these leaks happen all the time.

The Halloween skins, the dyes, mystic coins, endless batwing brew, SAB mini pieces… Etc. Hell one guildie made close to 7k off just those batwing tonics and they flat out told us that they were told what it would be used for beforehand.

And yes before anyone tells me off, I am aware that there are people who are just good at speculating but that doesn’t change the fact that insider trading is going on and is pretty rampant and they definitely affect the economy.

So you want everyone else to suffer because some people are tools? And I highly doubt you were only in the lobby for 9 seconds. Commanders whisper you and see if you are there then they give you a heads up then they boot you…

And even if one or two did…then those are one or two bad apple…

So because you got kicked from a few maps it’s now toxic? Every game has toxic people and you will come across them -does it suck? Sure, but not everyone is like that.

I don’t Multi-loot very often but when I have all the commanders were civil and as long as people followed directions they didn’t care. Most will boot you for the groups sake (if you don’t follow directions) but tell you can rejoin, aka it’s nothing personal they just want to keep things functioning accordingly.

If you don’t like AB Multi-Map don’t join it. You can still join a successful map and do one on your own. And all these people crying wolf about this being an exploit, what the hell is wrong with you? If people like farming it then so be it – why do you need to impinge on what they enjoy?

If you don’t like AB, you can farm SW, DT, Fractals, Dungeons, Gamble in the forge/ecto, play the TP, Speculate…etc… All of which are equally if not more rewarding.

And if you are really going to argue that it ruins the economy, then you are spatting nonsense. With all the insider trading that does actually go on, the vast disparity of wealth that mimics real life and everything else…you are actually trying to state that THIS destroys the economy? This is a game and people play it to have fun, not a real world simulation.

Seriously, get off your high horses.

It’s there so that you keep consistency with the map. Here’s an example…

Player 1 is in group 3.
Player 2 is in group 4.
Player 3 wants to join group 3’s map.

Player 1 stays in group 3 but joins group 4’s map. Player 3 doesn’t know this but they want to join 3 so they use player 1 to join group 3’s map because they are in group 3. However, player 1 has already moved to another map without moving group. So now player 3 is actually in group 4’s map.

Now do this wide-scale and you have maps closing on themselves, people joining the wrong maps…etc.

So it’s there to keep order and help the multi-map function properly.

vesica tempestas.1563:

It is not an agreement – read your The End User License Agreement.

you know its really easy to throw complaints all over the place, but its the intelligent that actually stop to ponder what the correct approach is, so again:

Build what the majority want’s now, or build what was promised years ago – what do you want?

Honestly, what the hell are you on about? This isn’t something that was just promised it was sold with HoT. They did not say that it may appear, they stated that it will be released with HoT. It was used to help generate sales and then it was never fully followed through with. You can throw the same kittening word “Agile Development” around all you want but what they did was wrong and could even be considered a Bait and Switch. Which is not legal at all.

How do you know what the majority wants any better than we do? If you go based on that then raids should have never ever been released because such a small portion of the population actually wanted them and an even smaller portion plays them. Yet a team of the same size as the legendary team, was and still is working on raids.

All Mike said was that the team could spend years on finishing the legendaries, well that’s not our fault is it? You sold them to us, you follow through with it. They can hire more staff if they need to, plenty of other companies do.

Hell, if I pulled this kind of kitten at work I would be fired rather quickly and we would also lose a lot of business. I don’t see why you defend such lame business decisions.

You also mentioned that you were a developer I believe, so I ask you (if I am mistaken please correct me). Do you often sell things you know you will have no way of finishing? If so, how can you not consider that a shady business practice.

I mentioned it in an earlier post that you might not have read but if you know it takes you 3 months to make 1 of 16 things but you only have 8 months until your product needs to ship, then how the hell can you promise to have all 16 ready? And even more how can you take sales on the product stating that all 16 will be released? That is not shady to you? I mean really, come on now.

MrPinks.2015:

lol you comparing mac and fries to an MMO game?
the budget for making a burger is waaaaaaaay different from making an mmo content XD

Okay then, let’s compare this to buying a home. Say you buy a home and you hire a general contractor to renovate the entire place. When you hire them you pay for a remodel of the 2 bedrooms, the kitchen, the bathroom and the dining room. You guys agree to the terms, sign and pay.

Half a year goes by and you are ready to move in. You then arrive at your new home and you notice that they finished the 2 bedrooms, the dining room and the kitchen but the bathroom is about 25% finished, i.e., it still functions as a bathroom but it wasn’t renovated as you had set forth.

Now you are likely upset and rightfully so but the contractor tells you, oh sorry we moved priorities over to the kitchen and dining room because we ran out of time and people generally spend more time in those other areas. Also, we even put in nicer things than you had asked for! We added a stainless steel oven and fridge, marble counter tops and brand new carpeting for the dining room! Isn’t it great?! We have to move onto other projects because you aren’t the only person we do business with but be glad we got you all of this other stuff, you understand right?

Now, if I was using the logic of many people in this thread, then the contractor would be in the right because he still provided most of the service, he just had to adapt because he ran out of time and needed to prioritize other things. It doesn’t matter what was agreed upon or paid for because things change and that’s how business works.

The reality of the situation is that the contractor would have to follow through with the contract. And if they did not fulfill this then there could easily be a lawsuit and the contractor will be held liable.

So I ask you now, what would you say in this case? And based on the principle of the example why is it any different? Why would one be acceptable and the other not?

PS: Another poster above mentioned something that none of you seem to acknowledge either. It’s in very bad taste to promise and ultimately sell something that you cannot deliver on. For example, if at the time of offering a full new set of legendaries with HoT, they only had 1 completed and 8 months to ship the game and they knew that that 1 completed legendary took 3 months. Then there is no way in hell that they could ever finish all 16, so why promise to begin with?

Things just don’t magically happen overnight and the expansion didn’t just happen over night. Yes, people asked for it but if you for one second think that Anet didn’t have any plans for an expansion then you are quite foolish.

