Guild Wars 2

Note: This is a cross-post from Reddit that I had written a few days ago. By request of some redditors, I’m making the statement here.

Three days ago Colin Johanson had this to say about the feature patch on Reddit:

I think that’s a totally fair question, as a veteran user I’d wonder that too – why does making the game better for new users benefit me when I want features that benefit me?

The simple answer is: by ensuring the game foundation is solid for new users, we’ll be in a place after the feature pack where we can do the kind of things that excite both veteran and new users simultaneously, and we’ll be able to retain a much larger percentage of the new or long returning users when they show up. Can’t say anything more than that yet – but that’s the thinking, you don’t need to agree with it, but it’s important to know why the decision was made!

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2etzxq/a_fresh_start_the_new_player_experience_in_guild/ck35jpy

The bolding was mine, because I think this statement needs to be examined and carefully considered.

People aren’t leaving the game because of the leveling process. And if they are, it’s more likely because of the trait overhaul system you implemented in April. I don’t insinuate that I know everything or why everyone necessarily leaves before 80, but if someone quits the game because they think the leveling process is too vague about what the downed mechanics mean, then there’s no way they’re going to unlock enough traits to participate in any meaningful way in end-game group-oriented content.

I can, however, more than happily illuminate as to why people leave the game upon reaching 80. People are leaving the game, and have been leaving the game since 2012, because the end-game content of GW2 is very, very basic. Tequatl is on full-blown farm status at this point, so a new player can walk up and participate in this content without actually having to show any work for it. They might even walk away with Tequatl’s Horde and not even understand what it is. (And as someone that has killed Teq hundreds of times, this happens a lot.)

The only content that regularly challenges players still and frequently fails are Wurm and high-level fractals. The problem with both of these content areas, however, are their rewards. The loot table is for the most part random and does not reward you in any way due to personal involvement. A leecher AFKing at the waypoint after tagging Tequatl once has just as equal chances to looting a Tequatl’s Horde as I do manning a turret or helping on defense. Is that appropriate?

One time there was this guild of guys that were trolling a defense group at Tequatl. They would overscale the event, they would not help out in ways that were appropriate, they would leave my guildies to die, and would pull mobs into the batteries on defense phases. They did not in any way impact our ability to complete it, but it wasn’t very nice dealing with really petty players like that. And at the end of the fight one of them looted a Tequatl’s Horde and linked it in chat. I was so furious.

We have asked so many times that you guys allow us a little more control on how Teq and Wurm is organized. We don’t necessarily need to have it fully enclosed, but some kind of mass invite system to a fresh map would go a long way at improving the quality of life for people like me that for a long time helped manage and lead these kinds of events. But you were so concerned about leaving new players out of the content that our requests were denied, ignored, or outright criticized for being elitist. I understand your desire for “facilitating friendly play,” as you put it back in April, as our leading these events were a means to an end to keep casuals playing the game and feeling included.

But the current system for Tequatl and Wurm does not suffice. The loot table is too random and poorly rewards players that show up every day. And it’s very heartbreaking for me to watch. As the year progressed it became harder and harder to push people to do turrets and defense because there was no incentive. My guild has for the past year provided a daily Tequatl kill to anyone that manages to get on our map. But what’s important to clarify is that we were often hanging by a thread getting people to step up and lead these events, or even just hopping on turrets or helping on defense.

Before I decided to quit the game, we even started doing leaderless kills because no one wanted to step up and do it. We just all wanted a chance at the loot. The system does not in any way facilitate or incentivize leading, and some of our best commanders just got tired of leading a few days a week and never getting a Horde for it.

And I wish this was the only area of the game where this is a problem, but it’s not.

In some ways I think this is like EA’s move into mobile. Telling their customers “The new dungeon keeper wasn’t made for you, it was made for a new generation of fans”. Clearly, gw2 was not made to appease the people who played gw1. Maybe at one point that was the intention, but then some committee got ahold of it and now it’s just one big hot mess.

