Guild Wars 2

I had a post deleted and was given an “infraction” for a supposedly off-topic comment that naturally was completely on-topic. I received a private message about this that said I could appeal via email at forums@arena.net. I did so and immediately got a new email from NCSoft saying that I must create an NCSoft support account within 24 hours. When I attempted to follow the link to do so, I found that the web servers for every single NCSoft game support site, including GW2, were down. Therefore, I could not create a support account and continue my appeal. This was especially concerning as I was told I had only 24 hours to do so. I immediately replied to NCSoft, explaining this issue and asking what to do. That was 11 days ago and I have received no response, despite repeating my question. I have refiled my appeal at forums@arena.net repeatedly and have received no response to those, either, not even another automated NCSoft support email. The servers remained down through my 24-hour deadline and the NCSoft account creation link has expired. So what exactly am I supposed to do?

I have now not played for two days in a row for the first time since early launch. I’m going to move on to other games. I am doing so because I am literally being told by other players and by ArenaNet that I’m not welcome. The direction of this game is ugly elitism, already in action with the gated/leveled dungeons and one-time events. Complain, or even simply point out it’s a betrayal of the game’s own innovation, and you’re a “whiner” told to love it or leave it by half the players and all of the devs. It’s not fun to be around, in-game or on the boards. Meanwhile, I was having plenty of fun with original content except where it is broken, and Anet has made it clear it is not fixing broken original content and instead releasing new broken content. Those are the factor that have me holiday shopping at Steam and finding new things to play with people who won’t insult my dedication and my intelligence.

To answer the question about foruming—yes, I do it more than I play now. Why? To see if ArenaNet is going to show any shred of honesty. I don’t even mean changing its tune and doing something I prefer. I just mean being direct and honest about it. The ludicrous post today about the Lost Shores event, with its PR blather, dodging of the biggest issue and lack of apology to the thousands of people whose fun was ruined convinces me I know all I need to know now. ArenaNet isn’t making mistakes. It knows exactly what it’s doing, knows it’s wrong, and hides its guilt behind puffery and lies. It will continue doing so. So no point in coming back here for more, either.

Video games have to make money or they are not going to exist. It does not have to be an extreme between total art and total profiteering. However, in this game, there are very valid reasons you feel that way. We indeed are being treated as gullible pigeons and it is downright dismal that they have devs and other nominally creative people on here spinning ripoffs as some type of innovative art.

lenpup.3765:

QFT.
Obtaining a precursor is a massively game changing occasion. And in one fell swoop they reduced countless players massive effort to obtain one into a joke, and countless other players got a hand out, while countless more were completely screwed out of even having the CHANCE to have this game-changing occasion occur for them.

This apology was practically a spit in the face.
Chris Whiteside needs to reach down, palm the family jewels, and say,
“Guys, we really screwed up in a number of ways with that one time event. We realize now that it was an extremely unfair and broken way of distributing game-changing items, and we’re both very sorry and FIXING IT AS A TOP PRIORITY.”

Basically, all he DID say served only to paint a public picture of a dedicated developer who cares about player feedback. It was a PR stunt, not an apology, and I’m even more pissed off after reading it than I was before.

This is exactly right.

miniszlan.7092:

It’s all about the self entitlement players have these days … Makes me sick. “Me, me me !” Titles like “We demand an apology” make the hair stand up on my neck. Zero appreciation, zero tolerance – These days players think they have full control over the game, with the average argument " We are the paying customers, we deserve it".
10 years ago, almost no one would have thrown a temper tantrum on the forums for an event like this.
The gaming community is not what it was before and it won’t be like that in a couple of years, either.

The event had two major and admitted flaws. One was technical, that due to culling, players literally could not see the enemies they were fighting, and were often disconnected and unable to get rewards after an hour-plus of engaging in the event. The other was the timed nature that meant that many thousands of dedicated players could not play. Your attempt to brand this as self-entitlement and a temper tantrum makes it clear you do not know what you are talking about. Your suggestion that there is something wrong with a customer expecting what they were sold is irrational.

Bonefield.9813:

It’s most likely botting, using a teleport hack. I’ve seen it before too, and not only in GW2—that was how gold farmers in WoW and FFXI gathered from nodes, too. At least in GW2 I don’t have to deal with starting to mine a node only to watch it disappear under my nose and be briefly replaced with a nonsense-named naked character who then flickers away.

This. Bots with teleport hacks are common in this game.

vince.5937:

So I spend about an hour in LA trying to find/set up a Level 2 FotM team. Eventually I just teamed up with a few other 2’s and a level 1 and just ran it because I enjoy the visuals. However, during that hour I experience the rudest treatment I’ve ever received in any game from the players in LA map chat. I was PMed and insulted, called names in map chat, and even got a few nasty slurs and one “die in a fire” for asking why it was so kittening hard to find a FotM team below level 5. According to LA, it’s super easy to find a team! Just spam spam spam! You’ll find one, even though everyone is saying they don’t want my FotM level! Right.

I almost found a level 2 team but they wouldn’t let me join unless I PMed them links to my equipped gear. When I finally did find my team, we entered to the Aquatic Fractal and I promptly crashed. Turns out the rest of my team did too and two of them gave up. No more team.

Between the rudeness of other players, the lack of teams for my FotM level, and the off chance my team will get hammered by a crash I think I’m just going to go back to soloing the PvE content. Hardly anyone does any dungeons outside of FotM anymore so I won’t bother looking for teams for AC, CoE, CM, or any of my other favorites.