So if in their infinite wisdom they decided to hype and sell something they knew that they could not deliver on, then they are 100% in the wrong. It is not our fault if they bit off more than they can chew, we paid for something and it is up to them to deliver. If they need to hire more people to get the job done, then so be it.

Vayne.8563:

Where are they advertising a full set of legendaries? They said there would be new legendaries in HoT and there are. They mentioned the new set of legendaries before launch, but not since as far as I know.

Yes they made a decision to do something better for the game. You may not like the decision but I’m sure it wasn’t taken lightly. They know their situation better than we do.

Honestly don’t want to dispute this with you and seeing as how long you’ve been around here, both GW and the forums, I’m surprised you sit there and claim they never did that.

Legendary weapons were a pretty big selling point for a good chunk of people. Anet promised a full set… in 2013, decided to “scrap” that system (if they even ever started it) and then pushed them back. Come HoT announcement they state that the full new set would be released. They posted presale online and allowed people to fully purchase HoT beforehand while listing a bunch of the content, one of those being a full set of you guessed it – legendaries.

The closer it got to HoT the more their stance on legendaries began to change. Aka…just 16 then small batches then just 3 then just 1 more and indefinitely postponed.

So yes, they did promise a full set and no they didn’t deliver. Due to all the backlash they started changing everything that mentioned a full-set but people have those screenshots and I’m sure you can dredge it up somewhere.

You can believe whatever you want but that doesn’t change the fact that this did occur.

vesica tempestas.1563:

And has has been repeated a million times now, there is opportunity costs involved with every decision in life, the FACT is he gets pleasure from the game, he finds it fun , and that means the overall effect of all decisions Anet have made including old discussions about weapons skins has been good. So what exactly is he complaining about – he plays a game he finds fun after years of content, and now he doesn’t want to pay he says, now after 4 years?

Thats not to say Anet do things wrong, they do, but that’s not really his point.

My annoyance is actually this entitled culture thing, they want everything they think of in their head whenever they think about it, and ignorantly and deliberately ignore the underlying reasons or benefits they get from decisions – its easier to complain right?

I think you are missing the point entirely…it’s not about entitlement at all. Anet promised these things in their reports/blogs/news/etc…and then the reneged on them. It’s as simple as that. They used HoT legendary weapons and armor as a selling point – to push sales up and then they didn’t follow through with it. The weapons in question are just one example of them doing that.

Yes the game is still fun, yes there are still other things to do but what does this mean for the future of the game. You say that “agile development” dictates that you need to constantly adapt your processes. How does pulling one of your smallest teams from working on their project to help the game but not pulling from those working on your NEXT expansion, when your CURRENT one needs a lot of help, make more sense? How is that not flawed? Please elaborate for me because you seem to understand this far better than I do.

What is stopping Anet from doing this again when their next expansion hits? What if they promise, x, y and z and only deliver on x? Could x still be fun? Of course it can but what about the other selling points?

Anet has had a habit of starting things and “laying the groundwork” over and over and over and then scrapping the idea entirely. People don’t want this to happen (well at least I don’t).

Imagine if your beloved Living Story was “scrapped” to work on WvW or some other aspect of the game you didn’t care for. There would be hell to pay and people would be in an uproar. Why is this any different than that? Because you don’t specifically care for that content?

vesica tempestas.1563:

-cropped-

As i said, this is to do with professional industry recognized development practices , developing software where you build everything you ever said you would is not how you develop fast moving customer facing products, and as has been said before, the OP could look up Agile development if he genuinely want to understand why Anet does this. but ofc he doesn’t really want to understand why, he just wants to complain about a thing he has in his ahead as some kind of ‘promise’ like a child throwing a tantrum with their parent – im not paying he says dramatically while he continues to play!

You seem to have glossed over the majority of my post. He is upset because he paid for something which was essentially never released. I can see how that is frustrating, it also shows he cares to an extent…He enjoys the game and he wants Anet to do better, there is nothing wrong with that.

Also stating he’s not paying anymore is not dramatic. He feels he enjoys what content there is but because of the direction Anet has moved in, he chooses not to give them anymore money for the time being.

I think more people should stick to these types of principles and to stop accepting everything as is. Remember this is a 2 way business model. Anet provides us with a product and in return we pay them for said product – we both need each other. The OP simply feels that at this point in time the product is no longer worth paying for. /shrug

It’s good to praise a game for the things it does right but it’s also good to acknowledge the shortcomings so that it can hopefully improve in the future. The OP’s points are very valid and just because you don’t agree with them it doesn’t make them incorrect.

They did in fact promise not only new legendary weapons but legendary armor in 2013.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

We aren’t quite ready to go into all the details here, but what I can say is you will see a specific way to build precursor items on your way to a legendary. On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013. Building your precursor will require a large amount of the new crafting material rewards listed above, 500 in crafting, and likely a combination of other items earned for completing more specific content in the game.

That’s in their official news…then they scrapped that as we all know to overhaul their system. And then new legendaries and armor were put behind a paywall, aka HoT. Not necessarily a bad thing but maybe a bit disappointing to all of us that were waiting for so long. Keep in mind that these were a pretty big selling point for HoT.

Then HoT was announced and we were initially promised a full new set of legendaries with HoT’s launch. Then as it got closer to release, we were told it would just be 16, then just 4 initially with small batches throughout the upcoming year until all were released. Then we got something like below which could be interpreted as they will be released eventually…

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/hot-new-legendary-weapons/

It takes a lot of work to craft these legendary journeys for release, so rather than take the time to develop the full set before releasing any of them, we will be releasing new legendary weapons in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of sixteen has been added to the game.

And then finally they were “postponed indefinitely”…aka they probably won’t see the light of day.

My biggest issue with all of you stating that scrapping legendary weapons saved the game and helped move it forward is that the legendary weapon team only consisted of 6 people, yes 6. So if these 6 people are carrying the weight of the other hundreds of employees then fire the useless ones and get other people who will actually work.

They couldn’t have left that team of 6 on the legendary team? What about pulling the 70+ working on the new expansion? Or any other of the plethora of employees at Anet. How do you guys fail to see this? If 6 employees were that crucial to the development of the current game then don’t you think Anet’s prioritizes are out of wack?

