Guild Wars 2

Skins are one-time use, with the exception of the achievement point skins.

Jellie.6329:

I haven’t posted much on this forum, but this kind of thing makes me want to stop playing this game. Not the issue with the patch; honestly, I could care less about accidentally resetting an achievement with some arbitrary reward. What makes me want to stop playing is the whiney, entitled responses from selfish players who clearly can’t appreciate the intense amount of time and effort required to create such a huge, polished game. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Actually, in a business relationship (which this is) a customer is, in fact, entitled to a product he or she feels is up to his or her standards. Anet isn’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts; they’re doing it to make money. Hence the customer feedback.

I don’t agree with all the vitriol, but it’s laughable that you can stand there and wag your finger at people for daring to express that they are displeased with a product they paid money for.

Maxwell.7843:

Anyway, let’s also keep in mind that in these months traits have been changed, removing the map completion ones. So I would say that it’s not fair to say that the problem is being ignored.

You must have different trait tasks than I have, because I still have six traits tied to six map clears.

lordkrall.7241:

lukejoe.1592:

The site says that skill challenges are becoming hero challenges and hero points will replace skill points, so I’d imagine they would just convert them 1-1.

Only skill points gained from skill challenges though.
The vast majority of skill points however are gained from Scrolls and leveling, neither which will be converted to Hero Points.

This is false. Leveling does count for the incoming hero point system. All other skill points will be converted to Djinngots.

Behellagh.1468:

Galphar.3901:

Behellagh.1468:

No as bad as announcing something that’s the player base polarizes over. Right now we are only unhappy because they are telling us the barest minimum, that it’s being simplified. It’s not generating any additional stories about how much we dislike being in the dark about specifics.

I think that almost 100 pages over the past 11 months would disagree with you.

It hasn’t been 11 months since they told us it’s being changed.

Ah, it’s been a mere 2 months, and 500+ responses. Or has it been nearly 7 months, and 4000 replies since we were told there were going to be fixes incoming?

A complete overhaul of the trait system. I’d roll a new profession, as well, but probably only long enough to see how it plays. And I’m certainly not buying any new character slots until the traits are fixed.

Subdue.5479:

@Guhracie:

See, here’s the thing. The dailies for all three modes follow a similar pattern, with PvP probably being slightly more convenient for one-mode-only players. Take today’s for example:

PvE:
Activity Participation > Quick & Easy
Krytan Lumberer > Quick & Easy
Metrica Event Completer > Potentially time consuming
Frozen Maw > Potentially time consuming

WvW:
Master of Ruins > Quick and Easy
Land Claimer > Quick and Easy
Camp Capturer > Potentially time consuming
Tower Capturer > Potentially time consuming

PvP:
50 Rank Points > Quick and Easy
Point Defender > Quick and Easy
Guardian Winner > Potentially time consuming
Engineer Winner > Potentially time consuming (This one is especially time consuming for me as I’m terrible with engineer lol)

It’s not like PvE has been dealt some sort of unfair hand here. Players are being encouraged to experience different content all across the board here, and that’s good for the game.

Think back to the dailies of old. Were you encouraged to explore different game modes? No not really. Were you encouraged to explore new content within your preferred game mode? No not really. What were the old dailies actually accomplishing? What purpose did they serve? At most they were an incentive to log in, locked behind mundane, grindish content (kill 50 ambients???). That’s been turned into a login reward now, without the grind, leaving AP the only incentive for those who want to do the daily.

And let’s be frank here. It’s not choice that you’ve “lost,” it’s rewards. The two are not the same, and you have options for getting those rewards, and more. The path to them is just slightly different. With 2 of the dailies always being easy in each section, you really should be able to pop into a different mode for 2 minutes to get your third and earn yourself double what you were probably earning before in terms of rewards. It really is that easy. I guarantee that the it takes you a fraction of the time it to complete the dailies today than it did before the patch if you’re willing to branch out for just a few minutes a day. But if even that is too much, you can do it every other day instead, and still be up to par with what you had before.

