Guild Wars 2

This is ridiculous… pay-2-win is not a matter of opinion on its definition. Yes you can buy gold with gems, or buy gems with gold(which means you spent ZERO $$). So the question is, is it pay-2-win? No in simple terms, what defines your strength is your level, regardless of how much gear you buy. Sure you can buy ascended gear, but it has already been determined that you don’t even need ascended gear to raid(some guilds have done it with ALL GREENS). “Oh but you can buy experience boosters, that is pay-2-win!” No, you are still required to put work into the game to level, it does not give you experience, it just slightly speeds it up. If winning is “beating the personal story” then no this game is not pay to win, you get free gear from leveling, and story missions are almost impossible to fail. PVP does not even use currency for gear so that is ruled out. WvW wins are more gear based but you still need to get levels to get better exotic gear to have near max stats.

Skipping a grind for ascended gear is not pay-2-win, that is just skipping a grind. It really comes down to skill of a player in any combat situation. Most people cannot solo things like arah explorable or champions in HoT, even with ascended gear, while some with exotics can solo these with ease. The implementation of gems to gold and gold to gems is and has been a way for players to have another option to the gem store that does not require REAL money. If one so desires they can even trade gems to in game currency, but I can guarantee you will never have an advantage over someone else that even remotely describes pay-2-win.

Gold is a currency, not a skill. What determines a monster killing you? Your level difference, your ability to dodge, your ability to play the game.

A person who spends 1 million dollars on gems to gold will only really be helping arenanet but they will never have an advantage over someone who has far more skill(and PVP is purely skill as money is not even involved).

GBEW.5947:

So what i’ve gathered from these comments is that if you dont play pvp nothing else matters. Lol. Idk why anyone else plays but i play to get gear, Load myself with gold, and achieve near perfect stats. And the fact is that i could spend $100 and completely skip my grind for ascended. I don’t see how anyone can say this isn’t winning. Just because ascended armor isnt much better than exotic doesn’t mean that it can’t be a goal and the fact is that it is better. It seems as if the term winning has been lost on the mmo community to be completely honest. Again if you don’t pvp much then you have no right to complain i suppose? I’m never going to legitimately think this.

To me Pay to Win is either being something that gives an in game benefit that is only available for purchase with real life money OR an item that GREATLY reduces the amount of grind needed to progress the game that either is only purchasable by real life money or an insane amount of in game currency (if there is a real life to in game currency conversion like there is with GW2 and gems to gold/gold to gems). Basically anything where if you do NOT pay real life money you will spend years trying to keep up with the players who do.

Ascended crafting doesn’t qualify as something like that. Neither do legendary weapons.

GBEW.5947:

So what i’ve gathered from these comments is that if you dont play pvp nothing else matters. Lol. Idk why anyone else plays but i play to get gear, Load myself with gold, and achieve near perfect stats. And the fact is that i could spend $100 and completely skip my grind for ascended. I don’t see how anyone can say this isn’t winning. Just because ascended armor isnt much better than exotic doesn’t mean that it can’t be a goal and the fact is that it is better. It seems as if the term winning has been lost on the mmo community to be completely honest. Again if you don’t pvp much then you have no right to complain i suppose? I’m never going to legitimately think this.

You can skip the grind, but you still have to craft the armor. Some people like the grind. I have three full sets of ascended on different characters and I did it without selling gems or spending real life money. Therefore you can win without paying.

More to the point, because content isn’t locked out by not having that gear (as it is in MMOs that are actually pay to win), it’s not that much of an inconvenience.

In other words, you pay to accelerate, not pay to win. There’s a difference. There are games out there where the best gear in the game can only be bought.

Two articles on the topic of what is Pay to Win.

http://game-wisdom.com/critical/defining-pay-to-win

http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/the-5-tiers-of-pay-to-win/

I fall into the camp that P2W is getting significantly better gear for cash that is not attainable in game.

I don’t count buying in game gold because with RMT sites, anyone can buy in game gold. All that official channels provide is letting the studio/publisher in on a slice of that market. It’s like how it’s better for a government to tax a vice, income, rather than expend the manpower to try and eliminate it, an expense.

OP has established that the game has a “pay” option. They have yet to provide evidence that there’s something to be “won” by choosing to spend RL cash to get gems.

