Guild Wars 2

Fractured.3928:

Honestly I kinda agree with OP. Maps and story shouldn’t be locked behind a paywall like that. Even more so, that they are locked behind ANOTHER paywall (HoT).

Arenanet is making bank off of microtransactions too, so the whole “They need money to make content”. They are making plenty of money, they just want to make more. Not only that, but for a full priced Expansion, HoT probably had the least content out of any MMO expansion I’ve seen, by a lot.

However, since if you’re actively playing when the story releases, it is free. I can’t really get up on a soap box and complain about it.

Nope, games with subs are making bank. This game, a whole $90 per person. Not bank, even with the cash shop.

$15 a month for 4 million players means WoW is making 60 million dollars a month. That’s making bank.

Ider.1276:

Anet are inconsistent.
Southsun Cove was part of LS1 – available to everyone for free.
Dry Top & Silverwastes are part of LS2 – available for free, you pay only for the story.
LS3 maps – locked behind the paywall.
This inconsistency is not healthy for customers faith to the developer. Anet should either charge price for accessing LS1 & 2 maps or remove the “pay to enter” aspect of LS3 maps and start charging people only for story instances.

So they should start charging for Dry Top and the Silverwastes. It’s a change. Things do change over time in MMOs. Dyes were once character bound, now they’re account bound. It’s a change.

In this instance, the entire game, all of it, if you were to buy it today costs roughly $90. Considering that’s half a year of Final Fantasy XIV I think that’s a pretty good deal. People who don’t want to pay for that content don’t have to buy it, but it’s weird to think it should all be included.

Total cost to play all Guild Wars 2 at this moment, about $90 or about six months of a Final Fantasy XIV subscription.

I’m not sure why people think $90 for 2 expansions and 2 living world seasons is somehow some sort of gigantic money grab. What MMORPG gives you more for less?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Another reason, I would suppose, is that it would be deemed unfair to remove the Achievement for completing all the Jumping Puzzles for those that completed it, when adding new Jumping Puzzles. Or, it would be deemed unfair that some players only had to complete 34 JPs, and later players had to complete 46 JPs for the Achievement.

There are Achievements, though, for completing the newer Jumping Puzzles; they just are found in a different section of the Achievements panel.

Good luck.

There is no achievement for completing all the jumping puzzles.

Rennie.6750:

Yes I agree I’m not done with everything yet and it makes me regretting buying this game so much right now… The maps are a chore to play and to navigate around. The story missions are boring and tedious, and the jumping puzzle ones (like prized possession) made me willing to throw my computer out through the window. After doing it I was really feeling like kittenslapping the guys who made and approved this for like an hour or two, it was that bad. I have sadly bought the new PoF expansion too and if it’s the same kind of content well that’ll be one less player, i’ll quit without any hesitation.

If you’re on a US server, I’d be happy to help you.

Use the DX 9. If the game seems blurier, use one of the sharpness options

battledrone.8315:

i know this is a niche title now
but it sure as hell didnt start that way
and im pretty sure Anet and ncsoft didnt want another one of those
remember what happened to CoX? i do….
fact is: all mmos need some bread&butter content
look how WoW is doing , after they stopped making theirs

This was always a niche title. It sold a lot at launch because of hype and a lot of people left the game within months, for different reasons. You’re confusing initial sales with whether a game is niche or not.

But this game has never really appealed to the main stream.

Metavahn.7293:

You can get a HoT key cheaper than a monthly subscription on those key selling sites, just make sure its a legit one that people know about, dont have to buy the $30 one from Anet

This is really really bad advice. Don’t do this.

For one thing, key resellers, and that’s what they are resellers, aren’t that picky where they get their keys from. Someone wants to sell them a key, they set up an account and sell it to them. And some of those keys may or may not be bought with a stolen credit card.

Even though the company is likely to replace a key bought with a stolen credit card, it won’t do you a lick of good because your entire account will have been closed. You’ll lose all your progress in the game and have to start over. If that happened to me I would absolutely leave the game.

Only buy from authorized resellers, not key exchanges. It’s not with the risk. People have been banned for it

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Obtena.7952:

battledrone.8315:

maddoctor.2738:

battledrone.8315:

…and casual players wont jump through all those hoops for some new pixels

Then they won’t get those pixels. You shouldn’t use the word casual there though, as there are loads of “casual” players that have no trouble with HoT. You are being unfair to them

lol, ive seen this problem in pretty much every mmo i have ever played
it always ends up the same way: fewer players=lesser content=even fewer
players etc.
lets hope those “loads” of “casuals” will be enough to carry this game forward
it feels good to be back in Tyria, and by some miracle i have actually unlocked druid
spec (waste of time and effort)
ill prolly just take the rest of my toons to straits of devastation and leave them there

That’s not a problem, that’s the natural evolution of MMO’s. No one has changed that evolution because no one has made a dynamic world yet.

Lots of casual players support this game and do what they need to do to get things done. I think that you need to gain a healthy sense of who this game is made for and what kind of person plays it. The game was made for casual play, it’s sustained for 5 years … I think any idea that it won’t be continued to be supported by casual players, even after the HoT expansion and raid focus is not an accurate view.

and most of the current casual players dont support the game with any money at all
if you cant see the problem with that…
anyway, PoF will show , who was right
i doubt they will sell more than 500k

First of all, I don’t think you should make statements you can’t support. How do you know most casual players don’t suppor the game with money at all? How do you know the percentage of casuals who support the game with real money has significantly changed at all.

PoF won’t show who was right. There are a million reasons why a game can success or fail. In either case it’s unlikely we’ll know how many copies sold. Anything we come up with is guess work.

