Guild Wars 2

We usually buy outfits with gems, but weapons are bought through the (shady) Black Lion Chests and their tickets. If ArenaNet were to sell full weapon sets in the Gem Store directly, without the need of tickets, how much do you think would be a fair price?

Rules:

• We’re talking about a full set, not individual skins. Think “Tormented Weapons set”, instead of just “Tormented Axe”.

• Say the price in US dolars, instead of just in gems, so it becomes easier for people to make the conversion.

Neural.1824:

Not that they are inherently bad suggestions, but they are the equivalent of building a car out of lead and then having someone say “you should fix it by making it a blimp!”.

Example, no traits on armor at all, and allow the players to enhance the items to their desire? wonderful concept for a game that has not been developed yet, but Mike O. and Arenanet would have to be deliberately trying to go bankrupt and shut down if they were to implement such a thing. There is simply no way in which they would implement something like that.

See, nothing less than radical change would work.

The issue with the earnings, which ultimately translates to players losing interest, is not ragequiters – let’s be honest, very few people actually ragequit. People who are angry are people who still care.

People who leave the game are those who stop caring. Not people who see a single change – skill X nerfed or feature Y removed -, rather people who pile disappointment over disappointment, over and over again, until there are more reasons to leave the game than to stay.

That kind of thing is not undone through small changes. Adding a new map won’t fix it, even if it were a good map. It’s simply not enough to make people care. Doing what ArenaNet has done – changing how the Black Lion Chests work – definitely won’t bring anyone back.

An expansion could have done it – it would create interest, it would make people pat attention to the game again, it would be a time to add many changes to the game – but HoT failed to do any of those things. If anything, it added more reasons for people to leave or to stay away from the game. The result is that even a new expansion likely wouldn’t be able to do it now, even if it were very different from HoT.

ArenaNet needs to do something big. Something so big that it would make the news, turn heads, and grab a lot of attention; which would be the first step in making everyone who left to actually pay attention to the game. It also needs to be something so big that it addresses a lot of complains about the game , instead of changing only feature Y or skill X, in order to be something impactful enough to make even the disillusioned players to come back. And it needs to be a huge show of goodwill, to make players believe in ArenaNet again.

Could it end up being corporative suicide? Sure, that’s a risk. It’s arguable, though, if corporative suicide is worse than being a slowly rotting corpse.

So, GW2 has hit rock botton. The Q3 earnings are the lowest they have ever been for the game. Creatively, the game is stagnant. Now would be a perfect moment for ArenaNet to give up GW2 and begin working on Guild Wars 3… But they can’t. It’s not just money they’re hemorrhaging, but also talent – ArenaNet could afford to pause and build GW2 because the original Guild Wars was very successful, but now they don’t have that kind of luxury anymore.

I don’t think the game can truly be saved, tbh. Between the multiple broken promises and the overpriced DLC ArenaNet calls “Heart of Thorns”, I’m not sure players would be willing to come back no matter what ArenaNet did now. A fundamental trust has been broken.

But, assuming resurrection is still possible for this corpse, ArenaNet would need to make fundamental changes that they won’t do easily. So far, their answer has been more of the same – they’re trying to circunvent the loss of money by focusing on their shady lottery system. That’s (rather obviously) not the answer.

ArenaNet needs to think outside the box. They need to go back to what made them successful once ago, despite losing it later.

They need… To Make Tyria Great Again.

The minimum ArenaNet needs to do is:

• Remove levels from the game.

• Remove all stats from gear. Let players set and rearrange their characters’ attribute points freely. All remaning items would be cosmetic only. Refund everyone who got ascended gear.

• Remove the Black Lion Chests. No more selling of lottery tickets; all skins would become available for a fixed price.

• Refocus the game from being about grinding to being about having fun. Stop wasting resources on fake longevity that only pushes players away. Double the efforts to actually make interesting content that people want to play, as opposed to catering to compulsive behavior only.

This is only the beginning. The question is, will ArenaNet do it? Or will they just lose everything they have?

…The original Guild Wars, I mean.

Playing through Nightfall, it’s amazing how much better GW2 could have been if ArenaNet had kept closer to their original design. Thousands of skills, full chapters released frequently (the third full game was released one year and a half after the first… Comparing that to GW2 is laughable), taking a stand against most cheap MMO tropes, etc etc etc.

I strongly recommend the original Guild Wars to anyone who thinks GW2 had a lot of potential, yet squandered all of it.

Guild Wars was successful enough to allow ArenaNet to invest on and create GW2. GW2, in other hand, is the end – there won’t be a Guild Wars 3.

Vayne.8563:

Doesn’t make the game superior, even if you might like it better. In fact, I liked quite a few MMOs more than I liked WoW, including Lotro, and Age of Conan (though that had other issues).

See, it’s funny Vayne, when you begin a paragraph saying someone else’s opinion doesn’t matter, then proceed to state your opinion as if yours, and only yours, were relevant.

Is WoW superior to GW2? Both are MMORPGs, they are very easily comparable. And WoW has been far more successful than GW2, so from that point of view, WoW is indeed far, FAR superior to GW2. And that, my friend, is a fact. Regardless of your opinion.

Vayne.8563:

The fact is, some people have invested so much money in it, it’s hard to leave, which is a psychological hold that most games can’t match.

Ah, so you say spending a lot of money in a game can have psychological effects on a player?

Tell me one thing Vayne, how much money have you spent on GW2 again?

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor.

Sorry, pet. Based on what ArenaNet said, EotN still had more than 10 times the amount of new armor sets we got from HoT so far.

Nope.

Wow, such raveting arguments! Such fascinating logic! With arguments like that, it’s no wonder you can prove me wrong!

Oh, wait. You can’t. Better luck next time, pet.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

to difficult to balance around. That’s pretty much all of GW1. The game was too hard to balance since there were tens of thousands of skill combinations in the game.

The thing is, GW2 is still not balanced. Even after three years with barely no skill introduced to the game, and with the game having so few skills and so few combinations, ArenaNet still couldn’t balance it very well.

Meanwhile, in the original GW balance was a mess, true… But that was bad mostly in PvP. In PvE, lots and lots of builds were viable, so you had many, MANY options of how to play. In many aspects, the “play how you want” statement was true, but we had hundreds more options than in GW2.