It’s hard to empathize with PvE only players complaining that they have been somehow displaced by the changes when all that’s required of them to make them even better off than they were before is a few minutes of travel time.

And now I feel as if we’re moving away from understanding, because I feel like you’re intentionally misunderstanding/ignoring vast swathes of my points.

First, and foremost, is that you’re responding to this as if the changes to the daily system are the only issue I’ve raised. It seems as if you want it to be, but it’s not.

Second, you’re arguing that PvE players haven’t been dealt an unfair hand, and they’re equal with all the other dailies. Again, my whole premise is that decreasing available options does not feel good. Just because you find fractals to be easy or PvP doesn’t make you despair for the world doesn’t mean that it would hurt your gameplay at all if there were more options.

Here’s kind of the crux of where I’m at, and I’m not sure if I can give a better example than this: I am totally, 100%, completely happy that there’s a PvP exclusive armor. Up with this sort of thing. I would have been extremely unhappy if that armor was plucked from the PvE sets and erased from everyone’s wardrobe.

I’m pretty frustrated right now, so I’m going to step away. Again, everyone, please be mindful of Gaile’s post, and remember that we’re having a discussion with other people. Please report posts that are in violation of the forum policy, rather than responding. Thank you all!

sorudo.9054:

Romo.3709:

“I want to tell you how much I want to pay for the thing I want”. Welcome to the real world kid. Things don’t work that way.

however, this is a game, a really horribly managed game, prices like that would never happen in the real world because the real world would just give the finger and never buy something as expensive as that.

Actually, prices like that happen all the time in the real world. You do realize a diamond is just a rock, right?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Guhracie,

The point you made that bothers me is this:

‘And, truly, without more meaningful feedback than “Interesting ideas” there’s not much more that we can do with the discussion, in my opinion.’

We are very passionate about the game, the community and the CDI. As such a huge amount of effort goes into it both from a Dev and community standpoint. I am sorry if I have upset you, that is not my intention. The point I am trying to make is that the CDI isn’t about what the Devs say, it is about the discussion we all have and the conclusions that are drawn from this. Thus if I am saying that somehting is an interesting idea I am saying that I am thinking about it and that it is worth group discussion in my opinion.

I hope this makes more sense?

Oh and in regard to folks questioning how I play. Well that really is water of a ducks back, and I would rather expend my energy have a healthy conversation than spending time explaining the obvious.

Cheers

Chris

Okay, I see where we broke down, and I totally understand why that sounded insulting. That is absolutely not what I meant by it. I don’t believe you are brushing us off by responding with “interesting ideas,” but I feel like there’s a point where the discussion does become circular due to your own constraints of not making promises or getting into specifics (both are totally reasonable and understandable).

As for me sounding impatient…. that’s because I am. I came into this thread excited by the topics, and I feel like the topic has become “ascended armor” when it was supposed to be about progression. I am not even slightly interested in discussing ascended armor. If I have a single crafting skill above 400, it was on accident. I am in no way saying that it’s not a valid topic of discussion for vertical progression, please do not misunderstand me. I just had a different expectation of what this topic would be covering, and I wasn’t expecting it to be dominated by ascended armor.

I’d be totally happy to sit out of a CDI called “Ascended Armor” and let the people who feel strongly about it discuss it. But I currently feel like I have to plod through posts about ascended armor so I don’t miss something that might be relevant to my interests… which is why I mentioned a summary of what has been mentioned about vertical progression. I’m anxious to get to horizontal progression because it’s one of the biggest reasons I switched to GW2 from WoW. And if I knew I wasn’t missing out on any of that discussion (or other vertical progress ideas not pertaining directly to ascended armor), I’d probably be spending way less time in this thread.

I’m terrible at portraying tone in text, but I am seriously sorry you felt like I was diminishing your efforts in this thread. That’s not what I meant at all. Thank you for your clarification. I think I’m going to take a break from foruming for right now- sometimes I get too stuck in my own head, as well.

