Guild Wars 2

Soon.5240:

Arlee.7038:

Extreme.8350:

nickoboy.2063:

Hopefully you have realised this already and understand that people quit for this reason

No most players quit because they finished hot already or 95% of it.

And your quantitative data showing most players have stopped playing is where?

And your quantitative data showing most players haven’t stopped playing is where?

HoT’s three scenarios:

1) HoT is wildly successful. It’s attracted a huge, new player base, it’s the talk of the gaming community, servers have been added and the future of GW2 is secure.

2) Hot was meh. It brought in some new players, but also lost about the same amount. In this case, the game’s future is limited. HoT was not sold to it’s investors as a “wash” in revenue.

3) HoT has failed to expand the player base, and is losing players. It’s future is not secure (which might explain the lack of updates). It was a good 3 1/2 year run, but it’s pretty much all down hill from here.

You’d think that Anet would be shouting from the roof tops if the player base has grown tremendously or that it would be evident by having to add new servers, etc.

Which of the three scenarios is most likely?

Burden of proof falls on the one making the claim.
If you claim people are leaving you’ve to provide a source
Let’s look @ your reasoning in other context:

You: I have fairies in my garden.
Anyone: Proof?
You: Proof that I don’t?

Looking foward to the sweet and reliable source in your next post

nickoboy.2063:

laokoko.7403:

nickoboy.2063:

I have played maplestory for plenty of time and this expansion is exactly the same, its just not as extreme as what Maplestory is. it’s okay to defend the expansion if you clearly purchased it but you gotta face the facts

Maplestory is probably a bad example.

But other typical mmorpg raise level cap in their expansion. How are you going to pvp in those games?

I can tell you no one playing those mmorpg ever talk about pay to win.

That’s because, like stated above 9/10 people agree that bringing out the Elite specs in regards to competitive aspects of the game ( so not regarding PvE ) has made them much stronger, for example. I don’t remember a normal Tyrian Gw2 Guardian auto attacking for 3.4k dmg every second and a half with a longbow, and then using another skill on the longbow that has a 6 second cooldown that does almost 10k damage. Or maybe a revenant who has basically all classes put together to make it, if a thief fights a revenant (even though thief has been turned into a evade spamming button mashing class now which is why i don’t main it anymore) what can it do? thief only has so much stealth and if you don’t have the expansion you can only dodge twice instead of dodging 7 times to evade a simple revenant sword 3 skill. ( i forgot to add that this also adds evasion to the attack aswell making it even more stronger.) HoT was added to give an unfair advantage in competitve terms of the game which is why myself and many others above are calling it P2W.

So people bought and expansion, got access to elite specs and won? That’s a nice story.

Redefine P2W all you want, that’s not what it means.

jarieleledan.8249:

Didn’t Anet get away from NCsoft some time ago?

ArenaNet is owned by NCSoft and NCSoft has always had a hands-off approach on ArenaNet’s development. NCSoft was the publisher, but now ArenaNet’s doing it themselves. Scroll down for example and you can still see NCSoft listed.

Mmmm… no? NCsoft were a publisher of GW2. They aren’t since last year but NCsoft still owns ANet (you know, they bought them).
Even though, NCsoft didn’t care too much about GW2. They didn’t care about Wildstar too.
NCsoft care about “their” games (asian games).

Can you just stop blaming “bad” NCsoft for everything? There’s no “ANet is busy because of China release” so now you’re focusing on NCsoft?

NCsoft used to be a publisher for Anet, since last year it is not the case anymore, GW2 now has no bounds with NCsoft.
They even changed the ToS and now you don’t read “NCsoft” anywhere.

Didn’t Anet get away from NCsoft some time ago?

NCsoft doesn’t develop Guild wars 2.

Hubal.8571:

And unfortunately now they simply cannot abandon 32-bit version for the sake of business itself. Basically you cannot change the requirements after you sell your product. The HoT expansion should have been made 64-bit mandatory – now it’s kinda stuck – and as I said fixing the situation will not be easy – time and money is needed (or as you said “development resources”).