It’s okay to have an opinion. Make stating unprovable stuff as fact is not the way to go about backing it up.

this forum is mostly about opinions, since that is the only way the devs can get feedback
facts? do you want me to prove , that most people wont pay for something, that they can get for FREE?
lets try with the fact, that the devs have said the expansion was “underperforming”
lets try with the fact, that the core game sold 5 times better for twice as long
lets try with the fact , that if HoT was a success, you would need at least 100.000 players in maguma every day, every hour

Devs have said free to play players didn’t buy the expansion in the numbers they expected. Not that it was underperforming which has a different connotation.

The core game may have sold much better But that could be evidence of a lot of things. For example, there may have been so many people that disliked the core game that they left ages ago and weren’t interested in coming back for the expac. In which case the core game would be directly to blame for the expansion not doing well.

No idea about your last point as it makes no sense at all.

You’re so desperate to prove your point that you’re drawing conclusions. We all no the game was wildly successful at launch, but most people also know there was a huge drop off when ascended weapons were first introduced and I know for a fact a lot of people saw no end game and left. Those people might not have given this game another try.

So what evidence do you have that this hard core/casual split is the reason HoT hasn’t done well.. It’s entirely possible that hard core players left ages ago and never came back and if the game had more hard core content at launch we’d have more people.

I’m not saying that IS the case, but it’s certainly a possibility. You believe something to be true, but that doesn’t make it true. Confirmation bias is a real thing.

You can’t possibly know that HOT didn’t do well because of perceived hard core content, or casuals not buying it,, nor can you know casuals aren’t spending money on the game anymore.

Arguably, most people left playing the game before HoT were casuals and most of them would have bought them game before they knew how hard it was anyway because that’s what most MMO players do.

The fact that sales are low implies that casuals didn’t exist in enough numbers to keep the game going.

Leo G.4501:

Vayne.8563:

Considering how many mastery points come from just doing the story and communing with points on the map, I’m having trouble believing you couldn’t make progress at all, at least to get through the story.

There are several communes in VB alone, two of them you only need basic gliding to get to, and you get a point for that, just by doing the first story, which you need to unlock masteries in the first place. I honestly think you made this harder than it was.

I can see being confused for a few days, maybe, but months? I’m not really sure how that’s possible.

That could very well be an issue with the system in that, through confusion, a user unintentionally makes it more difficult on themselves. It also doesn’t help that the later map is particularly convoluted so aiming to get the map point masteries could be something unobtainable until later.

Since it’s been around a year since I got over the issue, I can’t recall the particular roadblock I found or made for myself but it did force me to take a break for a long while. And considering it is possible to blow points on something you think you might need and not everyone goes and reads guides (at least at first), it’s not a perfect system, not even close.

As far as how someone could be stumped for months, it’s likely the whole “play how you want” mentality of the game, i.e. playing the content you actually want to play, not the stuff that annoys or frustrates you. Granted, I’ve learned to just deal with a different level of BS (similar to how Orr used to feel like BS but is a walk in the park now…but Tangled Depths isn’t really a parallel), but there were definitely hurdles to that adjustment.

I agree that that game requires more of you. I’m of the opinion games should require more of you though. That’s probably the difference between us.

The core zones seem very mundane to me now, and I spend a good part of my time in HoT or LS Season 3 zones. But people making stuff hard for themselves is not really something you can program around

Anet has more than once said they want the community to come together to figure stuff out. They even said this is Guild Wars 1 during the Hearts of the North scenario in the War in Kryta.

Hell could you imagine search each week for Nick the Traveler when he moves? No, because there was no way one person could find it. The game was designed for the community to play.

That’s been the design of this game from day one So if you’re confused and you don’t ask for help or join a helpful guild. I’m not sure how you can blame the game.

battledrone.8315:

Obtena.7952:

battledrone.8315:

maddoctor.2738:

battledrone.8315:

…and casual players wont jump through all those hoops for some new pixels

Then they won’t get those pixels. You shouldn’t use the word casual there though, as there are loads of “casual” players that have no trouble with HoT. You are being unfair to them

lol, ive seen this problem in pretty much every mmo i have ever played
it always ends up the same way: fewer players=lesser content=even fewer
players etc.
lets hope those “loads” of “casuals” will be enough to carry this game forward
it feels good to be back in Tyria, and by some miracle i have actually unlocked druid
spec (waste of time and effort)
ill prolly just take the rest of my toons to straits of devastation and leave them there

That’s not a problem, that’s the natural evolution of MMO’s. No one has changed that evolution because no one has made a dynamic world yet.

Lots of casual players support this game and do what they need to do to get things done. I think that you need to gain a healthy sense of who this game is made for and what kind of person plays it. The game was made for casual play, it’s sustained for 5 years … I think any idea that it won’t be continued to be supported by casual players, even after the HoT expansion and raid focus is not an accurate view.

and most of the current casual players dont support the game with any money at all
if you cant see the problem with that…
anyway, PoF will show , who was right
i doubt they will sell more than 500k

First of all, I don’t think you should make statements you can’t support. How do you know most casual players don’t suppor the game with money at all? How do you know the percentage of casuals who support the game with real money has significantly changed at all.

PoF won’t show who was right. There are a million reasons why a game can success or fail. In either case it’s unlikely we’ll know how many copies sold. Anything we come up with is guess work.

It’s okay to have an opinion. Make stating unprovable stuff as fact is not the way to go about backing it up.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vayne.8563:

The original Zhaitan fight was a dungeon with mechanics that required two people at least, and you required more than that for most people to finish.

Hearts and minds can’t be soloed.

Did you mean, “Hearts & Minds can be soloed” ?

Edited and yes. lol

Leo G.4501:

AliamRationem.5172:

Use facts, not salt.

That goes both ways. There’s nothing wrong with indicating facts but the way you go about it, and then demean someone’s opinion won’t get you the opposite response.

