Guild Wars 2

Carighan.6758:

There is no bigger changes or rebalancing coming ever. I don’t know why, I suspect they lack both talent and manpower. But fact is, you either enjoy the current (im)balance or you better look elsewhere, this late in the game they won’t do the massive reworks all classes need :S

Indeed.

Right now, the game might as well only have three professions: elementalist, engineer, and maybe revenant. The remaining six don’t seem to follow the game’s role philosophy at all in PvE, with thieves, necromancers, and even guardians being relegated to almost pure DPS roles. In the case of druids and tempests, ANet will actually nerf you for trying to play correctly.

I have no faith whatsoever that they can get all nine professions that actually work. Either they need to do a radical overhaul, ripping out every single existing profession and remaking them from scratch to actually work and make sense with the dynamic roles — and this would probably mean heavily reworking all existing content and probably reworking basic combat mechanics too — or they need to abandon all pretence and just crowbar everything into a the proven designs, however sad, lame, clichéd, and boring that might be.

The first option is basically Guild Wars 3, and probably not the sort of undertaking they want to deal with right now, and the tale of SWG suggests that the second option would not end well.

SloRules.3560:

Sry for bad language and lack of formating, but this was just some basic brainstorming.
Hoppefully i got my idea through, NO ILLUSIONS.

I’d certainly love to see shatters and illusions overhauled to something very different to what we have now, but no illusions at all would destroy the entire concept behind the profession.

Zenith.7301:

Doubt it will matter since we’ll always be forced to take chronomancer if they don’t give the other specs alacrity.

You aren’t wrong, but I’m cautiously hopeful that they’ll be able to safely make the buff available to other professions by the time they announce Hyperborean Toenail.

While I would like to see better damage dealing capabilities, I’m not really too interested in seeing an all-out DPS spec for the mesmer (or any other proferssion) personally, because just using whichever skills contribute the most damage in whatever order does the most damage is a far cry from what the game is supposed to be about. A good GW2 class design should be good in almost any role, not artificially limited to only playing a third of the game. The elementalist and tempest are pretty much the gold standard for this.

Personally, I’d probably go with cantrip as a signature skill type — polymorph type spells are commonplace among mesmers, with one NPC even successfully turning two sylvari into actual humans for a time. Of the existing cantrips in the game, two (mist form and tornado) are pretty clear examples of transformation effects, while cleansing flames, lightning flash, and armour of earth clearly have at least some transformation element to them. I think a shapeshifting-themed spec for mesmer would be interesting, and cantrips seem like a natural choice of skill line to fit with that.

Hammer would be an interesting choice of specialisation weapon — since most of our weapons are ranged, a melee weapon seems like a good choice, and the Juggernaut seems rather fitting for a mercurial shapeshifter archetype.

For the profession mechanic, the best I can think of is having F5 reduce your active illusions to a new profession resource and temporarily change your F1 – F4 to skills that consume the new resource. It’s a bit uninspired, but I think it can at least be made to feel good without too much trouble.

For group support, we could have another interpretation of Echo for the elite: cast Echo and if you use another cantrip within 10 seconds, you leave behind an echo. If another player touches the echo, they can cast the same spell you did by pressing the special action key.

I quite like the idea of using the special action key in class designs for example, you could have a cheap, powerful heal over time that makes boons on you stronger and longer-lasting, and harder to remove, with the downside that it also makes conditions on you stronger, longer-lasting, and harder to remove. You wouldn’t want a player to share that effect with you automatically, but using the special action key gives you a choice in the matter.

This could also be used to e.g., rework sceptre again, and there are plenty of core mesmer traits that would probably benefit from being optional procs using the raid action key.

If I’m running mesmer solo in open world or story instances, I tend to end up with a basic tanky wet noodle build based on sword/shield, greatsword, mantra of recovery, chrono/duelling/inspiration as specialisations, restorative mantras, harmonious mantras, and that covers all of the important things.

This all works well enough in berserker gear — you have a decent base health pool, there’s space on your bar for a stunbreak or two to help avoid being juggled to death, you have a lot of defensive skills on Sword/Shield to hopefully avoid extremely hard-hitting attacks, and mantra of recovery gives you a huge amount of healing per second if you’re not being kept from using it. It’s far from invincible, but you can survive a lot of things using it.

The downside to all this is that you will hit like really overcooked pasta.

Spira.4578:

Too be fair, MO used the manifesto and threw it in our face first, so I guess it would be hypocritical if he would use part of the manifesto to excuse his action, while ignoring another.

To be fair, it wouldn’t have been a manifesto if they’d actually expected you to read it and try to hold them to it.