Sorry, but this is exactly what ArenaNet wants to happen. Elitism is the new name of the game. Creeps are the new demographic they want to attract. You’re a second-class citizen of Tyria and they’re not gonna care.

Greenraven.8106:

I have a question about RP in the game. Do people RP, if so is there a particular server or is it just something that is done between friends who desire to do so?

Yes, people RP, and Tarnished Coast is known as one of the agreed-upon RP servers. Taverns are a good place to encounter people RP-ing on that server.

Ozma.1950:

Hi guys, first post here!
Not sure if this has been covered in other threads but I’ve noticed a dying player base for the arah dungeon. I’m sure this is due to the popularity of fractals recently even so, the player base for arah dungeon has been dreadful even prior to fractals.

The result of this is very discouraging for players like me working hard to get those shards of zhaitan for my legendary or the arah armor set which is the best looking armor light armor set by far IMO.

I’m sure it is not only the limited window time when you can get into the dungeon (have to complete the arah event chain), but the difficulty of the dungeon that has turned people away complemented with the abysmal rewards that comes at the end with completing the dungeon.

So i am pleading for anet to place more attention on reviving arah! Raise the rewards, lower the difficulty, make it accessible at ALL times, whatever it takes…It is painful to even find a group these days and i’m in Crystal Desert.

I have never been able to do it as story because of 1) the timer, 2) because it was known to have garbage rewards so no one wanted to do it with me, and 3) because it was broken for a long time and may still be for all I know. So I concur with all the above, plus Anet should prioritize fixing/upgrading existing content.

Aniaden.3581:

Not sure what the point of posting this here was. Maybe suggestions portion of the forum. People always post these threads to find moral support that they are indeed doing the right thing. Funny thing is this f2p go ahead and turn it off. We’ll be here when your ready to come check things out again. Super crazy I know.

If you think it’s great that anyone quits an MMO, which relies on other players to be any fun at all, you’re the one pumping yourself with moral support for your bad decisions.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

elsbeth.3567:

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Hey all,

I am starting to get a little frustrated, and I love the game, but I’m feeling completely left behind. Because of my work and school schedule as well as being married I do t have as much time to play as others. GW2 actually made me completely happy to play because I could do all the content without being required certain items or gear to meet a min requirement.

Anyways because of my schedule I haven’t been able to log on at all this weekend, but I finally got a chance this morning for about 2 hours before I got into work. I wanted to try some of the Fractals dungeon stuff today, but I got turned down from multiple groups because they were all working on Tier5+ (whatever that means). I was completely frustrated as this is the first time in this game that I realized I might not be able to do any of the newer content for a while because of my schedule.

Does anyone know how the fractal things work? Am I going to be able to get into a group running the first few levels?

I mean it is what it is and I understand that since I am a casual I will always be behind the hardcore players, but the reason I loved this game is because I never have felt like that yet. I love this game but if I can’t play the content because I can’t dedicate my life to a video game I will move on.

Is it going to continue with this design philosophy?

Welcome to gear grinds, gated content and raids. Like drug dealers, they clearly don’t care if they lose casual users because they believe the money is in the hardcore addicts. You’re a second-class citizen of Tyria, my friend, and they’re only going to get worse in their treatment of you.

Thing is, ANET wants to make money via the gem store. Which means they need people with disposable incomes. Who are most likely employed. Meaning they don’t have the time to be hardcore users.

I agree. The really horrible reality emerging is that ANet is not merely malignant, but stupid. A truly lethal combination.

What’s the overall level of your gear? Oh wait….

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Hey all,

I am starting to get a little frustrated, and I love the game, but I’m feeling completely left behind. Because of my work and school schedule as well as being married I do t have as much time to play as others. GW2 actually made me completely happy to play because I could do all the content without being required certain items or gear to meet a min requirement.

Anyways because of my schedule I haven’t been able to log on at all this weekend, but I finally got a chance this morning for about 2 hours before I got into work. I wanted to try some of the Fractals dungeon stuff today, but I got turned down from multiple groups because they were all working on Tier5+ (whatever that means). I was completely frustrated as this is the first time in this game that I realized I might not be able to do any of the newer content for a while because of my schedule.

Does anyone know how the fractal things work? Am I going to be able to get into a group running the first few levels?

I mean it is what it is and I understand that since I am a casual I will always be behind the hardcore players, but the reason I loved this game is because I never have felt like that yet. I love this game but if I can’t play the content because I can’t dedicate my life to a video game I will move on.

Is it going to continue with this design philosophy?

Welcome to gear grinds, gated content and raids. Like drug dealers, they clearly don’t care if they lose casual users because they believe the money is in the hardcore addicts. You’re a second-class citizen of Tyria, my friend, and they’re only going to get worse in their treatment of you.

My feedback: Told you so. I saw the writing on the wall that this is a company devoted to the bait-and-switch and the big letdown. As I said elsewhere in some long-ago-merged thread, I’m sick of being their sucker and I had no intent of doing the new content, instead just playing the original content. I am not at all surprised by the gamerage I am hearing from friends and strangers alike.

I did my one token sampling of the new content by visiting Kessex Hills during the first stage. A mindless zerg of enemies made invisible by culling. Made more confusing by an old-content dynamic event that is still bugged and broken. That about sums it up. Not only no fun, but a laughably stupid joke.