GBEW.5947:

And the fact is that i could spend $100 and completely skip my grind for ascended.

Yes, you can spend money to shorten your play.time, but is this a win for you?
If you say yes, then I wonder why you waste time with gaming at all
SImply don’t play MMO’s that costs neither money. nor time, a double win for you.

Just remember that: ANet is not selling Gold

ANet is selling Gems to get gemshop items and server-transfers. And beside storage extension and permanent-harvesting tools there is nothing in the gems-shop that helps you to play.

Gem-Gold is a player-to-player trade. One gain gold, the other gain gems, and both boost their goals with that.

I wouldn’t call the ability to buy gold pay-to-win. Earning gold is a goal for most people, and you can just buy your way to that goal, but when you buy gold, you’re selling gems to other players, which is almost universally regarded as a good thing. Compare this situation to, say, an endless runner where you can buy extra lives, or a game that would sell you stronger weapons and armor than you can obtain in-game.

The involvement of real-world money at all will never sit well with some people, but I’ve never been displeased by GW2’s implementation of it. For example, I’ve never heard of a party demanding players to bring revive orbs to a dungeon or raid.

In the Guild Wars 2 system, time is inversely proportional to money. You can spend time, or money or both. This doesn’t affect SPvP at all, which is the main competitive mode of the game.

In other games, you can buy gold and buy stuff too, even if it’s illegal.

This doesn’t make Guild Wars 2 pay to win. You’re paying for convenience.

I mean no one I know called Guild Wars pay to win and they sold actual skill packs. This continual shifting of the pay to win bar accomplishes nothing.

Personally( and I know I’m kinda singular in this belief) I don’t mind the gem to gold conversion. Not thrilled at the exchange rate mind, but at least its a way that allows you a fairly safe way to get gold without having to get ones account hacked by a disreputable gold seller. I’ve played a handfull of MMo’s over the years and GW2 is the only one I have found that actually does a conversion like this.

Most game companies tend to set rarities on items and then use that to make one farm the currency of choice for said item so that you play longer to get the better items. And while GW does this they at least saw a opportunity to the casual gamer that had spare cash to at least have SOME progress with a direct gem to gold store.

Admittedly im starting to feel that GW2 has TOO MANY currencies and keys and things of that like, since with every new zone we get a new currency and while in some thematically it makes sense they need to stop doing that at some point.

Pay 2 Win is paying for an advantage over others.

What you describe is Pay 2 Progress faster.

Logan is just one of Anises illusions to keep Jennah entertained (huehuehue). I mean look at him. A tree has more personality.

How else do you think he even got out of Arah? It was like oh no, I have to sacrifice myself for the player with certain death and the entire group cries over the loss and then a couple minutes later its yo baby I’m back you missed me?

I doubt they need to actually log into an account to see what’s in it or what’s it’s done. They do have access to all information as shown by the ability to see all chat, all gold transfers between accounts, etc. It’s most likely similar to the bug where the Texas servers showed as a location at login, which alarmed a number of people who thought they were being hacked.

If it really is Anet, investigated for cheating/exploit perhaps? We know that Anet can log in to peoples accounts.

I doubt they would log in just to strip your pants and have everyone at the office laugh at it. Then again… its Anet.

Logging into the forums sometimes places a listing in the Network Access postings. Though, that’s usually listed as Texas.

You can contact the CS Team (Support link above/below) if you wish a guaranteed response.

Good luck.

GW1 actually did a lot of things better than GW2. It really shows that the team that ended up building GW2 had nothing to do with the original team that started on it. They completed disconnected from GW1 and ignored everything that was good about it.

A lot of missed opportunities and this is one of them. Seeing more and more stuff from GW1 seeping into the game makes me kinda smile because it proves to me that maybe they finally start realizing how good GW1 was. Don’t get me wrong, GW2 has some things it does really well also, but I just can’t understand why they just completely ignored GW1 and build on what worked really well in there. It would’ve made GW2 so much better even.

I wish they’d find a way. GW1’s system was far superior to the hope and pray a taxi squad shows up in LFG we have now. :P

The biggest obstacle is how do they sort out resource nodes? If you could visit any and all megaservers they’d have to sort out not getting too many (if any) duplicates that if everyone guested to a guaranteed new shard, the economy would likely be affected.