The result is that GW2 is a very stale game. We have been using the same few skills in the same few combinations for years now. ArenaNet has just added some more skills, true, but even those aren’t properly balanced (go ask Tempests or get the Scrappers to talk about their drones, for example).

We lost a lot of the variety, of the room for experimentation and the opportunity to change our builds we had in GW1… And what did we get instead? A 100% balanced game? Not even close. We simply lost way more than what we got.

Unloveableone.6082:

“WoW is a better game.”
Lmao say that to another 1 year of NO CONTENT

How long did we stay with “NO CONTENT” in GW? Wasn’t it from the last Living World release in January until HoT in October? How many months is that again? Ah look, it’s almost one year!

Unloveableone.6082:

While GW2 is doing nothing but growing constantly.

Really? Do you have any evidence of that? Any sign that the number of active users has been increasing?

Meanwhile, what we know for a fact – and this is evidence, as opposed to empty hyperbole – is that the latest NCSoft quarterly report shows reduced earnings for GW2. Definitely doesn’t look like something that is “growing constantly”.

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

It has been 19 days since HoT dropped and the onslaught of complaints came in.
They are still pouring in.

It was thanks to the “onslaught of complains” that ArenaNet changed important aspects of the game, such as the amount of hero points required to unlock specializations, even when some people were trying to halt that discussion.

Honestly, people who pretend everything is fine and tell those complainers to be quiet are the worst players GW2 has. Not only they refuse to accept people giving ArenaNet the feedback they need to improve the game, but they also get to reap all the benefits of the changes they were trying to prevent.

(Although it is funny to watch how some people change their tune from “ArenaNet does not need to change this, it’s perfect as it is” when players are asking for something to “OMG, thank you ArenaNet for this change, it’s perfect!” as soon as ArenaNet actually implements the change players were asking for.)

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

There are bugs/issues from the Core game that took over 2 years to address. Some stuff STILL is an issue.

It’s amazing that you are saying that thinking you are defending ArenaNet. If they couldn’t even fix bugs that have existed for years, what made they think they were ready to release an expansion?

Rauderi.8706:

No question, HoT has had the smoothest MMO release I’ve experienced. Kudos to the team for that.

I wonder if the reason for HoT’s smooth release wasn’t simply how few people actually bought it.

Behellagh.1468:

A B2P game has more in common with a movie than a restaurant.

Sorry, but GW2 is now free to play, not buy to play.

Do you know what’s really funny?

Take a look at the original Guild Wars, 3 years after it had been released. By then ArenaNet had already released two new campaigns, one new expansion, and two big content updates (Sorrow’s Furnace and the Mission Pack). They had taken massive strides at the storyline, more than doubled the amount of maps in the game, more than doubled the amount of skills in the game – which by then had more than 1.000 skills -, added four new professions, more than doubled the amount of armor skins in the game, made some significant graphical updates, added a very large amount of small quality of life improvements, and so on and so on.

They also had already announced GW2. In other words, they had pushed the original GW as much and as far as they could.

Meanwhile, GW2 three years after release… Had next to nothing. That was in august – by then, we barely had any new skill, a handful of new maps (Southsun, Silvergrind and Dry Top), no new profession, and little improvements elsewhere. Even with HoT, this is not a game that has been pushed to its limits – it’s a game that’s spinning in its wheels.

Ayrilana.1396:

If I remember correctly, the EotN armor were just re-skins of existing armor.

Sorry, pet. Based on what ArenaNet said, EotN still had more than 10 times the amount of new armor sets we got from HoT so far.

Vayne.8563:

Hot is like a combination expansion/season pass, just as Guild Wars 2 was. It’s a hybrid model. I’m not sure why some people can’t see this.

Because SOME people actually realize that we know nothing about the LW season 3 update, when it will be released, how much content it will have, and so on and so on.

Some people are conjuring “information” from thin air and believing that their inventions are true (I remember when someone was stating as a fact that the raids would be release this week, only to be proven to be completely, inequivocally wrong). But the truth here is that we have no idea about how much content ArenaNet will release as part of HoT, so it’s incredibly nonsensical to use “future content” (of which we know nothing about) as an excuse for ho expensive HoT is, or how little content it has.

Grim West.3194:

Hopefully the devs will get a clue and fix the abomination called HoT. But it won’t happen soon and in the mean time they are going to continue to lose players by the shipload.

HoT is a disaster.

True.

Eirdyne.9843:

It never occurred to me the weapon swap and skills 123 being main hand, 45, being off hand are actually the same idea without the absurd amounts of gold or rare-item required to respect in older games. In Dark Age of Camelot you had to kill a dragon for a chance at a respec-stone. A dragon. There was just one per realm (world-nation). It took as much as 170 people to kill some of these.

Meanwhile, in the original Guild Wars you could change your attributes and skills freely.

Unlike in GW2, gear had little to no impact on your build. So, while going from a Power-based build to a condition-based build in GW2 often restricts you due to your gear, constricting building variety and suggesting to people that they shouldn’t really change their builds (especially after they get ascended gear), the original GW had none of that.

In fact, in the original GW we were not restricted nearly as much as we are in GW2 – instead of skills being placed in the skill bar for ourselves, we could place them as we wanted (other than only having a single elite skill).

Plus, we could equip two professions at once; and once you had unlocked a second profession, you could change between the second professions you had unlocked freely. At one moment you could be a Mesmer using warrior skills with Illusionary Weapon, and in the next you could be a Mesmer using Fast Casting to quickly cast a lot of monk skills – without spending a single copper, without having any kind of grind, with just the time it took to teleport to an outpost (which, for the records, was free, unlike using a waypoint in GW2).

And, of course, we had far, FAR more skills. Three years after the original GW, a Mesmer had more or less 130 skills, and that’s ignoring the PvE only skills; considering how we could use far more combinations than in GW2’s rigid system, plus all skills from a secondary profession, now THAT was build diversity.

In comparison, GW2 is simply, well, meh.

Straylight.7529:

Ashen.2907:

Nice false dichotomy.

Perhaps other options exist? Anet sold the expansion as including Raids, new legendaries, etc and only announced that said would not be included at launcha fter collecting customers’ money. So perhaps people who want what they paid for are an option?