I continued leveling up my second toon. That will be fun enough for me until I hit Arah, which I still have not been able to play on my original toon because it has been broken. I might still hop on from time to time until the grindy Ascended gear wrecks all levels of the game. I don’t see myself leveling a third toon. I won’t ever be their sucker to rush to expansion content and I won’t spend a penny on their untrustworthy game.

Hurling out messy new content like feeding slop to hogs may be a great business strategy for all I know. What I do know is that I’m much more likely to play a cleaned-up original game that gives me lasting reasons to play rather than cheap publicity stunts. I like RP, so I find it odd there is no housing, extremely limited town clothing, an inability to interact with furniture, no character biography panel, and no way for players to create meaningful content themselves beyond chat and crafted items that are literally worthless in the joke of a game economy. People who enjoy the other end of player-created content—pvp—have their own complaints. The games that will be in for the long haul and truly revolutionize the industry are those that realize the main asset of an MMO are the players themselves and empower them to create content. It’s cheaper, and it’s better.

Colton.9460:

This will be short since I am currently loving the new content but I wanted to take time to thank arena net for adding a little vertical progression, giving us new content, and promising more in the future. Me and my friends got this game not because of extensive research but because we heard that is was a good game; however the lack of progression and endgame made our adventure through your world shorter than we expected.

After reading the war on the forums I grew discourage that the game wouldnt grow and that we would have to leave it on our shelves but it seems that you have taken some of what us progressionist have said to heart and helped us find fun in your game once again.

Some may curse you for it and I am sure many will disagree with my statements; but rest assured me and my fellow adventurers will enjoy every minute of the new content and have a ball fighting our way towards some epic gear. ( Even if me drive our wives insane from splurging on the gem store lol)

Keep up the great work.

There’s a sucker posting every minute.

Sion.1653:

Here’s the thing. Anet has introduced new elements into their game that, as a player base, we would have never expected. Why? Because, before we bought this game, we were strongly convinced that this game would be different. It still has a chance to be.

Two paths lie before Anet:

1) Informed Trust from the Players -They begin to listen and respond to their player base. No, I don’t mean that they should cater to whiners. But they sure could be more open and communicative in regards to why they seemingly disregarded their manifesto with blatant disrespect to the players who purchased the game on account of what they told us it would be. Honestly, anything said from the dev’s will only help us decide for ourselves whether this is a game we still want to play.

2) Blind Trust from the Players – They continue their current path, which unfortunately seems to be a pattern of little communication to the players and when they do communicate, it’s so ambiguous or contradictory to previous statements that it’s like deciphering a cryptic inscription on a tomb right before the walls start closing in. This path would mean that, as a player base, we will simply need to accept that Anet has both our and GW2’s (they should be the same) best interest in mind.

Personally, I still think Anet might know what they’re doing. All MMO’s have shaky starts. However, they’re on a slippery slope with two paths before them. They can still remain on solid ground if they make efforts to do so now, by instilling (or regaining) trust from the player base. Option one is, to me, the only serious and legitimate option if they want to create a game that players want to play over any extended period of time. Option two will only lead to distrust and lack of interest. In my opinion.

Which path should Anet take? Giving us something to work with, or expecting us to swallow whatever they feed us?

How can they regain your trust, or is it even possible?

Why pretend it hasn’t already chosen a path long before release? The Black Lion chest scam was not an accident and the gear grind was something it must have planned well before release, because all that new content was not whipped up in a week. It’s a company that has chosen to be deceptive and attempted to sucker its customers to make purchases rather than inspire its customers to make purchases. Like any criminal—and its behavior has literally been criminal, if any of our authorities were savvy or wired enough to press charges—it can earn trust only by apology fully and changing its ways utterly for a meaningful period of time. It hasn’t and it won’t, so no money for it.

These are great points, but I disagree that ANet’s reach is exceeding its grasp, because it is by now crystal-clear that what it is reaching for is scamming, tricking and fooling customers in the hopes of ripping them off. Black Lion chests. Releasing new content while core old content remains broken. Saying they would never create a gear grind and then creating one. Scheduled events that are trivial let-downs. Content that, as you say, is not even reasonably playable or render-able on their engine. Badges/commendations that offer rewards you can buy for 24 copper pieces on the trading post—a lingering problem of the game and re-introduced yet again in Lost Shores. Plenty of cool ideas and innovations in the game, but ultimately it is, like all modern MMOs, a psychology experiment into trying to get customers to enter a positive feedback loop to spend money. Problem is, Blizzard is still genius at it and companies like this are clumsy so those with brains see the flaws.

I continue to hop on and play for a while. But I’m not playing new content and I’m not spending a penny on this deceptive game. It ain’t failure, my friend—it’s scam.

evilapprentice.6379:

Lopez.7369:

Cut them some slack. They have two people working on class changes.

That sounds like a staffing/money flow issue, not a “cut them some slack” issue.

As was also already pointed out, class changes have nothing to do with abilities that do not function as listed/at all/have unintended issues.

Yeah, why are we “cutting slack” on a company for understaffing a core job function on a gigantic project? And incidentally, if something’s badly broken, you have no slack to cut because you can’t play. I see Anet is hiring so perhaps this will speed up.

I understand new content was already scheduled and paced, but it is still grating that I’m being pitched fancy new dungeons when I haven’t even been able to play Arah yet because it’s broken.

I play on Tarnished Coast and while there naturally has been spread and drop-off since launch, everyplace I go has a decent population. And I go everyplace, working on a second toon and running my main around on world completion and taking pics for a website.