Just in case you think I was making those numbers up…from Mike himself.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Legendary-weapons-6/first

Last year we talked about plans to gradually build out a second set of legendary weapons through live content updates. That’s a big responsibility. We have a team of six developers working on that, who could work on it for years to come.

Okay, so let me preface this by saying that I don’t know much about the intricacies of developing and maintaining an MMO but is the amount of content/updates that we’ve received post HoT considered normal?

As far as I understand Anet employs around 300 employees. ~70 of them are currently working on another expansion. That leaves 230 working on the current game. Let’s say for some ridiculous reason about 130 are working on non-development things, marketing, research, accounting…etc… That leaves 100 employees working on actual game content.

We know that 6 employees or so work on raid content and they released 3 wings. We knew ~6 or so employees were working on HoT legendaries before that was pretty much cancelled (“postponed indefinitely”…whatever you want to call it).

So, my question is what the hell are all the other employees doing? Is this normal, should we really expect more content, or do we as a player-base expect too much?

I’m a bit confused because with HoT we were promised these things:

All new elite specs: We got them but there were changes pre-HoT that were mentioned in the last phase of testing that were never made. Some classes only had 1 patch of testing before HoT released. We had a ton of communication up until HoT and then all the class forums got utterly silent again. And many of the changes just never saw the light of day…

Legendary Weapons: We were promised an entirely new set way before HoT. Then after a lot of waiting they told us they were scrapping it and redoing from scratch. Then HoT was announced and we were promised the new set with HoT. So we were going to get 19, then they changed it to 16 (no more underwater weapons). Then it would be released in small batches until all 16 were out…then just 3…then they announced they were scrapping new legendaries because it was too much work, so we end up with 4 and with no more in sight.

My question there is, if only 6 people were focused on the new legendaries, why did you need to pull them for LS stuff? Could you really not pull any of the other 294 employees? You had to pull from one of the smallest teams?

Legendary Fractal Backpiece: This was another major selling point of HoT and we had to wait 3 months to finish the collection then another bunch of months to finally finish the backpiece, after you decided to scrap leaderboards for fractals – which no one really wanted in the first place.

New Fractals: Fractals became the new 5 man content…you revamped the rewards slightly, the tiers and some fractals…no new maps with HoT…we finally just got one.

New PvP Maps: We got 1 new mode and more recently another map.

WvW: New maps, revamps and many other changes were promised. They hit very slowly and many of the changes up until the more recent time were not what the majority of the playerbase were asking for.

LS3: Was promised to hit sometime after HoT and it was just FINALLY released. How could you have such a huge content drought for a NEW expansion?

So, ultimately I want to know what the hell is going on at Anet? Please, someone enlighten me because I do really like the game, there are just many changes that I don’t get and so many empty promises from Anet.

My biggest concern is that they are working on ANOTHER expansion when the current one isn’t even fully finished or fleshed out. How can you be working on something like that when you cannot even properly maintain your current game?

If I am completely wrong here, then please tell me to go fly a kite but I just don’t get it, so once again someone throw me a bone here.

Thanks for reading.

Seriously, why would you do this? As if we don’t have to click too much already. Who decided that adding a confirmation box to buying fractal encryption keys was a good idea?

Please, tell me what the reasoning behind this change was? We ask for FEWER confirmation boxes and then you add in this. Am I the only one annoyed by it?

Xcorpdog.2840:

Elitejelly.7462:

There was datamine where Anet was gonna give a title to those who reached lvl 50 before hoT, buuuut guess that didn’t happen either….

They wanted to but couldn’t seperate the players with 50 from those without, since the system isn’t set up that way. Also if it gives you any insight they had to get you to do a 50 after the patch since otherwise it wouldn’t count it.
Poor 5 man fotm team >.<

How could they not separate those with from those without? The game tracks your personal reward level… If they track that information then can’t they just go, “If X player’s Personal Fractal Reward Level is equal to Y as of (some timeframe before HoT) give them Z title.”

They are already tracking the data so I’m not sure what you mean it’s too difficult to find out that information. Could you elaborate?

Update: A guildie told me they got a lot from the encrypted boxes. So I bought a stack (250) and opened them all using the matrices I had. I got less than 100 fractal relics. So yea…Guess I just have to wait a few months to get enough for my alts. Just a heads up to others at this point.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Roquen.5406:

This doesn’t include the cost of potions, etc…that you can buy or the encryptions (which cost 1 per). Doesn’t seem like much at first but when you open hundreds and hundreds, you deplete your relics VERY fast.

Have you tried not buying the keys or potions ?

Yes, I stopped buying potions and I buy the keys with the matrices now…

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

You get 5 for a super low fractal like 2, which takes all of 2 minutes. Alternatively you could do a harder-but-still-easy Fractal like 56 (Bloomhunger) and get 20+ per run. Encryptions also have a chance to drop 5. It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be.

Just did a 69 cliffside, only got 10…so maybe I just have bad RNG? Either way I feel that it’s unnecessarily gated.

I have to ask, why did you nerf the fractal relic drop rate so harshly? I always had an abundance so I didn’t mind spending them on extra stuff. But all of a sudden with HoT and trying to gear my alts for higher end fractals, I’ve burned through them all.

Some quick math, someone correct me if I am wrong.

There are 14 slots for for the regular +5 infusion and for higher levels you need the +7. You need to “buy” 14 of each, so 28 × 75 = 2,100 fractal relics. Normally not a big deal but now you only get 5-10 relics per fractal it seems.

On the low end you need to do 420 runs to get enough for a full set of +7s. On the upper end you need to do 210 runs to get a full set of +7s.

This doesn’t include the cost of potions, etc…that you can buy or the encryptions (which cost 1 per). Doesn’t seem like much at first but when you open hundreds and hundreds, you deplete your relics VERY fast.

My alts are not gated by the ascended gear which I crafted for them but by these relics which were nerfed into the ground. Why did you do this? This is killing fractals for my alts.

Am I missing something here? Is there a better way around this? Thanks in advance.