Adding raids weeks after HoT launch does not give people more time to level their masteries.

And, per your analogy, If your meal comes weeks after the appetizer you might have cause for complaint.

It’s not necessary to include raids on launch day.

Oh? Just like it’s not necessary for people to buy HoT or to buy gems. I guess we should all just stick to what’s necessary and ignore those frivolous activities, right?

Straylight.7529:

You wouldn’t be able to raid anyway due to lack of masteries. Waiting 3-4 weeks so people can properly prepare for the raids is totally Ok. Other MMO’s are doing it in the same fashion and no one is complaining there.

Weren’t you saying how people could get masteries in a couple days?

And are you sure no one is compaining about the delay for the release in raids in the other MMOs? Have you even bothered to look at the forums over there?

Straylight.7529:

Besides there’s enough other stuff in HoT to keep you busy for the few weeks it takes until raids arrive. Do those things instead.

Do you mean grinding mastery points, grinding hero points or doing any of the other new grinds introduced with HoT? Because the real content has been exhausted for quite some time now, it appears. Which isn’t surprising, considering how little of it there was in the first place.

Straylight.7529:

Good luck.

Better luck next time.

Coulter.2315:

I kinda think you recommending people ask for refunds and continuing to ask them to do that even when they said they didn’t want to do so would make YOU the one partially to blame…

Yep, but mostly because I didn’t buy HoT and I’m also not buying gems from ArenaNet. The thing is, I’m freely willing to admit it. I wonder if people who try to drive away those with constructive criticism are also willing to admit it.

Vayne.8563:

Everything in MMOs tends to be rushed, because everyone is demanding everything yesterday.

Everyone is also demanding quality in what they pay for. Saying “it’s what the players want” is no excuse for HoT being rushed – not only ArenaNet took their time, but also they are meant to be the game developers, and to know how to properly develop one.

Or are you saying that ArenaNet is so feeble that they take no decision and instead leave everything to be decided by the players?

VaLee.5102:

… when you can just buy it from the TP for less money, less time invested and less headaches?
Because I simply don’t get it.

Because soon you won’t have any option. The new legendaries will have precursors that can only be obtained through crafting. Then you won’t have any option other than doing a grind that is arguably worse than farming for gold in order to buy something from the TP.

The only silver lining here is that we will likely only get a full new set of legendaries around 2020, if ArenaNet is still around by then.

Behellagh.1468:

After all ANet just got “paid” for the expansion so it should have some “free” stuff as a reward or stuff that could be crafted.

I’m not sure you understand what “paid” and “free” entail.

ArenaNet just asked people to pay $50,00 – which is overpriced in comparison to most expansions (actually, all expansions other those from Blizzard) – and they delivered very little content in exchange for that. Noticeably, HoT came with just 2 new armor sets and just 5 new weapon sets.

Now, why did HoT come with so few skins? Because ArenaNet’s artists are overwhelmed and couldn’t make more skins?

Nope. They have been releasing a very large amount of new skins in the Gem Store since the HoT release.

ArenaNet has not added more skins to HoT because they have decided that those $50,00 players paid were not enough to buy more than the few skins they have added to the game. No matter how overpriced those $50,00 were, how HoT had at release less than ArenaNet had promised the game would have (where are the 3 legendaries that would be available at release? Where’s the new squad system? Where’s the fractals leaderboard?), how HoT came only with 4 new PvE maps… Despite ALL that, ArenaNet still thinks everything the players paid did not deserve some new skins.

Making money is an important part of a business, sure. Earning and keeping the trust of your customers is also an important part of a business, and ArenaNet’s recent actions appear to be failing at that.

ChrizZcE.5981:

is that the new legendary armor?

that_shaman datamined months ago some armor sets that had an interesting feature – they had a “common” version and a slightly modified “enhanced” version. It’s very likely the precursor armor set and the legendary armor sets.

Most are very ugly, tbh.

The “common” medium armor looks good – at least it’s not a trench coat. Everything else is ugly. But those are just the skins, without the particle effects the armors will of course have.

Very unlikely.

Honestly, that’s the kind of thing ArenaNet would release as an outfit in the Gem Store. The great majority of things linked to the original Guild Wars – Tormented Weapons, Zodiac Weapons, Zodiac Armor, Primeval Armor, Monk Outfit and so on – have been restricted to the Gem Store, and lately ArenaNet is only releasing outfits, not armor there.

FoW armor would be, at best, a Gem Store outfit.

Skynet.7201:

Test.8734:

Walhalla.5473:

and implement a better System to join Maps that have Ppl in there ( There are in fact many People who play on HoT Maps ), like the District System in GW1.

This is what puzzles me. The same district system we had in GW1 would have been perfect here. Letting people know that there are other maps and that you can easily travel to them (until they’re full), with a numbering system so you know which map to go to if you want a full one (to map 1, if it’s full to map 2, and so on), would solve a large amount of issues here.

I wonder if ArenaNet can’t do that because of technical reasons… Of if they are afraid to do it because that would allow every player to see how many instances of a given map there are at any given time.

We did have a better system, in my opinion. We guested to a higher pop server. Just my 2 copper, I found it far easier than trying to catch taxis before they poof. It’s like trying to catch fish with bare hands.

The flaw in the old system was the overserver thing. If you were playing in an overserver – which was common when doing one of the big meta events – and disconnected, you had no way of returning to the overserver you were in. A district system more similar to the one in the original GW would help with that.

Zaklex.6308:

That’s a problem you would need to take up with your ISP, tell them to try and find a different way to route your traffic from the AreanaNet servers to your home connection

What are you talking about? I haven’t had disconnects in years.

Context, my friend, context.

Arius.7031:

Also, you’re BSing straight up if you say ANet hasn’t improved the situation immensely. Not only does the LFG tool work really well, disconnects happen far less frequently

I’m not sure if the disconnects are directly because of ArenaNet. The situation with the Ancient Karka all the way back in 2012 was more likely because of the way the event was setup (a one time event where A LOT of people had to be online at the SAME TIME? It wasn’t surprising that ArenaNet couldn’t handle it) than because of poor servers (or because the players would have had poor connections at the time, like Zaklex implied above). We have never had something like the Karka thing for us to see if things really improved on this aspect of ArenaNet’s servers.

