Guild Wars 2

I have read so much negative Posts here which are either utterly wrong and emotional impertinant or they are justified concerns which are overrunned by other emotional “this is all bs” posts. There are very few positive Posts but that is no suprise, because it is natural for a Forum to be negative, because people like to complain and if something is great, they are enjoying it ingame and it much more unlikely to spread those feelings on a Forum.
Therefore i want to go over the most common complains and make a statement to the to clarify they are right or not. I will use the example and comparison to WoW quite often, because it is the most succesful MMO ever made so far and a Milestone in MMO History.

C: GW2 has become a p2w game with the Elite Specialisations.
A: Wrong. The Term “p2w” is misused here to express the emotional Letdown of someone who likely just got killed by a Elite Specialisation. A Expansion is not a pay to win Mechanic in a MMO, it is progress and therefore not qualified to be called “p2w”. It is natural for every Game that a Expansion brings out more powerful Elements and everyone has acces to that whole content. If people decide to not take part in that progress, it is natural they are left behind and that goes for everything in life and in games. Let me give you a quick Example. When WoW launched an Expansion, it was no question of if you want to buy it or not, because the Level Cap gets raised, the new Raid has far better gear, the new Farmspots are way more rewarding etc. etc. If you want to be competetive, you buy an Expension in a MMO. To clarify, p2w is adressed to ingame purchases who are giving you a advantage over other players and are besides that not necessary or essential for the game. You can see, a Expansion does not fit into that Term.

C: HoT destroys the core game.
A: Wrong. If an MMO launches a Expansion, there is no “Core Game” anymore, it is called the Vanilla Version of it. The Core Game now is the Game plus the Expansion, which is why a Expansion is again no p2w Element. It is also the reason why all the really good rewards and other things are transfered into a Expansion and if they are not, a Expansion will just add so many more powerful and valuable things, that in the progress Vanilla content will get obsolete on its own. Guild Wars 2 has related to that still a outrageous good Vanilla Content.

C: Masteries for Fractals are a greed Move and with the Dungeon nerf only a grind to prolong everything. Already existing rewards are locked behind that stupid thing now
A: Almost right. Masteries for Fractals and Dungeons are a great Idea and a good way to implement even better progress and reward feeling into the Fraktals/ PvE content. The Dungeon nerf however was a difficult thing because Dungeons on that standard added maybe really too much gold with too little efford into the Game. A Group of 5 People finishing CoF within 10 Minutes or less added 5,25g in that time into the Game. That is quite a lot and now the same group would add only 1,75g into the Game. While i do understand the complainement about that loss of income and my own concerns about the new players who get into the Game and have it now much harder to earn gold without spending real money, it is a real problem if you imagine something like this would happen in the real world. (It already is btw.) It would be like the World Bank would simply add more and more money into the System and therefore the money itself would be less and less worth it. That already happened in GW2 since everything is now just even more expensive because Gold is less worth.
With that step now, newer players would get more for their real money, if they chose to buy Gems and trade it into Gold after and in the same progress, people who dont want to spend real money on the game are slowed down, which is not always the right thing. As you can see now, it is a very difficult thing how the economy evolves and needs to be investigated very closely and also monitored by ArenaNet.

Back to the Fractals. As I said before, adding the Masterie System is great but to lock already existing loot behind that now and therefore removing rewards from players who had acces to them before is not right. It is the wrong way to make people by a Expansion and there has to be another way. You just cannot hide something which already existed behind a even higher border only to make people use a Expansion System. A Expansion should add new things, not recycle old ones.
Here is a Quote of a User who put that into the right words :
“Those who did/do not purchase HoT should still not lose the ability to play what they were playing before.
The new levels, the masteries and such, however, belong to those who bought the expansion.”

C: HoT is the death for Soloplayers.
A: Not entirely wrong but given the name of this Game, it wasnt meant to be a Soloplayer game to begin with. Everything in Guild Wars 2 is and ever was designed to be a interactive multiplayer Content and it is one of the main reasons why Guild Wars 2 is such a great game. The possibility for players soloing Dungeons was wrong from the start and had to be fixed ages ago if you ask me. I do also think it is vital for a MMO to maintain its Group philosophy and keep players interactive and communicative. WoW has proofen that a MMO without those parts is likely to beeing toxic. It is because Guild Wars 2 keeps this philosophy high, this game is still really enjoyable for Soloplayers! Please keep that in mind.