Ignotus.7254:

Evan Lesh.3295:

The issue has been fixed and will be coming in a future build.

The fix will be coming in a future build, or the achivement points will be refunded in a future build?

It’s a whole new mini-game: trying to figure out what inscrutable Anet “communications” mean.

Pumpkin (jack o’lantern, really) has been there the whole time, at least on Tarnished Coast server. Looks solid and is presumably deliberate.

Playing a thief on Tarnished Coast server. For about 1-2 weeks, I have been getting serious lag and frequent disconnects when using skills, seems particularly frequent when using “Unload.” Extreme lag where combatants just stand around and then suddenly one of us is dead. DCs that break events. I’ve played an hour tonight and been disconnected twice, had serious lag at least four times. The game runs fine, my Internet connection is fine, I did not have these issues until approximately 1-2 weeks ago.

Several times recently I have seen an animation of large brown stones or boulders spewing into the air from a central point, as if from an explosion, for no apparent game-related reason. The effect is seen from a distance as I move toward a location.

On two of the recent occasions, the stones were spewing out of Lionguard forts in the Kessex Hills—Kessex Haven and Overlake Haven. Most recently, I saw the stones coming out of the side of a mountain as I entered the mountain pass between Refugee Peak and the Lake of Lamentation in Lornar’s Pass.

The stone explosion lasts for perhaps 2 to 3 seconds. It looks something like a giant fountain of boulders endlessly spewing about 40 feet into the air until it halts. There is no sound effect. I have no other graphics issues. The effect appears to be random; it has not repeated at these locations on other visits, both before and after.

It’s a weird one. Anyone else experiencing it, or noticing any in-game explanation?

Tomkatt.1684:

I finally leveled my main through to 80 and through the story and…well, Trahearne is freaking awesome. I never felt overshadowed by him, more like partners. Throughout the plot it was obvious that we saw our development alongside Trahearne’s own growth.

I dunno, not ranting or anything, I just don’t get all the hate. Is it envy for that wicked greatsword he’s got or something? He’s pretty cool, IMO (but yeah, dat sword).

I don’t hate, but I found him irritating both tactically and plot-wise. Basic bottom line is his AI sucks and he goes down faster than a swatted fly. I found his voice acting to be lame, though not as lame as many other NPCs. In terms of plot, I didn’t believe that we suddenly follow him because of the vague wishes of the magic tree, he seemed pretty stupid, and I was frankly doing a lot more important and dangerous things than he was. So it is more like envy for not running the army myself.

I do think some of the hate revolves around him not being seen as stereotypically macho enough to the chagrin of a certain class of player.

Negrul.5423:

Lothair.8942:

RLD, in fact that is a main reason why I stopped playing SWTOR. I was so fed up with having to stand around spamming chat for a group. I left them a pretty long explanation in my “exit interview”.

That’s the exact same reason why I quit playing SWTOR and it IS the reason why it failed as a game.

A good MMO game these days does need a dungeon finder. It is mandatory to have such a tool and not just wait for hours to find a group.

I do hope that they will add a LFG tool soon.

SWTOR is an interesting example, and this poster is exaggerating both its success and its status as a core reason for the game’s failure. The fact is, introduction of an LFG tool was enormously controversial on the SWTOR boards, with some saying it was difficult to group up without it, and others saying it was anti-social. (To oversimplify the arguments.)

An LFG tool was not necessary in the early weeks of SWTOR because it was so busy that it was easy to find fellow players. An LFG tool quickly became a necessity because SWTOR was a rapidly failing game (mostly for other, larger reasons) with empty planets and empty servers, making it near-impossible to find other players nearby via any chat method.

GW2 remains a very busy game and from that perspective, an LFG tool is a luxury, not a necessity, at this point. Personally, I like them for efficiency and keeping map chat clean. But we must recognize that introducing one will be controversial rather than a no-brainer. Not that Anet seems to mind controversial.

I agree that Orr is annoying rather than broken, and it should be annoying at the very least because it is the fount of the Risen army. I was able to run around solo on my ranger and get skill points without assistance. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible, and that sounds like heroic fantasy to me.

Ebon.7641:

Here I’ll say it for you then:

IT WILL BE FINE

If the cap lock key was the CEO of Anet, that would mean something.

Celesica.5790:

It’s fine! You’ll see
So far ANet hasn’t let me down. It’s still 3 months, so I can understand why some of the bugs aren’t yet fully fixed. But overall, it has been really awesome, for me. And about the new gears and stuff, I can’t say they’ve let me down just because of pure assumptions bases on words posted in a single blog post. I’ll have to see and experience it myself first starting on the 16th, before I judge. I’m so excited!

Judgments based on words from the people directly involved are by definition not pure assumptions. Likewise, the debate ultimately involves comparisons to similar systems in other games—comparisons that Anet itself made when it said it would never do this. So by all means, be excited and see for yourself, but understand that you don’t understand what you’re talking about.

Narkosys.5173:

And this to the vital question.
Can we believe what they say?
They say there will never be pay to win ever – but they just scrapped one of the founding principles.
So even if I was ok with this do I trust them not do it – to resist the temptation of the killer weapon for $10.
That is the profound question I am asking myself.
PS why do you think it was only 60, many purchased gems.

This really is a vital question. I mean not only in the purely idealistic sense that lying is bad, etc. I mean practically in how it affects my personal enthusiasm for playing the game, and thus the likelihood that I will help it continue via money or being a warm body on the server. My enthusiasm for “Lost Shores” is quite low because I feel braced for running into something that makes me feel like a sucker.