AliamRationem.5172:

Your vague complaint indicated that the “majority of content” is locked behind masteries. I simply pointed out that you only need 4 points to explore the vast majority of the maps themselves as well as complete the meta events.

And this is your own communication malfunction. Had you “simply” explained something, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you didn’t and say you did so whatever.

AliamRationem.5172:

If “the majority of content” includes the story and 100% map completion as well, then you need 43 points, which you can easily earn in the process from strongboxes, insights, story, meta, and map completion. But that’s only if you need full map completion. Leyline gliding is not required to complete the story, as I recall.

I consider “majority” as access to all the maps, the entire HoT story and possibly onto LS missions. The main issue is that the masteries were locked behind mechanics that previous unlocks were not linked to (you never needed Achievements to unlock Traits or Skills…well, you used to but not any more) so the hunt for more points went from playing the game to sifting through achievements. It could have been more from exploring the maps but that’s a whole different issue.

AliamRationem.5172:

You’re welcome to hate HoT and consider any amount of time spent there a grind. Just as I’m welcome to think that you’re exaggerating how much of a burden the mastery system is. It turns out my opinions matter as much as yours do. Cool, huh?

You know what I really hate? How polarizing people are these days. You either love or hate something. You either agree and support or disagree and dismantle. Like I’m suppose to thank you for allowing me to dislike HoT just because you consider my argument an exaggeration therefore invalid. Which is likely why you have these polarized expressions now-a-days because no one wants to hear that you are in the middle, they want to hear if you love something or hate something so they can try to bash you or flutter on about how they agree.

Well, my experience with masteries wasn’t an exaggeration because I seriously was confused about it for the 1st 3 months, so much so that I took a break and came back still confused until I hunkered down, opened the wiki, hunted down more points despite not wanting to so that I could comfortably progress. It meant I had to do some stuff I didn’t like or found unfun.

And I don’t have a problem with you having an opinion of my opinion. I DO have a problem with you making up what my opinion is and then complaining about that. It’s called a strawman.

Considering how many mastery points come from just doing the story and communing with points on the map, I’m having trouble believing you couldn’t make progress at all, at least to get through the story.

There are several communes in VB alone, two of them you only need basic gliding to get to, and you get a point for that, just by doing the first story, which you need to unlock masteries in the first place. I honestly think you made this harder than it was.

I can see being confused for a few days, maybe, but months? I’m not really sure how that’s possible.

The original Zhaitan fight was a dungeon with mechanics that required two people at least, and you required more than that for most people to finish.

Hearts and minds can be soloed.

Mutant Poodle.6253:

“Where’s Balthazar” mission in story line. Don’t try it, don’t waste your time; here’s why,

1. Once in mission you cannot get out until completion?
2. Tried no less than three times to get through it and . . . wait for it . . . even used you tube video to try and nope not even close.
3. That’s 45 minutes each time of my life I cant get back for complete frustration. Not allowed to start over just in case something got missed.
4. Easy up until last barrier, destroyed all the nodes quickly but no, that wont work either.
5. No wonder people have stopped playing this game with such dis functionality.
6. I look forward to the “oh, we had no issues, I got through OK”. Good for you

Not sure what your problem with that mission is, but it’s a particularly easy mission. Out of the missions I’ve seen complained about, (there are usually two) that one has hardly even been brought up.

I’m not sure what your issue with it is, but I’ve done it on 10 characters so far without even breaking a sweat.

Are you having trouble with the puzzle?

I’ve been asking for a colorblind mode for ages.

It’s not illegal, it’s just not authorized and you can get your account banned if you buy from there. That site sells keys bought from sources that aren’t necessarily legit. Buying from them is a risk. Definitely not worth my account.

I agree with the OP that it’s annoying and unnecessary. Even though there is a workaround most players won’t know it and thus many will end up frustrated. It’s simply bad design.

battledrone.8315:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Do event chains, do adventures, you’ll easily level up gliding, mushroom jumping and updraft use.

Yep, with just a few hours of effort you can have full access to game elements that you actively dislike using.

id rather put that effort into my apartment..its way more rewarding
and the fun factor is roughly the same

I had a lot of fun doing the event chains in VB. Not sure why you didn’t.

Edit: I still go back and do those chains sometimes.

I’ve filled out a dozen service tickets easily since launch, never waited longer than a couple of days. No idea why you’re waiting so long.

Are you gliding from the right place? He can’t be too bugged, I don’t think since I just did this yesterday.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Do event chains, do adventures, you’ll easily level up gliding, mushroom jumping and updraft use.

Yep, with just a few hours of effort you can have full access to game elements that you actively dislike using.

Well if you actively dislike gliding, I don’t know what to tell you, but I would assume you’re in a vast minority. I’m also guessing most people don’t have an issue with jumping mushrooms. While there are mushrooms in mario brothers, they’re very differnet, because you have to aim your jumps. With jumping mushrooms it’s more like a visual teleport.

Saying you don’t like using a jumping mushroom isn’t much different from saying you don’t like using a portal

But if the biggest problem is that people don’t like gliding and jumping mushrooms I’m not thinking if all those people left it would be enough of a dent in the population to make a difference, certainly compared to the number of people who seem to really enjoy them.

You’re certainly entitled to your opinion. I just don’t think all that many people share it, even if six, seven guys come and back you up in this thread.

eldrjth.7384:

Im only in the first zone of HoT but from what I played I didnt like. It reminds me a lot of super mario. I wouldnt have much problems with all the mazes and new mechanics if the player wasnt required to level up skills in order to access different areas but how it works now is unnecessarily convoluted. Zones separately by upgrades works in games like metroidvania because that is what the audience expects but not in mmos like guidwars. The core game didnt play anything like this either. *Maybe important upgrades shouldve just been story/quest related once a new zone is reached.