But anyway, the LFG thing isn’t a solution to this issue. Using it to taxi people from empty maps to not so empty maps isn’t what the system was created for; players improvise using it because that’s the best option right now, but it’s more a “less worse” option than a good option.

Walhalla.5473:

and implement a better System to join Maps that have Ppl in there ( There are in fact many People who play on HoT Maps ), like the District System in GW1.

This is what puzzles me. The same district system we had in GW1 would have been perfect here. Letting people know that there are other maps and that you can easily travel to them (until they’re full), with a numbering system so you know which map to go to if you want a full one (to map 1, if it’s full to map 2, and so on), would solve a large amount of issues here.

I wonder if ArenaNet can’t do that because of technical reasons… Of if they are afraid to do it because that would allow every player to see how many instances of a given map there are at any given time.

Pezz.4758:

dude im running out of companies to support here.

I know, right?

Despite everything, GW2 is still the best MMO around. But that’s largerly because the other MMOs suck

Pezz.4758:

But i cant play it and it saddens me. Its like banging a square block in a round hole. My square block is my playstyle that was supported for the last year in core GW2, and the round hole is this new play style they came up with for hot.

That’s exactly why you should ask for a refund – so you are heard. If everyone buys HoT and that’s it, ArenaNet will think the playstyle they have introduced with HoT has been a huge success, and will just keep adding more content like that. As you said, they don’t have an exit survey – they can see people not playing anymore but not asking for refunds as a sign that people loved HoT but found that the expansion has little content.

We have to let ArenaNet know what we think about this new content, and the best way to do so is with our wallets. Asking for a refund is the clearest way to point that you are not happy with how HoT is, regardless of how much content it has.

If ArenaNet listens, you can always buy HoT again.

Hawken son of Z.1367:

Its an MMO, people are supposed to work with other people to accomplish things. If you want to play alone. Then gtho tbh…. Go play a single player game.

And then you’ll find that you have to play alone because everyone else has left the game.

Saying “if you don’t want to play my way, just leave” isn’t exactly a great way to answer when you’re defending GROUP play.

I disagree with the OP and agree with Blaine.

Dungeons as a way for people to farm gold and/or experience are a bad idea. But they are still linked to exclusive skins, and, with the recent reward nerfs, those players trying to get those skins are really unlucky.

ArenaNet should:

• Massively increase the number of tokens for finishing a dungeon path once in a given day. But only for finishing, not for killing bosses at the beginning.

• Add multipliers the more dungeons per day you finish, so playing through different dungeons in a single day would give more tokens than just the sum of doing paths of a single dungeon through different days.

• Remove all dungeon-exclusive tokens and replace them for universal dungeons tokens. So playing in any dungeon would give you tokens for buying any dungeon reward.

• Don’t allow people to salvage dungeon rewards, but allow them to go into the Mystic Forge.

We would end with a system that rewards playing in different dungeons each day, that rewards finishing a path instead of doing its beginning over and over, that allows people who want the dungeon-exclusive skins a way to actually get them despite all the nerfs to dungeon rewards, and that even allows people to make some gold by using the items in the Mystic Forge (even if that means making only one exotic weapon for every four they acquire through the dungeon tokens).

Other than fixing the entire dungeons system – and let’s face it, ArenaNet won’t do that for the core game and much less for dungeons – that’s probably the best we will get.

As is obvious from my posts, I’m really disappointed with ArenaNet and with the way they have been handling GW2.

But, the only aspect of the company I have no complaints about is Gaile. She has my utmost respect, and I know that whenever she doesn’t answer a pressing concern, it’s because she has not been given the permission by the higher ups, not because she wants to leave the players’ questions unanswered.

Congratulations for your anniversary at ArenaNet, Gaile! I hope happiness will smile to you in the following years.

Ranlares.2513:

Have you played MMO’s before? Anything nearly as grand as a legendary weapon is in this game has a ridiculous quest tied to it or a raid encounter.

Exactly, meanwhile all GW2 has is a mindless, snoring grind.

I wish we had a “ridiculous quest” or a “raid encounter” instead of the massive grind cesspool it is today.

Ranlares.2513:

I love how people don’t realize how much work it was redoing the entire legendary system and not only writing the quests for each new one

“Quests”? Which “quests”? “Get 1.000 pieces of lumber” is a quest now?

And really, if ArenaNet knew how much it would take, why did they promise that three new legendary weapons would come with HoT? They were very clear: 3 new skins would be added with HoT, and the rest would be released later. Now they have changed their speech to “0 new skins with HoT” and “everything will be released later”, which basically scraps their previous goals.

And the last time they told us we would get new legendary skins “soon” was 2 years ago. Are you ready for something similar again?

The link is here.

Some quotes:

“It’s great fun in the right circumstances, but when those circumstances shift a tad from the ideal, it falls a little flat on its face, with increasingly empty zones and the illusion of open-ended horizontal progression.”

“These are tough events, full of charging and swarming enemies that often make soloing impossible, which wasn’t a problem just a few days ago when Heart of Thorns was brand new and groups were plentiful. Just two weeks in, though, I already often find myself on maps with virtually nothing going on. I’m alone with these swarms. Sometimes a notice pops up saying that I’m invited to join a more populated map (with an XP boost, to boot), but oddly enough, it’s occasionally almost as unpopulated.”

“When it stumbles, it’s in its ostensibly open-ended mastery progression that’s more set in stone than it seems, and in its heavy group and dynamic event focus that doesn’t always jive with empty maps.”

If you want to talk numbers instead of text, HoT got a lower score than Guild Wars: Prophecies, Guild Wars: Factions, Guild Wars: Nightfall or even Guild Wars: Eye of the North.

Firelysm.4967:

GW2 Core was the worst gaming experience in PvE that i’ve sad simply due to content that was made on Level 0. How hard is to kill first mob, that hard was end content. ZERO.

It was basically the players of GW2 Core who bought HoT. Is it really surprising that the HoT players want content that was more similar to the GW2 Core one?

Pezz.4758:

So i basically paid 50 dollars for content that largely frustrated me for absolutly no reason.

Ask for a refund.

GW2 has two long standing and huge issues: events attribution and server navigation.