I already had growing mistrust of Anet, especially after Halloween. The Black Lion chest scam was just outright criminal (even though it didn’t affect me personally). Then they told everyone to make sure they were in Lion’s Arch at X time for a big surprise. I actually rushed to finish work and then rushed home to make it, missed it by a few minutes, only to learn that all I missed was a cutscene that I could YouTube, and all the content was there at my leisure. And now this whole debacle.

They’ve got a great game that I love in many ways and that has points of real genius. I love it enough I made a website about my adventures in it. Almost three months in, I am not feeling bored by it and I play it every day. But over and over, Anet’s communication is awful and loaded with obvious PR hype and outright lies and deceptions. Whatever the merits or problems of the new gear and gated dungeons might be, it is impossible for Anet not to have known they would be intensely controversial, yet they did not explain until pushed, and then not fully or forthrightly; indeed, it just raised more significant doubts. Again, leaving aside moral judgments, in a practical sense, that just makes me not want to be around them and their product. Who wants to hang out with an untrustworthy friend, just waiting for the next ripoff or embarrassment or lie? Trust is good business, and trust is fading fast.

I tackled Halloween with gusto, wanting to try everything out. Never mind if I liked it or not, I did it, for hours every single day. But now I feel burned, and I am not going to be rushing to play “Lost Shores.” I’ll probably peek in and mess around briefly. I’m not setting time aside and I’m frankly looking at my library of Steam games. These are not decisions I’ve planned out; just stuff I realize I’m doing (or not doing) as I sit here thinking about it. And that’s bad, because MMOs need every player they can get.

A company doesn’t have to do everything I want, or make a perfect product every single time, to keep my business. But when it’s dishonest or disrespectful, it will lose me quickly—not just because of my head, but because of my heart. My heart is increasingly not in this game.

nofo.8469:

Curuniel.4830:

If I said, “baby I love you and want to be with you”

And her response was “Yeah k bro, how about you be my slave for another few years then maybe.” Then I would be like ok kitten this kitten.

Um, she’s his queen. He’s well and truly aware of that. He respects her rank and her importance to Kryta, rather than just viewing her as a hot chick he’s infatuated with. Whatever their romantic relationship (whether mutual or one-sided – and if she really wanted to acknowledge their romance, she would marry him surely, unless she’s holding out for a politically advantageous match) – anyway, whatever their romantic relationship, he works for her.

Why is he a ‘beta male’ because he doesn’t consider the fact that she’s a woman he likes to overrule the fact that she’s Queen of Kryta? If a king’s mistress stopped obeying his commands or started treating him informally in front of the court, would you not raise eyebrows? Rank before gender. It’s not that hard. Logan’s infatuated with Jennah and will bend over backwards for her, but more to the point, she out-ranks him.

I won’t go out of my way to defend Destiny’s Edge or the writing thereof, but they are meant to be thoroughly flawed characters. They are meant to be heroes rendered completely ineffective by their own conflicts (so yes, teenage drama). That’s where we come in, all fresh-faced and rational.

If a guy bends over backwards for a female and she shows nothing in return and he continues to do so then he is a chump.

They don’t have a romantic relationship, in basically every scene he’s like “omg jenna I will do anything for you” and her response is “Ok, good puppy. Here’s a pat on the head now go do some errand for me.”

This is not the personality type of a leader, warrior or great man by any standard, this is the personality type of a sniveling worm.

He is a beta by every definition.

Learn a little more about life and you’ll discover that a great many powerful leaders have exactly that sort of relationship. “Beta” status is some word made by boys who are scared of girls. Sounds like a cartoon character is threatening your own sense of masculinity. Heal thyself.

Malediktus.9250:

Please go ahead and keep adding more item and character progression. Its a very good way to keep pve interesting for a long time. New skins are good, but what if you dont like the new skins or like the one you have more? After all visuals are personal preference.

Anet is part of that “vocal minority” that said this was so terrible they would never do it.

grats grats grats

I’m glad that your business model is built with the option for me to not support your game further with my money to be able to continue playing, and I am certainly not going to support a company that sold me a product based on the above lie.

So what you’re saying is: Your goal is not to stop spending money on GW2. Your goal is to ensure a proper progression between rewarding companies that earn your money and not rewarding those that don’t. Wow, it sounds so much nicer that way, doesn’t it!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill.

Translation: “Our goal is not to use the term ‘gear treadmill,’ while creating something that looks and acts like a gear treadmill.”

I look forward to the “1984” expansion pack.

Maybe they’ve convinced themselves of their purity, but their words are plain and there’s no reason to fool ourselves. Required gear for gated content. Do it fast, do it slow, whatever—you’re still doing it.

Never hinted they would do anything like it, said the exact opposite, despite surely knowing they were doing it pre-launch. This thing must have been largely in the can months ago.

No communication, few details, lots of PR weasel words…. No trust.

“I really hope there’s a mystery tonic inside this chest.”

“Waypoint rates are a bargain.”

“I never get sick of fighting dredge.”

Why isn’t this just clearly explained on the main page? ANet has truly bizarre communication problems.

HellsMachine.4083:

Can some one show us a link to a quote from a dev that says “Ascended gear will have better stats than exotics?” Because so far all I am seeing is speculation.