Morfedel.4165:

Snort. Fantasy? So you DIDN’T accuse him of using emotion rather than logic? I imagined that?

Thanks, but if someone would rather use an invented excuse to dismiss everything I had to say out of hand, there’s no point continuing to argue with them.

Nike.2631:

Pre-order for ex-pac 2 given the sharpest scrutiny with every single bullet point being something that might get ‘suspended indefinitely’? Gonna happen. A lot.

Indeed. I’m pretty sure they’ll have one of three different things on offer as a preorder bonus for the next expansion:

1. Something that makes me tell them in no uncertain terms where they can shove it, simply on general principle.
2. Something that completely fails to make the preorder worth it.
3. Something that does both of the above.

Since certain people seem to not realise it, most of any given player’s support for the game comes from the value they add to it by playing. Over a year, you will easily contribute thousands of pounds’ worth of unpaid work to improving the game experience for other players, easily dwarfing the value of your purchases.

If you want to send a message, leaving the bulk of your contribution to the game intact is not a good way to do it.

As for the main discussion, the reality remains the same as it was twenty pages ago: the prepurchases weren’t mis-sold, but that doesn’t mean that people have no right to complain that the product they received is not as advertised, and people have every right to ask for a partial or full refund, and as has already been pointed out, they shouldn’t be required to close their accounts entirely in order to get that refund.

Razor.9872:

I hope their business model could support that. Do you think they need the sales from ex-pack purchases to fuel the previous development?

That is a legitimate worry.

I think that if it’s a choice between watching the game die and watching the game sail over the line into pure cash-grab player-milking machine territory, I’d rather watch the game die.

And I think that if enough people start regarding the game as a pure cash grab player-milking machine, then it could end up becoming something not unlike a self-fulfilling propecy, with Anet forced to make that same choice. So I think they’re definitely in a place where they need to start worrying about that line, even if they’re not in a position to do exactly what I proposed.

Spira.4578:

They also have 70 devs working on the next expansion. don’t forget that.

Ah, here’s the other thing we appear to disagree on. It is not reasonable to ask them to take from those 70 devs. Either trust in them to make this right, or don’t, but armchair game directing helps nobody.

Don’t ask them to stop developing the next expac. Ask them to consider releasing it free of charge to HoT purchasers. That ensures that it isn’t a cash grab or a milking attempt without any risk of making things even worse further down the line, and it is the accepted game industry protocol for making things right after a serious failure.

Although I guess really they should be doing it without anyone needing to ask so that we don’t end up looking like we’re trying to milk them.

Spira.4578:

So they should offer a refund for that feature (as well as fotm leaderboards, ect) or offer an alternative. It’s how markets work. You can’t sell something and just give up on it without offering the customer some kind of compensation. This is being reasonable.

Yes, yes, they should. That’s what I’ve been saying from the start.

People are so eager to paint everyone who disagrees with them on anything as a white knight who’ll defend ANet to the death even if it means getting covered in kitten, yet I probably agree with you about all of the important points.

And for the record, I’ve just finished uninstalling the game. If it improves, maybe I’ll come back.

Spira.4578:

Lol what? You keep talking about being reasonable, while you’re the only one not being one.
1st of all it was advertised as part of the expansion https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/hot-new-legendary-weapons/

They did not advertise it in a way that suggested that they had 16 legendary weapons all in hand and ready to go. They advertised them as something they were working on. That is the difference. At a later date, they went on to state that they are having difficulties and decided to give up — but even then, that’s still acting in good faith.

Basic decency demands that they apologise, it demands that they provide in-game compensation, it demands that they refund anyone who asks them, and if they even think they can get away with trying to charge HoT purchasers for that new expansion they’re working on, it demands that they kitten right off. And I have said this in one form or another repeatedly in this thread.

But they didn’t act in bad faith. What we have at the moment is just plain kitten, and this stupid argument is just distracting people from getting them to actually do any of the things they ought to be doing right now. As is the armchair developer bullkitten, in fact.

And yes, continuing to sell the expansion pack on the basis of content that they’ve shelved needs to stop as well.

Killdozer.5731:

You are wrong, as are most white knights as they are charged with emotion and not logic. GW2 is not your girlfriend/wife as much as you want it to be, people have a reason to be upset stop trying to tell them otherwise with blatant BS.

That’s interesting, because you’re the one slinging around emotional bullkitten and I’m the one providing some reasoning to go with what I have to day. And if you’d actually read my posts, you’d know that I’m not telling people not to be upset.

As for the rest of the responses, please see my edit.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

To sum up: they advertised A, they did not provide A, and say they refuse to provide A. Therefore they falsely advertised about A.