LOL! Sorry, that made me laugh. A while back, I had subscribed to the Adobe Creative Cloud soon after it launched to try things out. I was running Windows Vista when I started and Vista had full support. Three months into my CC sub, they changed the requirement to Windows 7 or 8 and I was unable to use the applications on my Vista machine.

Cloud-based applications are going to have constant requirement changes. I’d lump an online gaming experience in the same boat, especially if they’re tweaking things that require different resources. The product was sold under certain conditions but the only way to keep the requirements the same would be for the product to never evolve. If the product isn’t allowed to evolve then it grows stagnant and you’d have more people complaining about the lack of growth in what should be a dynamic MMO.

It’s a poor marketing decision to leave behind too much of your consumer base though, so you have to see the user data behind the scenes to know just how wise or stupid their decisions may be.

Hello all, I have been getting into trading more and more in Guild Wars 2 and really wanted more information when deciding what to buy/sell and couldn’t find a source with level of information that I wanted so I made one!

I have a big focus on data and feel like looking at single items doesn’t give enough information, forests and the trees issue all over again. So I have 16 markets where I track all item within them and present them like stocks almost this includes everything from buffs to tier 6 salvageable items and one index which covers the entire market.

I wrote a little about how to interpret the graphs here, http://www.gw2trends.com/#/faq. But if that’s not enough and it will not be I would recommend looking at this OHLC Tutorial(http://www.finvids.com/Chart-Pattern) on patterns to look for.

This project was started late October 2015 and was alot of fun to make. Right now the hardware is the only limiting factor in terms of performance but it polls all items every 5 minutes and rollups data daily.

Please check it out, recommend features you’d like to see, and report any bugs that you find!

GW2 Trends
http://www.gw2trends.com/

Endless Soul.5178:

To be fair, Tyrians only learned to jump sometime within the last 250 years.

I always thought it odd for a game that promotes jumping so heavily, there are many, many places where a tiny bump is insurmountable. I’ve ofc come across this millions of times in the course of the last 3 or so years and always shook my head in frustration and confusion as to why this is so. But just b4 i posted this thread, i had one of those “oh for goodness sake” moments as my char tried to jump this foot or so high rock. It was ridiculous and until i used a speed buff it was impossible to do. It really saddened me tbh as this was not some invisible wall, there was an ore atop this rock and u can obviously get on it, but the jumps off the ground given to our characters are so low that it was impossible to do it in a normal way.

I wish we had an agility attribute we could lvl up to naturally and permanently gain higher jumping abilities and be able to climb up mountains and such. But i dare say that won’t happen any time soon if ever, if we can’t even jump atop a little boulder without having to use a speed buff.

But who knows, with the mastery system in place anything is possible, hint, hint, nudge, nudge Anet.

Fluffball.8307:

Mastery for next expansion: Climbing. And picture the animation, it would look like a Japanese horror movie.

Perhaps the first tier of that mastery could be the ability to step over tiny bumps in the landscape while simply walking or running? I often find myself coming to a dead stop when there’s nothing visibly blocking me, only to discover that I need to jump over some polygon that was 1 pixel higher than the rest.

To be fair, Tyrians only learned to jump sometime within the last 250 years.

7-9foot tall demon mancats made of muscle and sinew and intense physical training.

…can’t clear a 4-foot wall that even I could climb over.

I don’t feel overly heroic in GW2 at times like that. >.>

Addendum: They’re also bad at climbing hills! MMOs are wretched about this, and perfectly equivalent gradients can have two completely separate collision reactions based on whether or not the developers “want” players to climb it, with no other visual indication.

What really annoyed me was the MPs they award for tyria doing the personal story are based on chapters, not what you have done. Do all the races? Do all the orders? Good for you, but you only get credit for the first one that did a chapter. I can see it making sense that the second Asura do do the first 3 chapters should not get more mastery points. Your 1st Charr after that Asura should though.

