Guild Wars 2

I always love the threads that end with “if you disagree with me, you’re a fanboy, whiteknight, etc”

Good discussion!

I take it you don’t participate in such zergs. So how then does it ruin your game play?

What sticks out as the most wrong is the dailies.

Dragonball Participant = Participate into 2 games of Dragonball.
Dragonball Boss = Win 5 games of Dragonball.

This should clearly be the other way around. Participant should be 5, Boss should be 2.
This would fix things because even if players lost, they would still get Participant, and that makes it worth staying. Perhaps you would lose 3 games and win 2 and be done with your dailies.

The way it is now, you have to win 5, and win includes participation, which means it is clearly more efficient to simply leave a losing match(actually there is NO reason to stay in a losing match other than waste your own time) and re-enter, because you will get Participant either way by winning the next match.

This is really badly design.

orenwolf.1953:

I .. use the airship when I want a BL skins merchant

For BL skins, you can just double click a ticket (or a scrap); brings up the vendor without talking to an NPC.

orenwolf.1953:

I .. use the airship when I want a …Daily activity.

Yeah, Terrace users have to go to LA (or the source) for activities.

Also, just a note on terminology because this is something that bothers me:

A bug is a fault with the game – something that’s not working as the developers intended it to. If there was a place or object in the Royal Terrace labelled as a commune point which you couldn’t actually commune with then that would be a bug.

Not having one in there at all is a design decision. It may not be one you agree with, it may not be a good decision, but it’s still a decision Anet have made (or not made), not a fault with the programming.

In other words calling this a bug is like buying a car without heated seats and then complaining that they’re broken because they don’t heat up.

I’d really hope they do this! It will keep the game going and make it easy for new people.

All this stufd about “betraying” those of us that bought it before it went free is nonsense! We paid to have the content much earlier and by making it easy for new players they are really just protecting our investment.

I want to be playing this game for years to come, if Anet wants to keep the game marketable to new players then I am more than happy.

You are not really getting anything free, except for playtime.

Doesn’t matter how the devs cut it because you still pay for the xpac. We are going to pay X regardless. The devs are not going to itemize each pack for $5 bucks each as some of you may hope. And no, we are not going to get the xpac for free because we paid for stuff before.

There is nothing wrong with bundles, it just makes more sense to do it that way. Doing so helps to populate old zones because players will have access to them. Most players who bought hot will be on the new maps so you don’t want mostly ghost towns populated with only the ones that purchased a particular access pac.

Also, it’s easy to spend $50-$100 going out one night and $5 per day on coffee, the prices for games are extremely reasonable considering the amount of entertainment you can get out of these products.

Save spare change if you need, you have a year wait anyway. Just be grateful there is not a monthly fee if you are that worried about prices.

Edit- assuming we get more elite specializations with a new xpac, it will probably require the unlocking of previous elites so players will want all those hero points from hot zones. That would be another reason to bundle it.

Sky.7610:

If Anet is sticking to their “expansion focus” new business model then it is fair to assume that they will come out with a new expansion on an annual basis.

In 2015 our focus predominantly shifted away from live updates and toward our first expansion. In 2016, we aim to provide a more balanced focus, which will see efforts divided equally between providing regular updates and working toward the next expansion.

In the future, we plan to offer all of the prior expansions, the core game, and the latest expansion for one single purchase price.

Hot was released Oct of last year, meaning if they stick to a annual release schedule, then a new expansion will arrive at Q4 of 2016 or maybe Q1 of 2017.

Either way, will gw2 get into the mess of “buy GW2 expansion #2 and get expansion #1 FREE” mess again (that will upset old players) or will Base + Expansion #1 be free because gw2 expansion #2 is worth the $50? Are you looking forward to the next expansion? What kind of business model do you think it should be adopted in the next expansion?

To help the kids out there, the average price of an expansion is 40-60 in an AAA mmo, and most modern mmo give access to older content free when buying an expansion – which ofc makes perfect sense. No different to you buying a music album now, then seeing it offered free in a compilation a few years later, or same for a game in Steam.

KestrelGirl.9267:

This!
I was running the game on a Macbook Pro Retina (school laptop… lol, private school perks) because I thought my little-toaster-that-could ($300 Windows 10 laptop with Intel integrated graphics and horrible battery life) wouldn’t be able to handle such an amazingly realistic-looking game. Having a high-res screen was nice, but I couldn’t go higher than low settings without a serious drop in FPS. It was already only 20-30.