You can level up every single upgrade you need to navigate in a matter of hours. People make it sound like you can’t do this. If you just play the zones, yiou can run from one end of VB to the other without needing ANY masteries at all. Do event chains, do adventures, you’ll easily level up gliding, mushroom jumping and updraft use.

I think it depends on the content you play. PvP tends to be less welcoming, but the more competitive the content, the more likely someone will be yellling, because that’s what competitive people do. Most of the time in the open world it’s about a failed tarir event or a failed Dragon Stand event and I’ve occasionally seen someone yelling.

On the other hand, Dragon Stand usually has a hundred people doing it, and I usually see 1 or two people yelling. That means 98 people aren’t. I’m not sure why that’s a bad percentage for a community.

More to the point, in almost every case I’ve seen some hot head yelling, I’ve often seen other players defending those that screwed up either by reminding people that they could be new or by saying it’s not a big deal it’s just a game. Either way I’ve almost never seen the COMMUNITY attack a new player, only a couple of frustrated players who lost an event. Judging the community by those people is pretty unfair in my opinion.

Sensitive people will feel stressed and get yelled at, which is why I’m one of the vocal defenders when I see it, but it’s not as bad as the OP is making it out to be.

Bratec.7136:

Vayne.8563:

The real answer is when you do that content, play the way the team plays. Alternately make your own team, guild, friends group and play how you want.

Team plays this way because buffs/heals are small range and radius.

Not because they want to or insist to, just because of low radius of buffs/heals.

I know that. And somehow, even though there are people in my guild who don’t stack we still clear content.

Doesn’t help if you’re trying to keep enemies where everyone else can cleave though. All it takes is one person out of the stack to bring guys away from everyone else.

The real answer is when you do that content, play the way the team plays. Alternately make your own team, guild, friends group and play how you want.

JohnnyJHB.7360:

I’m assuming the people complaining about the difficulty of solo instances never played video games in the 80’s and 90’s…

This made me laugh, but it’s true, games used to be much less forgiving.

I haven’t noticed those items with particularly low drop rates. Bloodstone Rubies however, are terrible. I wouldn’t mind seeing that drop rate increased.

Einlanzer.1627:

Like many other things the player base wants/needs/deserves, it’s “not a priority.” Instead, their priority is releasing half-ass balance patches every couple of months and tossing out new dev items without laying a proper foundation first.

While I have no object to townsclothese being released as outfits, those patches you’re maligning are what keeps some of us playing. And though I usually don’t comment on how many people do what, I will say it is my firm belief that far more people use and enjoy those patches you’re talking about than would EVER use town clothes outfits.

Game is fine in PvE. Won’t comment on PvP or WvW though. Someone here said the PvE end game is raids. That I categorically disagree with. The only thing you can get in raids you can’t get anywhere else is legendary armor and that has the same stats as ascended armor. T4 Fractals are still end game for many, and making legendary weapons is still an end game for me.

Ascended back pieces have been added to WvW, PvP and Fractals, as evidence that it’s end game content. The fractal backpiece also comes with a fractal glider skin.

The Living Story Season 3 is somewhere between HoT and Season 2 in difficulty. There’s been a new zone with every story The bad news is if you haven’t been logging in you don’t get LS content free. you have to purchase it with gems.

Ashivan.5216:

Vayne.8563:

Nope I’m not arguing a lot of people want easier tstory missions. If there are 12 guys posting again and again and again, it looks like a lot of guys though. The loudest voices aren’t always the most numerous anyway. You’re just assuming that’s what I’m saying.

I didn’t want to continue arguing about this as it’s quite pointless. Just wanted to address this ‘only 12 guys’ thing.

The reason you don’t see a lot of posts is: part of the solo players frustrated with some annoying missions moved on (from the game or from doing those mission) and some of them will not post this as the forum responses can become quite toxic: lazy, just bad, playing with the monitor turned off… and so on.

So those ‘12 guys’ will be the people that do stick around and just raise this concern. It is a valid issue for the more casual players. How would you feel if the situation would have been reversed: the new PvE content really easy and the forums response will be to play PvP/WvW for difficult content or just move one to another game.

And the reason you don’t see happy players post is because they don’t have a problem and there are many of those too. I’m honestly stunned that so many people would rather defend their right to not get better at the game than take the steps to get better I say this all the time and it’s true. It’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Throwing together skills and traits you like is one way to play the game, but it’s not necessarily the way to get past bosses in stories. I don’t believe these solo players mostly can’t beat bosses solo. I believe they want to play each boss the way they’ve always played without adapting. However, adapting is part of the game. Refusing to adapt is not playing the game.

I can’t tell you how many casual players in my guild can solo story instances. And it’s a really casual guild.

There are always going to be people who leave any game because it’s too hard, or too easy. Saying that people who left aren’t posting because they left this isn’t always true, because some people who claim to have left still post here. However, there were also a lot of people who left when the game was too easy and they came by to say so. For a lot of people this game was too boring before HoT.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t hold everyone’s attention on time and in budget. You have to decide a baseline and catch as much of the middle as you can. That means making it too easy for the best people and too hard for others. That’s normal for any game, not something special to this one.

So the question isn’t whether George left the game because he found the game too hard. The question is how many Georges are there. I don’t know the answer to that question. I’m guessing you probably can’t answer it either.

I bought Star War 2 and I was really angry that I had to buy Star Wars also to see that content Why are games different from anything else?

Deihnyx.6318:

If you just do it for the hero points. Just do WvW, you’ll get them much, much faster.

