Guild Wars 2

Looking at all the past updates, and gates created by the developers. The time to get many items and titles is just way out of proportion.

The laurel system requires countless months of dailies, if not years to get everything – W3 titles are a frickin joke in the amount of time to actually get some of the titles. And the less said about Legendaries..the better.

Now with the Guild Missions, since getting influence takes so long…some of the major upgrades will take a seriously long time as well. Sure you can say, we’re buying time to fix the game, but seriously its ridiculously what Anet is asking of its players, should we start making arrangements to hand down our accounts to our children so they can continue on the good fight?

+100 The problem is, no matter what will happen now. The damage is done, they have to live with all the fallout, all the people quitting and obviously, it is going to have a huge impact on the future of this game.

The problem is, the playerbase will not grow anymore, word of mouth will spread like wildfire, truely – I just hope for all the people who are going to continue playing is that enough population remains so everything can more or less function.

W3 will not be so epic when its like 10 vs 8 vs 3 now would it?

To all the naysayers, some of the rewards are ascended items. So how is this even fair to small guilds? This is creating a vast imbalance in the game, so the rewards are not pointless. This isn’t gating people, this is effectively locking them out of content, rewards and this is just the start.

Soon, we’ll be seeing raids or hardmodes for elitist players – Truely, the casual player in GW2 should just quit now.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The short answer is that new content is not going to drive people away from the game. There is absolutely no evidence to support that it would.

The long answer is that guilds are indeed both social structures and reward mechanisms. We realize rewards can strain social connections and we do our best to prevent it. We want you to be able to play with your friends without feeling pressured by the game to spend your time doing otherwise. We’re still fine-tuning some details, but the general idea is that rewards from new guild content system are rate-limited in such a way that a smaller, more-focused groups can maintain a similar pace to the larger ones. So no, you won’t have to abandon your friends and join mega-guilds to benefit from the system, but that’s not to say the mega-guilds won’t have plenty of stuff to do.

I don’t want to go into too many more details until our team formally releases all of the information in our upcoming blog post. But I hope that helps for now.

Necro Mode ~ Activated. Just to prove a point I made over 18 days ago. Either I’m psychic and foreseen all these problems – or I know what I’m talking about.

I’m still amazed at all the new people who flocked to this thread, not that I’m surprised to be honest, I think the regular posters here was expecting it. Alot of members like myself was expressively against this patch when this post first popped up, we’ve even battled against arena-net themselves – literally risking our accounts in the process, this is truely how bad this patch is, and I guess we’ll see the ramifications of this patch over the next few weeks but honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if I see someone resign – after all, Jay Wilson made less mistakes on Diablo III…

I posted a message several weeks ago expressing concerns when ‘Guild Missions’ was on the agenda for a future patch, I expressed many valid concerns and even back then – clearly stated that with the current state of the game – introducing missions could destroy many guilds depending on how it was implemented, and honestly – I’m still shocked at the implementation myself, because it’s been implemented in the worst possible way. I should dig up and necro that post just to prove a point -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-Quest-Update-concerns-me/first#post1522994

lol fanboys ~ This patch is already destroying the game, I expect someone to resign over this.

I just logged in and checked the upgrades, 150 merits + 50k influence for Guild Challenges, how in the holy hells is that doable for small guilds? As for GvG, it’ll never happen.

Essentially today, the hardcore elitists won – all the months of complains about endgame. Today, we also saw that anet are the pawns to ncsoft, only they could dream up a patch so bad.

Distaste.4801:

Alkron.1345:

Can anyone give some examples of what is on the list right now?

Off the top of my head:

10 WvW invader kills

40 kills in ascalonian zones

40 kills in Norn(?) zones

1 fractal

5 sidekicked events(you’re downleveled)

10 salvages

3 skill points

20 gathering

3 skill points? lol…that a pretty big grind… some of the others are fairly fast though, 10 salvages for instance, super fast.

With the recent stupid patch, alot of servers are really in deep trouble if you want to do the new content. Our guild is very close to reaching AoW5, if you want to join us regardless of being an anime fan. Please contact officer to join, perhaps merge with us if you want to do content.

I’ll be around for a few days to handle arrangements.

Anet, just look at all the fallout from this patch – look at all the threads, guild merges…people already abandoning guilds. Can I say it now? I told you so

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

10 people is a very good size for a Tier 1 bounty mission.