“there’s a lot of commotion going around about whether Sylvari have kittenes or not…”

I’d like to know where this commotion is happening.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Perhaps it’s premature to discuss traits at all. If you feel that’s the case, please simply step away from the subject until you have enough on which to base a meaningful post.

[…]

At this point, if you would care to discuss the topic of traits, please feel free to post.

Think it’s time for a reminder about the point of the thread, as well as gaile’s reminder to back away from the thread if you dont have anything meaningful to contribute.

This is getting really meta for me, but is the above post considered meaningful and on-topic?

Did we ever receive clarification on what there actually is to discuss that could not have been safely covered in the original thread? These are genuine questions that I legitimately do not know the answers to. Thanks in advance.

Ayrilana.1396:

Lothirieth.3408:

Ayrilana.1396:

kuittaa.7360:

Ayrilana.1396:

“I want to get a legendary by just farming Queensdale. Anet will not allow me to do this. How dare they not let me play how I want.”

But getting legendary by just farming Queensdale is possible. Might take a while though.

“But I want it now!”
“I should not have to grind to get what I want!”

The point being that certain players pigeon-hole themselves to only certain content and then are upset when they are not rewarded like those that are willing to experience all content.

Seriously what is up with you people who take “I want choice” and twist it into “I want everything handed to me just for logging on”. It’s dishonest. You know that’s not what people are saying so stop trying to make it seem like they are.

Please read my post again. I bolded the part you missed. There are 12 daily avhuevement options and people only have to do 3. The people complaining about the lack of choices are for the most part the group who focus solely on PvE achievements only and flat out refuse to do any other type. They’re the ones limiting their choices.

I might agree with this assessment if the game itself hadn’t changed to be more restrictive.

See, what they’re actually complaining about is that previously, there were more options, and now there are fewer.

Why is there this constant need to take stuff away? Nobody is saying, “Hey, hand me a precursor” or “I shouldn’t have to grind for a precursor!” they’re saying, “I got handed a precursor for over two years and now that’s not happening anymore, and why is that?” No, this is not a literal statement. Nobody got handed a precursor. I’m just trying to explain it as clearly and unambiguously as possible. And I’m not sure why I’m bothering, because people will still straw man this argument into something it’s not.

Reason for edit: Emphasis and bolding.

Subdue.5479:

Just something I’d like to throw in here as food for thought. You’re all complaining about some perceived loss of choice, when really, for the longest time PvE has been BY FAR the fastest and most efficient source of pretty much every available resource in this game aside from WvW badges and PvP rank points. It is so far above and beyond the other two that if you want to make a legendary, or even just amass some gold to buy an expensive (100g+) skin, you typically go to PvE content to grind it out. And as I mentioned before, PvE is already by far the biggest source of AP too. If PvE rewards were taken down a peg or two so that it was more in line with the rewards in the other two modes, wouldn’t that be making room for more choice, as you aren’t pigeonholed into having to go into PvE to unlock content that you want?

You seem to have missed my whole premise, which is that I’m all for choice for other game modes, but the reasoning that it has to be at the expense of choice in PvE is nonsensical.

Dusty Moon.4382:

No – sorry – not true at all. So what if the item is rare, that does not mean players have to gouge and YES you can set your own price on items. See the screen below – you can set your own price by typing it in.

I know this because I know players that have set their own prices for items – the TP just then takes the average and the lowest and puts them up – nothing to do with A.Net – this is a all on the players.

The TP doesn’t take the average. All the TP does is exactly what the people put in for buy and sell offers. Am I misunderstanding what you’re saying here? Because putting in a bunch of 1c bids does not lower the price at all. If you sell something for 10s, you’re going to get roughly 8s if it sells (EDIT: to note that the reason you don’t get the full 10s is because there’s a tax when you sell things, not because there’s an average price). If you bid on something for 1s, you’ll get that item when all the other buy orders have been met and someone decides to sell it for 1s. It would be hugely easy to manipulate if it were an average-based system.