C: 400 Hero Points for the Elite Specialisations are way too much! Iam forced to play through the Maps!!
A: Wrong. There is no Issue in “forcing” people to enjoy the Content, the new World, the Story to unlock your Elite Specialisation. I dont think that “forcing” is the right word for it and also it is justified just lorewise, that you, becoming a Master over your Profession, have seen and experienced the World. The Elite Specialisations are the top of your Characters progress and i think it is really wrong to hand it to you without any progress in the first place.

C: Hot has way to little Maps, no Armor / Weapon Skins , no Content at all. THNX ANet.
A: Wrong. Eventhough there are only 4 Maps right now, every Map has 3 Layers so i think it is fair to count one Map as atleast 1,5-2 Maps. Looking at the Skins however, it is right to call that little. I really think there has to be added much more yes. Talking about the Content in the End, the Expansion provides a lot of Content. Guild Halls, Masterie System, new Professions, new Class, new Maps, new PvP, new Sets, new Cinematics, Raids, new Dungeons, Gliding, new PvE fighting System, Action Cam and maybe even more.

In the End, there are issues in the Game and there have to be some improvements, but overall the very majority of criticsm so far is not justified. Sure it is possible that iam wrong about certain points, if so feel free to tell me as calm as you can why, if not nvm… Maybe i will update this as time passes and add some other things i have forgotten now.

So far, have a nice day and enjoy HoT.

Saying “the majority are annoyed with the expansion” is bluntly wrong, GW2 hit top 4 on Expansion Release day, If anything its brought even more players to the game kitten many positive reviews were made in twitch chats across the majority of the Streamers who streamed HoT Release.

The majority of Streamers and Players in game and via Twitch are Expressing nothing but love for the new elite specializations and New content released with this expansion, claiming the expansion has 0 raids?…. there was a ENTIRE video showing you the kitten Raids of this expansion you trying to say they last minute deleted all the content?…. Prolly unlikely have i been IN the raid zones, No… but theres ALOT of evidence provided which says they are in the game.

What else did you expect?…. As already said, Does anyone Reach top tiered Armour Within a half a week of Expansion Release? no… how about Before they’ve finished the Map Completion in the new zones? nope, EVERY MMORPG IN THE GOD kitten EXISTENCE has something in the game that actually takes MUCH Longer to achieve, just because GW2 ignore gear laddering doesnt Suddenly mean EVERYTHING proffession related has to be instant.

this is the Entire “I dont wanna pay for HoT” war all over again in ANOTHER aspect of the game, Im sorry, but EVERY MMORPG follows the trend of a Character progression, Weather its a Gear ladder, a Secondary levelling Source, Hero Point grinding Level Grinding Raid Farming or Whatever it exists in Every MMO, Just like Expansions Cost Money in EVERY GAME RELEASED..

this is why GW2 concept is great and also bad, Because Players become Adjusted to the Idea of 0 Effort for Everything and paying Nothing to be Entitled, its a great game but U never see these arguments about how quickly you reach the top in any other MMO because they are already come to terms with the fact each Expansion they’ll Spend 6+ Months Grinding out to have Everything…

Note: 6 months odd of Character Progression is BOX STANDARD for a MMORPG, if your looking for Instant pay offs, MoBAs are ur field of play, and Welcome to why MoBAs are Quickly taking over the Vast majority of gamers.

Incase you’ve NEVER Played EQ1 EQ2 or WoW, some of the very orginal bones to MMOs (i know they werent the first, they were some of the first to make the genre big)

Generally – a Expansion would Force you to Rip through 5 – 10 levels before u may even START grinding on character Progression, THen generally they’ll Rip u through grouping Just to qualify yourself to raid, this in itself for a casual player could take Multiple Weeks, thats right WEEKS to see the raids, Once you’ve Reached this point your on a Endless Spree of Farming with WEEKLY LOCKOUTS to achieve tier Armour.. to slowly progress through Each difficulty of Raid to achieve the Next stepping stone, Also some of these actually have Legendary weapons which take MONTHS of grinding.

Thats right MONTHS without having what they “paid for”…. Welcome to MMORPG History… and Welcome to what a MMO is…

Axelwarrior.9084:

Ever heard of character progression?
That’s what Masteries and Elite Specs are. Nobody ever claimed otherwise.

This. Instead of a gear grind and an increased level cap, they’ve gone with giving players progression in how they can interact with the world. You aren’t supposed to have everything at once. It’d be like if you played WoW and they just handed you whatever the new tier of gear was at the start of the expac instead of making you work for it.

leftyboy.9358:

bLind.6278:

I wonder if Anet even realizes that a very large portion of their playerbase is not only unimpressed, but pretty kitten ed unhappy with the expansion.