Wrong. They did not advertise legendary weapons. They advertised that they were making legendary weapons. That means that they were planning to release them at regular intervals. No reasonable person would expect plans to never go wrong.

Feel free to ask them what they’re going to do to make things right, but there are plenty of sticks to beat them with without needing to resort to nonsensical horsecrap.

And more importantly, you get better results when you use real sticks rather than ones made of nonsensical horsecrap.

Wow. There is still back and forth over this. OK, white knight hat on I guess.

There is no false advertising here. People are acting like this is like buying a box of chocolates and then getting home to find that half of them are missing, but that simply does not reflect the reality. No reasonable person would infer from their advertising that the legendary weapons were in-hand waiting to be released, only that they were in the process of making them, and any reasonable person would understand that development efforts can fail. If this is a half-empty box of chocolates, it was displayed open with a stonking great “sold as seen” sign next to it.

Basic honour still dictates that ANet should compensate players in some fashion and be willing to refund people who aren’t happy with whatever compensation is provided, but this is not mis-selling or false advertising or bait-and-switch or whatever. Unless, of course, you believe that the remaining legendary weapons were never in development at all and have proof.

A better analogy is going to a pub or a restaurant and ordering a burger and chips. Most places cook these things to order, they don’t have a load of cooked burgers sitting in a warming tray ready to serve you, nor are they going to have freshly-cooked chips to serve you instantly.

In this case, the burger arrived after 15 minutes, without the chips, and you took two bites out of it and found that it was undercooked. And there’s no sign of anyone for a while, but you manage to flag down a waiter and ask them:

“Excuse me, but where the hell are my chips, and why is my burger raw?”

And the waiter responds that they aren’t making any more chips today — without elaborating on why — but says that they will re-make your burger, and asks you to choose a different side from the menu.

There are plenty of things wrong with what’s going on here, but if you honestly think it’s unfair trading or false advertising then quite frankly, we are not going to agree on anything any time soon.

Going back to the pub analogy, any reputable pub or restaurant would offer a bit more of an explanation for where your chips are — “I’m terribly sorry sir/ma’am, but our fryer’s broken down” or some such — and they’d do more than just apologise, re-make your burger (don’t forget that we’re still waiting for that remade burger) and tell you to pick something else of the menu.

Feel free to complain that ANet haven’t done that (given that they, you know, haven’t), but please don’t be the person who thinks they should respond to problems with their order by decking the waiter and flipping the table over.

Although there is another metaphorical table out there that maybe should have been flipped over at some point.

Major Domo.9250:

I’m thinking the gemstore outfits, skins, etc. are created well in advance, and released periodically as the decision-making suits see fit.

You are probably right. But that doesn’t mean that it looks good when gemstore stuff gets released every two weeks and content that we were supposed to have already still has yet to arrive.

Silverstone.4539:

if that is the case. Why would they promise something they can’t deliver on.

Overconfidence, I guess. Ultimately, it is what it is.

I know, you can’t tell someone how to run their company. And I don’t want to see GW2 die either, but doing this to their paying customers is a sure fire way to drive away any future business and erodes trust horribly.

I’m not saying that it’s OK. I’m saying that it can’t really be helped.

Personally, I think they ought to follow the example set by Square Enix with FFXIV:ARR and Stardock with Elemental: Fallen Enchantress. In both cases, anyone who bought the original flawed product was given a free copy of the follow-up. Of course, the difficulty there is making sure that the money guys are on board with it.

Among other things, anyone accusing them of engaging in a cash grab would end up without a leg to stand on.

And there I was thinking that however bad things might be, at least the doom-sayers from before the expansion released hadn’t stopped by to gloat yet.

Silverstone.4539:

Simply get the people working on the new expiation to finish the old one first. The solution is so crazy simple I am dumbfounded as to why this post was even made by Mike O Brien. They are making themselves look so bad with this post. it’s just craziness. Simply deliver what was promised and what everyone thought that were buying at the time.

“There is a well-known solution to every human problem. Neat, plausible, and wrong.”

The fact that it’s supposedly so simple should have set off alarm bells right from the start. And plenty of people both here and on Reddit have taken the time to explain why that suggestion wouldn’t work.

It’s true that working on a new expansion with the existing one in its current state looks bad, but stopping work on the next expansion won’t help — it would actually result in massive delays to the fixes you want, and at the same time, it would doom the next expansion to be just as much a flop as this one.

