Guild Wars 2

-Turned 28 Two weeks ago,
- Born, raised and work in London, England.
- I’m a guy
- Fav colour is light-brown.
- I’ve never had a proper “hangover”. After a heavy night of drinking, I rarely wake up with a headache.
- I have a HUGE sweet-tooth. I crave sugar, but I’m trying to cut down.
- Work as an animator, and illustrator (- also do a bit of video editing at my job too)
- I do digital animation and illustration and have some experience in 3D animation
- I used to be a QA Tester for a few companies (Sega and Lionhead)
- One of 3 First-Generation British Born in our immediate family.
- In my lifetime, I’ve met: Vanilla Ice, Tinie Tempah (<-brits will know this dude), Peter Molyneux, Ken Loach, Benicio Del Toro, Danny Boyle and a few more I can’t recall right now. :P
- I have 3 GW2 accounts
- I started playing GW2 casually, and slowly slipped into playing the TP market
- I went to the same University as the Youtube Animator “Harry Partridge”, and was in the same class as the animator who did the “Maker vs Marker” animations on youtube.

I’ll leave it at that – but it’s great to see more to you guys than just a username.

emikochan.8504:

Adding more textures would also require an engine change.

Can’t tell if serious or…

Veplerion.3921:

-snip-

It’s not that simple.

From Shaman_Crinitus on reddit
Running on all fours: Footprints are backwards at 45 degree angles.
Running on two legs: Footprints are fully backwards.
Walking forward: Footprints are sideways.
Walking backwards: Footprints are correctly oriented. Walking backward is the same speed regardless of toggling walk/run.

No matter what happens, the footprints will be wrong in some form.

Hmm, I ponder:

It’ll take a lot more time to fix the rig to have the correct orientation, which I totally get, (because looking back on a rig isn’t fun when there’s a problem) but still you could possibly circumvent that by making separate textures for each “character state”.
Because they’re relatively small, this won’t impact performance.
And well, there should be basic Texture offset options available, i’d hope. So setting something like the “rotation offset” on the texture on the “2 legs standing stance” or “Idle stance”, to work differently from the “walking on all 4 stance”

This is very messy, but it’ll fix it until you can get someone to figure out the orientation faults in the Charr rigs.

I agree with Leo G.
Pretty much had the same situation with ascended gear. They still haven’t got the ability to gain it “across the world” and it’s locked off to select things like Laurels, or very high crafting levels, and still fractals.

I’d recommend getting someone to sketch up a rough Idea of the composition, or if you can yourself, dabble in Photoshop and see how it’s all going to fit, because it’s a little difficult to see what would go where, and how, and at what size.

I’m wondering how well the painterly effect will come off through tattoo.

E-sports, ooooh! Excitement, Ahhhh! /sarc

In all honesty, I think its 2 things:
1. To push the Esports thing further – lord knows why.
2. A lack of workforce (or perhaps just general “too much work”) to split the balance up between PvP and PvE.

So…~shrug~

Sweet Baby Jesus. This UI redesign is amazing. The only thing I disliked was the main web-page. Top navigation + big picture of something GW2 related, seems to be a very common thing in web design for MMOs. I’d love if this was different.

Anyhow, again, amazing job. It’s stunning that you took your time to do this. I hope that the team at Anet take a cold hard look at this and use some, if not all these parts to improve the UX. (For all the UI/UX changes they’ve made, it’s always been minor. They need to drastically change it up)

Gaile Gray.6029:

I totally understand the skepticism that you’re expressing. It has been a long time. But I know and trust the team, and I’ve heard enough details of the plans to give me confidence that progress and improvements are actively being made.

And thanks, from me to you, for not being nasty about it, or throwing a golem-sized boulder in my direction. I know that what I posted isn’t the substantive information you’d like to have. I can say that from all I hear it shouldn’t betoo long before there is some info we can share. I’m not saying “this week” but I’m definitely not pointing at Q2 2015!

My fear is more evenly placed on how it’s going to be changed, rather than when.

Really, I wouldn’t be surprised if traits turned into a “We fixed traits, and made them more accessible… but we’re leaving traits character bound, and now you can only gain 5 traits once-per-day-per-character. have fun!”

This is obviously an extreme, but I mean, things like this are already in game now…and they’ve put me off from staying in game for too long, if at all.
Good Luck Anet.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Granted. But I got the impression, once you’ve learned the traits, you can then experiment and build as you please. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I heard nothing about gaining them, but how to build and experiment on said build.