What about higher tier bounties? What then?

Birdy.4816:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The problem is, GW2 was originally aimed at the core/casual market and since really the start of the major events, they have started down a different path – utilizing smoke and mirror tactics in order to keep people playing. With today’s patch, it is clearly intended that this game is going down a much more hardcore path and isn’t good for any casual player at all.

What is “core about this patch” 1 new pvp mode, casual matchmaking for PvP, and some minor useless fluff for PvE.

There is nothing core about this game currently.

Its just bad grinds with no design.

Core market = Dungeons and Horizontal progression was the original focus. With todays patch, literally the game has changed, for the worst. The patch is even bad for hardcore players, they just don’t see it yet.

Fortuna.7259:

Loosifah.4738:

By “plenty to do for smaller guilds” he means the normal content in the game that you don’t need a guild to do. Good job screwing the smaller guilds on GUILD content.

Yup, there is plenty for smaller guilds to do… like sit around and WAIT for 40 laurels before they can get 1 piece of ascended gear… OR you can jump ship and get 1 piece of gear per week. IF you play any alts (or just other builds) you have no choice really. Brilliant.

The laurels is really another kick in the groins for a lot of people. For me for instance, before I decided to quit – I wanted the endless Tonic + Cat pet + Acended amulets for each of my 8 80s ….. thats like nearly 2 years worth of laurels…I mean, seriously?

The problem is, GW2 was originally aimed at the core/casual market and since really the start of the major events, they have started down a different path – utilizing smoke and mirror tactics in order to keep people playing. With today’s patch, it is clearly intended that this game is going down a much more hardcore path and isn’t good for any casual player at all.

Congratulations, Arenanet – you just made the 2nd most Stupid MMo mistakes in history – #1 Still belongs to Star Wars Galaxies #2 New Entry! Guild War 2 #3 Everquest II

Honestly, you guys just nailed several more nails in its coffin. Sure it might not die now or over the next few months – but its going to be a slippery downward road from now on. Expect all the fun things like server merges when some of the dead servers just throw off even more playerbase – expect W3 to simply cease to function for many servers.

And to all the naysayers that this patch wasn’t going to hurt small time/casual guilds? It already did

Savoy.6824:

Hi all. So I know there are a lot of small guilds out there made up of people who are real life friends. I know I have one of those myself. But I have recently jumped ship to what I would call a mid sized guild. It has a little over 100 people in it and there are about 15 people on during the US prime time. This guild has over 800k influence. Fact is folks theres probably plenty of guilds out there in a situation similar to this and further the situation isnt as dire as that 30 page thread would have you believe.

I believe a problem we will actually see is that there will be so many people kicking off these cool new bounty missions at once to night that we may not know which bounty belongs to which guild. So my question is, does anyone know how we will tell a target bounty belongs to our guild and not some other guilds?

My understanding of the mission is that when you kick it off two npcs appear in some zone(s) and you have 15 minutes do go find what zone they are in and dispatch them. They look like normal champions and everyone in the zone is allowed to help kill them. I think its great that others are allowed to join in I just wonder how were going to figure out if they are the bounty we are hunting and not infact some other guilds bounty.

Fixed, and this is why this patch is so bad and already causing a crapstorm – Basically, today a small piece of Guild Wars 2 died, and honestly – I think a lot of people, developers alike are going to look back at this point.

Enjoy the game, while its still alive.

Let’s just face the prime facts here, they are really more than enough people against this patch to warrant postponing the patch until a later date pending further investigation into how guild missions can be deployed in a better fashion. I personally haven’t logged in since Saturday ever since this was announced because for me, personally this is a total deal breaker – and from what I can gather talking to other people, a lot of other people will mostly quit too, some probably tomorrow, and others probably within the next week judging on how this plays out if they decide to push ahead.

The signs are already apparent that this is irrevocably destroying many small and casual guilds and the patch hasn’t even gone live yet. I think this really is the last chance for anet, do the right thing here – put pride aside.

What people are totally not getting the idea of what a small guild really is. This is purely because of the huge population imbalances on servers. Some servers are highly active, and others are dead – so many people here are only seeing one side of the issue, and lets face it – there are many issues this patch is bringing up.