The game needs dynamic changes. Huge reworkings. Not skill balancing, not nerfing this skill and buffing that one, but big huge reworkings like when Blizz redid their starting zones with new missions and so on. The fact is, however, that if that ever happens in gw2, it will only happen when it is financially the only way left to survive. The vast majority of the things your real fans want (like the roleplayers you just screwed by taking their dyeable town clothes away, I don’t even RP but it’s clear that’s a jerk move aimed at the people who actually bother to buy your gems, and for what?) are never going to happen. You’re going to placate us with bits and pieces and hope it’s enough, and maybe it is enough for some out there. Maybe it’s enough for enough whales to keep buying those BL keys and keeping you going. I hope it is. I hope you manage to pull an expansion out in a year or two and give me someplace to actually wear those legendaries and be “proud” of them. As it is I look at that time spent as a complete waste of my life, and that’s not something I have ever felt about a game before. It’s something that really makes me re-evaluate where I want to spend my time and money, and that’s another sensation I’m not used to feeling from a game. I can name a few games I’ve played 1000+ hours of, and I have no regrets for them. No regrets for the hundreds of hours I sunk into gw1 at all. Then again, gw1 was never like “Hey break out your credit card and support me if you want bugfixes. You do really love me don’t you?”. The attempts at manipulation are transparent and unbecoming. I realize all mmo’s are skinner boxes to some extent, but you’ve really piled up the psychological impulses to buy (more! now! don’t you want the best stuff?!) in ways that are obnoxious and clearly visible. Everyone knows why the 5% listing fee doesn’t show up in the projected profits, and it’s no accident that it happened. The game is set up to make you waste money testing useless builds that require a full set of 20g armor+runes+sigils+this and that and oh you need more laurels and more this and more but you can skip it if you just. break. out. that. credit. card.

I know that this post will get flamed, and that’s cool, I don’t really plan on responding anyway, I just have wanted to express my displeasure with the direction this game has been taken for a long time, but today was finally a large enough, over-hyped letdown that I am uninstalling, and I wanted to say why before I go. I hope my criticism here has been constructive enough that it won’t simply be removed.

Yes, I spent 1000+ hours playing this game. However, that time has only made me increasingly positive that wherever you’re heading with it, it’s not going to be any place worth actually traveling to, and nothing I couldn’t find in 100 similar mmo’s, with new ones being released now on a near monthly basis. After 1000 hours, for someone to say “I don’t recommend that game, it’s a complete waste of time and a non-stop grind” is about the harshest criticism you could receive, but I don’t pretend that anyone that matters will actually see me pointing it out or care.

See you in a few weeks or whenever your new dragon comes out. Will not expect to be impressed. Feel free to prove me wrong on that one.

Thank you for your time, although, if I could go back to 2012 and do it all again, I would not have bothered to give you mine,

BFS

The other day, while I was sitting out of wvw (the only thing I like doing anymore in gw2) after a transfer, unable to actually play anything other than eotm, I thought about getting a new game. Maybe go back to WoW, maybe try some D3, oh, I know, Wildstar. I’ve heard a lot about Wildstar. I go to pre-purchase it, but it’s an NCSoft game. Right there beside gw2. People tell me NCSoft is just the distributor, but after the “experience” of feeling ignored for two years in gw2, instead of pre-ordering like I do just about every other game that comes out, I hesitated. Did I really want to give money to people related to this? Did I really want to set myself up for another game of “Well I’ve put 1000 hours into this so I might as well stick with it?”. And the answer was “No”. No I do not feel like getting mired into another unrewarding gaming experience that sees my wallet like it has a bullseye painted on it. The only devs I’ve ever not bought games from based on past reputation are Peter Molyneux and EA, if that gives you any indication of how low my opinion is at this point, but just being associated with ANet now is enough to make me put my credit cards away and move on.

I know people are going to point out that I got my money’s worth from gw2. Fair enough, I certainly did. But it’s not 2012 anymore, and we’re still playing 2012’s mmo. That’s really clear to a lot of people. I’ve played mmo’s since everquest 1, been playing muds since they were back on compuserve and AOL online “was” the internet to most people. Only in the most pay-to-win games do I see new people join and drop out like they do in gw2. I see many, many new people (low ap scores) buy the game, join a guild, play for 20 or 30 levels and quit. They don’t even bother to max a single character, because everyone in their guild has told them, repeatedly “There’s nothing to do at 80, leveling is the fun part”. They don’t believe it at first. Surely there’s more to it. But eventually, after they’ve been told by several people “No, really, there’s nothing special at 80 except more dungeons” it finally sinks in that they’ve totally wasted their $25/$50/whatever.

I want to support this company. I feel strongly, however, that whatever made gw1 great (seriously, that’s my all time fave mmo, you really outdid yourselves in a lot of ways) has been watered down and neutered into something boring, formulaic, and so startchy-clean and perfect looking that there isn’t a spec of dirt on a norn. Giant sweaty dudes wearing leather and carrying axes, killing things all day, but every single one gleams like the top of Mr. Cleans bald head. That was ok in 2004 with 2004-era graphics, it’s not ok a decade later.

I can’t do it anymore. Between the writing (those hiccups to break what laughably little tension there was in the Scarlett final scene are a perfect example), the family friendly until it’s painful art style, the npc’s in major cities constant spouting about how wonderful war is (as a veteran, “I had a dream about a war, I must go fight in it” is the single stupidest reason I’ve ever heard to volunteer to be a body bag, fantasy situation or no), and now this… modifying of things, instead of adding content, and acting like it’s something special… It’s the last straw for me for a while. I’ve put a lot of hours into this game, waiting for it to get good. It’s not getting good. I understand that now. This update has been upsetting to a large portion of your userbase, and I think most of them are going to sigh quietly and either go back to wvw or just move on to another game. Normally I would join them, but things have been wrong (to me) for so long here, and I’ve abided it patiently, that I feel I should speak up.