Don’t get me wrong. I despise the new trait and leveling system too. But the inability to respec and try new builds, for free, isn’t the issue.

I believe this: "We want it to be much easier to experiment with and learn new builds as you explore the world of Tyria.” is what was referenced.

Not the actual, and abysmal, leveling system.

You’re right in that the ability to respec often isn’t a problem – I love that part. It’s getting to that point where respeccing is useful is the problem. ie: Having enough traits to respec meaningfully.
It’s easy enough to say, “once you’ve learnt the traits, it’s a walk in the park”, but then that’s omitting a major point of how you gain the traits.

It’s like saying:
“Making a legendary is really easy, once you have all the mats”

When we all know it takes quite a bit of time (and sometimes luck) to get the materials together to forge it. The act of forging is just button presses, after all.

So yeah…I agree with what you said there – and I assume you think other people are raging about the trait’s being able to be used on the fly? They’re not, from what I can see

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Tachenon.5270:

And some of our peers wonder why the developers say one thing then deliver the opposite. Prime example: trait system redesign, which, so they said, would make it easier to experiment with and learn new builds.

“We want it to be much easier to experiment with and learn new builds as you explore the world of Tyria.”

Source:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more

What are you talking about? I can redo and redesign my traits as many ways as I like for free now. This allows me to experiment and try many builds . . . again for free.

How exactly is that in opposition to what was said earlier?

Try playing with a new character/new class etc.

Unfortunately, I feel this is just the hype train being refueled again.

I noticed the same thing when they did a talk at Eurogamer Expo 2013. There was hype about saying what they had planned for the future, and it was pretty…well… bland. Just talked about Caithe coming back and continuing with the LS.

But I could be wrong. I’m actually hoping they prove me wrong too.

SkyShroud.2865:

— snip —

If you have played many f2p MMORPGs, you will then understand what it really means by grindy. Gw2 is nothing in comparison.

I have tried many F2P, B2P and P2P. Though to say gw2 is not the worst, shouldn’t dismiss there are parts of the game you can label as “grindy”.
As I said – “There’s enough to establish a lot of parts of the game as grindy”

SkyShroud.2865:

How important is RNG in this game?
Not important, there is no such thing as “unique” or super powerful rare drops. All gears and items are obtainable in several ways and gears are relatively easy to obtain.

How grindy is it to reach level cap?
You don’t grind, you do quests which is indicated as “Hearts” on the map. You also explore to gain experience. Yo also do personal story to get more experience. You can also do dungeons to get more experience but nowadays people kick you if you not level 80. You will get to level 80 within a few days if you plays a lot of within a week if you play regularly for couple of hours per day.

What is the wow factor of this game?
Not grindy, buy to play, constant updates.

How hard is it to get OP gear in this game?
As mentioned before, there is no OP gears, the highest tier gears are relatively easy to obtain either through time or golds or farm.

How Pay2win is this game?
Little to none. You can buy gems and convert them to gold to obtain highest tier gears but it doesn’t matter much. Those gears doesn’t give you imbal advantage.

What are the bad things about this game?
If you come from a grindy open-world PvP type of game with many customizations on equipments and lots of grinding but you love them, then this game will get boring for you, either because it is too easy or too casual.

Does this game give a real reason to keep playing even after I reach cap?
Personally, I do achievements, some pvp and some WvW. It is pretty much a open-ended game with no directions. The buy to play is really a plus factor that keeps me playing since there isn’t any other b2p game that interest me yet.

Don’t know any other questions but you get the idea.
Is a casual game, if you tired of the grindy and hardcore play style of those games you played, maybe this is a good change of pace.

Good, but remove all parts where you refer to the game as not “grindy” – that’s the only fault. There is enough to establish a lot of parts of the game as “grindy”.

PS: Best or “OP” Gear are Legendaries, correct?
And you have to Grind dem mats, and RNG dem pre-cursors to get to that.

Kestrell.6952:

…snip…

Why, did they think, for one SECOND, that this was going to be well received by the players? New players are going to have their kitten handed to them over and over until they throw up their hands and quit. I really and truly love this game, my old computer runs it pretty well and the graphics look great. I spend real money on this game. And I’m quitting because this is unacceptable and their complete radio silence is most likely proof positive that this is here to stay. This game is not the game that I bought. Sorry to be so overdramatic, but I’m really let down because of this. Back to Tera, Rift or WoW I guess.