All the way back in 2012, there was an one-time meta event – the Ancient Karka one – that had such a big drop rate that people nicknamed its reward the “Precursor Chest”. The event took quite some time and of course a lot of people were playing it, and ArenaNet’s network wasn’t particularly stable so quite often we got someone with a disconnect during the event…

…And boom, there went the event reward. Upon a disconnect, people would return to an empty map that had either just finished the event (thus no reward for the now returning character) or that had no chance of finishing the event at all. With no way to return to the maps those players were in, and no way to get the rewards for an event after a disconnect, people simply lost.

Now, three years later, we still have the exact same problems. It’s STILL impossible to navigate through the megaservers map properly – at best, all we can do is improvise with the LFG feature, but that often doesn’t work. Being disconnected while finishing a long meta event STILL makes a player lose his/her rewards more often than not, no matter how much of his/her time said player has just wasted.

ArenaNet is obviously not even trying to fix either of those issues, because if they were – and both have been very well known for quite some time now – they would already have fixed them.

Complaining on the forums doesn’t work, this is something people have been complaining about for quite some time now. The best we can do is to press ArenaNet economically. So, ask for a refund, tell your friends to ask for refunds too, and tell those who stay to stop buying gems. When this issue is fixed, then you all can come back. But we have to make ArenaNet listen, one way or the other.

Vayne.8563:

Majic.4801:

Vayne.8563:

Unless you can think of a way for all servers to be busy all the time, I’m not sure what else there is to say.

An explicit purpose of implementing the megaserver model was to prevent players from finding themselves in underpopulated maps. If the system was working as intended, players would not be placed in underpopulated maps, which is something both you and Sicarius agree is happening.

As explained by Colin Johanson:

The biggest benefit of this new system is that you’ll always find other players to adventure with in the open world, no matter what time of day it is. There are some maps in the game that tend to have smaller populations in them on each world; with megaserver technology, these lower-population maps will be full of players from the same global region, so you can always have a great experience and play any of the content in those maps. People online during nonpeak hours will be able to play in populated zones with other players, since they will all be sorted together to create fuller maps.

“Taxiing” is a workaround for the failures of the current system, but is not a solution to the underlying problem, and chiding players for not using it is a direct acknowledgment that the system isn’t working as intended.

The solution is for ArenaNet to fix it.

Fix it HOW? What is YOUR solution? Stop people from changing maps?

You’re quoting something that was said beforehand. The game has evolved. The solution is there.

It’s like someone being cold in a room and refusing to put on a sweater. This is ridiculous.

Vayne, Vayne, Vayne.

Tell me one thing – when the layoffs begin, are you going to be mature enough to admit how you are partially to blame for GW2’s failure?

Using your example, it’s as if someone is being cold in an office room that is always kept at freezing temperature by air-conditioning and, instead of listening to the sensible idea of simply raising the air-conditioning temperature, you tell people to just bring more coats or leave.

That’s what you always do. You blame the players for ArenaNet’s design failures, and insist on claiming the game is perfect and there’s nothing for ArenaNet to fix, even when faced with things that are obviously broken. The only impact you have is making players think of leaving the game, while deafening ArenaNet to the things they should be fixing. It’s a small impact, but for someone who has more than 17.500 forum posts like you, that’s not negligible.

In other words, you are making the game worse.

Are people right about having concerns about the future of GW2? Definitely. All signs are there: the game went free to play, key people are leaving, they did a 180° change on their plans, finantials are not looking good, and so on.

Are there things ArenaNet has to correct? Definitely. People keep seeing empty HoT maps and, unless the situation is REALLY dire, what is happening is that the megaserver system is not working properly. ArenaNet said they had fixed it, but looks like the issue is still there; and meanwhile, players still don’t have any half decent tool for navigating through the servers, so they are improvising with features that have clearly not been made for that (the LFG tool). There is a lot of broken things that ArenaNet could fix, and that players are right in asking a fix for.

Telling players they are “ridiculous” for having concerns and asking for fixes is not really helping anyone – not the players nor ArenaNet.

dricboylan.9812:

I’d be spending $50 for something I already have, along with additional content.

Yes, that’s pretty much it.

What ArenaNet has done is that they have basically forced old players to buy the core game again, which in reality translates to paying $50,00 for the expansion while new players pay the same $50,00 and get both the expansion and the core game.

Ah, if you haven’t been told about it, the expansion also doesn’t come with a new character slot. You need to pay (even) more to get one of those.

And really, it’s $50,00 for basically 4 new PvE maps. Only 4.

It’s a bit ridiculous. My suggestion is to not buy HoT right now and instead wait until it goes on sale. Considering all the topics complaining about empty HoT maps, probably that sale will come soon enough.

Sicarius.4639:

fixit.7189:

Unlike other MMO game expansions, this ones uses a metric ton of recycled assets and then called new. I know no other MMO expansion that makes you go back to old world stuff I have been doing for three years; it’s always completely new stuff, with new loots/rewards/etc. But not so in HoT! Here I am, in new expansion farming the same junk I have been doing for years. Instead, all the cool stuff is in the gem store; frankly, I am not impressed with this new direction they are going where less is supposedly more.

You need to recycle things so you can put all your new shiny toys in the gemstore for more profit! It’s actually laughable how we’ve seen more skins in the last couple of weeks than that in an entire expansion.

Right?

The thing that makes me the most sad about GW2 is that it’s not really improving. Time and time again, ArenaNet is making decisions that have clearly been made to benefit them to the detriment of their players. Such as:

• Releasing VERY few new skins with HoT, but then following with a deluge of new skins in the gem store. There really isn’t any excuse for this – it’s obvious that they had the manpower to make the new skins, but they chose to not add them to the game because they knew they could just sell them apart for a bigger profit, despite how expensive HoT is. The fact they weren’t even trying to hide it speaks a lot about how ArenaNet doesn’t even care.

• Things like the Bifrost collection that, as described, require players to do something completely dependable of pure RNG such as being locked inside one of the Shatterer’s crystals. The collections as a whole are a bunch of RNG and grind that are meant to be endured, not enjoyed, but to add something like this, in what was meant to be a system to reduce the RNG in acquiring precursors, is just a slap on the players’ face.