Hardcore players are the bain of MMos – and I personally despise most of them. The problem is, isn’t really to do with being a hardcore player, but the attitude of one. The average hardcore playing simply puts more time into playing the game than say, a casual or core player – thats fine. I’m a hardcore player too, I know alot of hardcore players – most of decent people, however..

The problem is when they start to demand more and more – they demand significant changes to the game, often at the expense of casual/core players. Quite often, developers decide to fall into the HC trap and cater for these players, and that is when MMo’s show the first signs of death. I could list a metric crap ton of MMos which developers listened to Hardcore/Elitist players and the game rapidly went down hill shortly afterwards. So really, the name hardcore player isn’t really the correct name to use for them – lets use the classic wow term and called them Elitist Jerks.

Alot HCs are the players who feel the most self entitled and often look down on casuals/core players as being inferior or unworthy. I’ve often done battle against Hardcore players in various games and communities – because honestly, in the end – they are bad for anytype of MMo unless the game is aimed at the hardcore market to begin with. Essentially put, pitting casuals vs hardcores is never a good idea.

I’ve seen some truly bitter forums wars, especially during the classic WoW period which really started the whole casual vs hardcore debates.

Flamenco.3894:

Parlourmeatflex pretty much provided a strong argument for Anet and I whole-heartedly and with entire backbone support, endores and agree with him

Not really, the exact reverse is also true. Why should guild members be forced into repping with other guilds to complete content, their primary guild will not receive any benefits from? Along time ago, the aspect of being able to be in multiple guilds at once was a major cause of concern – and now we are seeing one of the major reasons why.

The idea of being able to join multiple guilds sounds really good on paper, but the implementation of the idea isn’t – I think what would have been better for the game in general would have been to scrap that idea, and limit the amount of members who can join a guild to 50 instead of 500 – this would have created a far more varied guilds.

This is also why GvG would and could never work in GW2.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Flamenco.3894:

Guild Hall will need tier 8, which will take a year to research taking up 2 research slots

Well then they could release it now and the Halls would be ready to choose from when the research is done. Someone find this person a spot working at ArenaNet!

The small and casual guilds will take years just to reach Rank 8 at the current turn-over rate of Influence. So again, gated content at its finest. Someone mentioned a godzilla facepalm – honestly, it is will deserved now.

A more logical step in Guild Missions would be how other games approach this method.

1) Kill 100 Skritt in Iron Marches
or
2) Kill x Boss in x Dungeon
or
3) Kill x amount of mobs
or
4) Kill x amount of mobs + players

And have a slowing evolving difficulty + rewards as you unlock higher ranks

Try guesting to emhry bay server, in most zones you’ll be lucky if you even see some other players.

Sure, you can say not everyone uses raptr or xfire, but alot of more seasoned gamers do – these stats don’t lie. Listen, I’m not trying to pull the game down here ~ I’d personally love it if anet got its act together, pushed out some content of the highest orders and gained 5+ million new members. But what is the likelyhood of that happening?

http://www.xfire.com/games/gw2

tic.7425:

Skylightmoon.1079:

Small guilds need to stop complaining. If you decided to start a guild in the last month, which is late in the game, then thats yur fault and its not a smart move considering how difficult it is to grow when so many big guilds are out there.

There ya go… !

no more new and upcoming guilds, why bother? its too difficult and not a smart move. Thats just brilliant!

Instead of making your MMO accessible to new guilds that would like to grow, lets make it even more difficult.

/facepalm

The thing is, it also effects long term casual guilds not just small guilds in general. My guild for instance, It was created back in closed beta and thrived at launch gaining about 150 members and our influence grew fast too, since we was a primarily a PvE based guild and a democratic guild, we voted on the guild upgrades and surprise, almost all of the beneficial PvE upgrades was finished first, we didn’t bother going for some rank 5s such as Politics since there wasn’t anything in that tree yet. But we finished everything possible except Art of War, until we started to get some WvW members, and knocked that of to rank 4 – however in the meantime, we was losing members rather rapidly – far faster than we could recruit.

Come Lost Shores//Wintersday events, we had literally went down to maybe 15/150 signing on regularly – and some guilds had completely died at that point. And these days, we struggle to get 10 people online and thats counting the people who are not repping since our guild never required it because it was a casual PvE based guild, so after all the struggles building up our guild, trying to make it survive – this patch will most likely kill the guild. This is one of the reasons why I totally oppose this patch and many others feel the same way – and as for rewards, no one really knows the extent of them yet…for all we know, they could be ascended armor rewards with new currency…boy that would really cause a crapstorm then lol….