Basically, lack of foresight.
(I’d personally pin that on bad management. Whether that be on the devs side or publisher side is not for me to say, but its definitey someone who doesn’t really play they game or has opted to look over shoulders of playtesters while being flicking through metrics – ps. Anet, if you want us to stop poking at the metrics vs feedback issue, stop highlighting metrics as your go to source for changes)

Even if we go back to the very start, the lack of foresight was strong.
- Throwing in ascended gear and worrying about the fallout later.
- implement fractals with everyone on individual levels (while talking about avoiding segregation)
- standing firm against lfg tool (when a lot of players wanted one) until a third party version got popular
- SSC island used for one major event then pretty much left with nout to do afterwards

Etc etc.

I guess all i can say for now is, merry xmas, and i hope any newbies getting this game for xmas aren’t instantly disappointed.

drowze.3709:

… It can’t be working as intended.

You never know…companies do the darndest things.

Oh, I’m sure He died…..

…..From sheer embarrassment that he was being injured by leafy-head and basic cannon fire.

Healix.5819:

Not sure if… proving why NPE…

If there was Keyboard Hero, surely it would use more than a few buttons. You only have the 1 hand to press the guitar strings.

When playing bell choir, you want to point your camera so that you have a top down view of the notes. For keybinds, you want the default 1-0 keys and have both hands on the keyboard. As the notes pass the line, press the key. Keep trying.

Is the bell choir the same as it’s always been?

If so, the only issue I saw with it was that it was embedded in the 3d space of the world and not just added some form of UI, (panel on side of screen scrolling down) or at least raise the line of contact (the line when you’d hit the note) to be well in sight/above your character so you don’t have to do camera stuff like look straight down.

Correct me if I’m wrong though.

My only hope is that in January 2015, an expansion is announced, and there are plans to have a massive, massive overhaul of loot, dungeon revamps, trait fixes, new skills etc. as a lead-in patch for the core game as well as the expansion.

That’s a very lofty hope, though, for Anet. For another MMO, i’d probably be like “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll fix the big things come an expansion” but this game…I’m not too sure

“Let’s make this happen! Folks, go on Twitter, facebook or whatever and get attention to this thread. Anet themselves have “told” us that nothing changes unless enough noise is made. We want this to change, right? Let’s start making some noise.”

+1

Surely, this should be directed here:

MassiveTraitThreadThatRarelyGetsResponsesFromDevs

Really now….
Over 3.3k Posts and still we’re relatively in the same place we were at the start?

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Well, given that we are headed into the holiday section of game updates I think it will be a safe assumption that we won’t see even a menial change to the trait system (even for QoL reasons) until AFTER the living story resumes.

So, maybe sometime in February then? Maybe? Anet? Anything? Is there literally ANYthing in the queue for Traits?

Like I’ve stated: at the very LEAST i’d like to see some acknowledgement that they understand the trait system is broken and they’re looking into it, talking about it, discussing it, whatever.

Preferably in a blog post because it feels a little more “official” than just throwing a post on the forums that only forum-members can see.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I hope at the least this is fixed by the 1-year mark. Considering there are a lot of players who are unhappy and haven’t played as much since it was introduced, it’d be the perfect time to fix it. And please, let it be either you switch it to where only the GM traits need unlocking, or do it like many have asked, to where you have to do things related to the actual trait.

Don’t think it will be. Look how long it took them to get an LFG Tool added, or look at the now defunct dungeon improvements – how long it took them to start and the fact they hadn’t event scratched the surface before giving up, look at how long it took to even open up the traits for easy experimentation (resetting/unlocking without trainer) until they decided to just wreck that idea with what they have now.

Expect that in 2 years, mate.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Traits. Trait system changes and improvements. Let’s please keep this topic on its tracks as I frankly don’t want there to be any excuse for it to be closed.

Please keep the banter to what changes you might want to see to the trait system to improve it from its current version.

Also, for the devs that might be looking here (unless all you are doing is sending Gaile in here periodically):

Have any of the suggestions in the last 5 pages been seriously considered or a variation there of? Have any been tested? Was it a positive or negative outcome if so? Can we PLEASE get some feedback along those lines already?!