Then I tried running the game on my little potato.
Stable 30 fps on low settings. Bumped it up to medium shaders. Slight drop, and a little less stable, but looking great. Up to high shaders, and everything is gorgeous. THE GAME STILL RUNS. SMOOTHLY. AT 10-15 FPS.
I can’t use those settings in large-scale fights/PvP for obvious reasons, but now I know that I can take pretty screenshots on a craptop!

If you reckon 15 fps is smooth, you may want to stop stabbing yourself in the eyes, or whatever it is you are doing to cause such hideous damage to your sight.

This issue was fixed by making all currency accountbound. It still keeps you (oh friendly patron) from tweaking your characters with free level 80 gear that you bought 5 sets of from Orr that one Thursday 7 months ago before people just abandoned it.

In short, it keeps you exploring the gat-dang map!

To be totally honest it wouldn’t bother me either way. It really just doesn’t cost enough to care to be honest. If I wanted to wait for the next free release since they were public about the schedule it would be fair game too.

No hidden gimmicks here to be mad about even if it were the way you were claiming it is.

You may be a little bit wrong assuming yearly releases of expansions.

echo.2053:

Unfortunately thats a preview of the future of mmos as the entitled generation who their entire life were told they’d be a famous player and given trophies when in reality they struck out every time up to bat and their team was virtually eliminated before playoffs even started.

Rng is a needed mechanic- it has the biggest impact on item value. Players see their chance to obtain an item and immeditely go into whine mode how rng is terrible all the while failing to comprend that rewards are univerisal and that at any point in the day thousands of players getting individualized loot.

And what was wrong with bite sized patches to keep the players busy? Both the by-weekly patches and monthly patches worked just fine. There also wasn’t enough RNG or grind for people to actually complain about it.

There’s also nothing wrong with non RNG loot as you can make it take a while. A dungeon set takes like 10 days to acquire. The collection reward for all the dungeon sets? You’ll be busy for a couple of months.

Laurels were a daily currency, meaning you used to be getting an ascended accessory once every month. How did that hurt the game exactly?

There’s no RNG in ascended crafting. How did that hurt the game exactly?

echo.2053:

Mmorpgs are meant to last years not be 30 days CoD’s. DJ que up " You can’t always get what you want" and spin that kitten!!!!

and before GW2 pulled this poop out it lasted me 3 years of nearly daily log ins. After hot, it didn’t last me more than a day.

Obtena.7952:

Hold on … so voracious alt players would be more likely to play multiple times through 15 maps of Core Tyria-like content than 4 maps of HoT-like content? If there is anything MORE stale than 4 maps of HoT-like content, it’s 15 maps of Core-like content. Of course, it depends on who’s behind the keyboard but quantity of maps is not relevant, unless of course the goal was to hide poor, easy content behind an expanse of shiny looking visuals akin to a MMO scenery museum… Oh, I sort of described what Core feels like right there.

except that old maps had content that new maps do not:

free exploration with nothing being gated,
hearts, skill points and vistas (loved all 3, never liked dynamic events),
content being in more of a bite sized chunk making it easier to consume it. If I logged in on my alt and decided to do Sylvari starting area, it would probably take me an hour. I can’t set myself the same goal in HoT, due to locks behind masteries and dynamic event timers,
Old maps are less tedious. Fighting the same enemy with no mistakes done for over a minute is not fun, nor challenging. It’s tedious. When a map is too tedious, nobody likes it. Similarly to how Orr was very unpopulated and hated until the undead population was culled,
More maps = more environment change. Even in the same biodome, two maps didn’t look identical. You kind of lose that sense of visual progression when you’re stuck on the same 20% of a map for days.

Ayrilana.1396:

Xupok Moonheart.9412:

I have tried to stick it out in HoT, character after character, race after race, seriously trying to find the fun in the game, but in the end just doing what is needed, as I struggled with my inner feelings and combating the sensations that others will not easily abandon new content.. I was utterly disappointed to find, after only a few months play, the zones to be dead in my EU world server.. constantly receiving message to change maps to only find it popping up again after less than 5min in the ‘more populated’ map.. One has to critically wonder about the design idea, although true in nature and grand on paper, most people just wont play or look for pug groups.
Countless times I have heard good friends go completely crazy on TS, even helping them, outside of story-mode did not have the desired effect and those in the guild who already completed their Achievement points in the areas are not much interested to run through grinding content unless they are completely bored or have no other achi’s to hunt. Sadly I really feel ArenaNet will abnegate any major changes to accommodate the community at large and change the mechanics of current state of the game as it seems the original plan to back Guilds and community play is here to stay, although I try to believe myself wrong on this matter nothing seems clear if any PvE group based focused content will get any easier. Pity for solo/semi-solo players like myself but hey, there are many more things to do, until all achievements are done at least.
We can only hope.