You’re also missing the point that Anet sets the supply by how frequently the item drops. If there are only 10 of this item in-game, it WILL sell for more, regardless of what it looks like, than something with 10,000 available. As supply increases, the price decreases proportionately. In the real world this is strongly tied into how desirable an item is, but if you look at collectibles, you find that the rarer something is, the more sought after it becomes, even if it’s not as “good” as the more common item. So to say that Anet has no hand in setting the price is ignoring a huge part of economics. They employ an economist for the purpose of maintaining the in-game economy. The only way it would be a truly player-set economy is if players had a way to craft everything, but even that would be influenced by drop rates. The fact that players can’t create many items is what puts Anet in control of a large portion of the economy.

I have serious concerns about the OP’s mental health, and I am not being snarky at all. Dude, you need to get help, and you need to stop playing GW2.

Korossive.7085:

Soon™
Exciting™
No specifics yet
Being considered
Being discussed
Aware
Under wraps
Can’t go into details
No timeframe yet
Dev listening
Communication important

Just my guesses.

You forgot “Nothing is off the table” in your list.

Tigirius, I’m hoping it was a hammer!

Voicing my support for this. We should be getting exciting things from black lion chests, not things we get for using an 88c salvage kit.

I still cannot believe that we’re even discussing character progression without addressing broken class mechanics that impede progression. It’s like fixing the roof while the foundation crumbles beneath you.

It’s insulting that they didn’t even fix the traits linked to bugged events. I guess this is the new standard.

Every time there’s a patch that doesn’t address any of the major issues from the “feature” patch, I lose a little more faith that this game is going anywhere I want to follow. I don’t know what else to say. It might be time to give up.

proviticus.4183:

Guhracie.3419:

You can actually say that the pastries didn’t get worse, and then talk about the trait system? How can you hold those two things in your head at the same time? Because my trait pastry has absolutely gotten worse. The first halloween had glorious pastries, but the second one was terrible. The infinite continue coin pastry is literally inedible. Town clothes? That pastry is just repackaged from the grocer down the street. All those people who worked for their Fractal pastries having them just taken away? That’s not good business.

Some pastries have gotten better. But to say nothing has gotten worse is laughable.

while your general statement is true, and would be true about just about anything, I actually disagree on your specific examples. Trait system should have been like it is now at launch. We all tell noobs to level to 80 the normal way instead of EotM because you have to experience it, yet we’re all too spoiled to realize the new trait system is what a lot of people had been asking for? Then you have several references to content known to be temporary. Whether it recurrs and how often is irrelevant as it was known to be temporary. Your infinity continue coin serves the same purpose as it always has, and I’m sure it will still work when worlds 3 and 4 are released. They made no promises of timetables for SAB, so I’m not sure what you expected.

The fractal reset was lame, it didn’t affect me so my opinion that it was the best option at the time doesn’t count. So you can have a point there.

Go unlock builds on 2 or more characters, and then tell me this is how the trait system should have been since launch.

I know what people asked for; I was one of those people. This is not it.

Ashen.2907:

Guhracie.3419:

Ashen.2907:

Ayrilana.1396:

Ashen.2907:

Ayrilana.1396:

Ashen.2907:

Charging for a service and then not providing it is what separates the SAB situation from the general PVE, WvW, and PvP situations. All of those portions of the game arre available to be played. SAB is not. None of those other portions of the game had an access fee beyond the basic game purchase. Anet did sell access to SAB for a fee above and beyond the cost of the game.

Charging for a service/product and then not providing it is not an ethical business practice. Stating that the product might be provided at some point in the future, maybe, does not change that.

Knowledge of SAB being limited available content with no set release schedule at the introduction of that coin was widely available. Players should have thought first before impulsively buying the coin if they truly have issues about not being able to use it at the moment. Anet is not at fault for players not doing the due diligence to at least think before they open their wallets.

They’ve said that they have plans to bring SAB back. That post on the French forums stated it would be after the expansion which makes sense. My advice to everyone is that’s upset about this is to never buy anything that is only temporarily available.

They have plans to perhaps bring it back.