Unfortunately, If they close it, they close it, and it can be done using any excuse.
(Recalling back to the time they decided to close/delete a thread that was on topic and had red posts in it)
The problem is with little feedback of what’s been noted, there same ideas just pool around again, time after time.

After seeing that SWTOR was cutting the costs out of spec-ing up/upgrading skills, I would say GW2 should (at least as a temporary measure) lower the cost of currency to purchase a select number of skills. (that way, they can still control and maintain what skills get out easily but doesn’t break too much of what they may change in the future)

They do have to throw us a bone at some point, to at least let people know that they’re listening and they’re going to change something temporarily to insure they work on a better plan for the trait system.

At the very least, I’d love to see a blog post about them responding to the trait changes, and what their metrics have shown them.
Apparently, simple acknowledgement that the system is borked, is way too much to ask.

tolunart.2095:

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Despite the fact that the players posting here have generally been against the idea, this post from Gaile shows us that this is a done deal. Anet doing stuff that players clearly don’t want, yet again. Business as usual.

Anet is not going to (and should not) change their plans at a moment’s notice just because a few people complain about it. The program was “a done deal” before it was even announced, Anet does not need players’ permission to set policy or make changes to the forums.

“If we’re wrong: kitten IT!….Caution to the wind!”

Sounds like a solid structure to work from.

Tachenon.5270:

petespri.6548:

The take-away that I’m getting is:

“We don’t have time to listen to the community, so maybe if we can get someone to do it for free it will keep people happy, even though the volunteer won’t be able to communicate anything official to the community”.

That’s pretty much it. This thread is pointless, because it doesn’t matter what we think about this program, or what a bad idea it is, they’ve already decided they’re going to do it or they wouldn’t have mentioned it (see: policy), and all that’s left for us to do is tolerate yet another silly, pointless mess they’re hellbent on making, or finally just give up on anet and move along.

True.

Regardless of “Look we changed this – We’re Listening!!” they won’t go so far as to scrap an idea at least for the meantime while they work out the short-sightedness of the idea, because there are some grey areas, for sure.
This is the one thing I wish Anet did more often; stepping back, assessing the situation, being able to say “This isn’t going to work” and starting over before they’d already gotten into the full swing of it.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Swagger.1459:

this program is only going to work if you do the following…

1. start being transparent.
2. open a public testing realm.
3. actually start pumping out aaa quality content, updates, fixes, changes… on a regular basis.

anything short of the above three will be seen as another stalling tactic (cdi) while the game remains substantial development starved and we are constantly given the “umm, we can’t talk about it again”.

1. Up to personal interpretation.
2. Highly debatable benefit, keeping the costs in mind.
3. Up to personal interpretation.

What you’re asking for sounds good on paper but is not achievable.

1 – Achievable by having a roadmap like many, many other game devs working on MMOs.

2 – Agreed on this.

3 – Fixing stuff that’s forever broken is probably something they should have fixed a long while ago – and even looking at the traits thread, it’s only getting bigger, with lots of good suggestions but with little response from devs on if or when it will be fixed. Also this links back to number 1.

It’s not as farfetched as you think.

Swagger.1459:

Gaile Gray.6029:

As you will see in the News and Announcements Sub-Forum, we are introducing a new program for the forums. Please review the announcement and post any question you may have here.

Thank you.

this program is only going to work if you do the following…

1. start being transparent.
2. open a public testing realm.
3. actually start pumping out aaa quality content, updates, fixes, changes… on a regular basis.

anything short of the above three will be seen as another stalling tactic (cdi) while the game remains substantial development starved and we are constantly given the “umm, we can’t talk about it again”.

No 1. THIS is the one thing holding any kind of progress forward in terms of better communication.

No 2. I personally don’t think is really necessary in relation to this.

I don’t think No.3 Is needed per se. Though, glaring faults in the game DO need to be highlighted, acknowledged (preferably by someone relative to the problem) and rectified. The only thing is, you don’t need a taskforce to do this. That’s partially what the CDI was trying to tackle, and what Community Coordinators are supposed to handle anyhow.

“I think and hope it will mean devs will be able to participate more, since they’ll be able to focus on the topics in a distilled form.”

This is, I would argue, an exact description of why CDI threads were created, and it’s not worked out that way for the most part. Other devs post a few times, with Yourself and Chris doing most of the legwork – even when you’re not in the position to answer any of it.