I just want to point out that some of you are saying that a grind is doing the same thing over and over and over to get to the end result. If the math in this topic is even remotely accurate – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Gift-of-Maguuma-by-the-numbers – then yes that IS a grind.

Repeating the same events almost 4000 times is very grindy, especially for a game that is supposed to be on the more casual side and that is by your own descriptions/examples of what a “grind” is.

I am not saying grind is bad, nor am I saying it’s not needed but to claim outright that it is not in anyways grindy is not true.

Also, IMHO it’s not a great idea to compare this to other MMOs in the vein of “That one has so much for grind for x, y, z reasons, so this is no grind” because this game isn’t intended to be like other games. You should compare it in its own right. That is, what is this game trying to do? Does it successfully do that? If yes, great! If not, how can they improve? Just because one isn’t as bad as another, doesn’t mean either are good.

Anyways I suspect that many will disagree with me but I don’t mean to step on anyone’s toes. This is just my opinion on this topic. Feel free to correct me if need be. Thanks for reading!

Jski.6180:

Roquen.5406:

Jski.6180:

—snip—

Hrm, those sound great on paper but in practice I feel they are pretty lackluster and in many cases perform worse than their base counterpart.

Not realty if you played the old d/d ele back when ranges caster could not nearly one shot you (with attking a lot realty fast not realty one shot lol). Its lets tempest cover what d/d ele use to be it also bring a new class type to get game the healer type. It may not be fun to you (to a lot of ppl if your not seeing big numbers you cant have fun) but for others it is.

Any way the question is how tempest is different.

I feel that you are focusing on the damage aspect. It’s just that IMO, the Tempest doesn’t do anything differently than before. Ele could frontline back in the day, especially before stability changes. We had Aura Sharing, awesome support, etc…etc… I think it’s a bit lame to remove something then add it back in and call it new (which they’ve done slightly with other classes as well) and that’s kind of what it feels like here.

Hell, in sPvP Ele’s have pretty much had the same d/d cele cantrip build forever. A bunker/support build.

That and it seems like it lacks a good chunk of synergy (which I’m not sure they are addressing completely), which leaves the spec feeling as if it’s all over the place. But, that’s just my opinion… /shrug

Jski.6180:

Aura heals, aoe stun brakes and super speed, being able to use all aura types with out being locked to a wepon, a bit more stab, a more reliable whirl finisher, a moving pAoE attk and heal and cc, boon buffing, (for now) might only boon sharing, stronger protection for self, a real aoe weakness and some enduraton reg that is aoe all i can think of.
So over all tempest is a more pt aimed and a bit more def then ele. This lets tempest play more melee aimed then ele (as things stand ele can play melee as d/d or d/f but that type of game play for ele has been eroded by a great deal due to ranges classes getting higher dmg on there ranged attks i have a feeling ele d/d and d/f will be going away from viability comply after HoT).
Ele is your dmg/support ranged game play where tempest is your def/support melee.

Hrm, those sound great on paper but in practice I feel they are pretty lackluster and in many cases perform worse than their base counterpart.

Elementalists generally attune swap a lot, so by providing you with an Overload mechanic it forces you to camp one attunement. Which I guess is considered a change in playstyle? I’ve seen this point as a big selling point but how true is it?

We already do that in PvE… As a staff ele you mainly camp fire for max DPS with the occasional swap to another for some support. This is pretty similar for other ele builds as well. If you run conjure you camp your attunes with a similar rotation, rinse and repeat.

So how is this a selling point when it’s something we already do? Then you have the aura share…which is something we could do already. Then we were given great boon share via Heat Sync…but that has been nerfed into oblivion and now it’s a might stacker (once again something we can already do).

Can someone please clarify this for me? How exactly is Tempest giving us a different playstyle, when all of the things it brought/brings were all things that we could already do at some point (before stuff was removed/nerfed/etc).

I don’t want to step on any toes as I am sure many are excited to play Tempest. But if the elite spec doesn’t provide anything really “new”, nor are any of the aspects stronger than the base Ele, then what is actually the point in playing it? I’m just genuinely curious where everyone sees the appeal.

Edit: Yes, I understand that I don’t have to play the elite spec but Ele is my favorite class and it was a nice thought to have something “new” to play after 3 years but it just doesn’t seem worth it. /shrug Thanks for listening

Cyninja.2954:

Roquen.5406:

Cyninja.2954:

Some people can’t be argued with. People even tell you that Anet goes out of their way to keep unbalance due to grafiks to a minimum, yet here you are still not getting it. I doubt many others will care for your plight, especially not on the pvp forums.

I am not quite sure what you are saying here, as that’s not what I was talking about at all. Also, you didn’t address a single one of my valid points. Finally, I didn’t post this on the pvp subforum, it was posted under general and a moderator moved it here.

You have no valid points. Your only argument as to why the refractors should be allowed is:

- they would not impact pvp

Everything after that is grasping at straws or basically stating “two wrongs make a right”. People invalidated that point by showing that Anet is going out of their way to keep balance due to grafiks to a minimum by providing option settings to remove all clutter etc.

Train of thought, what if legendaries are making things harder to see? Does not mean Anet needs to add even more thing to make pvp visiables overcluttered.

Done here. Thick skull is thick skull.

Funny coming from you…you just stated they provide an option to remove all clutter…as in if you select it you wouldn’t even see the skin. Then you complain that allowing it to show would ruin the game for you. Make up your mind…

Second…you act as if pvp is balanced when it is FAR FROM IT…so please read everything before throwing insults at people.

Cyninja.2954:

Some people can’t be argued with. People even tell you that Anet goes out of their way to keep unbalance due to grafiks to a minimum, yet here you are still not getting it. I doubt many others will care for your plight, especially not on the pvp forums.

I am not quite sure what you are saying here, as that’s not what I was talking about at all. Also, you didn’t address a single one of my valid points. Finally, I didn’t post this on the pvp subforum, it was posted under general and a moderator moved it here.

Cyninja – If you are going to argue that particle effects get in the way of player interaction. Then you have to ban throughout, you can’t go, “Oh no these are slightly less irritating so they are a-okay”. That’s the only way to be fair on all fronts. By your argument legendaries should be removed as well.