There is a difference between at that moment and a period of years later. Buying a product that is labeled as providing infinite access if one desires such is not impulsive.

Spin it how you like, the service was charged for but is not being provided.

It was for infinite lives, not access.

Lives are the ability to play/access the content. The word, “continue,” refers to the ability to continue to play.

Some people have no interest in discussing things like reasonable expectations. It is my experience that those people are just not worth engaging with, after a certain point. I mean, I’d personally wonder how long people should be expected to be patient, but if someone seems to think that two years is a reasonable amount of time, it’s just not worth asking.

If there were actual technical problems, which were explained to an extent, and a time-line for correcting them in order to return the paid for service to function were provided, and refunds were offered to those desiring such, I would not have an issue with a protracted wait when dealing with something as complex as an MMO.

But taking away a service after it has been paid for, not providing a timeline for its return, indicating that its only a possibility that it will ever come back (Anet has redefine “absolutely,” and, “will,” as meaning, “perhaps,” or, “might,”), and not offering a refund even after paying customers have been without access to the service for which they have paid for a period of years is unethical.

I am in complete agreement with you, and I honestly hope that Anet is paying attention to your posts in particular. You have always been extremely even in your praise and criticism of the game, and you’ve often given me food for thought on issues I believed were extremely clear-cut. I take it as a major blow that this company has lost your respect, and I hope they feel that.

Fiennis.4387:

I don’t understand the new skill point system they are suggesting and ArenaNet’s motivation to change the existing system.

Here’s an excerpt from their announcement:

“characters that have reached level 80 will no longer gain skill points through leveling
Skill points will be added as rewards across high-level content to offset this change.”

So for those of us who decided to start playing this game again lately, who haven’t racked up hours upon hours of gameplay and haven’t accrued a large amount of unused skill points, will now have to go out to “high level” areas to get them and can’t play general content and other game modes such as WvW and PvP (tomes of knowledge) to level up and acquire more skill points.

I don’t understand how this new system would make things any better for me and others that might be in the same situation.

In fairness, we don’t know how they’re going to change other things that are currently reliant on skill points, and they’ve said they’re going to change the trait system. They haven’t said how, of course, but it’s something. Additionally, skill scrolls drop more frequently in wvw and pvp currently. I see no reason to assume they’re going to remove that. If anything, they’re probably going to increase the drops.

My overarching point is that it’s hard to draw any sort of conclusions about the impact of the removal of skill point gain without any context about the way the rest of the game is changing.

The one to Rule.2593:

Ashen.2907:

The one to Rule.2593:

He did speak for his own circumstances.

She also spoke of other people’s circumstances. If she had spoken only of how it was not expensive for her that would be one thing. Telling others to get a job is something else.

Personally I am willing to spend hundreds of dollars for a game that I feel is worth it. I spent in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars in the months following GW2’s launch.

I would consider HoT to be too expensive if priced at anything above $0. This is not because I am unwilling to spend money. It is purely because what has been announced as included in the price of the expansion is without worth to me.

The one to Rule.2593:

I guess the last 3 years of free play

I paid for every minute of that, “free,” play. Until very recently so did everyone else.

Except that you really didn’t you paid 50-60$ for the base game. The no subscription fee is what allowed you to enjoy all that time for no extra cost. Every other major MMO on the market has a subscription fee. Had this been WOW, you’d have paid that for the base game, 15 dollars a month as well as 20-40 dollars for each new expansion. Add up 10-15$ a month for this game over 3 years n get back to me. Even at 10$ the cost is far more.

Actually, if this game had a subscription, I never would’ve paid the $40 for the base game, or the $15 for my second account. I never would’ve spent money in the gem store.

This argument that content updates are somehow special and should be treated as extra value is the worst kind of straw man argument. The base game was sold with the expectation (based on actual statements from the company) that it would be regularly updated in order to, you know, keep the players playing. ANET didn’t do us some random charity with their updates- it was part of a business plan.