Basically, Gaile, I’m more concerned at this being yet another attempt at “Better communication”, that won’t see many/if any results. After all, your policy of ‘No Discussion’ remains, and no amount of Initiatives/Specialists will solve that.

Gaile Gray.6029:

No, that’s not how we see this at all. If there are 100 threads about a topic you’re working on, but a trusted forum specialist, backed by the FCT, suggests you review a few of the topmost threads on the subject, you’re more likely to engage. And if all goes as planned, forum specialists won’t be submitting progress reports on the forums, the devs themslves will be doing that, when there’s something to say and when they have the opportunity to post.

Then the question becomes – How will that change what we’re seeing now with highly commented, mega threads that are rarely answered even thought there’s already knowledge of it existing?
Considering those new specialists can not discuss whether or not they’ve relayed information to the proper Community Team, the idea and execution of this starts to come apart at the seams.

I doubt this is going to stop things like You/Other devs commenting on things of minor importance and glossing over ones if greater importance (“Traits” Thread is giving you dagger eyes from across the forum room)

Goodness, It’s like I’m reliving this one MMO i used to play, all over again.

After they got a lot of flack for not contributing to discussion, they hired people as “Forum Supervisors” – which meant they did have meetings with the community team and discuss what things were of most importance in the forums – however, this did not change the game at all or how the forum was run.

Instead, there were just a lot more threads closed, a less flexibility on what was allowed to be said on forums, as well as people (on their own discretion) flagging things that they disliked – and with the backing of the community team and other Forum Supervisors, those threads were closed, people were given lots of warnings and even some people banned from the forum for continuing to state that nothing was changing after the implementation of the Forum Supervisors.

smh History Repeating itself.

The problem with GW2 is that, impartiality is hard to come by, and knowing that it is, I can only hope that anyone looking at the applicants does a check through the persons forum post history to see which side of the fence they fall on, and how often, to make sure it’s not just all fanboys or extreme haters of the game.
Simply “3 Forum posts in the last 3 Months” isn’t going to really cut it.

Read Blackmoon’s post…
and totally agree.

Do you not think it’s to do with a lack of “real” stories within a fantasy setting?

I’ve always felt that it’s still “Fantasy” stories being told in a fantasy setting.

This is literally how threads of great importance get left behind, closed or die.

So much has been said from one end, it’s starting to just resemble one person talking to themselves pacing back and forth with an onlooker only peeking in to say “are you still pacing back and forth? keep pacing back and forth…”

This reminds me very much of the first CDI; Open for TOO long with very, very little response from the devs, considering they were the ones that came up with the idea but failed to execute it.

I’m putting my bet here that, it’ll eventually get Gaile or a mod coming in saying that this thread has now run its course, and “the feedback was valuable” but that they’ll close the thread as they feel they’ve exhausted all talking points, and still they’ll tell us nothing about the status of trait changes.

For the love of all that is good in the world, SOMEONE from Anet say SOMETHING about the traits. Staying silent only reinforces a lack of trust between player and company.

You’re better off just adding the line:
“….but besides this, the trait thread needs to be addressed”
To the end of any post for any thread from now on, and get everyone else to do so to highlight it’s a big deal.

OP: Why U no talk about Devs?

Basically, this is a big deal, because it flows across all things you’ve said. (what good is a dev team that doesn’t fix, improve, add new ideas, or scrap bad ones – and just trots forward)
I mean, it takes guts to come out and say your game’s first iteration was pretty poor, and you’re making it from the ground up. If we put this in perspective of Anet, it’s “our game works off a heavily modified engine of GW1, so we can’t do much”.

Regardless of the studios involved, however, I also think it’s to do with the difference in culture. I don’t think I’ll ever see anyone for Anet with the same passion displayed by Yoshida.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE9G3ByXKIE)

Hell…with having to find all those items, it kind of makes it exclusive to those with more time, but this could be considered as a convenience item.

Where are convenience items located? GEM STORE!

I’d happily pay a bit more than usual for a exp accumulator off the gem store, and who knows – being able to level up alts a lot faster may get me into a kind of mode to buy more char slots to get them filled a lot quicker too and to experiment more/play more classes at higher levels.

Eitri.2608:

The reason people are wondering why it’s taking so long is because it seemed like the trait overhaul was implemented quite quickly.