Oh they do. Should check out the main topic under heart of thorns discussion .
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged].

over 50k views and 2k posts and most are negative and critical solutions out of this mess.

At this point I think the moderator is just having a hard time keeping up with all the new topics that are really the same topic. Hero point system for elites is not fun.

its the vocal minority again while the majority are having fun in the game. dust will settle in 2 weeks

Did someone forgot that there is no new lvl cap?
This is the lvling part…as in any mew expansion, you have to progress your character to unlock new stuff…
This crying is just ridicilious…

Ripr.8073:

As one guy stated, apparently people have wanted it to change from first beta. Second, I never purchased the expansion until the night before due to some friends getting it so I did not have the oppurtunity to play in betas as far as I knew.

Oh right, understandable. Tbh I am surprised there has not been more on the forums leading up to the release from players that did test. Maybe everyone was just all happy to be trying out all their new elite specs. But now they have to WORK for them the reality has set in….

Shame really.

Or at least some of you.

If content is too short and easy, people complain.

If content is too long and hard, people complain.

And yes I am referring to the elite specializations, the mastery system, etc.

Please make up your mind on what you want.

darkace.8925:

phys.7689:

PlatinumMember.5274:

It is not a disaster just because you are too cheap to afford an expansion. The fact of the matter is, Arena net seems genereous when you compared to other companies.

Also, if you are not going to buy the expansion why bother run dungeons? Those things are never going to be improved and it makes everything pointless.

hes talking about fractals, not dungeons. Do you even read bro?

He/she, like far too many of the Guild Wars 2 fanbase, is in too big a hurry to victim-blame to bother reading – let alone actually consider – any criticism or concern being addressed by those who haven’t waterlogged themselves with Kool-Aid.

Victim blame? Victim blame? Ooh boy, hoo hoo haa haa haah! Seriously? Did I read this right? This guy is a “victim” now? Oh dear me. No. Victims have actually suffered more than the little inconvenience of having one of their circus acts taken away. However I do like the kool-aid reference, although it’s possibly a little before your time.

ZippyBawBaw.6487:

Amaya.1483:

To people who are serious about the “old content nerf” , yeah maybe other expansions didnt nerfed old content, instead of it, they made the new content so much more worth, that its literally the same. You guys… sigh

Except the old content in said other games was still perfectly playable and didn’t have rewards/loot tweaked until several expansions later, if at all. They most certainly did not remove key rewards and content from their older stuff, just to gate it away and have it available only to those willing to shell out 40-60 bucks for it.

You know what they did do though? Create enough original content to justify the price tag while leaving the older stuff as intact as possible for the people that paid for it.

Buying the expansion right now feels less like I’m ‘supporting’ Anet and more like I’m being suckered by them. No thanks

There is no need to tweak anything if its not worth anything. Old content always got obsolete in WoW for example, GW2 is far away from that. KKthxbye

To people who are serious about the “old content nerf” , yeah maybe other expansions didnt nerfed old content, instead of it, they made the new content so much more worth, that its literally the same. You guys… sigh

Play the game, and as you enjoy it, you’ll level up. If you want to level faster, WvW is a good place to get XP. The more you rush it, the less you’ll enjoy the game because then it becomes a chore. Once you hit level 80, then focus on all the optional stuff.

Pezz.4758:

AdaephonDelat.3890:

Pezz.4758:

AdaephonDelat.3890:

Pezz.4758:

according to a bunch of people on this forum it is.

but eh, i went out and bought a ton of beef jerky, beers, redbulls snacks for prep.
worked out that i can use them to camp for BDO alpha keys instead of playing base engineer for another month.

As you’re off to play BDO can I have your stuff?

ok i made an agry post in the heat of the moment and ill apologize for that
i dont want to give up on the game but i assure you ushering people out who
“dont play within the vision of the game” is not a smooth road.
ive been on it once, it didnt work out well for anyone

I’m not ushering you out. I thought you were leaving. Glad you’re gonna stay. Can I offer a possible alternative to your quandry then? You also get hero points for levelling up in WvW. Why not do a few rounds of EotM with some WvW XP boosters? Dull as hell of course but will allow you play the new content as a Scrapper.

im going to be completely honest with you here.
i appreciate your help in giving me a work around.
and im preparing for backlash before i even continure posting which i SHOULDNT have to do for being an unsatisfied customer but in the age where game companies are defended blindly i feel the heat coming.