What you are seeing is reading comprehension.

impoc.1795:

it doesn’t matter what other games you have played, this is not those games

give the new content a try and see how it works

its ok to express your concerns or fears, but to outright say you have been betrayed, or scammed, or that you are quitting because of this, is simply idiotic

PLAY the content, THEN give feedback

right now everyone is taking speculation as fact, without even giving the ideas and content a chance

FROM THE GOLDEN RULES OF GUILD WARS 2:

Take risks
“Let’s try it.” You hope to hear that phrase at the end of a meeting, especially if that meeting was contentious, or if the idea discussed is new and radical.
Imagine a playground full of kids playing. At its best, playing is making mistakes in a safe environment and learning from those mistakes in a way that encourages growth. Trying out new ideas or making drastic changes is the way we as designers get to play with the game. It’s where we slip and fall, scrape our knees, and otherwise monkey around on the jungle gym. While we don’t try out every idea, we use our collective experience to get a sense for what has promise—what we should follow down the rabbit hole. We look at where our ideas break, how they break, and why they break. "

Industry history doesn’t matter? Why? Because you just declare that by fiat?

ArenaNet’s own descriptions and promises don’t matter? You yourself are quoting some of them. Should we ignore those, too? How is responding to the company’s own words “speculation”?

Your argument is like saying that just because I once got bitten by a growling yellow dog, I should not be worried about being bitten by a growling brown dog. Experience matters. Your line of argument is naive, illogical and beside the point, since many people of course will be trying it.

Death by Chickens.6902:

This outrage is hilariously stupid.

I guarantee an ANet dev will post in the next few days and explain that NO, they said nothing about adding new equipment tiers every 6 months, and as the blog explained, they saw a need to bridge the gap between Exotic and Legendary by adding ONE new tier.

You people are going to give yourself aneurisms over nothing. Stop freaking out. Constructive feedback is great, but ya’ll are taking it too far.

I’m not convinced that you are in a position to guarantee anything or that there is any substantive meaning to your assertion that hundreds of commenters here fall into some undefined area of “taking it too far” that only you can judge. I’m convinced that you’re uncomfortable with conflict and want to control other people’s reactions. It’s an unpersuasive, unconstructive line of argument.

Talloc.6835:

Alice.8694:

Talloc.6835:

Alice.8694:

Alexander Dragonfang.1759:

Alice.8694:

If you can point out, which part of this announcement explicitly points out that arenanet are turning GW2 into a gear threadmill, power creep snowball. Then your argument might actually hold weight. But you cannot, because it’s simply not there.

Maybe you missed it but…

https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ascended-EN.png

There you have it, power creep, small, weak, almost unoticable, but power creep after all.

But not a snowball, that is simply a higher plateau. The argument you are making is that somehow these ascended items are going to break the level limit and get progressively stronger.
Nothing mentioned here actually supports that.

Do you know what the snowball argument actually is? Please don’t give me a link, I’d like it in your words.

The snowball argument somewhat ironically is another name for the slippery slope fallacy…
But since you are more implying how it relates to this situation:
The sheer act of increasing the item power will somehow cause a momentum that forces Arenanet to add additional levels of power in order to continue the intended effect of adding the first.

It’s basically an assumption that because they added A therefore they must then add B, C, D, E, F and G to sustain the effect intended by adding A.

Which implies a deliberate ignorance to the current system in place and how what they’ve specifically said would effect it.

And what is your reasoning that they won’t add more progression now that their foot is in the door? I’ve got about five dead MMOs backing up my worries.

I can honestly say I wish I shared your optimism, but this announcement has given me a familiar feeling.

The problem is that a little learning is a dangerous thing. These kiddos heard somewhere that the slippery slope and the snowball are “fallacies.” They are not fallacies by logical necessity. They can be false analogies, but obviously there are real-life slippery slopes and snowballs—literally. It’s an actual phenomenon and when you extrapolate logically from known data, including relevant prior experience, it’s a perfectly valid argument to use. Back to logic and rhetoric class for people who use little cliches without understanding them.

Sirge.8934:

So, Ascended Armor. Agony. Infusions. People are ticked. It looks like the start of a gear treadmill. And I agree that a gear treadmill would be bad for the game.
However, a few have replied that this is what the community has asked for. People were completing every event, obtaining 100% exploration on the map, and then quitting, due to lack of endgame.
GW2 has forms of endgame, such as PvP, WvW, and cosmetics. However, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if it was enough.
New content is great, but players consume it faster than devs can create it.

So, my question is this: How do we expand the existing endgame (things to do after “beating” the game) in Guild Wars 2 without implementing a gear treadmill? How have MMOs lacking gear treadmills, such as Guild Wars 1, kept an active player base through the years? Discuss.

EDIT: The purpose of this thread is not to discuss Lost Shores, or whether or not Lost Shores is a gear treadmill. I mentioned it only because that’s what brought this topic up. There’s a ton of other threads to debate ascended armor in.

There’s already plenty to do and their content updates are already plentiful. Everywhere I go is still busy. It’s a non-problem. It looks like ANet is responding to economic freak-out, which would be better solved by putting things in the shop that people actually want, at a price they can understand without doing algebra.

In the long term, quality is more important than quantity. You cannot stop people from blowing through content. What you can do is inspire them to return, replay, re-experience. I’d do more for RPers—like, say, actually be able to sit normally in a chair for starters, or buy more town clothes. It’s silly to me that we’re talking gear grind when women still lie on the floor instead of sitting down and there are pve dynamic events that have been broken since week 1.