The changes were announced officially on March 20: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/traits-unleashed-forty-new-traits-and-more/.

The changes came out April 15th: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-15-2014/first#post3957343.

It seems like they could re-overhaul the system quite quickly if they wanted to. “We hear your feedback,” is different from, “we acknowledge that there are these specific problems and we’re working to fix them.”

Anet should understand that the passionate feedback in this thread is valuable. The reason it’s here is because the game was better before this change. Many of us aren’t playing as much as we did before and thus not buying gems. We also aren’t recommending the game, which leads to lower sales.

I think trying to understand the time spent on the overhaul, using the space between announcement date and the release date is flawed.

Mainly because of Anet’s policy on not announcing anything until the very last stretch means that we don’t hear of it until the last moments, which is also a big deal because it’s too late to say “you done goofed up, guys!…This needs to be fixed”
(Considering ANet’s development of GW2 continually seems to lack foresight before the backlash begins)

Gaile Gray.6029:

Oh actually, the request was for any different suggestions that forum members may want to offer…

Here’s a wild suggestion Gaile, and while it isn’t about the traits directly, I do think it helps us understand more as players.
I’d love for you to get a roundup of ideas and thoughts from the ANet team on why they made the choices they made, and what their intentions were.

Now, I think it’s only reasonable to ask, because I’m all too aware of the policy you have when it comes to discussing things prior to their release. However, this has been out there for some time, and I’m explicitly asking for the devs opinions after the release. Not on what they could do better, or what they missed. Simply, how they got to their final release and why they made some choices.

I always feel like it’s only half of the puzzle when you simply just ask for suggestions, and yes Gaile, it does really feel like we start talking at someone (unfortunately, it seems you’re in the crosshairs!) instead of talking with them.
It would be good to get that kind of understanding of their mind-set, so we can better evaluate our ideas to you too….at the very least anyway.

I hope this doesn’t fall within the umbrella of the company’s strange policy, because if it does, then there’s very little hope of discussion and improvement.

Thanks.

minbariguy.7504:

You get the idea. Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, is it considered good communication or effective customer expectation management to allow an issue to sit and stew for months without an update. Please feel free to correct me with a source.

And again, Gaile, this is not directed at you. This is a deeply ingrained flaw in your company’s business ideology that continues to frustrate many of your customers and severely compromise the potential of a relationship built on trust and respect. The longer it continues, the less likely my continued customer loyalty becomes.

+1 Trillion

Still won’t get them to tell us anything though –

man…this thread….

Vayne, I can see your passion in all this…

But I really think there has to be some kind of understanding that, if the tables were turned, and the OP was a kind of ‘Anti-Vayne’. (for lack of a better term) You’d be the first one dismissing their information with the same passion you have reinforcing your original post.

Many-a-time you’ve stated that no-one knows numbers unless you work for Anet or have access to their servers – and if you don’t then it’s pure speculation regardless of your information.
And how often you’ve dismissed, and continue to dismiss people that oppose you on the weak statistics and sources – surely it’s only fair if people dismiss the information you’ve brought up?

No, not everyone is done with it.
I’m pretty much half-way done. I may pop in a few days every fortnight but that’s it. But that’s just me. I can’t speak for an entire playerbase.

Though, I honestly think GW2 is going to turn into one of those games where a core group of people really stick with it. They may be complete fanboys, or just enjoy the community that remains around them. And that’s cool, it just won’t be a titan of an MMO further down the line I think.

Oh, and I don’t think one MMO will ever really steal the playerbase outright, but over the years, multiple MMO’s will take small chunks of players away from GW2 to game x, y or z…(as it would with any MMO in competition) but players are fine to come back into game whenever they like (even though with each passing year, that’s not really a strong argument to return because we live in a world where F2P games are the norm – so the same can be said for every other F2P)

I have no idea if ANet are intentionally seeing how far they can get before they’re called out for going too far, or if they’re just collectively so detached from the playerbase that they just don’t register any of this as “Not worth the effort to check for any issues that may arise”

I mean, you’ve got this. The commander tag issue at the moment, but in the past there have been a few suspect cases that this has just added to.

Gaile – A genuine question here:
It’s great that you can fix things but really, REALLY Gaile, do you think it should get to this stage before someone notices that “streamlining/modifying” something that’s going to make it better on the dev’s end, isn’t going to so much for the players?