I’ll come back for the next LS event. I won’t expect there to be more than an hour or two’s worth of new content, and I will expect to grind that content until it gets boring because it will be the only thing there is to do in gw2 that I haven’t already grinded into the dirt.

There are a lot of people out there with 3x/4x/5x the achievement points than I do. People who never stopped defending you. If you go to reddit and mention that you’re disappointed with gw2 you’ll be downvoted to oblivion. It still took you two years to give those fans account-bound legendaries and account bound WxP. The phrase “battered spouse syndrome” comes to mind.

mtpelion.4562:

[…]

Gold to Gems.
Gems to Charges.

That is no excuse.

Not everyone has budget or time to continuously spend like that.

With real one-time upfront paid unlocks, you can save for a skin you want for some time, but once you get it, it’s yours. You can use it anytime you want. You may now go for another skin. For some it may take less than others, but everyone has the possibility of eventually getting all the skins they wanted.

With continuous payments, it won’t matter if you managed to get the skin you wanted, now you’ll have to continuously pay for gems or grind gold to change to it. Change to another skin, the old is lost. It’s there in the list, but for you it’s lost, because all time and effort spent in applying the skin is gone. Poof.

For me this change doesn’t mean I’ve got more skins to use. It just means I can put away all the skin appliers I’ve been saving. But can’t actually buy the skins, because you can never actually buy them. You only keep access to them.

I don’t mind paying. But I want to pay once. I paid once for the game, I paid once for finishers, I paid once for bank slots, I paid once for character slots, and I want to pay once for other unlocks.

What’s the opposite of that?

Paying each time you want to make a new character, instead for additional slots.
Paying each time you put something in the bank.
Not being able to buy the finishers as unlocks, and instead having them only as consumables.

Don’t you dare tell me that countless people would either stop using them, or leave the game altogether, if they turned pay once features from “pay once” to “pay per use”.

Conversely, much more people would use “per pay use” features if they were turned “pay once”.

Even the game is pay once. Would you keep playing if they changed it to pay per use? Login! Poof, 50 gems gone" Wildstar style! Blergh.

Looks like I’d have to clarify the text in my signature…

Charges make the wardrobe pointless.

Yeah, the skins get unlocked, which is nice. And they are account bound, which is absolutely great.

But as it is, it’s all pointless. Because you are not really unlocking the skins. You are not keeping the skins in a wardrobe of yours. What you are doing is something more like collecting catalogs of skins that you then rent, not the skin themselves.

When I say “unlocks are always better”, I mean GW1 style unlocks:

- Pay once. Want us to buy more stuff? Make more stuff.
- Account wide. After buying it, all characters can use it without buying it gain.

Right now it seems “unlocked” for ANet means “You can still pay for it when we remove it from the gem store”, which would not be that bad for particular things like legendary skins, but not for freaking everything, every single time.

As the cost is on applying the skin, not unlocking the skin, having more skins doesn’t mean you can have more variety in appearance and change more often, it just means you’ll have more skins you can’t use unless you have charges, the skins themselves are therefore not really unlocked, only the access to them, as you still have to pay for them every time you want to use them.

I’d rather have an additional upfront cost for each skin before being able to use them, but pay just once, than this.

The average player will just pick the appearance they like the most, and never change until they get some free charges, is ever. Nothing will force them to buy gems if they don’t want to.

I don’t mind paying for new skins, I would buy any and all new skins if they were unlocked, but this is NOT “unlocked” for me. And I will not pay for the same thing over and over.

Same happens with hairstyles and other character customizations. You have to pay gems each time you change to a hairstyle, instead paying to unlock it, then being able to change to it for some coins by talking to a stylist NPC.

I don’t care much about a system whose only purpose is teasing me with all the things I could have but can’t unless I continuously pay to use something I supposedly already earned.

There’s not even a system in place in which you stop spending charges in a a skin after applying it 10 times or something like that. And it doesn’t seem that gemstore skins will be free to apply once bought. It would not surprise me if they moved AP and HoM skins to this systems so we also have to continuously pay to use them too.

Pointless.

The real problem is this game should not have been designed with a scummy cash grab gimmick for cosmetics instead of a proper system.

Even free to play MMOs do it better. Champion’s Online: soul bind an item and the skin is unlocked for your account, go to a tailor and you can change your armor/weapon to look like any other one you have ever equipped, and dye it at the same time. Cash shop to unlock skins you don’t have yet, or exclusive shop skins.