Also you have to understand, people don’t want to rep other guilds just to do content – they want to do content with their guild. They want their guild to reap the rewards of finishing this content. Basically, bluntly put – this content was rushed, and not all bases (the consumers) was covered – this content was aimed at select groups and guilds, most likely to keep them occupied until more content could be rushed, at the expense of the majority of the rest of the players. I even started a peti.tion to try to stop this (yes, certain words are probably flagged so they can be checked by mods..most likely how infractions are handed out) but then I realized something, looking at anets track record from both gw1 and gw2 – this patch will be go live regardless on the 26th no matter what – so my drive to attempt to stop the patch pretty much stopped and more of a mourning process set in and pretty much gave up trying to save this game, since then I’ve barely logged in at all – and like many others, will probably bow out completely on the 26th. Obviously, the developers have no clue – or are just plain arrogant and are unwilling to compromise.

At the moment, in some ways I feel bad for anet – on one hand they have all this backlash with the Feb 26th patch, and on the other hand a growing storm about condition damage – not good for the company, not good for the developers and certainly not good for the game.

emikochan.8504:

All mmos lose the locusts after early launch, then the people that didn’t read what the game was leave, and now the people playing are the actual gw2 players. Same in any mmo. A slow growth is great.

But a fast decline of players isn’t ~ The game already had lost a ton of players with the Lost Shores mess, and now the next patch it set to cause another round of players quitting.

Pretty much, and that is what will be the driving force that will kill many small and casually focused guilds on the 26th.

Yes, and all the reports are based on sales. Since this game isn’t based on subs, therefore – there isn’t any way to tell how many people are actually actively playing and ones that are idle.

However, I bet if a survey was done ~ It’s pretty obvious there is way more idle players than active ones.

The entire patch is a mess, everything is being rushed and every potential outcome is not being considered carefully. Arenanet should very well know that the community has a whole is very fractured, especially since Lost Shores and the community cannot take many more bombshells.

With the whole launch of Fractals and Ascended items, every player no matter what still had the same chances, the same access to the content as the next person. However, in the next patch – you don’t have access to the same content

What should have been down is the players of any guild should be able to participate and receive the same rewards. The content should have been created so everyone could work together, or solo if they wanted too.

Guild Bounties should have been Art of War 1, and each rank should have unlocked a progressively harder encounter, so the larger guilds could clear this content faster and more efficiently than a small guild could – but the outcome would have been the same – everyones happy – But it wasn’t created in this way, it has been created with a hardcore and super large guild in mind. I personally blame all the players who wanted raids etc for this mess.

Achievement points are worthless, there was exploits which allowed some players to exceed 10k – 20k points, even then you have Entropy which is infinite. I don’t think there has really been that many games which have a very good system that shows how good the player is. Even in WoW’s gearscores wasn’t a good system, it just ment they was in a good raid guild.

GW2 has many great players, many of which are pretty much in average looking gear, you can’t tell how good they are until you actually clear content with them and build up trusts and bonds.

Its really impossible to provide statistics, and even then ~ they can be faked. Its all personal experience, and I’ve personally seen a dramatic drop in players.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

The playerbase has massively declined since Lost Shores – stop spreading false hope.

Or you could stop spreading wrong data.
Anet data has shown a major increase in the playerbase and concurrent players.

And you trust anet?

Not really because you are still essentially screwing over many guilds. So many other people who have responded notice the direct threat with this patch. Small guilds will not be able to do any of this content period -

Guild Missions will require large amounts of Influence
Large amount of players online at all times

The small guilds will never raise up enough influence, and they will not have enough players online/active to participate in the activities. This is gating many players, forcing them to join different guilds if they want to do these quests, and because of the rewards they will abandon the small/medium sized guilds practically instantly.

To be very blunt here, this up and coming patch is a dagger in the backs of many players – and needs to be stopped.

On the contrary, the reverse could also be stated Heijincks. Why does the small guilds compromise and be forced into being have nots, or being forced out of being able to compete and/or just having to skip content. If anything, small guilds work even harder than big guilds.