Silly me, I fell for the ‘play your own way’. Fractals? Hate em. JPs? Yow. Personal story? Well, it looks interesting so I will give it a try. How was I to know I would be punished for putting my effort into playing what they were hyping rather than what they later gave lots of MPs for.

nickoboy.2063:

laokoko.7403:

nickoboy.2063:

I have played maplestory for plenty of time and this expansion is exactly the same, its just not as extreme as what Maplestory is. it’s okay to defend the expansion if you clearly purchased it but you gotta face the facts

Maplestory is probably a bad example.

But other typical mmorpg raise level cap in their expansion. How are you going to pvp in those games?

I can tell you no one playing those mmorpg ever talk about pay to win.

That’s because, like stated above 9/10 people agree that bringing out the Elite specs in regards to competitive aspects of the game ( so not regarding PvE ) has made them much stronger, for example. I don’t remember a normal Tyrian Gw2 Guardian auto attacking for 3.4k dmg every second and a half with a longbow, and then using another skill on the longbow that has a 6 second cooldown that does almost 10k damage. Or maybe a revenant who has basically all classes put together to make it, if a thief fights a revenant (even though thief has been turned into a evade spamming button mashing class now which is why i don’t main it anymore) what can it do? thief only has so much stealth and if you don’t have the expansion you can only dodge twice instead of dodging 7 times to evade a simple revenant sword 3 skill. ( i forgot to add that this also adds evasion to the attack aswell making it even more stronger.) HoT was added to give an unfair advantage in competitve terms of the game which is why myself and many others above are calling it P2W.

Of course Anet want you to buy the expansion.

That being said, do anyone playing Wow say “Oh I need to buy the expansion else I’ll get pawned by higher level people”, “or I’ll need to buy the expansion else I won’t be able to compete in competitive pvp”?

In mmorpg you buy expansion. That’s pretty much the buttom line. If you don’t like it, try to play other pvp games which isn’t a mmorpg.

Xenesis.6389:

Vayne.8563:

When there were a zillion ham/bow warriors running around the situation isn’t much different than it is now.

Actually there is a difference, because everyone had the base game before so if you wanted to roll up a ham/bow warrior yourself you could, with the expansion not everyone has access to the new specs, there is now a line drawn between equal play to pay to win, whether that changes depends on Anet and how they go about their balancing and how long it takes them to even do so.

Again P2W is in regards to competitive play which affects all account types in this case because they are all forced to play together in pvp and wvw. I don’t care how much more damage you can or cannot do in pve with your old or new class unless of course your new class is suddenly doing like 20k more dps then obviously something needs adjusting. There’s no dps meters in gw2 so even there the pve is not very competitive.

Mmo classes are not built to be equal, but their have their roles to balance each other, and that’s expected more so in pvp. You will never achieve perfect balance but you of course don’t expect to have classes than can 1-2 shot you, or man handle the old specs so bad that it becomes expected to upgrade to continue to compete on a more even ground.

It’s like you’re playing vanilla iron man, and the expansion comes out and someone buys it and gets hulk and starts wrecking other players, you can still try to take on hulk but prepare for limbs being torn off, eventually you’ll be forced to just p2w and get access to the hulk buster instead.

Sure and when new stuff is released it often takes months in most MMOs to get the balance right. So we see new professions, they’re being used a lot, people jump on the band wagon and then stuff gets nerfed, just like warriors got a nerf at some point.

It doesn’t happen instantly.

In a year from now, we’ll see if things haven’t balanced out but it’s not going to happen right now, and no one can say the game is pay to win just because it’s out of balance right now. It’s a misuse of the term.

nickoboy.2063:

laokoko.7403:

nickoboy.2063:

I have played maplestory for plenty of time and this expansion is exactly the same, its just not as extreme as what Maplestory is. it’s okay to defend the expansion if you clearly purchased it but you gotta face the facts

Maplestory is probably a bad example.

But other typical mmorpg raise level cap in their expansion. How are you going to pvp in those games?

I can tell you no one playing those mmorpg ever talk about pay to win.