A better solution would be to give HoT purchasers a copy of the next expansion for free or at a discount, once that releases (which is, in fact, the accepted protocol in the games industry for this sort of situation, as seen with FFXIV:ARR, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, Act of Aggression, etc., and, going back to the restaurant analogy, not unlike a restaurant offering you free dessert as compensation for screwing up your order).

ZudetGambeous.9573:

FYI since this morning they have removed 4 pages of comments, all of them negative as far as I can tell. If you are wondering why more people aren’t mad about this the answer is they are, and Anet is just banning them.

You are talking kitten, as proven by the 26 pages of mostly-negative feedback that remain uncensored, the fact that multiple people have virtually torn them a new one over this without repercussions, and the fact that ultimately, what you are accusing them of doing doesn’t even make any kittening sense. They would gain absolutely nothing by censoring people merely for saying things that they don’t like, and everybody knows it.

I know I said I felt I’d already said my piece, but I’ve been thinking about this a little more, and I have more to say.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Obviously I go into this knowing that some players will be very upset. That’s why it’s such a tough decision.

Ankdarkwolf, Darkmikau, Ballads, Spira, Caerbannog, Cysgod, you each posted a variant of an accusation I’ve seen many times over the past few months on the forums, something along the lines of, “AN shipped half an expansion with HoT.” I take issue with that. We shipped a new region full of content, a new mastery system, gliding, guild halls, a new profession, nine new elite specializations for existing professions, and more. Then we shipped precursor journeys for existing legendaries, and said, “We’ve been working hard on new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” While I fully get that you’re disappointed today, this is not about us shipping half an expansion pack.

Mo

Quite frankly, I’m inclined to agree with you. For the people complaining that this was “half an expansion” to be right, the net amount of content contributed to the world by Heart of Thorns would need to be positive.

But not only were whole swathes of the game’s content killed off or made irrelevant by the expansion, but now NCSoft are killing off their other (admittedly, themselves troubled) properties so as to conserve resources to bail ANet out of their balls-up. You’d have trouble putting together a positive balance equalling “half an expansion” in content if you included all of the remaining core content as well.

The controversy over this particular change is actually overblown — EXCEPT that it’s symptomatic of everything going wrong with the game right now. The correct analogy to use here is going to a restaurant, ordering toad-in-the-hole, and after three hours of waiting, a waiter comes out and tells us that the kittentails won’t come with umbrellas because the chef lost his arm in the meat grinder. Nobody should really give a crap about the umbrellas, the big worry is how the hell anyone screwed up so badly that someone figuratively lost their figurative arm in a figurative meat grinder. Also, you know, why did we end up waiting three hours for anything resembling any sign of our food?

I’m well aware that software development is hard, and MMO development is even harder — except that it isn’t. To me, or some other layperson? kitten yes, it’s hard. To you? It should be like a kittening walk in the kittening park. Maybe a bit harder than that. But still not especially difficult, given that we gave ANet our money under the assumption that they would be kittening equal to the kittening task. There is only so much that can be excused by the realities of software development.

I’m still willing to believe that you aren’t guilty of any particularly underhanded or shady business practices. But even that is not good enough. As a consumer, I do not expect you to merely refrain from unfair and unethical business practices, I expect you to conduct yourselves so as to be above all sane suspicion. And even in that, you have monumentally failed.

You need to show that you have gotten your kitten together, you need to offer compensation to your players — for the crap that this incident is a symptom of, not just the legendaries themselves — and you need to offer easy refunds to any players who still aren’t satisfied after you’ve done all of this. And you need to specifically reach out via the launcher, in-game messages, and registered e-mail accounts so that those who don’t read the forums or Reddit know that you know you kittened up and want to make it right.

Then, maybe, we might accept that you’re halfway kittening sorry for this whole mess.

PS: You’re welcome to continue work on the next expansion — I’m well aware that the realities of software development mean that those people wouldn’t be useful anywhere else, and while the realities of software development don’t excuse much, your prior balls-up is what it is. Don’t even think of charging HoT purchasers for it when it lands, though.

EDIT: ‘kittentails’. Really not something I’d like to be served in a restaurant, with or without an umbrella.

Kamara.4187:

That’s not what happened. In fact going back even a little further than NGE or the CU, Ralph’s stance concerning the alpha classes altogether was that it would be a detrimental move…Time has proven him correct.

Many also forget that he resigned over the CU.

I’m going by what Raph himself said in part of his post-mortem , which is that they started losing subscribers after they introduced holocrons, and that the reason the holocrons were a problem was because they’d gutted the achievements system that they’d planned to use to determine who became a jedi in order to meet their deadlines. Things like the CU and the NGE were, from what I’ve been told, attempts to reverse that decline.