Just stop acting like the updates to an MMO should be factored into the cost of an expansion. The way I see it? It’s the cost of keeping players interested and engaged.

cheshirefox.7026:

it’s fluff content, it shouldn’t be on the front burner. . .

It’s like if they’d sold the permanent pass to Havoc’s Heir, but then the ship went away with the Zephyrites, and everyone was promised that it’d be back with the next Crown Pavilion/Zephyrite… and then, a year later, they come clean and admit that none of that content is coming back at all.

Delgan.8619:

I’m not trying to be an kitten here but unless I’ve missed something on a big scale you all need to go back and actually read up on the mega server.

Yes, we’ll all be together and although they’re no longer called “overflows” they’ll still be created when a server reaches it’s populations max…. now correct me if I’m wrong you currently flood a server until someone is put into Z overflow.

This can still be achieved possibly even easier now as the servers are more likely to almost be at their peak before you start flooding it.

It has more to do with the boss schedules than the megaserver itself. The fact that Tequatl, Bloodtide Wurm, and Karka Queen will only be appearing three times a day is a pretty massive change from the current schedule.

And it’s now been a month of silence since the announcement that traits are “for sure” going to be changed. Yeah, no clue why I had my hopes up. I’m going back to my stance that I’ll believe in a change for the better when it is live and in game, and not a moment sooner.

Paper bag helms, please.

Becka Williams.4978:

Aguri.2896:

I could live with them never expanding SAB but I cannot accept never being able to play it again. It should be permanent and if it was permanent in the first place there wouldn’t have been a problem to begin with…

if it was permanent in the first place, you’d be bored with it by now.

You keep saying this, and it keeps not being a valid argument.

Sylvari in wvw/pvp should count for it, too.

Actually, it takes you to the exchange section, where you can exchange your gems for gold, or your gold for gems. And “pay to win” doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means.

Rose Solane.1027:

McViolin.8547:

Care to give us examples of you caring about the community because all I can remember of your company is the feeling of being spitted on. (F2P and the royal guard outfit, gutting core content/rewards like needing masteries for full fractals rewards, Halloween XP bugged yet just won’t fix it. etc,) I’d also disagree with your interpretation of the OP and feel you are just using that as an excuse to keep negativity of this game to a bare minimum. But you are pretty much the face of Anet’s PR team and just doing what you are payed for, so I can somewhat understand. I would also love to be able to refute any counter arguments, if it weren’t for the fact that I have to wait an hour between each post as punishment.

If you are disappointed you should give your opinion (maybe a little less salty) but it would be nice if you look at things in perspective. Halloween XP bugged yet just won’t fix it. Halloween event released 22 hours ago, at midnight for the developers. Together with the new expansion. You should give them at least a little bit of time to solve bugs. There is no reason to believe the Halloween XP bug will not be solved.

You should check out the dev tracker. Ms. Gray has a post in the main GW discussion area wherein she states that it will not be possible to get it fixed.

“Last sugar bear!” (Labyrinthine Cliffs vendor who actually says “Fast shoe repair!”)
“Getting humped!” (Charr warrior says “Getting pumped!” when adrenaline rises.)

How do you know what race I’m thinking of?? >.<

Labjax.2465:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

fractal playerbase is still waiting for anet to answer what the hell is up with the drop rates. and the fractal playerbase is still waiting for anet to explain just what happened to leaderboards and the fractal weapon box (and evidently, the fractal tonic)

i guess you’ve only been here for a few months, but basically, anet’s got a big history of screwing around with the players, and a few red posts on the forums wont change that

wake me up when they say something actually concrete about anything beyond “we’ll look into it maybe it’s not off the table”

It sounds to me like there are a lot of areas that don’t get solid dev communication. I understand it being frustrating and I don’t mean that in a placating way. I’ve been there.

It just sounds more like priority struggles on their part than intentionally screwing around with players (which they would gain nothing from).

Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Maybe you fractal folks should bring that stuff up a bit more. That is, if you don’t already have active threads on the issues you’re seeing.