That’s because, like stated above 9/10 people agree that bringing out the Elite specs in regards to competitive aspects of the game ( so not regarding PvE ) has made them much stronger, for example. I don’t remember a normal Tyrian Gw2 Guardian auto attacking for 3.4k dmg every second and a half with a longbow, and then using another skill on the longbow that has a 6 second cooldown that does almost 10k damage. Or maybe a revenant who has basically all classes put together to make it, if a thief fights a revenant (even though thief has been turned into a evade spamming button mashing class now which is why i don’t main it anymore) what can it do? thief only has so much stealth and if you don’t have the expansion you can only dodge twice instead of dodging 7 times to evade a simple revenant sword 3 skill. ( i forgot to add that this also adds evasion to the attack aswell making it even more stronger.) HoT was added to give an unfair advantage in competitve terms of the game which is why myself and many others above are calling it P2W.

And raising the level cap isn’t an unfair advantage. Do you think if you were level 70 and everyone else was 80 you do well. Or if everyone was level 100 and you remained at level 80.

In PvP in most MMOs the level cap raises. This includes all the AAA MMOs I can think of except for Guild Wars 2.

Pray tell, can you name a single AAA MMO that you don’t need the expansion for to remain competitive.

This is what exists INSTEAD of paying a sub. Calling it pay to win is simply wrong.

Thaddeus.4891:

Vayne.8563:

In the mean time, you have the problem of having to sell the expansion. Plenty of people are simply cheap. They won’t spend the money unless you give them a kitten ed good reason to pay the money. So people who only PvP, they really have no reason to spend money on an expansion if you give them everything.

That doesn’t even make sense dude. They sold their elite spec on the very fact that it wasn’t a power creep and they were equal, just different way to play your profession. You don’t remember? All those tread and qqing about how elite spec could be pure upgrade and it was bad. And all those fanboy (me including) that were defending anet since they clearly said that

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Elite-Specs-No-Diversity/first#post5069916

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Pay-to-win/first

Here two that I could found.

They don’t need to make the profession more powerful to sell the expansion. They could sell the expansion by promoting the NEW roles these spec would give to the professions, not by improving where they are already good at. And you know what, that’s exactly what they did. Take a look at the Elite spec page right now.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/specializations/

brand-new way for you to progress, adding nine entirely new ways to play, a twist on your standard profession mechanic.

They always talked about how they would unlock different way to play the character and never talked to improve current strength of these profession.

Ask yourself. What do you prefer to play and what would sell the most?

Hey come play the new PS Beserker and the new Staff Tempest. Which are pretty much basically the exact same thing as the PS Warrior and Staff Elementalist, but with just a little twist with your F keys and more powerful.

or

Hey come play the Condi Reaper the first time Necromancer can finally be powerful in PvE. Come play the Chronomancer who can buffing the party with crazy with quickness and alacrity. Come play the first truly competitive Condi Warrior. Come play the Healing Druids. Come play an auramancer support with the tempest, etc, etc.

Those are what are selling the new specs because they bring completely new ways to play your characters. That sell way more than pressing F1 and F3 on a staff elementalist that play otherwise exactly the same, but with more dps.

Of course some are a bit too powerful. Chronomancer perma quickness is a bit much, condi Warrior dps is crazy, etc. But the point is that making profession more powerful is not what sell the best. Giving new ways to play your characters is what sold the elite spec to the players base. They just included a power creep into that.

Actually saying the sold the elite spec on the fact that it was just equal is a bit of an overstatement. They sold the elite spec on the very idea that it gave you a new way to play a profession.

Now, we don’t know how those professions will be adjusted now that they’re in game and people are using them.

Years ago, warriors were OP and now they’re not. They didn’t sell the original game on the idea that warriors are OP.

Also not all the new specializations are OP. And the idea that most people are playing them because they’re OP is also wrong. Many people will be playing them because they’re new also.

As an example, my burn guardian in PvE is just as effective as a guardian as he is as a dragon hunter for the content I do. I still play the dragon hunter, because I like the new skills. Not because it’s OP.

So, new stuff comes out, its’ not balance, game is pay to win. No. Not even close.