• Reducing the value of things in the core game right when HoT is released. Not only the dungeon nerf, but also the many things that used to be part of the core GW2 and were moved to HoT – a huge number of guild buffs, for example, and even earning many rewards in Fractals that are now gated by the Fractals mastery. Removing things from the core game in order to drive people to get HoT is far from being something done for the players.

• Locking progression on the Living Story by masteries, and locking the elite specializations – which we all know was one of the features players were excited the most for – behind grind gates. This was obviously meant to artificially inflate the longevity of HoT by forcing people to grind before they could reach the end of the story or unlock their specializations.

People often quote the ArenaNet’s MMO Manifesto for the line “We don’t want players to grind”. But at the end, ArenaNet said something else:

“The most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”

And no, that’s not true. The game has been built against the players.

Is this the best MMO around? Maybe. Which is proof of how bad MMORPGs are, not of how good GW2 would be.

BrooksP.4318:

The thing is MMORPGs have moved away from the foundation, and has moved into what you described. The foundation of MMORPGs was to have a RP based game in a MMO environment. This means that the role is up to the player, and the world environment is generally shaped by players. However now it’s structured to be linear and static, where devs now need to add walls and grinds to spread out content since almost all content is dictated via whatever new stuff the devs can push out compared to how fast the player consumes it.

I agree with you, and I think that’s a great point.

Let’s face it – sandbox games are niche games. The kind of creativity and inspiration you need to play one of those is not for everyone.

But is that a bad thing? Must a game be played by 5 million people to be successful? Because when trying to make a game catering to millions, you’ll have to use resources that require your game to have millions of players in order to not be a failure, and it’s hard to achieve that without playing to what the stereotype wants.

It’s the same discussion about having levels: could GW2 simply not have levels at all? Definitely. Would that actually make a better game? IMO, yes.

Does that likely mean that the game would have less players, because way too many MMORPG players are used to the idea of levels? Hell, yeah.

I think that’s the entire conundrum with GW2’s design, really. The original Guild Wars was a far smaller game; but it was still a great game, and successful enough to fund a sequel. Guild Wars 2 is a far bigger game with far, FAR more players, but I can’t help but feel that the game got worse when trying to cater to more players, losing many of its unique aspects (the complex skill system, the very low level cap, how fast people got weapons with maxed damage, and so on).

And I’m not sure, ironically, if GW2 is that more successful than GW1. It has bigger earnings but it also costs far more; ArenaNet is around three times the size it had when releasing the original Guild Wars. I wonder if all this – increasing the scope of the game from GW1 to GW2 but losing so much of the original in the process – was worth it.

AXEL.8362:

Not only that but the word MMO itself this days has a bad connotation. Almost always used negatively or aggressively in debates. This has “MMO tier quest”, “MMO tier skills”, “MMO tier action”. Never used in a positive way.

That’s deserved. MMORPGs are bad games.

MMORPG players have taught developers that they don’t need to make fun games or good games. Players are willing to go through content they don’t even enjoy as long as they get some reward out of it, be it more gold, more levels or even more skins.

You begin with a rotten foundation – you don’t have to make the game fun, you just need to make it take a long while to get the best rewards available. From there it just gets worse – in order to fuel monthly fees or microtransactions, it becomes a matter of placing in front of the players as many roadblocks as possible, so it takes them even more time to reach their goals, or it incentives them to rely on the in game store to do so.

It eventually culminates with the scam-like lottery systems many free to play MMORPG use (in GW2’s case, the Blacklion Chests). You buy keys with real money that you need to use on boxes you grind for so you can have a small chance of earning something nice. Really, this is almost masochism.

The thing is, humanity has at least a small degree of salvation – there aren’t THAT many grinders out there. What the MMORPG boom learned is that WoW added a lot of players to the genre, but that’s pretty much all the genre will ever have; not nearly enough players to sustain the 10+ MMORPGs that were being released in quick sucession. It was little suprise that so many MMORPGs failed and continue to fail, leading to this decay of the genre.

And the irony is, no one is going to try something different. Whenever a new MMORPG is released, the stereotypical MMORPG players rush to it and begin demanding all the classic features of the genre – basically, the mindless grind its known for. Most of those players will leave within 3 months, but by then the damage is done: any inch of originality is gone and you’re back to another grind cesspool.

With the way things are, people know that MMORPGs are for grinders, and no one else. There aren’t enough grinders around to sustain many MMORPGs. Thus the genre will decay until it’s incredibly niche or it dies completely, like space simulators and point and click adventure games did for a time.

Straylight.7529:

Test.8734:

(and not even just a preorder, rather asking the full price)

This makes no sense. A preorder is a preorder. It’s one additonal option on how to purchase a game. Nothing more, nothing less. And of course it’s full price. Did you expect it to be half the price?

Yeah, because no one has ever said that “Pre-purchase means you buy the game for the full amount. Pre-order means you put some money down towards the full cost”.

And of course, ArenaNet has never made a preorder available to GW players, ever.

I would kindly suggest trying to find better places where to do your research than YouTube. Because, if you haven’t noticed, some people here know what they’re talking about.

Straylight.7529:

There has been information on every major feature on an almost weekly basis since the announcement back in January.

Really? So when did ArenaNet tell people about the paragraph Vayne quoted, on how HoT would be almost entirely challenging content? When did they tell people about the cost of unlocking the elite specializations? When did they tell people about the number of maps available in HoT?

Was any of that in January?

Oh look, it wasn’t! What a surprise! Nor was it in February. Or March! Or April. Or May. June…? Nope.

Meanwhile, they have known for a long time now how few maps HoT would have. They didn’t decide the amount of hero points required to unlock the elite specializations two days before release. ArenaNet knew players wouldn’t be happy with those announcements and so they chose to only release them nearly the very end of the pre-launch period, after months of telling players to prepurchase quickly or lose the opportunity of getting a new character slot.

This was very obviously a way to fool people into buying the game as quickly as possible, with the least information – oh sorry, I guess some people think talking about hylek actually matter, so I’ll rephrase it: with the least relevant information – as possible.

Vayne.8563:

Saying that people are victims of making assumptions because they didn’t even do basic research is pretty silly if you ask me.