i dont raid, i dont PVP, all i want to do si explore the world of maguuma jungle as a scrapper. i undderstand now that is impossible. so please dont get your knickers in a twist, as the game is buy to play there really is no “quitting” but its now noon, expac launched 9 hours ago ive put in 20 minutes because of the system.

dont get me wrong, i got a helluba lot of stuff done in that time, but none if it had to do with GW2. we can let this thread die now. but thats the feedback i want to give.

instead of grinding masteries just to unlock scrapper, ive made a dentist appointment, went to the bank, ate some popcorn and jerkey (i bought supplies for this launch might as well eat em) and got my mail. not to mention vacuuming. you know whats great about vacuuming? i dont need to rank up my vacuum before i make my apartment clean. pretty sweet concept i guess. maybe call dyson? i dunno

Hmmm that’s fair. Notice I didn’t actually defend them nor get “my knickers in a twist”. Just asked for your stuff when I thought you were leaving (my reasoning: you’ll have no need for it if you’re not playing). When you informed me you weren’t I tried to offer you a solution. I appreciate that you dislike this solution but I figured it was one you may not have considered so I thought I’d offer it.

Best of luck wherever you find yourself.

PS – Can I have your stuff? :-P

Spurrlock.3219:

The common denominator is not “I don’t want to play to unlock this,” its “I don’t want to grind masteries for 20+ hours and burn through new PvE content to enjoy the rest of the game with new elite specs,” such as dungeons, fractals, wvw, etc.

Example:

• When you create a new character, do you expect to go off and kill Zhaitan at level 1?
• In real life, do you expect to register for college, and walk away with a 4 year degree on your first day of school?

Simply play the game. HoT is an expansion that offers new skills. Logically, your character would need to learn and master the new skills, not just walk around and instantly become Elite. If you really want to get those new skills, you gotta earn them.

leftyboy.9358:

Gaile gray’s post implies people who have a problem with long grind for their basic elite skills and traits are in some way just silly.

But… all the complaints are silly. The common denominator for all of them is “I don’t want to play to unlock this, I want it now.” Anet Devs said previously that they pay attention to legitimate complaint posts, the ones that actually provide constructive feedback. And they take that feedback and make changes to the game.

Edit – Somewhere buried in the forums, Colin or MO actually gave examples of changes they made based on player feedback.

Actually, you need to start looking over this code right away to make sure this doesn’t become a problem for Wintersday.

Wiat.3806:

In the last 3 Years I have spent quite a bit of money..Happily…In the last few months I have spent a good amount on influence for my personal bank guild.. anticipating guild halls .is there any reason whatsoever that you as a company could not have informed your players before release that have done nothing but promote your game and tell people what is good about this game that personal bank guilds would be worthless and the money we have spent on influence is now in your pockets and we r just KITTENEd

I think it was Colin who said in an interview that Anet sees guilds as having at least 5 players. So if you have at least 5 players in guild, then you can go out together and work on your own hall.

And FYI, we’ve known for a long time that guild Influence and Merits would be useless when HoT released. You need to read the official web page for updates.

MyriadStars.5679:

SkiTz.4590:

welcome to the business of… well.. doing business lol.

What about “goodwill”? At least in gaming industry, this should be a very important asset.

What Anet is doing now for HOT is often done by companies that do not plan to be in business for long and just want to grab as much money as possible for now. This really makes me worry about the future of the Guild Wars franchise.

Unfortunately, employees can’t pay their own bills with goodwill nor can ANet pay it’s own bills with goodwill. At some point, companies have to do things to turn a profit. And sometimes those decisions lead to unpopular game directions.

That being said, I neither agree nor disagree with the OP on the fractals issue as I haven’t played fractals enough to know what the rewards were before and what they are now and what now requires HoT or what doesn’t.

If they have locked previously available rewards behind HoT, that is a pretty horrible move. New rewards is fine, but old rewards is low.

This Thread is full with absurd opinions, really hillarious. Have you ever played any game which made an expension at all? What did you expect? The Dungeon nerf was btw reasonable because it was way to rewarding compared to other things when it just takes you around 10min to get all the stuff by skipping 80% of the content. This is really weak from everyone of you who compains here.

Devildoc.6721:

PopeUrban.2578:

Devildoc.6721:

Yeah but doing events we’ve done hundreds or thousands of times before already just isn’t fun.

Well, I mean, that’s part and parcel for the genre unfortunately. in a perfect world game developers could put out content faster than we could eat it up, but in reality that’s just not possible, so at some point you’re gonna be repeating stuff

That has nothing to do with it, this isn’t new content that we just run out of this is content they KNEW we’d already done to death.