We have to watch balance patches to see where it goes in the future, because there have always been more powerful professions in this game.

When there were a zillion ham/bow warriors running around the situation isn’t much different than it is now.

And you know it’s hard to introduce a bunch of new stuff and know where the meta will go.

But my understanding of these specs, how they were SOLD was that they were new ways to play your existing characters, which is what most people were asking for.

nickoboy.2063:

I have played maplestory for plenty of time and this expansion is exactly the same, its just not as extreme as what Maplestory is. it’s okay to defend the expansion if you clearly purchased it but you gotta face the facts

Maplestory is probably a bad example.

But other typical mmorpg raise level cap in their expansion. How are you going to pvp in those games?

I can tell you no one playing those mmorpg ever talk about pay to win.

Thaddeus.4891:

Ayrilana.1396:

Thaddeus.4891:

Ayrilana.1396:

Would you consider the Guild Wars 1 standalone campaigns and expansion P2W?

I didn’t play GW1 so I can’t answer that. And tbh I don’t care about labelling any game as P2W, B2P or whatever. My only point is Elite Spec should have been equal in power to the core specs and not so much more powerful like they are now. That’s my only point here.

The thing is that this has been in the series since the beginning and practically every other MMO does the same. The OP is also using the term incorrectly.

Well, it depend on what we are talking about here. Again. My only point ever was about the power creep so I guess if you quoting me you are talking too about power creep.

It’s not because a lot of MMO are doing it and it was in GW1 that it’s a good things. Watch the video that I linked. Power Creep in gw2 is a bad thing. Ascended, Specialisation and Elite Spec being the 3 main power creep element added to the game. That’s the reason why most World boss are so freaking easy now, why dungeon can be done under 5min with a pug group, etc.

How is it really a bad thing? I guess that’s what I’m not understanding. Unlike other MMO’s, the power creep (via expansion) comes solely from the elite specs. It’s normally assumed that most players will purchase expansions so players will essentially have access to these right off the bat (provided they get the needed HP).

This will likely be something we won’t agree on.

Thaddeus.4891:

Ayrilana.1396:

Would you consider the Guild Wars 1 standalone campaigns and expansion P2W?

I didn’t play GW1 so I can’t answer that. And tbh I don’t care about labelling any game as P2W, B2P or whatever. My only point is Elite Spec should have been equal in power to the core specs and not so much more powerful like they are now. That’s my only point here.

The thing is that this has been in the series since the beginning and practically every other MMO does the same. The OP is also using the term incorrectly.

Thaddeus.4891:

Vayne.8563:

Yes, I am facing the facts. The fact is there’s a difference between cash shop purchases and selling an expansion.

Is WoW pay to win? Because every expansion in that game raises the level cap.

The game is buy to play. It was always supposed to be a series of games that you bought, instead of paying a sub. That’s the business plan of the game.

By your reckoning, Anet could never add anything to the game that might give power, unless they gave it to everyone. In my reckoning that’s a failed business right there.

If you can’t tell the difference between an expansion for a game that sells once, three years after the game comes out and Maple Story there’s not a whole lot of point in continuing this conversation.

Well it’s flirting on the line if you ask me. An expansion should add content and give more option. That’s what they were telling us and that’s what we were expecting. The problem is not the expansion itself, it’s the power creep from the elite specs. It was a big debate pre-HoT. People were fearing that elite spec would be elite and would toss aside vanilla profession. I was of those who were defending Anet since they said that elite spec would be new ways to play the game, not just improved version of profession. And I was wrong because they are.

You can see it. In PvP, the vast majority of build are elite spec. Same with PvE. You don’t want elite spec to be bad so ya of course you want some of them to be meta, but ALL of them?

As for your question. If Anet could never add anything to the game that might give power, unless they gave it to everyone.

I answer that they should never add anything to the game that might make a power creep. Balancing profession yes. But not power creep.

You could say, hey lets upgrade the dps of the necro because it’s lower than most.

You could say, hey let’s make tempest improve condi ele since it’s wasn’t competitive.