But this is veering into off-topic territory now. SWG was brought up because someone asked if there were parallels between what happened there and the current GW2 situation.

That said, I think I’ve said everything I need to say on the topic of the thread. TL;DR:

I don’t think this level of incompetence is acceptable at all, I think we are entitled to some form of compensation, and I think refunds should be offered to those who think that whatever compensation we are offered isn’t acceptable, but most importantly, I think ANet needs to get its kitten together. However, I don’t think that we’re being deceived or that there’s any malice going on, and I don’t think it helps anything to try to ‘punish’ ANet over this, especially when it’s only a symptom of the real problem, which is that HoT’s launch was premature and utterly shambolic.

RustyMech.9876:

First few months of that game were the best.

So I’ve heard. Apparently, whole swathes of the game had been gutted in order to meet the ship date. There’s a full post-mortem here , if you’re interested.

The other interesting parallel between SWG’s woes and GW2’s from those articles is the whole thing about how they started asking the wrong questions when running metrics.

Astralporing.1957:

And Legendaries don’t?

When they don’t materialise for six months on end, they very definitely don’t.

Nandor The Stampede.1593:

Wasnt this similiar to the bullcrap that ended up killing swtor and swg?

Raph Koster (the lead on that game) posted a fair bit of commentary on what happened to SWG.

The TL;DR on why SWG failed is that Raph and his team were overambitious and the higher-ups at SoE failed to rein him back in.

The TL;DR on what actually happened is that the game was pretty badly hurt by a premature release, and updates intended to reverse that decline culminated in the NGE, which ‘killed’ the game by destroying much of what distinguished it gameplay-wise from other MMOs. It was ultimately shut down a few years later.

There might be a few parallels.

ODB.6891:

What part of it means they didn’t? The burden of proof is not on the customers at this point…due to their sketchy track record so far.

In judging incompetence vs. malice, the burden of proof is always on whoever alleges malice. This stems partly from Hanlon’s Razor, and also from the general principle that you don’t accuse people of a crime without proof.

It’s obvious that they’re incompetent. They do need to compensate players for this — it was, after all, their balls-up — and offer refunds to those who don’t like whatever compensation they offer.

But however kittened off you are that they screwed up, that does not mean you’re justified in accusing them of lying or deceiving you.

Dinks.2478:

Anet apologists will always find some way to defend the actions of anet. Honestly I’m personally just waiting for a response from Mike O’Brien that isn’t just outright insulting people in this thread before I make my decision to leave or not.

ANet haters will always find some way to portray the claims of anyone they disagree with as ANet apologism.

minbariguy.7504:

Sure, they are allocating resources towards the next expansion instead of allocating them to finish the expansion you’ve already paid for, but that decision likely comes from higher up the executive chain.

I can’t say I’m happy that they’re working on the next expansion when the previous one still needs tonnes of work, but I’m fairly sure those 70 people were allocated ages ago, so either they’re left as they are or they get laid off.

But still, it’s not like they’re breaking any laws by proving incompetent to deliver on their promises — as long as some sort of compensation is offered. And remember that it’s not compensation for the legendary weapons themselves, since that’s just symptomatic of the expansion being released prematurely, in an utterly shambolic state.

ODB.6891:

Your brown nosing knows no end apparently. You aren’t getting a cookie for sucking up. You can bury your head in the sand or bend over…whatever.

Well, this is literally true, in that, since my “brown-nosing” does not exist, it cannot possibly know an end.

I won’t. You can try to ignore their track record up to this point…I won’t. There is no lack of publicly available information about their lack of trustworthiness…especially when it comes to all things HoT so far. The fact that they had to be pressured into refunds for hot pre-orders.

Incompetence. No evidence of malice outside of your imagination.

The fact that the primary advertisements for HoT were for content that they have decided to just cancel…6 months after selling us the product.

This is actually factually incorrect. There was a blog post to the effect that they had 16 legendaries planned, it was never part of their “primary advertisements”.

But whatever, it was promised, and now they’ve determined that they’re no longer capable of delivering it.

The fact that they have said absolutely nothing about refunds or any form of compensation. These are adult issues. These are business issues. These are legal issues. These are respect for their customers issues. If you can’t understand that, then you need to stop posting.

And what part of that means that they actively tried to deceive you, as opposed to just screwing up?

This type of concern isn’t isolated to just one industry. If I ran any type of business, and advertised a product indicating specific things would be included. You came into my store, read the advertisement, and purchased based on said advertisement. Then you went home and found out said advertised items were not in the box. You contacted me and I simply told you that I decided not to include them for whatever (irrelevant to you) excuses…and just stood there smiling at you…with no offer for compensation or refund…would you feel you had been treated with respect as a paying customer? We all know the answer is no…therefore you are absolutely full of it.