One of the biggest issues here, is that many people are worried (and rightly so) that this content update will kill alot of small and casual guilds, because they’ll not be able to compete with larger more organized guilds, not to mention many players never wanted to join larger super guilds either, they like a more relaxed social/casual guild.

Also, you have to realize that these patches will indeed destroy many guilds – And that is what will lead to many players quitting the game in disgust. Why are the smaller/casual and less active guilds being punished? Lets say, a guild with 100 unique accounts/members started at launch and then lost lets say 80/90 members since launch, so its averaging out at around 10 members logging in per day. The guild has built up a large array of upgrades, and has worked hard. Wouldn’t you be kitten if along comes a new patch which effectively will destroy everything you have worked hard to achieve?

Also, not-representing isn’t the same as being a member – If your not actively representing, you are not contributing anything to the guild, thus not an active member-

Meglobob.8620:

The playerbase is NOT declining.

Anet have said the playerbase is growing at a steady pace and this has been the case since launch and I believe them, on the evidence if you go anywhere that is known to attract players there are hordes of them…

The playerbase has massively declined since Lost Shores – stop spreading false hope. Anet are obviously going to say the game is growing, where as to the contrary there is much more clear evidence to support the opposite.

Also, your server is also important in this equation. Some servers are very dead, whilst others are still very much alive. Emhry Bay (ebay) for instance, is struggling for players with many zones just devoid of players, often feels like there are maybe 50 people on the entire server some days.

My wifes computer does that each time there is a major patch, it is really annoying and I can’t figure out why it is rebuilding either.

^ This is the best reasoning and post to date, anet should take notes from this.

Jski.6180:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

RoRo.8270:

Wasn’t surprised that there would be classes that overall performed better than others because I played gw1 where the discrimination also existed. Rest of the post I can’t agree with especially evolved destroyer taking 30mins…

It used to take 30 minutes, and I’m not talking about the classic setup of 4 zerker warriors and 1 mesmer. Try going into CoE path 3 with a pug made up of a Necromancer, Engineer, Ranger, Elementalist and Guardian.

How about going into Arah (path4) and take along a Necro, Engineer and Ranger as part of the group..=P

It seems your making out that you MUST play one way in this game. You have got to get out of the mind set that there is only one way to do things. The fact that your going with a group of random ppl (i guess you have no friends in this game but i hope that not true) will changes up how you run things. The class comp. will have nothing to do with it.

Side note:
I think its an interesting event going on here you have ppl who think they can only do events by doing it the “best looked at way.” In effect they are becoming elitist with out being able to in there view play in an elitists way. I think some one needs to try to make a master off this or at least wright up a good paper.

My attachment says it all – and that isn’t an isolated, that is very very common.

Nurse.1085:

Borikitty.1302:

riddleguy.9738:

Borikitty.1302:

riddleguy.9738:

Im reserving judgement until the patch releases. I think some of you guys are overreacting a wee bit….we don’t know what the requirements for the other types of guild missions are.

That being said, i hope some of the mission types are easier to unlock then guild bounties. I think it would be a bad idea if all guild missions required level 5 in a tech tree. Its fine if some mission types take a while to unlock but some should be easier to unlock. If at least one type isnt fairly easy to unlock(i.e require art of war level 3), then i will be very dissapointed.

Mods already confirmed the existence of one type. “Bounty” and that’s behind the AoW5 wall. No other forms are out at launch. They have to be unlocked after Bounty.. that is.. behind the AoW5 wall..

it was just said the first mission type bounty requires AoW5…i never saw any mods say anything about the other types having to be unlocked after bounty.

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/210/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-I.aspx

Colin: It’s really spread out all over the game and it depends on which type of mission you’re doing. There are actually five completely different types of missions and based on which one it is – bounty hunts, for example, is the really basic one, that’s the one that you can get right off the bat when [February’s] release first goes out. You actually have to unlock all the other missions types, so it’s literally going to take months for your guild to build up enough influence to unlock all of them.

So basically, it’s another grind….
Except a Guild-wide Grind.

Invite as many players as possible…to save up enough influence to unlock Guild Events.

God, this sucks.

The problem is, there isn’t that many players to go-around anymore. And then, most players will just end up leaving the small guilds or these guilds who cannot do these missions and join the larger ones – effectively killing every small guild in the game.

