Guild Wars 2

Really? I mean, really really?

Honest question time. What part about bundle items was so confusing? Was it combat? Was it having a bunch of new skills when you picked up something? Or maybe the sparkles on the ground for bundle items was too distracting?

I’m trying really hard to even fathom what kind of confusion you might get from diving goggles. They’re not in combat locations, you only get two skills. They’re not even abundant in low level areas, so they can’t be that distracting (unless you walk into a city).

But new characters are simply told “you cannot use that item now.”

For the past week or so I have been playing a lot of GW2 and having tons of fun. I have 5 characters, 3 of them around level 20. I enjoyed the challenge of the game, and the ability to go where I wanted, and level how I wanted. With this update, the game feels terribly linear. So many cool, unique things that were in the game are not blocked off for me. I’ve tried playing since the update, but I jsut done feel it’s worth my time anymore. I’ll check back in a few months to see if anything has changed. This may seem overdramatic, but really, I’m just not having fun leveling my new characters anymore, and if I cant have fun, what’s the point of playing a game? Congratulations, anet, you’ve lost one of your newest, enthusiastic players. Which I believe was the complete opposite effect of what this update was supposed to bring.

Let me ask one question as well – what the hell is going on with you?!
A quick state of the game:
Content-wise:

• PvE – open-world content has never been more boring. There has been no valuable content here outside of Tequatl revamp. Living story – most of it are instances that you do once or twice. Permanent, but worthless replayability-wise. Dungeons – buried under the sands of oblivion.
• WvW – 5 months of work are bringing golem mastery and a new trick&trap. There is a new colour for commander icons.
• PvP – no new modes, no new maps, broken matchmaking, Skyhammer, atrocious ‘balance’.
  Summary: where is the ‘expansion-worth of content’?

Rewards-wise:

• PvE – open-world – nerfed over and over (Segnor Blix sends hello from his coffin). Living story – opening achievement boxes is fun… until you see the contents. Dungeons – grinding same paths for two years now.
• WvW – Colin said we would see a lot more precursors with the new reward system back when the rank system was introduced. Guess he meant something else. Also – playing WvW can actually make you lose money.
• PvP – reward tracks are nice, but still not close to PvE.
  Summary: 2 blues and a green. Bloodstone dust. Even 10.000 champion boxes can’t help.

Now where exactly is the problem?
Everywhere. Literally all you’re doing is wrong.
You introduce content that people do not want and reject to bring back things that players love. When asked about it, you hide behind petty excuses instead of answering openly. You neglect the feedback and keep people in the dark. The communication management ranges from poor to straight unprofessional. Your game has long ago become boring, stale and unrewarding. Things that are important to your players are apparently not important enough to you. It looks horrible from the outside. Where are all the people that made this game such a great success? Where are all the Lead Designers? Are they out same as Robert Hrouda, Martin Kerstein and Kate Welch?

People have been telling you their feelings about the state of the game everyday for the past 48 months and all you give them is ‘maybes’.

How to waste huge potential by getting fixated on doing the wrong and rejecting to do the right.

What an amazing time it has been! Let’s recap.

There was a company that made a video game. The game was promised to be everything before it was launched. On release, it was a lot, but not everything. What pushed it most to fulfilling its potential was its amazing community. What kept this community together was a promise of improvement from the company. It kept the community playing, even though it wasn’t always rationally justified.

A year passed. Things improved. [Redacted] The company kept promising that it was learning from all these experiences, that it will keep pushing the game forward and improve it. The community was even engaged in discussions about the game development.

Time kept passing. Some promises were kept, some weren’t. No one complained about it. The community just wanted to know that things were coming and months spent on completing mundane daily activities in a stale game would pass with the coming of a new fantastic content.

At some point the communication provided by the company dropped in quality and quantity. Even then, the community continued playing, but months kept passing and passing. It was close to the games second anniversary, when things changed…

Let’s recap the most recent history.
With the past two weeks the company’s handling of recent events has consecutively hit new lows.

First came the gamescom. The PvP event has seen some developers of the company being asked questions about the game in general. The company has obvious policies regarding outside communication and the answers provided during gamescom interviews were well in line with these policies. That was the first mistake. Not only has the company agreed to giving interviews on topics it couldn’t discuss, it also delegated improper people to do it.

The community didn’t like what it saw. It didn’t like for example, that content that was made available in the past that the community absolutely loved wasn’t coming back anytime soon. It also didn’t like the tone of poor responses that not only wouldn’t explain why things weren’t being worked on, but also sounded like excuses.

Something ticked, the head and founder of the company decided to grace the community with a letter that tried to explain the situation. Instead of showing willingness to improve, the rhetoric suggested a total negligence and denial, duplicating the well-known interview political talk. Something inside the company was shaken though and the community has seen a sudden wake-up of few developers. One of them for example, decided to hop into a 4-month-old topic with concerns about a recently implemented system and acknowledge the community he would look into it again. How splendid… In another topic, someone else came back and reassured the community, that he would talk to them again. Would things finally come to normal…?

Tensions dropped as the days passed, but then… another interview happened. Once again were the developers asked questions. The community learned for example, that one of the oldest and most important systems that was in dire need of changes to make the game more appealing and keep sworn fans playing wasn’t being looked into for the past year and no plans to change that were made. The community was once again reminded of things that weren’t off the table and were a subject of revision down the road, down the pipe.

I have been a developer on AAA titles and specifically, MMOs. This article is less about criticizing ANet and more about them making the game more fun.

RNG is bad for MMOs. Here’s why:

1) RNG as implemented fosters player rancor.
I post that I haven’t found an item after opening 100 chest, someone else post they found it in the 2nd chest and they don’t see a problem.

2) RNG as implemented isn’t fair.
Nope, life ain’t fair. GW2 is not life, it is a game. It is entertainment. Frustration is not fun.

3) RNG as implemented isn’t fun.
Putting a desirable item behind RNG is a recipe for making people frustrated. Something that always drops is meaningless; something that never drops causes frustration. A balance must be struck.

4) RNG as implemented is illogical.
People who want the item do not get it. People who don’t want the item do. Since items cannot be sold in the trading post, this again creates frustration.

GW2 would be a better game and more fun if:

1) Allow rare drops to be sold. Remove account binding.

2) Improve the chance of a rare item drop the more a person tries to get it. I suspect ANet will say they can’t do this due to “technical limitations”.

3) Sell rare drops in the trading post for gems. People with money can buy the drop; people who have oodles of time/will can hunt for it. Please don’t hypocritically say rare things should be special, and then let people buy/sell “legendaries”.
RNG is fun and entertaining.

Excessive RNG is bad and frustrates players. Frustrated players don’t recommend the game and don’t spend money in the store.