Saiyan – In your second point you kind of defeat your own argument… You state the effects get in the way but then link an option that you can apply so you wouldn’t even see them. I am well-aware that those options exist and wasn’t asking for them to be implemented but was stating that those should be mandatory by your standards.

Aktium – Please reread what you quoted. As mentioned above I was not asking for those features but mentioning if we went by the previous posters logic… Then those things should be mandatory.

You are trying to tell me that this would throw things out of wack and make things unfair? But things such as…

Class balance being broken
Stacked teams still being paired against hot joins
Poor matchmaking group comps
Certain builds completely outclassing any level of skill
1 condition doing 10 times more damage than any other condition combined
Etc…are fine?

If Anet really cared about balancing everything then they would be patching every few weeks and constantly tweaking and fine tuning to keep everything competitive and fair, much like any other major e-sport does.

Instead you have the same maps for 3 years, the same builds still overpowering everything else (d/d cele ele), the same game modes and on and on. Please stop acting as if this is a finely tuned competitive game mode and something like the refractor would shatter the non-existent, perfect balance that you speak of. Afterall, this is a very casual game where the end game is essentially cosmetic collection.

(Reposted without the first line because a mod deleted my initial post…)

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There’s no slot for the refractors in ascended gear, let alone in PvP. Plus, if you add one to an exotic, you can’t move it to another toon unless you destroy the original item (and if you add it to an unsalvageable trinket, you’re completely out of luck).

tl;dr refractors aren’t very user-friendly in all sorts of ways

You can put them into exotic gear plus the link below to extract them. If you use a cheap exotic (since stats don’t matter) then you don’t lose much gold. Hell if you just use any backpiece it can be even cheaper.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Upgrade_Extractor

But yes they aren’t very user friendly and it is quite disappointing, the effects are quite fun…

Cyninja.2954:

Roquen.5406:

Friggarn.9451:

After all that time, you didn’t wiki search it and find that out? 400-500G is a lot to spend without researching the item first!

I looked at pictures and Youtube videos of the items being used and for whatever reason it didn’t register to check and see if it did work in sPvP. Seeing as it’s a vanity item I didn’t think they would stop you from using it.

No one buys it for the stats as you have to downgrade your gear to use it (can’t slot into ascended). It’s used for the unique color/glow it brings about.

Imagine if you could only use your legendary skin in PvE only, you wouldn’t be upset? There is no good reason why they can’t be used in sPvP. Thus, I am asking for it to be visible while pvping.

Actually there is.

Refractors make animations harder to read (especially the black one). This would give players with refractors an advantage, especially on asura where the animations are already hard to read.

I wouldn’t expect them to change this.

By your logic:

Legendaries should not be usable as their particle effects in some cases block the player’s view and cause an unfair advantage.
The wing backpieces should not be usable as they are very large and skew the player’s view.
Players should all have to be the same style/race/gender as that would cause an unfair advantage.
Legendary armor should not be visible in spvp (assuming legendary armor will have shiny pieces to it).

Xbon.9086:

This should be a given, A refractor is an item you slot into an accessory/ring/etc, think long and hard about this one; you don’t use your regular slots in PvP, you use a single amulet, and two sigils per weapons… This will not change, I can almost assure you.

You can place it into your backpiece which is a slot you use for a skin…I want the skin not the stats.

Friggarn.9451:

After all that time, you didn’t wiki search it and find that out? 400-500G is a lot to spend without researching the item first!

I looked at pictures and Youtube videos of the items being used and for whatever reason it didn’t register to check and see if it did work in sPvP. Seeing as it’s a vanity item I didn’t think they would stop you from using it.

No one buys it for the stats as you have to downgrade your gear to use it (can’t slot into ascended). It’s used for the unique color/glow it brings about.

Imagine if you could only use your legendary skin in PvE only, you wouldn’t be upset? There is no good reason why they can’t be used in sPvP. Thus, I am asking for it to be visible while pvping.

Hello All,

So after a long time debating whether or not I should get a Refractor, I finally broke down and bought the orange one. Much to my dismay…it does not actually work in sPvP…please change this. That’s the only reason I bought it.

I’m quite disappointed with this and really hope this can be changed. Thanks in advance.

Vayne.8563:

Roquen.5406:

Arnox.5128:

You know… You guys didn’t have to do the event at all. With some of these responses, you’d think ANet put a gun to their head and forced them to do it. The event may not be very good at all but I hardly think it’s as bad as what people make it out to be.

And in any case, I thought it was, at the very least, fun to watch the Mordrem just crumble so fast under the heat of 40+ players swarming them and wasting all in their path.

Are you serious? No one is saying that at all. Yes you don’t have to do the events or grind them out. However, if you want the rewards from the events, then YES, you DO need to grind the event for the entire weekend. That is because it’s time-gated per hour (30 minutes of an event, 30 minutes of waiting), time-gated per reward and it’s a limited time event.

Yes, anything in the kitten game is optional, you don’t need to log in, you don’t need to make a character, you don’t need to play, you don’t need to talk. But for those that actually want to play there is a grind in certain aspects. That’s not really a bad thing but the implementation of said grind is bad.

And their entire grind philosophy went out the door as soon as the game was released. But that’s a different story.

I think you’re missing the point. When you need certain gear to do certain content, within the context of the game that gear is not optional.

When I played Rift, you needed a certain amount of focus or you couldn’t even queue for a dungeon. You couldn’t enter it at all. Within the context of Rift, I was locked out of content by not having certain equipment.

You don’t need anything from that vendor to play the content in this game. If you want it, have at it. But you’re not disadvantaged in the game by not having it.

I addressed that in one of my previous posts…but since you use “optional” so loosely, in Rift you don’t need to dungeon, that is something you CHOOSE to do. If you want to dungeon you have to get focus. You can do other stuff if you want and that doesn’t all require attunements or gear or anything of the sort.