But I agree that choosing which shard you go to instead of having to beg and grovel via whisper for a taxi would help many players, especially PvE and RP players. A system with a drop down menu that could show you how many of your friends are in each of the shards would make a big difference.

My apologies if this has been asked or posted before, I searched and found nothing on this topic.

Why not go back to the old ‘Districts’ system of Guild Wars 1 and let people change districts? This would get around the current ‘Taxi’ system that players are already using to go into the ‘district’ they want to. The megaserver is effectively the districts system of gw1 so what reasons are there to not return to a system that worked?

Or don’t listen at all like Blizzard,

just be happy that sometimes, something in the forum is read and might even cause some actions from A-Net, don’t forget that this is still a much better relationships to the company than you can have to most others.

They listen to “us” they don’t listen to “you” every company must do this or go insane.

Anet does listen to it’s community often. I don’t know why people are always complaining about this kind of stuff. It’s always, “Anet have lost their minds! It’s broken now, I can’t chain lava fonts.”

Good riddance. I loved playing ele but the class was seriously too OP. It could do everything. Dh being broken? I don’t see how. It got the better part of the buffs this class. Symbols even a sword.. epic. Banish cd was reduced too. I don’t care much for thieves, but the only people complaining are people who got to comfortable in their rotations and play style.

Honestly, if our choices had included “Poohbah & Friends,” I would have gone with that over even “Dragonswatch”. I don’t really think the possessive is the issue here.

I have trouble understanding why ANet didn’t invite us to offer suggestions, then pick their three or five favorites, and have us vote on that. We’d be invested in the decision instead of feeling that it was a choice between the lesser of evils.

Anyhow, as a practical matter, it’s moot: the voice actors have gone home for the season and the name is here to stay.

Now we know Rytlock’s taste in names.
“FATES RAZOR!”
“Naaaw Fate’s Razor sounds stupid.”
“Dragons watch!”
“Babysitters it is!”

Sartharina.3542:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Donari.5237:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/choose-a-name-for-tyrias-heroes/

There was a player done vote between three names and Dragon’s Watch was picked. See also threads from early June discussing the merits or lack of merits of the various choices.

My recollection of the consensus was: no one loved any of the choices (and that it could have been even worse). Regardless, my preference is that in the future, they ask for suggestions first, cull them down to a list of three they like, and let us vote on those.

They may have considered that. I can imagine how the conversation goes now.
“I think we need a new guild. Got a name?”
“How about Guildy McGuildface?”

Sure, people would submit troll names, which is why ANet would have to cull the list down (as I said in the post you quoted).

(Although, to be honest, if given the choice between “Guild McGuildface” and “Dragon’s Watch,” I’d have to think about it.)

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Donari.5237:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/choose-a-name-for-tyrias-heroes/

There was a player done vote between three names and Dragon’s Watch was picked. See also threads from early June discussing the merits or lack of merits of the various choices.

My recollection of the consensus was: no one loved any of the choices (and that it could have been even worse). Regardless, my preference is that in the future, they ask for suggestions first, cull them down to a list of three they like, and let us vote on those.

They may have considered that. I can imagine how the conversation goes now.
“I think we need a new guild. Got a name?”
“How about Guildy McGuildface?”

When Rytlock heard “Dragon’s Watch” I expected him to rip off his blindfold and walk out. But he liked it. I think he’s going soft.

I can’t explain it, but it certainly was the least horrible of the choices we got to vote for. They at least could have at least removed the apostrophe.

Once again, I raid every week and I most definitely am not anti-raid.

Every time anyone talks about changing anything with raids, the same 2-3 people immediately pounce and start yelling about “anti raid” or “you have no idea what youre talking about.”

It isn’t about chest thumping and who can prove they are the best raider through their forum comments. It is about providing feedback and, hopefully, inviting multiple perspectives to the conversation.

I think raids need some work. I think with some minor tweaks, they could offer a challenging and more open experience without some the barriers that exist in the current model. I respect that others do not feel that way.

And, please please please make arguments without making it personal – or going on the warpath as soon as someone says something about change. All that does is discourage people from taking part in the conversation – which isn’t good for anyone.