But you guys are also missing the other points being made, it isn’t going to just be a matter of unlocking these missions, your guild will also require a significant amount of guild members devoted to doing it, the guild bounty for instance is going to require 10 – 15 players all representing and all online at the same time – for a large or medium active guild, that isn’t a problem. But for all the small guilds, small casual guilds – even medium guilds that are not as active – this spells D O O M for them.

Actually, screaming entitlement has always been hardcore and elitists – They automatically feel entitled, what the rest of the players want is equal treatment, and fair and honest practices – We’re not seeing that here, this is one of the reasons for the backlash.

RoRo.8270:

Wasn’t surprised that there would be classes that overall performed better than others because I played gw1 where the discrimination also existed. Rest of the post I can’t agree with especially evolved destroyer taking 30mins…

It used to take 30 minutes, and I’m not talking about the classic setup of 4 zerker warriors and 1 mesmer. Try going into CoE path 3 with a pug made up of a Necromancer, Engineer, Ranger, Elementalist and Guardian.

How about going into Arah (path4) and take along a Necro, Engineer and Ranger as part of the group..=P

Leamas.5803:

Hellkaiser.6025:

Those leaving: “This game is dead on it’s feet and/or dying”

Those staying: “This game is thriving and we’ve gained members in our guild even”

The difference? nothing, if you’re not enjoying the game and direction then leave and remember it next time A-Net develops a game and markets it, inform others that they might not get what they expect, Personally I will NEVER purchase ANYTHING that’s published by NCsoft, or has involvement from ANYONE who worked at or with NEXON. That’s just my “opinion” as a consumer. I don’t blame anyone for staying or enjoying this game however, and do enjoy posting on the forum albeit mostly cos it’s an interesting divide in the community which is amusing to a degree even if it’s baffling.

HK raises a good point about player perception. The real question is whether they’re losing players faster than gaining them. I’m not seeing it. While there surely was a noticeable player recession in the month or two after the November loot nerf, that number seems to have recovered…this time with people who never experienced, hence have no memory of, the golden pre-November days. If anything, I’m seeing more people on now. That said, I’m also seeing more and more people complaining openly on world chat about extremely poor drops…especially at boss events. This begs the question of how long it’s sustainable like this? They’ve promised to improve drops in the February patch. Does this mean they’re started to see player recession again? Time will tell.

Your perception also is heavily reliant on the server your currently on – try guesting to a smaller server and you’ll see massive differences in player population. Also, if you’ve been logged in everyday since launch, you’ll have definitely noticed a massive decrease in player population – I’ve noticed it, and many others have too.

There are just so many problems with this patch for such a wide ranging group of people, honestly it should just be cancelled for now. It isn’t really even about gated content for smaller guilds, because the smaller guilds will never never be able to do any of the guild missions anyway – it probably wouldn’t be so bad if the rewards for doing them was minor, but they are not.

Anet are being total fools here by just catering to the very large and very active guilds. If alot of players here think they’ll have access to this content, even then they might be sorely disappointed – as stated, even the guild bounties will require 15 guild members online at once – you know how many guilds struggle with that these days? Doesn’t sound like a lot of members, but when you factor in how many guilds have died, have many people have quit and how many players who don’t represent 24/7?

Astralporing.1957:

And it seems that another way to make the game even less appealing to casuals is about to go in. The guild mission gating that clearly show that (contrary to what the devs were saying up to that point about this specific update) smaller, casual guilds were never even considered for that content.

I have to fully agree – since Lost Shores update this game has been taking some major steps away from the casual friendly game that was initially marketed.

Shonie.5297:

Astralporing.1957:

Shonie.5297:

I guess I don’t really understand the attitude of many of the people who reside in smallish guilds expecting the developers to cater to them, especially the people in 2-10 person guilds. Keep in mind this is an MMO.
Every MMO has content for large groups. To use the most popular of them, WoW, it had 40-mans and 25-man raids I think. Was there an uproar from the small guilds or was it just accepted as part of MMO culture?

I guess you haven’t seen the topics suggesting introducing Raids in GW2 and the strong opposition to that idea.
People that want Raids are mostly playing WoW. Those that switched to GW2 are those that didn’t like that gating feature.

So, mentioning Raids is not really helping your argument.

Open world large scale events were popular in previous games.
Nobody is forcing you to do new large scale content meant for larger groups.
If your group/guild isn’t capable of completing new content, the solution is pretty obvious if it’s important enough to you to partake in.
This game has elements that cater to many playstyles, and much like any of the content in this game, it is all optional.