You’re missing the fact that Linsey is a corporate weasel who uses such conveniently vague PR terms as “excited.” We’re all “excited,” obviously. Some negatively, some positively. If you really want their attention, organize a boycott of the gem shop for a specific, high-impact period—say, Black Friday through Christmas Eve.

Satans Chosen.1024:

Some of the later posts also bring up an important point. The mainstream notion of “role-playing” has not broken out of its limited definition in the last 40 years. Whatever personality or other variances are added, the vast majority of RPG both digital and not are based on killing things. It can be for a multitude of reasons and through very creative ways, but the core remains the same. That’s what many, probably most players want out of MMORPG like GW2, and I’ve come to accept that.

Besides, I am not sure some of the most fascinating roles in literature can even be made into games. Take Dune, how are you going to role-play legally a Bene Gesserit Breeding Mistress or a Tleilaxu Master in a game? It makes role playing a Ixian Fabricator or Caladan Fisherman appear simple and a basic soldier or even Sardaukar childish.

People have such limited notions of “history.” RPGs are based on fantasy fiction, in turn based on myth…in which all the heroes killed things. It’s a defining trait. They kill things in “Dune.” A lot. You can take the monster-slaying literally or you can take it metaphorically. You can emphasize it or de-emphasize it. But as long as our species exists, it’s going to be a core piece of narrative and character. I’m all for different types of narrative and RP, but it’s insanely myopic to say monster-slaying is some limitation rather than one of our most fundamental psychological expressions as human beings.

I can’t believe you seriously expected anything different in an automated game, rather than one run specifically for you by a DM/GM. Furthermore, what you are talking about is not simply an MMO genre hero; it’s a hero, period. I also disagree that these heroes are flawless or of black-and-white ethics; mine got drunk and naked in public and lost something valuable, just for starters, and made many impure bargains for strategic advantage. The character feels quite real to me and reflects many aspects of my own personality. Perhaps you just chose your character poorly, or are so focused on your own interests that you are misreading the game’s actual contents.

I’m tempted to say you should read a book, write a story, or pnp. (I have adapted pnp D&D games to be quite small-scale and RP-oriented with little or no combat. I’m surely not the only one.) But to be honest, it sounds like you’re seeking something that no fiction can ever provide in any form—all purely about you, with no trace of artificiality, authorship or collaboration. Maybe you should go to sleep and dream? Go on a trip somwhere? If you want it to be your identity rather than identification, it’s not RP; it’s RL.

If it’s RP you want, there are certainly a lot of RP opportunities out there in the GW2 world if you make the effort to find them and engage in them. That’s the MMO part. There are many skilled RPers out there who would play virtually any kind of storyline with you. I do think the game could do more to encourage and reward RP-ing, even with such basic things as letting people sit normally on chairs. But it’s out there and it’s pretty good.

My final two cents on this is just some translation of the Linsey Murdock press release. Besides simply lying, it just shows a thorough dishonesty and contempt for its audience. That not only angers me, but also chills me because it reminds me of all those SWTOR press releases of yore.

“Linsey Murdock Unveils New High End Ascended Gear.” Translation: “ArenaNet dashes off quick press release to put out PR fire started on other forums, after not even bothering to discuss this itself openly and honestly with fans.”

“Greetings citizens of Tyria!” Translation: “Instead of answering serious questions seriously, I am going to stay in bad Renaissance Faire character to pummel you with condescending fake comradeship.”

The change is in response to their “most dedicated players.” Translation: “We’re going to pretend this is a bottom-up rather than top-down decision. If you don’t like it, you’re just not dedicated enough, even if you’ve played every single day since early launch.”

“I hope you are all as excited about these new items as I am!” Translation: “We know very well how angry people already are about this, but if I use enough exclamation points, we can just smile our way through the awkwardness and never address it honestly. And I’ll pretend that the players and I are all in this together, even though I’m getting paid a ton of money whereas they’re being asked to pay a ton of money.”

This matters. People who talk like this are not your friends and are not to be trusted.

Xhieron.2168:

bcbully.7289:

Omega.1473:

bcbully.7289:

maybe if you people complaining would have bought some gems, this wouldn’t have happened.

People have obviously been buying gems and a lot of them if you read the financial reports that they gave for NCSoft investors.

No, this isn’t because of the core audience not paying up. This is because P.O.S no-lifers spent 1000 hours in the game since launch and are now complaining because they’ve done everything in the game faster than any development team can hope to keep up with. Now those whiny MMO addicts have twisted the one game that didn’t pander to them.

I read the report. It did not separate out cash shop revenue. It showed GW2 making around 3 mill won (or w/e) more than B&S, 13 mill more than Aion, 20mill more than Lineage 1&2.

The thing is all these games offer some form of sub and will surpass GW2 launch sales quickly. Maybe by the end of this yeah in B&S and Aion’s case. On top of that Anet is still in the red.

Much more needs to be spent in the case shop, and people need to be happy doing it. The forst step is to get them staying in game longer. Thus the new progression system. Remember we still haven’t heard how the cash shop will play into this.

I think this is at least partially a fair assessment of the situation. Through the whole evening I’ve had a kind of impending dread to the effect of: “It looks like this experiment didn’t work out after all.” There’s probably a revenue angle, and I’m not so naive as to think there wasn’t plenty of marketing research and probably some focus testing that led to a conclusion that “We need these kind of players to play and spend money, because they’re the ones who’ll spend most, and this is about money.” —Honestly, not a bad thing in and of itself; after all, this is business. From a purely economics perspective, the sensible thing is to toss players like me to the curb now that I’ve already paid my entry fee, and try to trade me in for players who are suckers for the cash shop scams. Good luck competing for those players, though.