I don’t know that that’s true. I can fully unlock a character’s elite spec in 2-3 hours, with perhaps another 2-3 hours on a single character to get the masteries I need to say participate in a hero train. So 4-6 hours in your first character, but once those masteries are leveled it’s 2-3 hours per character after. You’d need 250 proof of heroics per character, assuming you don’t want to spend them on anything else, I think that would be more time.

Ashivan.5216:

Vayne.8563:

Ashivan.5216:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

Ayrilana.1396:

Games should not be catered to the lowest denominator

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

If your game population is really low because you only have hardcore fans – you’re missing the point on having a viable product that generates enough revenue so it doesn’t shut down.

I’m fairly casual with this title but I do pay for expansions, living world content and character slots (without mentioning trivial things like makeover kit :P)

I find it hard to believe that for you, a veteran player, those story missions are the main content that you like to play… over and over again. And even if you did that it still doesn’t explain why you would be against having a difficulty slider for those missions.

I do repeat those missions over and over again (I’ve got 6 characters right now that have completed every single zone and every single story in the game from personal story up through LS season 3).

With new chapters of the LS coming out every 2-3 months with a new zone, I don’t believe there’s time to make and test more modes. That’s one of my objections.

It seems to me there are a lot of people who would rather have the game dumbed down than learn how to play it.

Do you repeat them because you like them and the challenges they bring or because you have to do it for the new characters?

Also, Vayne now you are saying there’s a lot of people who want easier story missions… but you argued a while back that we’re just a few ppl, bad at the game. Thanks for the boost

At the end of the day is the developers choice (and their business department) if they go with rewarding the faithful players with increasing harder content or they try to accommodate that for a larger (maybe hypothetical) audience.

Nope I’m not arguing a lot of people want easier tstory missions. If there are 12 guys posting again and again and again, it looks like a lot of guys though. The loudest voices aren’t always the most numerous anyway. You’re just assuming that’s what I’m saying.

I repeat the missions for different reasons. One of them is learning how to do them better. Improving gameplay or time. I see my progress. Missions that were once sort of challenging become less challenging as I learn the ins and outs.

This way I can give better advice to guildies just starting out. I mean doing a mission on a necro is very different than doing it on a zerker ele. Not necessarily easier or harder, just different.

Einlanzer.1627:

I did not say it was a “fact”, however, common sense will tell you that any attempt at unnecessarily controlling players’ time or fantasy is ill-conceived, which both LW1 and the ranger pet thing represent.

It’s also a fact that not having LW1 in the game creates a big hole in the story that should be a priority for them to address.

And yet many people are saying Season 1 was the best living story season and they wish that would happen again. So it’s not a fact that it was a bad decision. It’s only a fact that you didn’t like it.

Double clicking a ticket or ticket scrap opens the merchant. There are also merchants in all major cities.

Ashivan.5216:

Ayrilana.1396:

DoctorDing.5890:

Ayrilana.1396:

Games should not be catered to the lowest denominator

I could not disagree more. To remain successful, games like this absolutely MUST cater for the lowest common denominator. Those people are paying customers too. Call it easy mode, story mode, hard mode, expert mode or whatever but the fact is that a “challenging” level of difficulty can turn people off the game. You might be happy to see those people out of the game but every lost player means less money to develop the game.

Despite this being a MMORPG I think there are lots of people who want to play it solo, which makes some of those bosses seriously tedious and not fun. There would be no harm at all in having an easy story mode or whatever. It would not affect anyone else at all.

No.

Lowest common denominators are not representative of the entire game population. They’re normally a very small minority. All it does is make the game less enjoyable for other players as we saw with complaints about core Tyria. If there were to be a difficulty for those players, it would need to be a more which they can activate giving them a more easy experience.

If your game population is really low because you only have hardcore fans – you’re missing the point on having a viable product that generates enough revenue so it doesn’t shut down.

I’m fairly casual with this title but I do pay for expansions, living world content and character slots (without mentioning trivial things like makeover kit :P)

I find it hard to believe that for you, a veteran player, those story missions are the main content that you like to play… over and over again. And even if you did that it still doesn’t explain why you would be against having a difficulty slider for those missions.

I do repeat those missions over and over again (I’ve got 6 characters right now that have completed every single zone and every single story in the game from personal story up through LS season 3).

With new chapters of the LS coming out every 2-3 months with a new zone, I don’t believe there’s time to make and test more modes. That’s one of my objections.

It seems to me there are a lot of people who would rather have the game dumbed down than learn how to play it.

Leo G.4501:

I don’t see why having an opinion is such a controversial thing.

Personally disliked most of the HoT maps. Verdant Brink wasn’t bad. Like Auric Basin but Tangled Depths is annoying. My dislike of HoT was how the majority of the content was hard locked by the masteries which, when i started HoT, had no clue how to get more mastery points outside of the ones marked on the map (which weren’t enough). Even to this day, i am limited in mastery points until i do achievements i don’t want to do but at least the remaining masteries aren’t necessary to progress.

The reason i don’t like Tangled Depths is because the visual map is useless as a guide. At least Verdant Brink was open enough that i could explore to find out how to get somewhere or if you’re able to reach it.

Having an opinion isn’t a bad thing and no one ever said it was. However, there are people who say things which aren’t opinion, stated as fact that aren’t true. I don’t care if people like or don’t like HoT if they don’t imply they’re in some kind of majority, if they don’t say hot can’t be soloed, if they don’t say that no one is playing it any more, or Dragon Stand is dead.

There are also opinions based on things not true. One person wrote that they hated VB because you had to wait for the choppers to get to the canopy to complete the zone, which simply isn’t true.

The problem is the amount of misinformation floating around. As long as that continues, plenty of people who might have enjoyed HOT won’t even try it because there’s such a loud voice of people that are annoyed by it.