Saying that people are to blame because they expected an expansion to be more of the game they were playing is what I would call pretty silly, if you ask me.

The fact many players did not understand how hard HoT would be is proof of how poorly ArenaNet communicated it. Which really, is only fitting to how poorly they have talked about HoT – they began selling the game (and not even just a preorder, rather asking the full price) before even announcing a release window, much less a release date. A lot of the information they gave about the game was only made available after presale had been going on.

A lot of information, for the records, including the quote you claim people should have read before buying the game, despite how ArenaNet was already asking people to buy the game by then.

So yeah, if you want to say it’s the players fault for not reading something that was not up while ArenaNet was asking them to buy the game, I’ll have to just point and laugh, Vayne. It’s obvious to anyone without an agenda that this is completely, unequivocally ArenaNet’s fault.

Avectius.3271:

What happens when we’re done with Part III? Do we hand all the three backpieces to the NPC and he’ll award us with Ad Infinitum? Do we put all of them together, somehow? Or maybe, as we unlock them, we have to hand them over, rather than keep all three or something. Or perhaps there’ll be a final Part? Maybe Part IV? Where we collect components and then get awarded it.

Part III is the precursor. Just like for the other collections, all that grind is just for the precursor, you’ll still have a lot more to grind for in order to get the legendary item itself.

Volaric.9813:

In the meantime, I guess I’ll just go back to HoT

Wow, I’m sure ArenaNet is SO sorry that you feel like the only place with good rewards in the game is within the new overpriced expansion!

I’m sure they would tell you to play some dungeons to feel better but… Oh wait! They have nerfed dungeons rewards too!

Divine Flavor.2016:

I don’t know if five and a half million subscriptions was enough to make buy to play work for them, but it’s hard to argue that those kind of numbers weren’t successful on at least some level. As far as I know, WoW is the only other MMO to ever get numbers that high.

Half a million subscriptions would be more than enough to make GW2 a big success… But GW2 does not have subscriptions

We know the GW2 earnings. Notice how, no matter how many players bought the game, its earnings in the graphic I linked earlier were less than those of Blade & Soul (which has not even been released in the West yet) and very close to those of Aion (which has had a very poor reception around here).

Celtic Lady.3729:

Is WoW the only MMO out there that hasn’t gone F2P? I don’t mean free to play to 20 or whatever. I mean, free to play the whole game.

GW2’s F2P seems more restrictive than any I’ve experienced so far.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn still has a monthly fee.

And try playing The Old Republic for something even more restrictive than GW2.

Vayne.8563:

Asking for a zone to be nerfed is far more lazy than saying people need to be reasonable about their expectations.

Not really. Victim-blaming is, after all, the laziest possible approach to a given problem. Which pretty much describes the attitude of some people, who claim that nothing in the game is wrong and that it’s always the players’ fault that anything, from the smallest thing to the biggest outcry, appears to be wrong.

It’s rather obvious that, in an expansion for GW2, players would have expected content similar to that of GW2. To make HoT something so different that many players – for example, the one you were quoting (and not imaginary people like “everyone in my guild”) – do not enjoy it is completely on ArenaNet. They should have clarified it before the expansion was avaliable for sale, and the fact that some players weren’t aware of it is prood that ArenaNet wasn’t clear enough.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I was surprised to see a ‘Road Ahead’ News Blog.

Yeah, I remember the Looking Ahead of 2013. The one with many interesting quotes:

• “We’ll begin regularly adding new skills and traits to the game for each profession to expand your characters and builds!”

• “you will see a specific way to build precursor items on your way to a legendary”

• “you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013”

• “We’ll expand all crafting professions to allow them to reach a new milestone: 500 points!”

So I would suggest taking anything ArenaNet says in other “Road Ahead” posts with a grain of salt. Or, more accurately, a sea’s worth of grains of salt.

Good luck

Cayenne.5341:

The happy people might just be more busy playing.

Considering all the reports about empty maps, maybe there aren’t that many happy people, then?

I’m not sure about the future of GW2 for different reasons, actually.

It looks like ArenaNet doesn’t know what they’re doing.

First, they would continue GW2 with the model of a Living World, telling a story in real time as the world would change to make players feel like they saw history as it happened. They even said that, if they did the LW right, GW2 would not have an expansion. Yet the season 1 was a failure, after players complained about all the temporary content that made people feel nothing had really been added to the game.

Then ArenaNet tried a different model with Season 2; it was far more timid, world-changing wise (other than adding a couple new maps, it didn’t really change the existing GW2 world that much), and was focused on instanced, soloable content. They also monetized it more, by making people to have to buy it if they didn’t log-in when the content was released.

Yet, that also failed to increase GW2’s earnings. Not only it didn’t increase the earnings like the spike of an expansion sale, but it also barely stopped the earnings from falling.

So then ArenaNet went in a third, different direction, and stopped releasing new content for the core game while working on an expansion. We are seeing the results of that now, with HoT…

…But the expansion hasn’t been all flowers, either. It’s clearly unfinished – content ArenaNet said would be there at release isn’t (the first three new legendary weapons, the new squad system, the Fractal leaderboard), not to mention the content that ArenaNet promised would come “later” without any tangible release date (raids, the full set of new legendary weapons, and etc).

The hurried release of an unfinished expansion, together with how they began to sell HoT – before even announcing a release date, asking people to pay full money for it, and before they actually made most of the announcements that would later make the community erupt into surges of rage – hint that ArenaNet was kinda desperate for money.

Now, we don’t know what will be the result of this third model (after the LW season 1 model and the LW season 2 model). The empty HoT maps are not encouraging.

Now, what else do we know?

• ArenaNet had basically to make server merges with the megaserver thing, due to how empty the maps were. This doesn’t exactly scream “look how healthy the game is!”.

• GW2 became free to play, and we know that no MMORPG went free to play when its previous business model was being a success. This is a big hint that GW2 wasn’t being that successful as Buy to Play.

• NCSoft, which completely owns ArenaNet, has distanced itself from GW2. We have been told that it’s ArenaNet who’s publishing GW2 now, instead of NCSoft; the lack of advertisement about HoT is a very clear sign of how few resources ArenaNet has as far as publishing goes when compared to NCSoft itself. And when you go to the NCSoft website and hover over the “Games” title in the site’s top bar, the site shows Aion, Blade & Soul, Lineage 2, WildStar… But no GW2.