But when tempest add dps to the direct damage elementalist, that’s when you brough Power Creep and it’s never a good idea that you give it to everyone or behind the expansion. But behind the expansion is ever worst.

I disagree. I played Guild Wars 1 too, which was also buy to play and there was definitely power creep in that game as well. People want to feel like they’re progressing. It’s very hard to do that without making them a bit more powerful. That said, it’s not TONS more powerful in most cases.

Then you have necros, which were less powerful over all and now have a spec they can use.

It’s simply more complex an image than you’re painting it.

nickoboy.2063:

Vayne.8563:

If this game is pay to win then every MMO expansion for every game is pay to win. Not really what the term was meant to designate.

Pay to win was when you had to continually use microtransactions to stay current. Look up games like Maple Story. This game is not P2W. They’re selling an expansion.

In just about every MMO expansions raise the level cap, and you need to buy them to compete. Not sure why you think this is different.

I have played maplestory for plenty of time and this expansion is exactly the same, its just not as extreme as what Maplestory is. it’s okay to defend the expansion if you clearly purchased it but you gotta face the facts

Yes, I am facing the facts. The fact is there’s a difference between cash shop purchases and selling an expansion.

Is WoW pay to win? Because every expansion in that game raises the level cap.

The game is buy to play. It was always supposed to be a series of games that you bought, instead of paying a sub. That’s the business plan of the game.

By your reckoning, Anet could never add anything to the game that might give power, unless they gave it to everyone. In my reckoning that’s a failed business right there.

If you can’t tell the difference between an expansion for a game that sells once, three years after the game comes out and Maple Story there’s not a whole lot of point in continuing this conversation.

If this game is pay to win then every MMO expansion for every game is pay to win. Not really what the term was meant to designate.

Pay to win was when you had to continually use microtransactions to stay current. Look up games like Maple Story. This game is not P2W. They’re selling an expansion.

In just about every MMO expansions raise the level cap, and you need to buy them to compete. Not sure why you think this is different.

Here is what is going to happen (because people that are really impassioned about their game are driven to be heard).

More players are going to start using reddit, and trust me you all don’t want that because that’s taking the venting out of house. The truth is if they had thought they were being heard here they never would have started going over there to begin with.

This game is very saveable and it can be turned around. Believe me, I lived through the broken spine of SWG, and it could have been saved had they listened to Ralph Koster.

Get back over here on “your forum” put the ball of control back in “your court”.
Take polls or give a “touch base” once a month for Pve, PvP, and WvW and remain steadfast with it. You have my word you will see a turn around in community attitude. RIght now you have nothing to lose. I do like this game, and I want to see it succeed.

I’m not trying to be pushy, and I hope this advise is taken as one who has a solid understanding of gaming communities and would just like to see the best for all parties concerned. Other than that your WvW desert map was amazing…a little big but amazing.

I think ArenaNet aspire to the Valve approach, by which I of course mean that they intend to do as much talking to their community as a brick wall made of mute buttons sealed within a vacuum who have recently sworn an oath of silence in accordance with their Religion of Absolute Quiet.

I literally almost hit the floor laughing from this, Thank You.

You would think that the devs would know where their bread is buttered, given that only paying customers can post on these forums.

Do you spend time communicating with the people who have actually forked over cold, hard cash (more invested in the game, and therefore more likely to spend more money in the future), or do you spend time on third-party sites where any anonymous fool can troll, air grievances, and libel the game, all over the F2P portion?

Then again communication means nothing when you don’t actually take action on the underlying problems. The devs already let us know that (there’s the communication) that they’re not going to do anything about the atrocious state of matchmaking and balance in sPvP until after the league season ends. So we know we’re stuck with October’s borderline unplayable, unwatchable bunker meta until at least February. Not to even mention the horrendous population issues with WvW that have festered for years and finally reached the breaking point with the expansion launch.

At this point, the game needs a lot more than communication: it needs actual action. If ArenaNet actually starts solving problems, improved “communication” will occur naturally.