I get it,. You don’t like HoT. But there are people who bought it late due to the loud voices on the forums, that ended up enjoying it

zoomborg.9462:

If u go on vinetooth with 5 people it will be super ez. The problem is both health and defiance bar scale with people. When 9/10 dont know what cc is then vinetooth becomes a problem. It is not a boss issue but a l2p issue. With PoF release there will be less people doing AB so vinetooth will get much much easier.

Also if u are about to do vinetooth dont ever….ever pop a tag. Less people is always better for that event.

This. Five people with good bar breaks will always beat the vinetooth prime.

Why assume we summoned balthazar? Maybe he just used the summoning opportunistically and we only think we summoned him.

marelooke.9708:

Rauderi.8706:

marelooke.9708:

But seriously, I feel that many epic hanging threads were pulled into LS3, got rather superficial treatment and then they grabbed something else from the “hanging threads”-bag just to try to outdo the previous reveal (Omg, White Mantle! Omg, Lazarus! Omg, Caudecus!, Omg, Balthazar! Omg, Livia!). I really hope this isn’t going to be a continuing trend and that the story gets some room to breathe in LS4 (and PoF, of course, but I’m slightly less worried about an expansion than the episodic nature of the Living World).

As someone who didn’t play Guild Wars, it feels like the constant reveals were a checklist titled:

How Many Plot Points Can We Kill/“Resolve” In One Season?

I didn’t know who these characters were, except Caudacus, and his resolution came with the death of another loose end that felt really ungratifying.

So maybe that’s part of it. The deaths feel cheap. Belinda, Demmi, Lazarus . . These “surprise” deaths are just narratively unnecessary, meant to provoke angst or tie up loose plot threads that don’t need resolution, rather than taking a single plotline to completion.

Yup, revisiting plotlines without actually resolving them in a final way is also an option, many of the resultions were just plain unnecessary.
Eg. I’d much have preferred if Lazarus had stayed a (possible) threat after the Balthazar reveal thing rather than the entirely cheap “resolution” we had in Ep6. Especially for us raiders who have seen the power of the Mursaat on full terrifying display and then we just resurrect one and kill it like any other mook, because we can… I mean, seriously, which sane PC would take that risk? After going through the raids I sure as hell would never have agreed to resurrect Lazarus. (most definitely not with some wise-cracking jerk of a stranger my PC had never heard of before)

In theory we didnt’ take the risk, Livia and the Shining Blade did. I’m not sure her and Anise are typical PCs.

Edit: This said I did find the whole thing gratuitous. And I did play Guild Wars 1.

Einlanzer.1627:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Einlanzer.1627:

Anet has a particularly bad habit of arbitrarily deciding what is and isn’t a priority to the detriment of the game.

These weren’t arbitrary decisions and there’s a very strong argument that these were better for the game/community than the alternatives

Einlanzer.1627:

LW season 1

I’m not sure if you mean having an LS1 or the fact that it was temporary content or the fact that they weren’t prepared for the game’s popularity (and so suffered from server issues).

However, it was hardly an arbitrary decision to include it in the game. The entire plan was in place prior to launch.

Or maybe you mean that they haven’t entirely rewritten it so it can be brought back as repeatable content. That, too, wasn’t arbitrary in the least — the effort & people involved is comparable (if not identical) to those devoted to new living stories and they decided that more people would like to see new content than there are those who want to see old content (especially since it can’t possibly meet our over-hyped expectations at this point).

Einlanzer.1627:

Townclothes tonics

This, too, wasn’t an arbitrary decision. It was spend extra time re-designing for the Wardrobe (by making a light|medium|heavy version of the relevant clothing, each of which has its own set of issues) or indefinitely postponing the conversion so they could release the wardrobe sooner rather than later.

Einlanzer.1627:

Ranger pets

Again, not an arbitrary decision to require rangers to use pets. It might not meet your idea of a “ranger”; it meets other people’s concept though.

Einlanzer.1627:

Dungeons

Presumably you are talking about ANet’s decision to drop support for dungeons. Again, that wasn’t arbitrary. They looked at trying to keep them modernized and recognized it would mean rewriting much of the original code/design. Fixing old content when the same resources could be spent on new content seems like a waste to a lot of people.

And they didn’t double down on it, they actually redid the rewards so that dungeons are more rewarding now if you speedclear and about equally rewarding as before if you don’t (but still continue to do 8 unique paths).

tl;dr none of the examples cited were “arbitrary” decisions or a “bad habit”

I’m not at all sure why build templates haven’t yet made it into the game and I think ANet’s misjudged the need: there are so many ways they could make build swapping easier for us.

But let’s not exaggerate the situation. Not liking a decision isn’t the same as considering it arbitrary or even a mistake.

They made poor decisions. End of story. And most your analysis of my comments shows a lack of understanding.

Deciding to make LW1 temporary was boneheaded (I control my own time, not Arenanet), and not fixing it by implementing a permanent version of it before continuing the story only exacerbated the problem, which will continue growing worse until it’s addressed.

Not supporting content that you have in the game is ludicrous, as is deciding that FotM and open world PvE can replace classic dungeon content.

Mandating my use a pet so I can fulfill the Ranger fantasy is absurd. Giving me an elite spec that stows the pet, but then forcing me to dance in and out of it so I still have to interact with the pet is absurd. I don’t even main Ranger and this kittenes me off.

The gemstore meshes that people paid for should have been remade for the wardrobe system. No other solution was acceptable. If they really have that many problems creating individual pieces for clothing, they need to fix the framework.

Anet has made some poor decisions. I’m not sure, however, that any one on the forums has a monopoly on which of those decisions are wrong. And your opinion, yes it is your opinion is fine as long as you don’t state it as fact.

When you state an opinion as fact, you lose credibility.