Lishtenbird.2814:

nethykins.7986:

If the devs do eventually end up changing this, I’ll feel like this is just another case of Anet’s lack of foresight. Even with all the metrics, it seems the lack of foresight is – an unfortunately, negative – trait I’m seeing all to often.

The conspiracy theory says it’s not “lack of foresight” but a “change as we need, step back a bit if too much backlash to please the community” method which people mentioned during the commander tag, NPE and TP2.0 improvements.

That could be very true, and I’d not blame people for assuming so.
Because it just happens way too often to be a consistent lack of foresight.

Way. Too. Often.

Sigh

Just a standard restriction of flexibility here.

I appreciate how active you are, Gaile (and straightforward too) but I feel that the change is basically “We did stuff because it’ll be better for us – and the comprimise is that it won’t be so flexible for you”…

If the devs do eventually end up changing this, I’ll feel like this is just another case of Anet’s lack of foresight. Even with all the metrics, it seems the lack of foresight is – an unfortunately, negative – trait I’m seeing all to often.

If we’re talking about GW2’s longevity, shouldn’t we be talking about games likely to arise in the future that will pose a threat? (instead of MMO titan’s like WoW, that have been around longer than GW2’s inception — and yes, as much as you all hate them, and many other people do, even with numbers dwindling, they still trump GW2’s fanbase)

Arikyali.5804:

I have a better suggestion: More skimpy armor for male. Less skimpy armor for female.

It’s a win-win.

Alternative suggestions does not make it a better one.

How about Equal amounts of skimpy armour on both sides instead of doing more for one than the other/less for one side than the other?

Planetside 2 possibly?
Planetside 2 – Work in progress Vids

And I’d even say the “Command Centre” vids hold some information sometimes.
I’m not sure how they fair up against PoI though – since PoI is very new

as someone who studied the Uncanny valley during school, on 2 different occasions, I can confirm that you may be shoe-horning the term of “Uncanny valley” into somewhere where it’s pretty far off.

I mean, I can vaguely understand where you’re coming from. Like, we can relate some games to reality. (Look at how WoW’s economy is being looked at (at least in terms of studying trends) as a model for current economy, or Watch_dogs using tech that’s currently being used, has been used, or is in the process of doing so…that’s uncanny because of the context, not so much the visual or auditory feeling)

GW2 is far too stylised to be placed in the “Uncanny valley” section of anything. Even it it’s stylistic choices, they’ve been made via influences, rather than just trying to imitate life, per-say

Vayne.8563:

nethykins.7986:

@chemiclord:

No discussion points on the loot drop changes?

I’ve started up an engi and at lvl 16 i’ve picked up only 4 bits of gear relevant to my class. The rest came through the parts of the leveling process (like underwater breathing gear and a harpoon) and one or two personal story missions, but drops-wise, it feels like nothing has changed on that front.

I even did Maw a few times and still kept getting stuff like swords and even a bow!

Chests aren’t affected I think, only drops from creatures.

Bummer…well then it’s doubly bad…looks like loot isn’t working in my favour at all. Again been playing on my engi and got more swords, and boots I couldn’t use, (these were drops)

Anyone else getting the same thing for Engi’s or for any other classes?

@chemiclord:

No discussion points on the loot drop changes?

I’ve started up an engi and at lvl 16 i’ve picked up only 4 bits of gear relevant to my class. The rest came through the parts of the leveling process (like underwater breathing gear and a harpoon) and one or two personal story missions, but drops-wise, it feels like nothing has changed on that front.

I even did Maw a few times and still kept getting stuff like swords and even a bow!

GuzziHero.2467:

Why do we not fire ooze gunk from the cannons now?

So.

Much.

Innuendo.

On NPE:
Maintaining two separate clients would have used up a lot of resources
You could say the same thing about what we have now.
You can also end up throwing your game into a death spiral for one market in order to satisfy another, then end up using resources changing things to suit which ever market is in disarray.

In regards to Khong Zhong, and any influence that could have been placed on them. It’s not impossible to think so. A lot of game devs have creative freedom only up to a point. If the developers say X, Y and Z is not going to be fun, and the publisher states they’ve run tests and metrics say A, B and C should be done, you kind of have to take that on board or that could place you bad standing with them, and in the climate we’re in, any sign of something failing only gives publishers a reason to shut a game down, or seize more control.