That is not analogous to what is happening. Therefore, you are absolutely full of it.

This was a conclusion we were already coming to on our own…many forum posts about this already. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this was anything other than yet another PR recovery move.

What else would it be?

Yes, this was dirty and disreputable. You think they just realized this was a problem yesterday? You think they weren’t having these issues with the legendary weapon process prior to releasing HoT?

They had the first few in hand at that time, so no, I don’t think they were having the same problems at that time.

You don’t remember the outcry on the forums due to lack of information on what would actually be included in HoT for the pre-order purchase price?

I remember that outcry. But the people who didn’t feel they had enough information to decide whether or not to pre-purchase presumably opted not to pre-purchase. It’s pretty difficult to argue that they were deceived.

As far as requesting a refund from our banks…what bank is going to refund an e-purchase from 6 months ago? Why should we even have to go that route to dispute it from our bank. You don’t speak for ANET or our banking institutions. If ANET is trustworthy…they would be offering us the refund…just like any other reputable company with a product recall.

You’re proposing to take them to court, that is why I am telling you to contact them first via customer support, and then attempt a chargeback, because a court will expect you to try and resolve the matter amicably first.

Raxzor.5946:

I am actually disturbed that some people are giving Anet a pass on this. They have actually broken consumer laws in the EU and lied to you, and basically some are saying that’s ok, I still love you!

Nobody is giving them a free pass except in your own head. I absolutely believe that they should compensate existing players for this and offer refunds to anyone who wants them.

But the claims that they’re lying, cheating, disrespecting their customers, or even close to the worst in the industry are bullkitten.

Amurond.4590:

I’d be interested to see the numbers/statistics behind people who participate in raids vs people who own legendaries. Some justification I have seen is that only a small percentage of players own legendaries. I’d like to see how it stacks up the percentage playing the raids.

Raids benefit more than just the people who run them.

ODB.6891:

Not sure why your nose is so brown about this, but yeah….if enough of their customers are getting refunds…that is a big scary thing to their apparently non existent bottom line.

Disagreeing with you is not the same thing as brown-nosing.

You think ANet are a bunch of lying cheats, I think they’re a bunch of incompetent hacks. You want to see the game crash and burn so that you can gloat and make people miserable, I want to see ANet get their kitten together so that I might one day have a good game to come back to.

If people get refunds, so what? It doesn’t affect my bottom line, and if the game crashes and burns, I have plenty of other games to play. It does, however, mean fewer people kittening on the forums and making everyone else miserable, so it’s actually a win on that front.

skullfaerie.7203:

I’d be very interested to hear more about this. My intuition is the same as your friends, but it’s not an area I know much about either. People who are looking into it- keep us posted

If you want a refund, just ask for a refund. If you don’t get one, ask your bank for a chargeback. Talking about court cases at this point is pointless, unless you think you could get more than a refund out of a court, which would never happen.

ODB.6891:

Reasonable discretion is not going to save them from the law…when the issue is literally selling a product…advertising what is in the box….and then you buy it/take it home/open it…and what you advertised is not in the box.

At best, you’ll get a refund. Wow, big scary thing that ANet needs to be ‘saved’ from there.

ODB.6891:

Even if they some how manage to avoid legal consequences, for the dirtiest and most disreputable business practices I have ever seen in the gaming industry.

If you think they’re shady kittens and want to boycott them? Whatever. But this? “dirtiest and most disreputable business practices… in the gaming industry.”?

You are absolutely full of it.

ANet ballsed up. Everyone knows it. They admit it. There is no malice here, and nothing to even suggest any.

They never said that you can’t get your money back, and even if they did, any bank would happily process a chargeback for you.

Torolan.5816:

I am no lawyer, but at least here to have the secretary(a law trained professional, not a typist) of a judge to just look at your case and see if it is court worthy or not takes more than a worth of a fraction of 50 or 100 bucks.

If someone really wants to take ANet to court for a refund, there are specialist courts that can handle it. Don’t get why they wouldn’t just cry to their bank and get a chargeback done though.

Spira.4578:

evilunderling.9265:

but the reality is that the live team’s work would end up even further behind due to having to spend time bringing the expansion guys properly up to speed on what they’re doing

Same goes for the legendary weapon team… It doesn’t matter where they pull the devs from.

It’s fewer people, and they’re already on the live team, so they’re a lot closer to being up to speed. It would take maybe a month to break even — which is actually halfway useful — instead of the best part of a year.