The optional argument doesn’t really work because you can apply that to anything. The point was GW2 doesn’t want to be like any other game, right? So why design it in a similar fashion? They said they don’t want people grinding/farming endlessly for stuff, yet they design the game in such a way that the only REASONABLE way to get it is to grind endlessly or be praised by the RNG gods.

Look at GW2 in the context of gear-treadmill being a cosmetic-treadmill. In that case this game is very grindy.

Arnox.5128:

You know… You guys didn’t have to do the event at all. With some of these responses, you’d think ANet put a gun to their head and forced them to do it. The event may not be very good at all but I hardly think it’s as bad as what people make it out to be.

And in any case, I thought it was, at the very least, fun to watch the Mordrem just crumble so fast under the heat of 40+ players swarming them and wasting all in their path.

Are you serious? No one is saying that at all. Yes you don’t have to do the events or grind them out. However, if you want the rewards from the events, then YES, you DO need to grind the event for the entire weekend. That is because it’s time-gated per hour (30 minutes of an event, 30 minutes of waiting), time-gated per reward and it’s a limited time event.

Yes, anything in the kitten game is optional, you don’t need to log in, you don’t need to make a character, you don’t need to play, you don’t need to talk. But for those that actually want to play there is a grind in certain aspects. That’s not really a bad thing but the implementation of said grind is bad.

And their entire grind philosophy went out the door as soon as the game was released. But that’s a different story.

ThreeFeetOfMagic.4529:

I played a game called Ether Saga. In that game you could buy a bot from the cash shop that would kill in a specific area for you, heal you when health was set to whatever % you wanted it to heal you and even set the range of which you targeted mobs. When I played the max level was 105. In the time it took to go from 104 to 105 you had to use these bots for non stop 24/7 grinding in the best spot in the game for xp which there was only 18 of them btw, 9 of which were in non pvp and 9 in pvp. The time it took for 1 being the class with the longest range aoe, 1 shotting the mobs was 10 months. The other classes took over a year. That is non stop grinding. People of this game do not know what grinding is.

So what you are saying is that because you played a game that was so grindy that you had to have a BOT play the game FOR YOU for 10 months, to grind out a level…That GW2 doesn’t have a grind?

Can you please consider what you are saying for a moment and how ridiculous your accusation is? Keep in mind GW2 is catering to a casual crowd and is supposed to be different from other MMO’s.

Or better yet consider how ridiculous the game you were playing was…to level up you have to let something play the game for you, that makes no sense what so ever. You really went to the extreme with your example.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Why should someone get the same rewards as someone who put in the effort, just for doing an easier form of said content? You reward those who are willing to put in the effort and time to complete said hard content, you don’t reward the lesser skilled just for attempting. “Oh well, you tried, here, have a participation reward
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Some-people-don-t-like-hard-mode/page/10#post5400683

No efford , no fun :P

We had ppl in that thread , what hated RNG and wanted 100% chance to get the item or Tokens (which they are using atm in this events) :P

But it currently isn’t skill based… A large portion is just random, the other portion is just having enough time to grind stuff out.

I feel that a lot of you are missing the point…

The thing is this game is very grindy, if you want to aim for any goal at all really. If you want ascended armor? Legendary? Cultural Armor? Fancy Weapon Skin? Grind away.

Now, if you just want to hit level cap, use odd matching armor, etc…then yes there won’t be a grind. But the same can be said in ANY game. You don’t NEED to raid in other games, or grind day in and day out. You can just level up at your own pace, go pvp, or do some dungeons or whatever it is and call it a day. Raiding is OPTIONAL, it’s only if you want be part of that environment that you need to continually upgrade your gear and do this and that.

The same goes for GW2 but this is where my point stands. You don’t NEED to do anything in any game so you can’t really throw that argument out there to say that GW2 isn’t grindy since everything is OPTIONAL because as I previously mentioned if you actually want to get anything accomplished, the game is a grind.

One of the problems IMHO with GW2 is that you can’t spot grind for mats, you get random bags and hope it gets what you want. Whereas in other games you can go out and grind X spot for Y item. In this game you find the flavor of the month spot to grind for X amount of gold so that you can buy Y item. Then Anet nerfs this spot and that spot because they don’t want you to grind (or so they say) and people find another more profitable area to grind. But if they don’t want you to grind, why do they make the only reasonably obtainable way to get an item, a super tedious grind? It seems that Anet at times isn’t even sure of what they want.

The other thing is, this game doesn’t have end game revolving around a gear treadmill grind. It does however have a cosmetic treadmill and so I feel that it is only fair to compare it to other games in that regard…i.e, cosmetic grind is to GW2 as gear treadmill is to any other MMO. When you look at it that way, yes there is a grind.

Then you have people above that mention the game is not grindy because I can just get ascended chests and convert them to the armor I want. Well just because you get 1 ascended chest every few days, doesn’t mean others do. Some people have done Teq every day since the revamp and STILL don’t have a hoard. Others get 2-3 within the first month of doing Teq. For the first individual the game may not seem grindy for the latter….it is very much a grind.

Not to mention all the temporary content which poses an issue for certain people that can’t play during those periods of time.

Also, I played WoW for a very long time and found the “grind” there to be much less grindy than in GW2. I raided in Vanilla WoW up until I quit sometime in WOTLK, so I was there when the game would be considered far more grindy than it is today. So, no I haven’t played every other MMO under the sun that has more of a grind but I did play a game that people often compare this one to.

I know that every game has its grind and that helps with longevity but the difference comes with how “fun” the developer makes that grind. To me running around with a shovel for hours on end for maybe 10g an hour, or playing TP wars, or dungeon training the same dungeons for 3 years isn’t exactly fun…

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy many aspects of the game but there are some things I wish Anet would do better. RNG being one of them and they have already taken steps in the right direction (with things such as the legendary precursor track for HoT). Though, this event seems like a step in the wrong direction.

Hopefully, I made some sense here…and feel free to correct me on any points that I am mistaken on.

That is an awful idea, I’m pretty sure he would only unlock the Twilight and Sunrise skins, one of which he already has unless he equips the Eternity. On top of that he would lose his own legendary in the process and would just have one extra skin…

I don’t think this is something you should do at all. It has so many chances to end poorly. A better alternative would be to sell sunrise and farm the rest of the 1000-1500g you need to buy eternity outright.