I think Anet has made some poor decisions too, however, my candidates for those decisions are decidedly different from yours.

Of course, I recognize that that’s just my opinion.

Access to cheap ascended accessories, or easily farmed ones anyway. Access to various back pack skins you can only get on those zones. Minis you can only get in those zones. Access to unbound magic, which can be converted into gold. It also can work as a karma farm.

I enjoy playing the new zones quite apart from the story

Ashivan.5216:

Vayne.8563:

Well see here is the disconnect. Guys who play this game for a month and leave for a year and come back for another month aren’t really keeping the lights on in my opinion. I’m not saying that they should be excluded from all thought, but I don’t want my instances to be dead boring because someone else wants it easy.

And it’s not that hard to learn the game. Plenty of casual people do. It’s not like studying for a law degree. Most of the stuff people need to learn could be taught in an hour or two, and it might just make the game better for them as well. I know I’ve helped a lot of casual players out learning the game and it’s given them a better appreciation of the game.

People seem to be arguing that they cant’ get better or they simply don’t want to. I’m saying those players aren’t really something Anet should cater to. Not at the expense of players who are here all the time, supporting the game on a constant basis.

I never argued for making the story missions dead easy, for all the players. It’s against the freedom to play how each player likes, something that I love to find in games.

What I was saying and think is reasonable is to have difficulty modes ranging from Story (easy mode) with small rewards to Elite/whatever name (that could actually be more difficult that they currently are) with bigger rewards.

You will not be robbed of anything but instead you would gain the freedom to play them at what difficulty level you feels is more appropriate for your skill level.

But I suspect you won’t like that, because as you said – you are the people that keep the game lights on while the casuals move on / come back and the game should only speak your language in terms of difficulty…

It’s not only that, but there’s also far more programming testing time involved in doing that. For a company coming out with a story and zone every 2-3 months, it sounds like a big ask to me.

Djinn.9245:

Ayrilana.1396:

Half tempted to solo the last instance of HoT without armor and no traits allocated just to prove a point on how soloable it is.

“Oh yea? You can complain all you want that playing the flute is hard but I can do it blindfolded and with earplugs!” So what? Some people are inherently better at things than others. The fact that some experienced players find story missions hard but some players find them easy doesn’t say anything about how difficult they actually are.

Either Anet cares that their players experience the story in GW2 or not. If they don’t care, I’m not sure why they are bothering to take the time to write some of the really good story that I’ve seen. They should just keep writing crap like the Commander being so untrustworthy that he is forced to join the Shining Blade. It would give them more resources for crap like Adventures.

Or maybe Anet wants people to get better at the game, and finishing the story is a form of encouragement that works on some people but not others. Maybe they simply have to draw a line somewhere and, unfortunately, some people are on the wrong side of that line.

Maybe creating something that fits everyone is harder than it sounds. Making it too easy would be as bad as making it too hard. I’m sure there are some stories you find fine and some you don’t. But that’s probably true of everyone….including me.

Ashivan.5216:

Vayne.8563:

Ashivan.5216:

Kreed.2768:

A lot of games nowadays include a “Story Mode” difficulty type because they’re designed for people who don’t actually want to play the game, but are there for an interactive, cinematic experience… or something. I guess those types of “gamers” exist now, but I don’t know if an action MMORPG like GW2 needs it. I don’t think the story content is particularly challenging as long as you have a basic grip of the mechanics and run a decent build/gear setup. If you die too easily, a setup that is a bit sturdier might be a solution. Sure, it won’t win you fights quite as fast, but that’s better than not winning them at all, right?

If you’re the type of person that can only enjoys things if there are other people that can’t have them – yes, it makes sense to think like that.

But at the end of the day, why would you care how other people play their story missions?

Shouldn’t those ‘dirty story peasants’ eat their cookies too? In the end they also payed for those, money that are used for further development of the game you love.

I care how other people intereact in the open world sharing events I’m in. If they can’t get through story they should want to get better Doing everything on the easy mode means they’re carried through everything else.

And I don’t actually mind carrying people or teaching them. But it’s naive to think that letting people not learn how to play the game is somehow better for the game.

Ah, Vayne always vigilant that the players are learning the game

You know there is a distinction between the story missions and those open world sharing events, you are mostly concerned… right?

For me personally, this game is not a big thing in my gaming life. I like to come back from time to time and see the new content and fiddle with new classes and builds. So from this pov I can see that the game veterans (you were saying in another thread something about having 20 characters – yay ) are trying to defend their way of playing and their history with the game.

On the other hand I like to think the story difficulty modes (with reduced rewards ofc) would allow more people to have an enjoyable story experience so they would stick more to the game, getting to eventually learn all the combat mechanics. I’m not a huge story/lore buff but I like to see how some story arcs conclude. And while not I’m completely against difficult content , I can’t see the story being one of the difficult content pillars.

Well see here is the disconnect. Guys who play this game for a month and leave for a year and come back for another month aren’t really keeping the lights on in my opinion. I’m not saying that they should be excluded from all thought, but I don’t want my instances to be dead boring because someone else wants it easy.

And it’s not that hard to learn the game. Plenty of casual people do. It’s not like studying for a law degree. Most of the stuff people need to learn could be taught in an hour or two, and it might just make the game better for them as well. I know I’ve helped a lot of casual players out learning the game and it’s given them a better appreciation of the game.

People seem to be arguing that they cant’ get better or they simply don’t want to. I’m saying those players aren’t really something Anet should cater to. Not at the expense of players who are here all the time, supporting the game on a constant basis.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

@Ashen

Okay let’s try this from another point of view, that of a developer. The developer has to make content that is not too easy and not too hard for a percentage of the people. Too hard for most people and the game can’t be played. Too easy for most people and most people find it boring.