After a year of no communication, fractals players have largely given up. In fact, when pressed about some of these issues in the Fractal CDI , people were told that they were being off-topic and to please post elsewhere if they wanted to discuss those things. There was plenty of squeak to that wheel.

Adding my support for the change to Arah: Story. This makes a great deal more sense to me, and I think it’s a good change. Looking forward to completing my personal story.

1. Skin Acquisition to be more like the zenith skins- account bound, reusable, and self-contained.
2. Fix broken class mechanics. Engineers and rangers are at the top of my list.
3. Balance PvP, WvW and PvE separately.
4. Absolutely no more gear treadmills.
5. The ability to ignore a person (by clicking on their name) from emotes.
6. The ability to group up for daily activities.
7. Daily activities that include a rotation of all the previous mini-games, but the ability to access any of them on any day. (Only one gives credit for achievement/chest reward/allows grouping, etc.)
8. More and varied ways to acquire laurels.

I must say, though- I’m glad this thread isn’t full of wish fulfillment. There’s tons of stuff listed that I wouldn’t want to see happen.

Draknar.5748:

heartless.6803:

The new trait system is absolutely terrible beyond a doubt. It makes classes harder to level and leveling more boring and sucky because you have to wait a ridiculously long time to get traits that are core to a class to even function.

I’m not going to defend the trait system as I agree it was a step backwards, but there are absolutely no traits that are so core to a class to make it not functional while leveling up.

Why do I say this? Because I’ve leveled up 2 alts now during NPE and have hit 80 no problem. Once you hit 80 you can start worrying about what kind of traits you need for specific dungeon runs, fractals, wvw, whatever. But while leveling up you absolutely do not need any of them. I’ve hit 80 without spending a single trait point (through normal map completion means, and not EoTM). Quite honestly I forget I even have trait points.

Oh, you’ve leveled up all two of the professions so you can unequivocally say that there are no traits so core to a class to make it not functional while leveling up? Huh. Well, it’s a good thing there aren’t eight professions with their own strengths and weaknesses.

And if you’re arguing that traits are meaningless (“…honestly, I forget I even have trait points.”), I’m kind of wondering if that’s an even bigger indictment of the entire system. I cannot possibly imagine finding the difference in having traits negligible, and while I was known to forget to assign points right away at times, I also can tell the difference in a well-traited character, versus untraited.

Yes, starting with season 2. Season 1 wasn’t designed with this in mind, so they’re having to figure out how to make it work, and it’ll take longer.

But if you log in at all during the time period the living story is active, it’ll be unlocked for your account to play anytime. The only time you’ll have to pay is if you miss it entirely, and want to play it.

Phy.2913:

The guys making glider skins aren’t the guys fixing bugs and making the game more gamey

Of course they’re not. So how many new skins did your $50 expansion come with? You can’t tell me that the people making skins to be released in the game (this still happens, right?) are not the same people who make skins to be sold in the gem store. Or that they’re not the people who are making the art assets for the as-yet incomplete set of new legendary weapons.

They may not be the same people, but it certainly appears that the company is prioritizing gem store sales instead of producing a finished expansion. Then again, they already have your money for this expansion, so there’s no rush to, for example, add new fractals.

Keep on enjoying and defending your gemstore updates. Businesses need to make money, right? How else could they make money without putting a stranglehold on new cosmetics?

A chance to get rewards which were previously guaranteed (as meta achievement rewards), at least how I read it.

Fingers crossed for the gas mask and the sclerite backpiece. And maybe the fervid censor.

The only problem I have with Aetherpath is the time investment required isn’t rewarded in any significant manner. If the guaranteed rewards were buffed to reflect that it’s not the same as running a mindless CoF, then I think it’s likely this path would see more players.

My character select music is the same as it’s always been. Are you guys in the beta, maybe, and that’s why it’s different?

Subdue.5479:

Zero Day.2594:

There are two people that seem to be trying to derail the thread by trying to switch it to how fast people acquire resources and now legendaries (btw the root of that evil is precursors…)…

That’s not true. While precursor prices have risen, that’s more a response to an increase in the availability of gold. It’s not like there are fewer precursors dropping now than a year ago.