That’s what tends to happen when players rush through content or decide not to do certain aspects (e.g. collections) because they don’t enjoy them. Had they released 15+ maps like core Tyria, we’d still be in the same condition as we are now. Of course what you’re seeing here is nothing new and happens in every MMO.

Except if they released a larger number of maps like in core Tyria, it’s unlikely they would all be mostly-meta maps. This would mean there would likely be more things for solo or small group players to do in a not very full map.

There is another alternative where you can get rid as many as you want. Do crafting refinement of these materials at crafting level 450+. You can get rid of as many as you want, without no time restriction.

http://tinyurl.com/hb4bkmx

Riku.4821:

I agree with your idea of 1+1 =/= 2.
If the next dragon awakes we will all know we kill it. Perhaps a non logical story is the wrong idea, perhaps just a curveball.
We all go to the next dragon almost defeat him then he swoops up destroys a bunch of our forces and gets away and flies north/south and we pursue.
Something different then Cat and Mouse.

However, that would never work an MMO. People will complain how the story is incomplete. Video games story cannot end in such a manner. Your suggestion would only work in a living story since people are not directly paying for it. I liked the living story because arena net is less restricted, it can have some twist and turns. But for paying content people will not be content with an incomplete story.

MMO players like predictability. They like feeling kitten, which is why that tree guy was generally hate.

You need to see more movies. There is a difference between a predictable ending and a “round” ending. Both close things neatly, but one do so in a cliché and not interesting way, while the other blows your mind without abandoning logic.
The problem here is Anet is abusing the predictable ending style…

The ending has to be logical. Logically, we will have to kill all of the dragons. We know this based on how Tyria and the dragons work. Just because that is the logical end doesn’t mean it is a bad or predictable ending. You don’t know what is going to happen in the story, you have a good idea of where it’s going to end up, but that is almost always the case with any story.

A story which has no logic and is full of chaos is a bad story because it is one that people cannot understand, cannot follow the trajectory of, and cannot draw connections between.

You absolutely can be creative even if the story is headed in a clear or logical place.

It’s also because MMOs need gold sinks to counter the gold that’s constantly being created when players kill enemies and complete events, and the TP fee is one of the most effective gold sinks, especially because it scales to the value of the items (and therefore approximately to the amount of gold) you have.

But as mentioned scamming is also a major concern. GW1 had an excellent face to face trading system: you open a trade window, put up your gold and/or items, can see the other persons gold and items exactly as they’ll appear in your inventory and the trade only goes through when both people have confirmed they’re happy with it. It even warns you if the other person changes their offer.

Here’s a short list of the most commonly encountered scams which occured in spite of (or sometimes because of) those precautions. Even now new ones appear from time to time which aren’t always documented:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scam

GodOfWar.3624:

WereDragon.6083:

GodOfWar.3624:

Why can’t I have something risk and fee-free? Why am I not allowed to have that as the player? What’s wrong with giving me the possibility?

Because trade systems across nearly all MMO’s suffer the risk of scams. THe trading post does not.

How the hell do you get scammed in a trade where you have to confirm?

One of the more obvious scams was to show a high value item and wait for the other party to enter their offer. Then the high value item was replaced with a low value item with a similar icon. Sometimes the other party didn’t notice and accepted the trade.

Another trick was to misinform new players. When a new player asked how much an item was worth there was a good chance someone would whisper him something along the lines: “It’s only worth 5p, but I’ll give you 6.” when in reality that item was worth way more.

There are more, but I can only name those that people tried against me. I’ve never been interested in scamming other people myself.

Curtis Johnson

Hey guys,

The no face-to-face trade is a real decision and it’s primarily a question of trust (as many of you have noted). But it’s also a decision to protect players from scamming and protect the economy from black-markets. Let’s run through some quick examples.