Actually, it really isn’t optional at all. Like with grinding – your fooled into thinking it’s optional. In so many ways, your saying join a super guild or quit the game in so many words, remember the huge backlash when Ascended items first appeared? This new patch will essentially be just as bad – and this time, I’m fully prepared to fight against anet if I have too, the players can only really be pushed, ignored or screwed over so much.

As for being over dramatic? Am I really? If the problems this game are directly facing wasn’t that serious – I would agree with you. But, the problems right now are that serious, shall I start posting famously bad ideas that have appeared in MMos since the early days? One thing I’ve learned from playing so many different MMos, being a member of so many different and varied communities over the years – one thing that I’ve learned is that you have alot of arrogant and self centered players, but you also have alot of arrogant and self centered developers too. Sure, I might be a little arrogant at the moment, but I’m 100% behind this game being an open, balanced and fair game for every type of player – can you say the same?

Thanks Cherrie, I’ve been gaming for a very long time myself ~ call me a Jaded veteran if you would but I learned along time ago that everybody who plays the game is entitled to his/her own opinion, whether or not you agree with them – its your own personal views.

I’ve been along time poster on the forums, vocally voicing concerns, raising issues – I may not be the most articulate of posters, I make spelling/grammer mistakes and sometimes even struggle to get the valid points across in my own words – but the main thing is, I want this game to survive, to grow and be a great game everyone can enjoy not just one type playerbase.

Since way before launch, the main target audience was always aimed at the casual players – hence the horizontal progression, and since then the game has been heading into a more hardcore direction, and that is one of the reasons why the game has been steadily losing players. The next patch again, really caters to the more hardcore player and hardcore guilds than anything else – I admit, Guild Wars needs to cater to bigger guilds, but not at the cost of everything else – also, it needs to cater just as much to the smaller guilds – everything needs to be in some sort of balance, right now the scales are being tipped violently.

@Shonie This is one of the reasons for the backlash, not many players want to be part of a huge super guild, also this isn’t WoW. You also have to understand that since Lost Shores many many guilds have died, many other guilds even ex-larger guilds have lost significant amount of players – then you have larger guilds where hardly anyone reps and finally, you have your super guilds where you are forced to rep or kicked out.

Essentially all these new guild upgrades, cater to a more selective market of players. The hardcore types, and everyone else is being screwed over. As is, I seriously question the developers choices – or should I start linking to Jay Wilsons resignation and say ~ This will happen to Anet soon? Honestly right now, without any shadow of doubt – if these changes go live – the game as a whole, the community – everything will suffer greatly. We’ll see another massive backlash, the forums are already fractured enough -

If any developer, moderator or GM is reading these posts carefully and even remotely cares about the game, about the players – there is more than enough evidence here that these changes are seriously bad for the game right now.

As a professional gamer, my personal recommendation right now would be to seriously hold-on on these patches until further research and community feedback has been done. After all, isn’t player satisfaction and player confidence in your Company important? Are you guys really risking to go ahead with something that could, be the catalyst that could utterly destroy the game? Or at least, force you guys to lose another portion of playerbase?

Oreoz.2573:

Exterminans.9723:

Leamas.5803:

And yes, as Oreoz said, drops from bosses, such as Jormag, SUCK!!! I don’t even bother with names bosses anymore unless I’m doing it with a guild group or just happen to be in the area at the same time the event pops. And I also agree there is too much RNG and it’s too restrictive.

Problem with loots from Jormag is less the quality of the items or the amount of the loot, but the fact that this kittenty system revolves all around vertical progression. It doesn’t matter whether you get a weapon with a nice skin or not, it’s all just about getting better stats / salvageables to craft one of the few “legendaries” or “rare skins” from the mystic toilet. And first ones you only get from a single dungeon while the second one is a pure combination of RNG + hardcore grinding.

sadly people will argue that that’s all optional which is true…but they also forget the other thing.

“Ok fine guess I’ll quit then since maxing out your toon takes *15 minutes.”

*denotes exaggeration

Imagine if the majority of the player base thought that way?
It’ll probably become a reality once they realize that if they play the game their way instead of grinding fractals and dungeons they’ll get their legendary in like, 2 years. If we’re to base it on the current overly consistent crappy drops.