I agree with the revenue angle, but I don’t think ArenaNet has the faintest idea of how to market things. Look at the Halloween event. Instead of giving out a nice freebie that could have seduced people into, say, buying a matching item in the shop, they did the out-and-out scam with the Black Lion chests, a major backfire blunder. Likewise, gear grinding is surely going to be about pushing people to buy required items rather than inspiring people to buy interesting items. I think it smacks of desperation rather than good business or good marketing. I have played this game virtually every single day, for at least two hours a day, since early launch. I have not spent a penny in the shop because the items are uncreative and have no relation to the game (e.g., getting a matching set of town clothes, or rounding off a collection of pets I could have started in-game). Why was the first freebie a baseball cap?! Why not an actual Tyrian hat, part of a collection I could buy, or something? My worst fear is that they just counted on attracting a bunch of dopes who would blindly buy anything and everything while they played, and it didn’t work, so now they’re going to get more pushy about it with required gear. (Not that you won’t be able to get gear in-game, but that they’re gonna offer some significant easy way out in the shop.)

Panda Shepard.1248:

lordkrall.7241:

I love how people always over-react to things before we have ANY kind of information.

For all we know the “slightly better stats” means an increase of 5 points. Guess what?
Those 5 points won’t make the player immortal.

And for all we know this set is specific for the dungeon, meaning we can ONLY use it in the dungeons.

Stop whining until we actually know what is going on.

You can’t stop them. They just like to complain about things before they even know what they’re complaining about. They’re not gonna get the devs to change this update. Best to wait and stop them from doing it again when we know more info.

Older and wiser than you, kiddo. We know exactly what we’re talking about. This isn’t a new idea. It’s an old idea that bored millions of players out of WoW and that angered thousands out of LOTRO. Pretending that history and industry context don’t matter is just naive. On the SWTOR boards, we got the same sort of fanboys tossing out the same “wait and see if classically bad ideas will somehow magically work this time,” the same pop psychology put-downs of critics to insulate their brains from unpleasant realities, until they realized they were standing in an empty game talking to themselves.

Teva.2807:

I dont know why I even go on the forums. All of the negativeness and hate just makes me lose hope for the game, I dont want to lose hope. I have to get off the forums.

The fanbois said the exact same things about us clear-eyed folks on the SWTOR forums… right up until EA admitted that thing was the epic fail it was. What you weakly perceive as negativity and hate is the passionate constructive concern of people who love a game and don’t want to see it crippled or dead. Running away and pretending everything is great when a company does something that will make players flee in droves—that’s being negative.

As someone older and wiser than Linsey Murdock and thus not particularly impressed, and certainly not fooled, by her peppy hype-talk, I have two things to say:

1) This means an elitist gear grind (and/or pay-to-gear-up), which means I just won’t play huge chunks of the game. That means I am even less likely to buy anything in the store. It could mean I ultimately don’t play the game at all, because it is a drastic philosophical change to everything new and different about this supposedly new and different game. The genius parts of GW2 are communal (dynamic events, WvW) rather than ye olde sports-team model (dungeons, pvp). I hate pvp of any kind, yet I have done hours of WvW in this game because it is fair, balanced, skill-based, community-minded and has nothing to do with gear grinding. I am someone who has not hit the “Legendary wall.” In fact, I have yet to finish my personal story because said “personal” story is in fact a raid, and one with a weird timer at that. I’m already upset enough about that. This is just even more of a march toward WoW-town.

2) ArenaNet is displaying a pattern of lying to its players about key developments. The Halloween Black Lion chest scam was clearly deliberate and deeply troubling. (I say that as someone who was not a victim of it.) Now, after promising not to have a gear grind, it will have a gear grind. Adding insult to injury, ArenaNet is saying it’s not a gear grind; it just exactly meets the agreed-upon definition of a gear grind. Linsey Murdock is a little kid holding an empty glass and standing next to a grape juice stain on the carpet, looking up at us and saying, “I have no idea how that got there.” Not fooled, kiddo.

ArenaNet already put a lot of lipstick on a lot of pigs in this game; e.g., doing the same old kill-15-things quests, but smartly using a vague bar instead of a direct number-counter. That’s fine. Not everything can be new and we are ultimately playing a game. But to stand there and lie to our faces about the great Halloween trinkets you can get, or how it’s no gear grind if you need to get particular leveled gear to complete particular dungeons…. Well, you’re asking for a guild war, alright, and one you’ll lose.

If a game goes bad on its own, fine, I may stick around and play the good bits for a while. I played WoW for a long time as it nosedived and excluded me from huge sections of its game. But when the company starts lying, betraying and deceiving, it’s just a matter of a very short time until I’m gone with a vengeance. WoW pushed me to that point a year ago and I’ve deleted all their little coupons and beggings and pleadings ever since. Please do not drive me away from your generally very fine game. I’m only asking once.

Agreed. Since the latest update, I’ve had intermittent serious lag when using skills on my thief toon. The buttons pulse and the toon and mob just stand there, then suddenly one of us is dead. Rarely, it totally crashes the game to the load screen. Lag has not been a problem for me and I have been playing virtually daily since launch. I’m on Tarnished Coast.