Zaseka.7182:

Mike says it’s a choice between content and legendaries. How about it’s a choice of not starting to work on a new expansion before hot is finished, balanced, and fixed. Here is a thought, maybe have the 70 people that are working on the new expansion help with fixing the old one, then they can move on.

That might make you feel better, but it’s a really bad idea. The expansion teams were set up months ago. Pulling them off the expansion in order to help with the current game sounds like a good idea, but the reality is that the live team’s work would end up even further behind due to having to spend time bringing the expansion guys properly up to speed on what they’re doing. It would take months to realise any benefit.

It’s perfectly understandable to be annoyed that they’re working on another expansion before getting the last one into a decent state, but there’s nothing that can be done about that now, unless you’re proposing to subject dozens of people to unemployment over a balls-up they had basically no part in.

There will always be nutters out there who think every last thing you do is a flagrant attempt to milk consumers for as much money as possible while giving them as little as possible in return. And you’ve just spent the last six months handing them a metric kittenton of ammunition, haven’t you? Yeah… oops.

The Heart of Thorns release and its follow-up patches have been utterly shambolic. Yes, you had money siphoned off to support Wildstar, yes, some strategic genius decided that you needed to launch prematurely in order to go head-to-head with Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3 (I’m sure this sounded like a great idea at the time, although I have suspicions about what that time was), yadda yadda. Ultimately, there is no excuse for failing to deliver on what you promised (well, maybe if there was some force majeure to deal with, but the nutters probably wouldn’t accept even that).

On the other hand, whatever the reasons behind this shambles, it is what it is. I’m willing to believe that you realise that the state of the game is an absolute disgrace, I don’t have any desire to start scrutinising everything you do in order to make you look bad, I’m not about to play armchair game director, and I know that taking much input from any of the armchair game directors in this thread would make things orders of magnitude worse.

Although I guess you could stop with the glider skins and outfits for a bit. Even if I don’t think there’d be any practical benefit to redirecting those resources elsewhere, at least nobody would be able to claim that you’re just milking people.

The central problem with the expansion really isn’t anything to do with casuals vs. hardcores. Nor is there a lack of content — by my reckoning, the Heavensward expansion for FFXIV was smaller, yet it was received better by players and I’ve found it to be better overall.

Ultimately, the problem is that there is basically only one kind of content available. Between VB, AB, and Spirit Vale, we got something like nine open-world casual raids and one hardcore instanced raid. Plus Tangled Depths, which is a bunch more raids, and Dragon’s Stand, which is a bunch more raids.

That is actually a pretty decent amount of content (what other game releases the equivalent of twenty raid wings at once?), but no matter how casual you are, what are you supposed to do if you’re not in the mood for raids? Or if you just don’t like raids? You’ll find very few significant options that haven’t been around for years already.

randomly.6395:

Being encouraged to jump into damage pools and not dodge damage in order to ensure CA is up when it’s needed is reasonable, though?

I didn’t say it was, but that can be fixed separately without rewarding bad play.

A much better system would be to eliminate all AF generation on healing (since you’re going to heal when needed anyway), and add a constant baseline regeneration to compensate.

Dom.2310:

Insert another angry reply here. I know it’s not the point but considering I tend to let troll unguent pulse up the astral force and oftentimes I’m at the back deliberately avoiding damage, making it so it doesn’t work on healing ourselves is ridiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiculous.

• It’s perfectly reasonable not to encourage or reward blatant overhealing.
• It’s perfectly reasonable to punish less-blatant overhealing — e.g., topping people off who are damaged, but not actually at risk, when you could be DPSing.
• It’s perfectly reasonable to not want people to engage in boring pointless busywork for a gameplay advantage.

NemesiS.6749:

anyone that have been around since GW2 release and coming to ranger forums know that no dev play ranger. They all played warriors back in the glory days, they are probably playing now dragon kittens since they are OP as hell and no nerf for them. But anyway if you have been coming for some time you know the only dev that played ranger and came to the forums got fired long ago lol so…

Not strictly a dev, but I’m fairly sure Gaile Grey mains ranger.

Hammerguard.9834:

Why are people literally asking Anet to make a boring and lazy CAF?

As the existing CAF is boring, lazy, and pointlessly annoying, “boring and lazy” is a pretty massive improvement.

I’m very much in favour of a radical overhaul of the entire thing. Before HoT, if I wanted to heal, I’d just quit the game and fire up something else, and that state of affairs hasn’t changed in the slightest.

In fact, I’m pretty sure my BWE3 feedback included the argument that the druid’s design at that time was a showstopper-level flaw with the whole expansion.