Existing players are not the only players in the game however. Part of it is making sure the content is compelling and has longevity for new players as well. basically, the idea is that if you know your game is going to require people to repeat stuff somehow, the goal is to make it feel rewarding to repeat that.

Map rewards and masteries are an attempt at making it worthwhile to repeat that core content rather than simply abandoning it, and overall making the game as a whole feel more valuable no matter where you spend your time.

darkace.8925:

“We don’t make grindy games.”

“No, you cannot play as a Reaper until you’ve “acquired” more Hero Points."
“No, you cannot…”
etc, etc, etc

It’s almost as if you need to play the game to play the game…I’d be furious if I was forced to play a game I’d purchased. I’d go and speak up in the senate about it, the world needs to know your plight.

The theory is that the bulk of the core game (and probably even HoT) works for small guilds and so there should be some things for guilds that require more than a handful of members.

That said, as His Eminence suggests: there are ways around some of the requirements, including asking others for help. I’m sure people will be offering this as a service (i.e. ask for payment) and I’m equally sure those that are a little bit patient will be able to find volunteers in-game, via LFG, the forums, Reddit, etc.

You’re not.

Direct from the Q&A stream, colin stated anet considers a guild as a group of 5+ players, and less than that “not even a group really”

They aren’t designing guild systems for guilds of less than five people, but encourage you to find outside help, or bribe people if you want to use the guild system in an unintended way.

I’d be happy to have some of my guys help you out with your guild hall expedition just for fun. No bribery required

Pezz.4758:

TyDi.9078:

Honestly what did you expect this expansion to be? It sounds like you were waiting for a new game to come out.

sorry im pretty new to GW2 mostly started coz of the reaper and scrapper.

im used to other MMOs that release new classes and you can play ALL the content with them, not do ALL the content and THEN play them.

apologies if i was wrong.

It’s just another layer of progression. Think of it as raising the level cap. It’s like saying “oh why dont they just make us 90 so i can do all the level 90 content”.

What, were you expecting it to be handed to you at the beginning? And if it was, wouldn’t you then proceed to not do anything in the new maps and complain there’s nothing to do?

Rikkado.7321:

This is like buying a brand spanking new car and then someone tells you:

“Wait, you have to learn how to drive this old crappy machine you’ve been driving for years while earning stamps for every checkpoint you drive past,

No, it’s not like buying a car at all. It’s like buying a derelict plot of land off your neighbour. It’s a blank space into which you can extend your current garden. If you want the garden, you have to create it.

Or, if you want a much more pertinent analogy, it’s a bit like buying the original GW2, or any other similar game. You get a bunch of empty character slots in which you can create a level 1 character with one rubbish weapon and one bag. When you bought the that original game did you expect to be able to insta-create lvl 80 toons with max bags, max weapons and all the skills available? AT the start, you don’t get to disintegrate the mobs in Queensdale with your Huge Blazing Sword of Doom. You get to scratch them to death them with your Insignificant Dagger of Bluntness.

And, yes, I get that if you have loads of alts that there will be some level of repetition but, you know, that what alts are!

The intent of the game designers is obvious. You are meant to fairly easily reach the first rung of the elite ladder and then spend a bunch of time and effort making your way up it. That’s the game. No likee, no playee.

That’s why it’s called an “elite” specialization. You have to work to get it. Did you guys think you would start HoT with almost everything already unlocked? The point is that you’re leveling your character through the game.
“We have to play-through the whole Maguuma on all our characters, rush the map as fast as possible, just to unlock kittenable elite spec.”
No, you don’t have to. The game is fully playable with the usual specs, and you can unlock elite specs as you play the HoT campaign… Really, people need to stop with this instant gratification mindset – the point of a game is that you don’t have everything handed over to you on a plate within the first 5 minutes.

Eh. It’s not too bad really. Gives everyone enough time to brace themselves for what’s coming.

Also, 10 gold says the first complaint thread will be “OMG!! THE GAME CRASHED AND NOW I HAVE TO DOWNLOAD ANOTHER PATCH!!!! FAIL GAME ANET!!! GOOD JOB AT RUNING YOUR GAME!!!”

(Tries to think of a suitable poem for the occasion)

’Twas the night before launch
And all through the game
Not a creature was stirring
Not even an AgitatedFox.
The gamers sat by their computers with care,
In hopes that a Dev, soon would be there;
The download was sitting, awaiting the call
With hopes of crashing. The game and us all.

Ohoni.6057:

Nope. Raiding engages you always.

Nope, that’s entirely subjective.

As always, this community never fails to amaze me.

Jesus.