Guild Wars 2

I honestly don’t think they care. They made enough money to fund their next 2 years or so. At this point they just want to see how hard they can push.

Well played John. However, you pushed to hard for me. You did your job well but this next month will tell if you really know your stuff or whether you just mortgaged the future for a sharp temporary gain.

If you want a smile on your face, go look up the money spent by this account. That is your doing, but your economy has become too rich for even me.

In a way I suppose I owe you a thank you. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever stop spending but HoT cured me of that. I have absolutely no desire to give you any more money. Maybe that was your plan all along.

So where are we at on this Anet? I, too, appear not to be getting mastery points for personal story.

No, I would not preorder the next expansion given the current emphasis on gem→gold and group based meta events.

Samhayn.2385:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Raids should only have one mode, the hardest possible mode available. If you want easier content, dungeons and fractals are still available to play. Raids are not designed to be inclusive, they are designed to push players to get better. You say you’re a casual and a good player, so if you get with a good group you should be able to beat it. You may fail many times, but when you beat it that will be an incredibly satisfying moment—Those moments are what raids are all about; the catharsis from defeating a seemingly insurmountable foe is incredible. You, too, can enjoy these bosses if you’re willing to put forth the effort and join a group to overcome it.

If they stick with this then they need to sell the raids in the gem store and use the money from that to develop the next raid. That way 99% of players aren’t paying for stuff they aren’t going to be able to do.

I would buy them so I could do them with my guild. I even do raids and other hard contentment I just dislike the attitude that raiding seems to bring out in people.

Scaling content and rewards is not a bad idea and helps people see the content that they paid for.

This is an interesting idea, they do it with sPVP servers and Living Story, why not raids?
They do need to monetize raids but I doubt it will be something so direct. I’d bet on an AR mechanic that draws gold through the existing economy.

Notsoperky.2348:

They missed a trick with raids- firstly, adding another timer to DPS check isn’t good design if you’re trying to move away from a zerk meta.

The real trick they missed was making 3 or 4 difficulty settings for each raid, with rewards scaling appropriately, so that everyone has a chance of learning the gimmicks and then moving up the difficulty scale and earning better/more rewards.

I completely agree with this. Anet is new to raid design though. It’s quality work as is but it is unnecessarily exclusive. If you go back and look at some of the history of raid designs by other companies it’s easy to see the evolution of thinking that Anet must eventually reach. To be honest, I think they probably had all the work they could handle just nailing this first pass and apart from the missed opportunity, which they’ll grab when they feel comfortable, they have done a good job with it.

OP – I think what you are feeling is valid. GW2 has indeed changed directions. It was what the vocal population wanted and, most likely, what Anet themselves wanted. Is it hard to imagine the developers being bored with their own game?

Unfortunately, it isn’t what you wanted. That doesn’t make it wrong does it? Surely you can see the game needs Hearts and World bosses as well as Raids and Group Based Meta Events? Is it less for providing content you don’t feel comfortable playing?

I can tell you loved the game as it was. I encourage you to vote with your wallet, if that is what you wish to do, but it seems unnecessary. Despite the obvious changes to content presentation, for now, I do not believe GW2 will abandon its core mechanics. There will be more content, and I bet some of it will even have you doing a 180 on your current post.

Some elitist posters can be harsh but their message is valid just the same. Lots of people wanted raids, and we will vote with our wallets too.

Given the customer segment this item currently targets I am really surprised Anet has not given any indication which patch this will be fixed in. If I were a Producer at Anet I’d be locking down a programmer to get this fix in the pipeline and communicate a fix is coming.

I’m sure they have hundreds of bugs to fix. They can’t possibly comment on the state of each and every one of them but the cost of this item, paid in real money to Anet, warrants special consideration.

Way to expensive of an item to let this thread die. I have removed my Nightfury for the time being since losing the effect was frustrating.

What do we do with defective digital items? This thing definitely cost real money for me and in the real world I’d just return it. I’m not whining, it seems a genuine issue when we directly or indirectly buy virtual items with cash and they don’t work as intended.

OP – I think your opinion is valid. They took what was largely a solo part of the game and made it group based. I’ve enjoyed plenty of Saturday afternoons doing SW events but hate the rigidness of this expansion. I often feel helpless to progress in HoT maps, which was not the case before.

I genuinely appreciated the flexibility of the old design model. The expansion changed more than the difficulty curve, it changed the way we play and feel successful in the game.

I’m sure they have their reasons for not implementing this but in my opinion this is a perfect example of a developer being stubborn for no other reason than just because.

Whatever design goal they are married to here is nullified by the fact that players will hold down the control key, even if it physically hurts us. Since we will keep the nameplates up, one way or another, good developers will recognize when bad decisions are hurting the game and make appropriate changes.