During the BWE, I remember specifically mentioning that allowing the druid to charge AF by overhealing was a terrible idea — and I stand by that statement. Overhealing is bad play, and if it’s blatant enough that even the game could spot it, it should not be rewarded.

IIRC, however, my proposal was for the rate of AF generation to be increased, and for healing to have no effect on it at all, so as to specifically reward playing a healer correctly — i.e., minimising the amount of time and effort spent on healing.

For this reason, I also supported having druid heals not be particularly healing power dependent.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

D/D ele? The build that can scrap it up because of eles built-in sustain and because celestial actually works on ele?
Reaper? The build that has a tanking ability (death shroud) built-in to the spec?
Thief? The class that has several times as much stealth access, a new spec built around extreme dodges, and dramatically more engage/disengage mobility than mesmer?

You were the person who said that heavy armour was needed to melee, not me.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Lastly, your comparison of ranged to melee weapons is flawed at its root. Yes, of our four primary weapons, 3 are technically ranged (my objections aside).

But we’re not talking about primary weapons. We’re talking about mainhand weapons.

You’re responding to a tangent right now, not to the main thread. When considering what weapon the mesmer should be given next, it doesn’t make sense to ignore half the primary weapons that the mesmer already has. On the other hand, it does make sense to ignore the ‘flaws’ with those weapons, because papering over base class flaws is not the point of elite specialisations.

Unless a future spec locks out off-hand sword (and possibly torch as well), or we get it replaced with off-hand dagger, we aren’t eligible for any more main-hand weapons besides the axe and the mace. So we’re going to have to start getting more two-handers sooner or later.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Umm I’m pretty sure Sword MH has 2 melee attacks….

We were talking about greatsword and scepter.

Neither weapon has even one skill that’s actually a melee attack, even if they can be more useful up-close.

As for whether we’re a melee class or not, there are far squishier things than mesmer out there that almost specialise in mixing it up in melee.

Again, longbow would just be yet another ranged weapon. We’re not exactly hurting for those, but we do only have two melee weapons, and one of those is spear.

I think we really need either axes or hammers next elite specialisation. Longbow might fit necromancer quite well, now that they’re a bit more balanced between range and melee.

At some point, though, we will be getting our ‘nutcracker’ elite spec, and I could see both rifles and longbows fitting well with that. I don’t think it should be the very next thing on the list, though.

As I understand it, the idea is that it looks weird if you wield a ‘light’ weapon (dagger, pistol) as a main-hand and a ‘heavy’ weapon (sword, axe, mace) as an off-hand. As such, there’s an unwritten rule that every profession is either a ‘heavy weapon profession’ (with access to sword, axe, and mace off-hand) or a ‘light weapon profession’ (with access to dagger and pistol main-hand).

As for our next elite specialisation weapon, I think axes (or possibly hammers) would ultimately fit our gameplay needs better than pistols or rifles (even if the pistols and rifles might seem cooler). The vast majority of our weapons currently are ranged, and while ranged hammers and ranged greatswords are a thing and don’t come across as stupid, I think a primarily-melee rifle is pushing it.

But really, I kind of want to see new weapon types drop as well, and if that happens, we’ll presumably get glaives as a core weapon.

There is a bug that causes people to sometimes not receive rewards for map completion. It’s known, and will be fixed Soon™.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3qtuk7/any_word_on_glitched_map_completion_rewards/

Test.8734:

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

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

Ok I Did It.2854:

How can you properly review a game for the masses that you have only looked at for 30 days, and given there is only 720 hours in 30 days, it further adds to the mystery, im guessing being AFK in LA for a month cannot really constitute playing.

Even if he had only started playing GW2 a month ago, that would easily give him enough playtime to have useful comments to make about the game. But he’s saying that he’s spent the equivalent of a whole month of his life in-game, not that he has only been playing for a month.

Rienrodrys.7493:

Don’t make us laugh, a review from a guy who wrote:
" Aging engine has surprisingly poor performance"
AGING?

The GW2 engine is about as old as World of Warcraft’s. It’s seen development since then, but so has WoW’s, and WoW’s might even have seen more. And it’s not particularly toaster-friendly, especially not in Verdant Brink.

“Group-focused content in an anti-social game.”
ANTI Social Game ?

This guy’s main MMO is FFXI, which has forced interdependency from pretty much the word ‘go’, as well as a ridiculously deep combo system.

“I have an 80 Engineer and 80 Revenant. I’ve spent plenty time in this game.”
Wow 1 class in 3 years before HOT.
Rofl.

Very few people spend several hundred hours playing MMOs that they don’t like.