Since I’ve started playing, I’ve spent well over 15,000g on the forge (that I can recall). Obviously not all at once, usually 200g-1000g at a time, 1500-2500 crafted rares or 200-400 exotics. I always use level 80 weapons, rare or exotic, I use 4 of the same weapon type unless I use rares collected from open world stuff.

I have forged a few precursors (dawn/dusk/spark/the legend) but with the amount of gold I’ve lost gambling…I’m definitely deep in the hole. It wasn’t profitable for me and since I’ve sold pretty much everything I had of value and stopped farming / grinding for gold, I have no more to gamble with.

I found that the precursors I did forge came from exotics, though I have heard other people claiming they’ve had much better luck with rares. At one point I went through 6000g with no precursor…so yea be wary it’s referred to as the Mystic Toilet for a reason.

Randulf.7614:

They dont have a test server. I imagine they thought it would happen, but believed it would easier given their resources to implement and adjust.

The problem with knowing Teq will get squashed is how do you adjust it beforehand without data and testing to show where to make the adjustments. I doubt they have enough numbers in house to make a raid

Then again, it asks the question how did they get teq, wurm, vine, marionette so right if they dont have testing.

Its a mystery!

Wouldn’t it be possible for them to run a test raid? Something like, spawn X Guardians, X Elementalists, X Warriors, etc… People have multiboxed in the past with 10-20 characters for other games. I can’t imagine that the developers of the game are incapable of doing something along those lines.

Even just doing 1 Teq kill would show them how high damage output could be. Then again, like I said before maybe it doesn’t work that way. /shrug

Can anyone shed some insight?

So, I wanted to know how Anet implemented this patch without knowing what could happen. One of the mods or devs mentioned something along the lines of, “There is no way that we could have tested for these things (such outrageous damage) internally.”

How is this possible?

They couldn’t take a raid to Teq or emulate what would be a raid and stack conditions in an ideal situation?

They couldn’t do a couple of pvp matches to see how bursty everything is?

They couldn’t run around in wvw and once again see how bursty everything can be?

I don’t get what they thought would happen when they take away reliance on traits for stats, while merging a lot of traits (making them stronger), while also giving access to a third tree?

A lot of people point out that condition is too strong on world bosses such as Teq. But what about the fact that Teq is uncrittable, so running Zerker makes 2 of your stats useless. Hence why people often use PVT. I would imagine that if you made Teq crittable and people could go back to Zerker (for example), then he would die much faster, as players aren’t fighting handicapped.

Also, originally a raid of players would have the condition damage of 2-3 people max due to the way condition was capped and overwritten by other players. Now, they upped the limit to 1500 and each player can finally contribute their own condition stacks/damage without being cancelled out by others… Did you not think that damage would significantly increase?

Then we have people saying and posting videos, such as, “Exploit – too much damage, small group kills big group”. Well you take a very well coordinated and stacked group against a bunch of unaware, possibly auto-attacking players, what do you think would happen? I always liked the idea that if a player(s) decide to be smart/tactical, they can win. This shouldn’t scream nerf, it just speaks to the skill/aptitude of said players. They played well and should be rewarded. Because if that raid was playing half as well as that small group, they would stomp them. The same goes for pvp/pve, obviously a stacked group with a lot of coordination and min/maxing is going to perform well…

Overall, I just really don’t understand how most of these issues weren’t already dealt with. Within minutes the playerbase figured it out, yet the developers who have been working on this for who knows how long, couldn’t foresee any of these glaring issues? It just doesn’t make sense to me. So, maybe someone can enlighten me. It almost seems like a lack of effort and planning went into this, that they just wanted to/had to meet some internal deadline and just said screw it.

I bring this up because I feel that things will start getting nerfed left and right. I know we have an official statement that there won’t be any sweeping changes. But time and time again, developers opt to nerf stuff rather than take the more challenging road of bringing everything else up to scale.

I know it’s very possible that I am jumping the gun and may be 100% wrong. I would actually be glad to be wrong in this case because I really do enjoy the game, I just don’t want to see it make changes for the worse.

Anywho, thanks for reading and I’m open to any criticism/insight/thoughts/comments/etc.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Roquen.5406:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Attaching the core game is indeed an attempt to make more money. However, it’s not at the “expense” of veterans. A GW2 veteran who buys HoT and chooses to apply the code to a new account gets exactly the same as a new buyer. They get a virgin account that has access to core GW2 and HoT, 5 character slots, etc.

But that is where you are wrong if you pre-purchase HoT but already have the core game you DO NOT get a secondary new account, you just get the upgrade to HoT.

So once again, if you pre-purchase but don’t have an account you get a new account AND HoT.

If you already have an account you only get HoT.

That is the issue people have with this.

Actually, what he said is correct. He said that if you pre-buy and do not apply the code to an existing account, you will get the exact same thing that a brand new buyer gets, a new account with access to the HoT on that new account. Whether or not this is desirable to a veteran player is not something he discussed, only that the same option is available.

His argument is kind of nit picking though imo because while it is an option, it’s not a desirable option as it comes with so many disadvantages to someone who is progressing an old account. The old account will not have accesss to further progression from the new system and has no accesss to the new areas.

I think in order to do that you would have to register a new account (as in new email…etc). And if he is really attempting to argue that angle…he’s just doing it out of spite at that point as that’s not really a reasonable option.

Still, what about the people that bought accounts more recently because it was stated that you needed the base game?

Take this for example, if I bought the game 2 weeks ago because I read the FAQ that mentioned HoT was not a standalone game. I am now paying more for the same product being offered, i.e., I paid $60 2 weeks ago and now another $50 for HoT (which includes what I bought in the first place). Rather than the new player that only has to pay $50 for both. Now even if I got the game on sale, I am still paying more than someone who did not because they no longer need to purchase the core game.

You can argue that I can get a refund for my money if it’s within a certain time frame but I would lose any progress that I would have made. That is not something you can refund, so most people would not opt for said refund. Note that this doesn’t apply to me, it was just an example.