1) Give something to my friend. – As several of you noted, target your friend, right click the item and select ‘mail-to…’. Done, this works in contact list, guild list, or in world anywhere without having to ‘meet’ them or ‘catch’ them.

2) Get a fair price for an item (anti-scam). – Because ALL trading goes through the trading post we can guarantee that highest bidder meets lowest seller and we can give every player the benefit of current market information.

3) Barter item-for-item. This is the grey area and also the most risky kind of trade because even with UI many items look alike in icon and many social engineering scams take place in this kind of system. It’s a risky trade environment which is why when you support it you have to have these multi-stage UI’s where everyone double-checks everything, and then eventually get’s lazy and stops double-checking and gets scammed anyways.

In the end we decided with super easy access to mail for trusted trades and trading post for untrusted trades that such a system wasn’t worth the risk, complication, and fragmenting the player market off of the trading post..

In testing we’ve found that mail is easier 90% of the time we’d want trade and the other 10% trading post is far safer and avoids drama and thing like random trade windows being thrown at you and lots of other unsavory hawking in game.

Hope that all makes sense.

Just to be Clear, ESO has good graphics, but the performance of the teso engine is truly terrible, its well known to be terrible, in fact if you go to the developer posts they regularly talk about the performance issues. They are frank about the problems they are having and how they don’t actually know how to fix the issues (it is suspected the modified engine is at fault, hence no fix in 2 years) If you go to the players forums it has been a huge issue, with rubber banding, crashing, single groups spamming aoe to bring down the server, it goes on. Client performance is not an issue in GW and Teso, so DX12 does little, its not addressing the issues at hand.

It boils down to money and manpower. Blizzard pulled in more income in one year than this game has made in it’s lifetime. With resources like that they could through an entire building of experience game engine developers at the problem. Also it was only the demo in 2001 that ran on a modified WC3 engine. By the time the game was released, the engine had been rewritten.

Turbine uses the same engine on multiple platforms so adding Dx10, which was done while their games were still subscription base, had multiple income streams. The Dx11 upgrade was trivial and virtually unnoticeable unless you knew exactly what you were looking for.

gigamarkus.2109:

Hi, I’m really in love with this game since its release and played a lot of time, although the performance is not the best with the current Direct X9 version.

Since HoT is released, and much bigger and more beautiful and lively zones arrived, i’m a bit concerned about the future of this game in case of the direct x drivers. The game is so powerful and the big boss events are so much fun, especially the dragons stand, but it feels sad, that even on high end PCs it can only be played at around 30 fps.

In comparison to other games it would be nice if you could work on a updated engine that supports DX12 (and still dx9 for those people with freaking old PCs). I could wait for this feature until the next expansion releases but it is really necessary for the games future. The performance could be much better and that would make these fights outstanding in the mmo genre. It woud be the best improvement by far for a lot of players.

So my question: Is there the possibility to give us DX12 support with the release of the next expansion?

Untill everyone is using windows 10 no, probably not. Now if you where asking for a DX11, then that would have a chance of happening as it would probably cover almost all of the player base.

Wilendar.1450:

ANet really, learn from your competition, TESO will gets DX12 support read here >> http://wccftech.com/elder-scrolls-online-dx12-upgrade-ps4-7th-core-usage-performance-improvements/
If You don’t upgrade your very old engine Your game beloved by many of us will die with natural death, because there will be better and far more advanced and optimized titles, like Black Desert Online, which look Stunning amazing, and looks better than most sinlge player AAA games today. Funny thing is that even Black Desert Looks Better than most SP game it runs a lot better than GW2, I’ve got constant 50-60 fps on max settings there, even in big fight. When in GW2 I can have drops to 10 fps on large scale events with GTX 970 !
Why is that? Answer is simple because of DX9, Windows XP unsupported system for a couple years now, and I’m asking You ANet why ? Why aren’t you upgrading your game to modern standards?
I bet WoW will get DX12 (becasue it’s support DX11 from couple years now) with next expansion, and How About GW2 ? Please release public beta dx12 client and let your community send you reports how it works.

So you play games not because they’re fun but because they have great graphics.

I see.

Basically, as others have said, DX12 adds nothing of value (you clearly don’t really understand gfx engines and why GW2’s is sub-par) and makes the game only playable by a minority of people who have swallowed M$’s propaganda about Windows 10 .. or more likely had it foisted on them because they were incapable of preventing M$ force-installing it on their Win7/8 systems.