The whole premise of this thread is that there are options being taken away from PvE players, when the only reward for dailies is AP, something that is abundant in PvE relative to the other game modes. I think the availability of the singular reward which is apparently forcing PvE players to grind painful events or travel begrudgingly outside their comfort zones is extremely relevant to a conversation about PvE players having choices in what content they want to do.

And, like I said in my original posting, the change to dailies is merely the impetus to having this discussion. There is a larger picture, here. I also object to your assertion that the way to bring PvE in line with PvP and WvW as game modes is to make a more restrictive game for PvE. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you- I genuinely do not know.

But if the shift in philosophy to fewer choices was meant to balance things out for the other game modes, it has sorely failed in many ways. There’s no reward track for the personal story in PvP yet. Most of trait acquisition is located outside of WvW, and none of it is in PvP.

Do you genuinely feel as if PvE needs fewer choices to be in line with WvW/PvP? I am just really struggling with what people are even defending, at this point. Are you saying that there hasn’t been a distinct trend toward a more rigid structure to the GW2 PvE experience in the last year?

Behellagh.1468:

Didn’t say it was a good system. I just said they didn’t look at it from someone who quickly levels alts.

I don’t think they looked at it from anyone’s perspective. They took one piece of feedback (“I miss hunting for elites in GW1!”) and ran with it to the soul-crushing extreme we have now.

Zaklex.6308:

Someone already took the precious few minutes it must have taken them to exam the new ‘monthly’ rewards calendar and figured out what you get by day and totaled it up, it’s in the other thread where people are kittening about the new system. The only thing they couldn’t do was determine how many laurels you would get out of the end of month box. That’s what I meant by reading the blog post and looking at the screen shots, it shows you the daily log-in rewards, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math based upon the screen shot. The only 2 things missing is how many laurels are in the daily log in bag(that you get on the day it is given) and the total in the end of month box. If you absolutely need to know how many laurels you’re getting a month, well then you’ll probably have to wait and see, bust since it’s every 28 days and not by calendar month you get 13 ‘monthly’ rewards per calendar year…might be a net gain, might be a net loss or it just might be a wash.

As pointed out previously, the end result is exactly what this poster is asking about. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to comprehend what Iason wrote.

I’m incredibly curious about if we’re losing out on rewards overall, and if the laurel vendor will be changed up at all, as well.

I don’t understand why you’re acting like this thread is utterly unnecessary and that all these questions are either unimportant or have already been answered. This is key information to know if this system is worth celebrating or if it’s an underhanded way to stunt progression even more than it already has been stunted.

So you reorganized the dailies, but didn’t bother to take out double fractals? Wow. Just. Wow.

I really want to know when the system will be released, for sure. If it will be with Heart of Thorns, or if it’s going to be sooner.

Celtic Lady.3729:

sorudo.9054:

if the core game has become free, does that mean we can make a new account without HoT for free?
oh and if that’s not the case, it’s not really free now is it.

Yeah, it’s free for new players only.

So how much does just the core game cost now? Oh, right. You can’t get the core game on its own anymore. So it’s either a free bonus with HoT that has some sort of value outside of HoT, or it’s not a free bonus, and is thus factored in as part of the price of HoT.

It’s not a bonus, because it’s no longer being sold on its own. If you want to play guild wars 2 as of now, you’re buying Heart of Thorns.

It’s not free because there’s no where to download the vanilla game for a price. As above, it’s not being sold at all anymore.

It’s not a bundle because there’s no option to separate the two. Neither piece has its own individual price, and on top of that, the vast majority of people who would want to pre-order, people who already own the base game, only get the “free” base game if they start a brand new account, and apply the expansion to that account.

1-5: Broken class mechanics. Largely for engineers.

Honorable mentions: Lack of wardrobe/easily reusable skins, the broken TP, the removal of culling in pve, and the strict adherence to the 2-week cycling content.