I would relate it to DLC for other games. Let’s say I want to play Advanced Warfare Zombies. In order to play that I would need the base game, plus the map pack(s) because the zombie mode is only included in the DLC. So that’s $60 (or whatever price it is at the current time) plus $10-15 per map pack or $50 for a season pass.

Now it says very clearly that the season pass or map packs are not standalone games, you need to have the actual game in order to play them. Let’s say I went and bought the game for $60 plus the Season Pass for $50, I now spent $110. If a week later they ninja change the disclaimer and allow people to only pay $50 for a season pass, which allows them to play the zombie mode without buying the game, you can kitten well be sure that I would be kittened. And I feel that is essentially what Anet or NCSOFT did.

A lot of time and careful planning goes into these decisions, so it was most likely a deliberate cash grab. Which is wrong on their end. They blatantly lied to their player base to get more money. It’s not a matter of how much it may or may not break the bank but more so that they pulled what IMO could be considered a bait and switch.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Attaching the core game is indeed an attempt to make more money. However, it’s not at the “expense” of veterans. A GW2 veteran who buys HoT and chooses to apply the code to a new account gets exactly the same as a new buyer. They get a virgin account that has access to core GW2 and HoT, 5 character slots, etc.

But that is where you are wrong if you pre-purchase HoT but already have the core game you DO NOT get a secondary new account, you just get the upgrade to HoT.

So once again, if you pre-purchase but don’t have an account you get a new account AND HoT.

If you already have an account you only get HoT.

That is the issue people have with this.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I disagree with this one. Precursors should never be just handed out for literally no effort.

Even though I don’t know what it consists of, since we know the precursor scavenger hunt is coming, I’m satisfied. Assuming, of course, the terrible RNG isn’t pushed to a particular component of the collection, like needing a different particular exotic to drop in order to get the precursor. Anything in the collection needs to either be craftable, purchasable from a vendor, or have fairly reliable droprates.

I know that most people will likely flame me for this…but precursors have ALWAYS been handed out for literally no effort. With the way RNG is you either get it or you don’t. There is no skill/effort/etc in getting a prec some people are lucky (usually more than once for some odd reason) while most aren’t. But that’s another discussion entirely. I just wanted to say I hate when people just say “You want something for no effort”, because that’s exactly what this system has been.

And just to set the record straight it’s not that I agree with the OP, just that I don’t agree with you. Besides if you think about it as you put 3 years into the game and are thus rewarded with a precursor…That’s a bit of effort, no?

Wuselknusel.4082:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

I just want to take a second to address this topic, because it’s something we state as one of our key philosophies – but don’t often clarify exactly what we mean we say it. And because everyone and their mother has their own unique interpretation of what grind can mean, it’s very simple for this to feel like we’re not following our own guidelines when we build and implement content.

When our company president said we have an anti-grind philosophy way back before Gw2 shipped, and when it has been repeatedly reinforced since then, our statement is simply: “We don’t think you should need to grind to get the best gear and stats in Guild Wars 2”.

So what exactly does that mean:

[…]

I would like to chime in here because that is the part where my interpretation of grind is diverging from your interpretation if grind.

First of all, I think it’s pretty cheap to say that you don’t want the player “to grind for stats”, since GW2 isn’t about stats but about skins. It’s like, to put it hyperbolic, the devs of Tetris saying they’ve aimed for the best possible story ever told in a videogame.

But we can see how your motive influenced the game:
Nearly all rewards are given through RNG. You have the chance to get everything from nearly everywhere and if you don’t you can atleast buy it from the traiding post.
Now the problem is that this design creates new issues, funny enough, those issues lead to feeling the need to grind.
As I’ve said, the RNG lets you get everything almost everywhere. This has two consequences:

• First, the player is never able to say “I am going for X”. You are not able to say at the moment: “I am going for a precursor right now.” or “I am going for tier 5 blood”, you can just say: “I am doing this activity and hope that I get what I want.” This creates dissatisfaction for the player because he can’t control when he gets the items he wants, other than rolling the RNG dice a second, third or fourth time.
• Second, the player is creating items he can’t use. He is selling them because he want atleast to get some gold for those items. This creates another two issues:
  • If the item is unwanted, the traiding post gets flooded with it. The devs then can’t use this item for new possible uses, because their metrics tell them that this item is way too common, unless the increase the quantity you need for the new use. this happened with ascended gear. And what is the complaint about ascneded gear? That it feels too grindy.
  • If the item is listed in the traiding post, it’s most of the time easier to get the gold to buy the item instead of playing the game to get the item as drop. So the average player of GW2 will start to get gold. To make more gold, he’ll start to look for the best way to make gold. Once he has found it, he will do it over and over until he got enough gold to get what he wants. And that repeats for every item he wants. And what do we call doing the same thing over and over? Grinding.

So in the end, by not giving the player a special way of obtaining an item reliably, so this special way doesn’t get grinded, you’ve created a grind for the only option left to obtain an item reliably: Buying it from the traiding post.
And I’ll go out on a limb and say that acquiring an item yourself feels more awesome than running to the traiding post with all your savings to buy it.

I just wanted to say this times a million. I think people are mainly comparing apples to oranges when they talk about grinding for BiS in this game versus others. That is because of the reasons stated directly above, this game isn’t designed around BiS but Cosmetic upgrades.

I can use most of the stale arguments being thrown out AGAINST making changes. You don’t actually NEED ANYTHING, having a weapon, a trait, a this or that, or whatever is all a WANT. Even the desire to succeed in raiding in other games is A WANT. You don’t NEED to go out and finish raids and kill world bosses, you can run around any game naked and explore, sure you might die and be super ineffective and what not but that IS an option. And I kind of feel that is the same argument many of you use here, “You don’t NEED to do X or Y, you can just settle for Z.”. But why should people have to settle?

It’s inherent in our nature to strive for things, to set goals for ourselves. That’s how games are designed, we are given a carrot on a stick and we want to achieve some form of it. In essence that’s how this game is designed. However, the way it’s handled, turns how you chase after that carrot into a pretty boring grind.