• Lots of important people have left ArenaNet this year:

Jon Peters, former Game Design Lead? Left ArenaNet a few months ago to join Amazon.

Eric Flannum, former Lead Designer for GW2? Left ArenaNet to also join Amazon.

Kristen Perry, the main artist behind the Sylvary look? Left ArenaNet a couple months ago.

Not to mention Chris Whiteside, who was the one doing all the CDIs with the community. Notice how many of those left ArenaNet a few months ago. Does this hint that everything inside ArenaNet is sunny and happy? Nope, it doesn’t.

• There are many complains about how empty the HoT maps are, just 2 weeks after release.

We will see what happens after HoT. It’s possible that ArenaNet will grow with the earnings from the expansion… Or it’s possible that HoT won’t be big enough to fill the hole in the sinking ship, and soon the layoffs will begin. Time will tell. But really, I wouldn’t be exactly hopeful about the future of GW2 right now.

Quick, repeat with me:

• We can’t solo everything in an MMO and we have to grind for masteries as we do map completition.

• We can’t solo everything in an MMO and we have to grind for masteries as we do map completition.

• We can’t solo everything in an MMO and we have to grind for masteries as we do map completition.

• We can’t solo everything in an MMO and we have to grind for masteries as we do map completition.

• We can’t solo everything in an MMO and we have to grind for masteries as we do map completition.

Since ArenaNet already nerfed some of the grind – see the specialization unlock – and already made the game more soloable – see how some of the hero points in HoT were tonned down so champions became veterans -, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until they listen to us and make the game even more soloable and less grindy. All we have to do is complain a bit more.

Dengar.1785:

Raids were never going to be implemented on launch.

Such righteous indignation! Too bad you can’t use it to talk about any of the other features, that were meant to be available at release but simply, well, weren’t

Dengar.1785:

I don’t think anyone is arguing against the engine being old. But pointing that out is kind of… I can’t think of the word for it, but basically it really goes outside of the scope of what you’re judging.

Ah, so what you are saying is basically “Oh noes, some review has a different opinion from mine. Clearly it’s not valid because my opinion is the only correct one”.

Dengar.1785:

Uhhhh…. They SAID those things would come out later.

Yeah, they shot their old statement of “we will release it when it’s ready” and instead decided to release the already lacking in content “expansion” without many of the features they claimed it would have. Raids, at least the first few legendary weapons, the new squad system, the Fractas leaderboards… All unavailable and all given a vague “later” release date.

Straylight.7529:

My “no comment necessary” refered to this line:
“The latest and greatest GPUs can limp along in the 30fps range in most environments even when settings are toned down.”

..which is simply wrong. No discussion needed.

Yeah, because no one ever complains about the poor optimization of GW2 and how it can stutter even on great systems.

Straylight.7529:

No matter what profession you play, you’ll not spend most of your time auto attacking.

As a necro I have 15 active abilities on my ability bar. In order to make the above statement correct I’d have to use it more than 50% of the time which is simply not the case! Checkmate.

Yeah, because no one who has played GW2 has ever complained about how the game favors spamming 1111 while mindlessly following a large zerg.

I would say “checkmate”, if not by the fact that would assume that proving obviously wrong statements to be wrong is something as complex as playing chess. Proving the degree of denial here is more like checkers than anything else, tbh.

Straylight.7529:

Test.8734:

Do you want to see something funny? Take a look at the post history of anyone in this topic. Do you really expect to see anyone attacking the review that agrees with that user’s previous point of view?

Maybe you should have a look at your own post history

Which part of “anyone in this topic” was too hard for you to understand?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

But I’d rather they make the game they want to make, than the one the masses want it to be turned into – that is how Ascended got added as it did.

Isn’t it too late for that?

As you said, they added ascended gear and Fractals grind because “the masses” asked for it. ArenaNet planned to make an expansion-less game based on the concept of a Living World that would change over time, but critical disappointment over the ephemerality of LW season 1 and the lack of finantial returns changed their mind (and thus HoT, here we are). They said they would periodically add new skins to the game two years ago, but the idea was then abandoned; they had said they would try to add many events to a single place so each event wouldn’t repeat often, and then we got the Silverwastes.

Meanwhile, a lot of important people from ArenaNet has left the company.

I’m not sure what game they wanted to make, but I doubt even ArenaNet knows it anymore.

Straylight.7529:

“Perhaps the greatest shortcoming of Heart of Thorns is its entire focus on new content rather than investing in improving the foundation of the game.”

First he makes it sound like it’s a bad thing when an expansion focuses on new content, and then he says the game didn’t improve its foundation which is just plain wrong.

It’s only “wrong” in that he could have added how HoT actually made the core game worse, by being followed by a nerf to dungeon drops and the addition of a mastery gate to Fractals. But saying that HoT doesn’t improve GW2’s foundation is factually correct.

Straylight.7529:

no comment necessary.

You don’t make any comment mostly because you can’t – or are you going to say that the GW2’s engine, which is basically an iteration of the 2004 engine, is not old by PC games’ standards?

Straylight.7529:

“and the ability design has you spend most of your time auto-attacking while waiting patiently for the right moment to follow up with AoE, defensive abilities, and conditions.”

here he shows that he clearly didn’t play the game. I play necro and engineer and my auto-attack is easily the least used ability. (except for Ability 1 in reaper shroud).

I’m trying to think what’s funnier: to imagine you standing there doing absolutely nothing while your skills recharge, or someone actually trying to defend the notion that the skill without a recharge is actually the least used one.

The reviewer isn’t wrong; it sounds more like a L2P issue.

evilunderling.9265:

The only reason you dislike the PC Gamer view is that it challenges your pre-existing stance, and the only reason you like the Gamer Revolution one is that it doesn’t.

Are you saying that the OP here is any different? Or anyone else posting in this topic?

Do you want to see something funny? Take a look at the post history of anyone in this topic. Do you really expect to see anyone attacking the review that agrees with that user’s previous point of view?

Sykper.6583:

Incredibly trashy review, this isn’t someone who played GW2 at all.

Incredibly trashy review of the review, this isn’t someone who has read the review at all.