I’m not talking about whether you find it hard or I find it hard. There are people who know certain games are hard and certain games are easy more generally.

I’m not batter, but I’m a good fielder. I wouldn’t go to a batting range and ask them to change their entire business so I could hit the ball, because I know that the way it’s set it, is set up for people who know how to hit. This is what I’m talking about.

Yes, some people can find a game easy and some people can find a game hard, but beyond that, there has to be some sort of baseline to make a game in the first place.

By your logic if a terrible player, playing on a really really old machine with terrible internet can come here and say yes this game is too hard, make it easier so I can play it.

For him the game would be truly hard. But that doesn’t make the game hard, and if you made it so that guy could play it, 90% of the rest of the people would likely find it too easy and get bored.

Games are created around a baseline of how difficult the company wants the game to be. This is necessarily to keep people interested in the game. Guild Wars 2 did have a very low baseline in core. And Orr had been harder and people complained and Anet nerfed it.

By nerfing Orr, Anet took away some of what they wanted in the game in the first place. They wanted challenging end game open world zones. They said this. They talked about this.

Orr was a bit obnoxious but I don’t think it was really difficult. I think some people did find it difficult, but I don’t believe they were very good players. This is a problem all games have. If you make them too easy for too many people you lose the people that do want challenge.

You’re talking about the subjective feeling of whether something is easy or not, but there is such a thing as difficulty. Here’s an example.

Dodging and moving out of circles that give you a clear tell and more than 2 seconds isn’t hard. It may be hard for some people but the actual act of moving and dodging out of that circle is not hard.

None of the mechanics in HOT is difficult per say. You have a sniper who puts a clear target on your head and when he does, you can move sideways to avoid the red line of death that he’s going to hit you with. That’s not hard. It may be difficult for some people, but objectively moving sideways when you see a target isn’t hard.

There’s a smokescale that does a lot of damage, but also dies fast, as long as you hit it when it’s not in it’s circle of mist, when it’s invulnerable. If you melee it in that circle, you’ll likely die. But it has no range. You can run away from it draw it out of it’s circle and it dies very fast. Again, it’s not a hard mechanic. The circle is very easy to see.

The hardest thing in all of VB is probably the frogs that shoot circles of poison because those circles of poison are harder to see. For me, I’m colorblind, I can barely seem them at all, but I can see my health bar going down fast and I know to dodge out of it. Again, even with my limitiations, this isn’t objectively hard.

snip

It takes practice…it’s not really hard, from the point of view of creating a game.

There is always going to be someone who finds something hard, not matter how easy it is, but you can’t create a game based on that subjective definition of hard and easy, because if you make a game too easy for most people, you’ll lose most people.

I don’t believe HoT is too hard for most people who play games generally. It is harder for certain people. It’s harder for mouse turners and skill clickers as an example. But that’s not the best way to play these games and those same people would find end game content in most games hard.

I have, not once, said that development should be balanced around those who find the content difficult. Nothing of the sort.

I stated only that I disagreed with your comment that the content was universally easy on every class. For you perhaps, it has been easy for me as well. But there are others who struggle, even with attempts to adapt via build, etc.

So, again, because it is easy for me doesnt mean that its easy for everyone. Because it is difficult for some doesnt mean that it is difficult for everyone. Because it is easy for some and difficult for others doesnt mean that it is objectively easy or difficult. Because it is difficult for some doesnt mean that the level of challenge should be reduced to cater to those players’ current level of skill. Because it is easy for some doesnt mean that the level of challenge should be increased to cater to those players. Ultimately the developer decides which group of players they wish to please and follows their vision.

And I maintain it doesn’t matter if I find it easy or hard, or you do or any individual does. It’s not relevant to what I’m saying. I’m saying there’s nothing hard programmed into LS seasons, with every few exceptions, and some of those are bugs anyway. I’m not using the definition of what is hard or easy from a consumers point of view, but from a development point of view. You can use whatever definition you want, but you’re talking about something different.

Daroon.1736:

rapthorne.7345:

No. Devs have said they are aware people want build templates, but they are not a priority and will not be a part of PoF release

This pretty much sums up the state of the game.

I don’t know. There are quite a few QOL changes that have made my life easier, including right clicking salvage kits, account bound recipes, consume all for several items, new stuff added to the materials storage…there’s one HUGE big ticket item that people want more than anything but that’s in no way a reflection on the rest of the game.

HellMarch.6827:

can anyone tell me about the gameplay changes since then please?

Too many to count. Truly. Condition damage complete revamped. Old conditions have been changed. Skill changes, trait changes, too numerous to list. Addition of a new ammo system for some skills. Changes to Heart of Thorns, the Shatterer, new raids, changes to Fractals (many many of these) changes to dungeon rewards and how they’re earned, new side story achievements, changes to PvP and WvW rewards, changes to WvW itself, gliding allowed in core tyria, you can right click salvage kits now, a lot of consume all options added for karma and luck, lots of new zones and stories with the Living Story Season 3….it’s a really really long list.

Abakk.9176:

Raven.1524:

I also saw some people streaming using the mouse to click on their skills…. Honestly… I won’t even talk about that…

That again.. really?

I can handle 3 buttons with my left hand and the rest i have to click. Before my stroke i could do 5 buttons and the rest i had to click.

Should i be ashamed or something?

Just be glad you can do everything blindfolded and on keybinds and stop making fun of those that can’t.

You definitely shouldn’t be ashamed and I understand physical issues from personal experience. There are things I’ll never be able to do in this game. I just don’t feel the game should be programmed around such issues, no matter how unfair that might sound.

It sucks when you can’t do stuff due to injury or disability. But game companies have a responsibility to the playerbase as a whole, rather than individuals. It’s a sad fact of life.