LoL ~ Last time I posted that for many casual players, the time frame for getting a legendary item is like 2 years…I got an infraction for it >.> With the Mod stating I was exaggerating, when really it isn’t.

Actually if anything the way the prices are heading – for most people, it’ll be their grandchildren who may end up with the legendary item =P j/k

You can mouse over the name of the zones, even WvW zones and it will pop up a small box telling you stats for that zone, it will give you information on how many Pois you have etc, you can then use that information to trace the zones where you are missing the final ones you need.

I’ve played extensively every single class now, 5 of which has world 100% so from my own personal experience, each time I swop to a different class I can really feel the major differences in not only damage output, but overall utility too.

Warrior is just king right now, everyone knows it. But again, it has been the powerhouse class since closed betas. Are they overpowered? Nope not really considering many boss fights and encounters. The problem really stems from the insane burst damage from 100B, easily 22k to 48k depending on your runeset and no other class can match it, maybe a P/P Zerker Thief with unload maybe but that is using up all the initiative points and having a pretty long cool down after that – whether as the Warrior doesn’t have that those problems.

Ranger is a great class, just really under utilized – The main problem really is with the pets, lets be honest…they just pretty much suck and are one of the main reasons for the classes problems. My ranger can still dish out a respectable amount of damage but it isn’t even remotely as close to the warrior and has far less survivability. Players forget that many bosses/encounters are just as dangerous (if not more so) to ranged characters than Melee – Many bosses have significantly potent ranged attacks, some even have Ranged Reflection too.

I personally like my Necromancer, the only problem is the condition damage – I’m totally fine if I’m not in a group with other CD spec’d player. I think one of the problems again, is with the pets ~ I cringe each time I see a necromancer with pets, I personally run a well build and I can stack up a very large array of debuffs and CDs its frightening, the problem again ~ is simple, if you want to compare the Necro vs Warrior, you just can’t do it.

Engineers are perhaps the worst class of them all in terms of damage output, I really hate playing mine, even though it was my first class to 80 and my first one to get a world 100%, in terms of everything…they need a major overhaul. Yet ironically enough, they have received alot of nerfs lately especially with the elixir gun and it’s godly healing…I mean, seriously?

To a lesser extent, I think even the mighty Elementalist could do with a few buffs.

bluewanders.5297:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

I hate to personally say it, but this might be the time to start a petition to attempt to block this patch.

No… you don’t petition to block new content from dropping. I don’t want big guilds to be excluded from the content too just because small guilds have been… the answer is make our position known, and understood, be willing to discuss it at length until it is… and then act like adults once the “final” decision has been made and deal with it’s consequences on an adult level.

We aren’t 5 year olds… we can certainly deal with an unfavorable turn of events without trying to screw over everyone else for whom it is favorable. At the same time… when decisions have been made, the decision makers need to be given feedback and alerted to dissident opinions… that is the very basis and strength of freedom of speech. “Good” decision makers take this feedback into consideration in the future and incorporate it into more accurate decision making models… even if their decisions continue to press disfavor on a portion of the population affected by them… not all decisions can be favorable to everyone… but everyone should be heard and acknowledged… and their feedback should have weight.

But your also basing this on a democracy, the country might be a democratic society but the gaming world and indeed, on this forums is it really democratic? I’ve already voiced my personal opinion on my FB pages, raptr and here that these changes, if go live will be extremely unhealthy for the game. However, what many people and players need to realized that these changes will affect the game on many different layers, and I think even anet themselves haven’t fully realized the implications of this patch.

For small and even moderately sized guilds, getting influence isn’t nearly as fast as it was at launch. The average guilds have maybe 1 – 20 members online during the day, that is including non-representing members too, so your talking a really low amount of daily influence generated, because once your 80 ~ not many people will be grinding out influence – You don’t earn Influence for completing dungeons etc either and the time to actually research upgrades takes a considerably long time, Your talking 95 hours to go from Art of War III to IV for instance, and 10,000 influence – for a small/medium guild these days, that is a pretty significant amount.

So, the outcome will be members in small PvE or small casual guilds which didn’t invest or couldn’t afford to invest in high level guild upgrades will then either quit or stop representing the small/medium guilds completely, effectively stopping growth and ultimately killing the guild. These alone, obviously is going to be a driving force in people quitting the game.