Guild Wars 2

Seems ANET has decided they have already given us all the answers they’re willing to give. Which are more or less “That’s what it is, we’re not going to change our mind, take it or leave it”.

It is unnacceptable, but I guess as long as they don’t read this thread anymore (I guess they’re now focused in the new megaserver feedback threads) we won’t get anything.

As far as I’m concerned, though, I will try to keep this thread up to be seen and if they continue ignoring us, I’m willing to open new threads once the change is done, to request our tonics to be changed into outfits as a first step, and to request outfits to be changed into mix-and-match pieces as a second one.

I’m that stubborn.

Hamfast.8719:

(snip)
Unfortunately, the Outfit system does away with the ability to create a unique look. One size fits all, with very limited colors to boot. I’m glad they tried to let us keep our Town Clothes, but Outfits do not fit the people who purchased Town Clothes. I doubt they will see much use, since they are unable to provide the individuality craved by their target audience.

What I see as a solution: Start from scratch if necessary and remake all the old Town Clothes that we bought. Turn them into individual armor skin pieces that work under the new system.
(snip)

I agree with every single one of your points in your post, just shortened the quote. Your bold point at this stage is the only way I can see this being able to work. The wardrobe was a great idea, and very needed.

But the slap in the face to anyone who purchased town clothes to mix and match (you know, the majority of the people who purchased town clothes) for an individual look (Wasn’t that the point of being able to transmutate? To get a personalised look?) reeks of not even being discussed or thought of. It seems like something completely forgotten about, except it was a gaping wound of a problem. Now they’ve slapped a band-aid on it, hoping it will fix the issue. It obviously won’t.

I’m more than happy for the wardrobe. I’m delighted that all those skins I have in my bank that I cannot figure out to give to which character can now be given to them all if I want. And even though I have not purchased any town clothes, I am not sure this was worth the trade off for loss of town clothes customisation. I really don’t care about being able to wear town clothes in combat, to me it makes little sense. But that’s not what this discussion is about.

ArenaNet talks about ‘Collaborative Development’, but let’s be honest here – it isn’t. Anet thinks up an idea, implements it, goes ‘How did we do?’, and then tries to deal with the fallout. This is not the definition of ‘collaboration’. You are reading this, you have internet, I presume you can look up that definition on your own.

To be truly collaborative, ArenaNet should bring up these ideas before they announce them going live, or start work on them. While there has been a fair amount of vitriol spewed out by a number of people, there have been some very constructive posts and some excellent criticism as to why it is a bad idea, and even some suggestions on how to make it work better.

You have a large community here, Anet, who are invested in a great game. Your collaboration idea is great, but you need to actually do it. I know that development/programming/testing/etc of ideas can take a long time, but I for one would be happier knowing something that was worked on by devs and the community together was coming, rather than having it sprung on me with some inherently bad flaws. There are obviously some things that could never be agreed upon, or be capable of developing at all. In these cases it’s more than fair that you would be able to say ‘No’ to.

But please, give us a chance to give input! You have done so much good and right already. Make this a true collaborative effort, make this MMO a true community between devs and users.

eisberg.2379:

Aidan Savage.2078:

kuscheldrow.6415:

All together with a different chatcolor than plain white it would be perfect, yes. , But obviousely never going to happen as anet ignores RPers strictly…

Just like any game developer ignores the “minority” in the game. Honestly, a lot of the changes made to games, not just gw2 specifically, are NEVER intended with roleplayers in mind. If you cant adapt, you get left behind. That’s all there is to it. There’s always going to be groups of players that are going to remain an afterthought.

Yeah, if a very small group of people are going to be affected by a change that is better for the vast majority, then so be it.

Spock

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few

And do you remember what Spock said after that?

Nothing, because he was dead. He died, cut off from his friends and anyone that might even try to help him. His flesh burned and irradiated, quite literally cooked alive. If he had been human, he would have been screaming in agony.

You want to sign up to be one of the few sacrificed for the many? Be my guest. Personally, I didn’t support this game just to be tossed under the bus when there’s a better option that could make everyone happy.

Also, I wish Spock had grabbed some bags of microwave popcorn before going in there. He could have saved the ship AND prepared a tasty snack at the same time!

Feothyr.6072:

Speckly.3729:

I’ve spent several hundred dollars on the game

So have a lot of other players as well

Speckly.3729:

Telling me ’don’t worry’ doesn’t do much to alleviate that.

I can understand your concerns very well, but personally I just think “not worrying” is a healthier approach. The patch isn’t even live yet and we do not know all the details about the megaservers. What we do know is that ArenaNet is constantly working on improving the game.
Why not simply wait for the patch and see how things turn out? The problems you keep predicting might not exist at all I’m pretty sure there is going to be plenty of time to give feedback and voice concerns, once the patch is live and the problems do actually exist in the game.

The smileys are starting to come off condescendingly. I’m voicing valid concerns, and so are quite a lot of other people.

Yes, plenty of other people spend money on the game, I’m aware. But my money has been spent on roleplay, and so has plenty of people’s. That being the case, there’s nothing wrong with making sure our stance on things is known, and with Anet’s track record in regards to roleplay, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being wary, either.

I do a lot of roleplay in the zones that are going to be hit by the test run. I’ll have plenty of time to actually get a feel for things once the patch hits. In the meantime, what’s wrong with pointing out potential problem-areas so that they’ll already be on the dev radar when it comes time for launch? No one’s launched a witch hunt and no one is crying ‘doom.’ We’re just being (rightfully) skittish.

Razyll.2081:

chemiclord.3978:

Titan Cronus.9216:

snip

And here we go into left field sillyness.

Theft? Really? Come on. I get you’re disappointed, but seriously, get real.

Tell ya what. Ya really think it’s theft? Here ya go: http://www.fbi.gov/report-threats-and-crime

Follow that link, report Arena.net for theft, and see what happens.

Content within a game changes all the time, especially in MMOs. It is not theft. Period.

If you want to try and sway the opinion of a developer, accusing them of a felony probably isn’t going to tilt their ear your way.

Did you even read what he commented on entirely? He acknowledged the very fact against what you say. He’s right in the regards that it just feels morally wrong with what they’re doing to the minority of the players.

This is what bothers me the most. You are quite right, legally, there is nothing that can be done; since we spent real money on the gems, not the actual outfit (the way you bought the actual outfit in GW1), regardless of the EULA, the argument would be that you only bought the gems with the real money, and got what you paid for; you only spent in-game currency on the outfits. Splitting hairs, but great legally for them. Thing is, in every other company I have ever dealt with outside of software companies, there is a good faith effort to address and resolve consumer complaints. Even the cable companies, as per the example above, will at least try to credit an account or change the package or whatever to placate the customer, even when they claim the changes are “necessary” or “unavoidable” or whatever. Switch your steak for a pork chop and I don’t know any grocery store or restaurant that won’t take it back and at least replace it, if not fully refund it. As much as I hate the changes as proposed, I can swallow that. What disturbs me is Anet’s flat refusal to refund the gems for outfits, or to give any real credit to the complaints of the customers. Amazon, in one of the other examples above, couldn’t get away with that, for instance. I do have to say, I don’t think Anet really appreciates how deeply a refusal to at least try and make things right damages customer trust, nor how deeply that really will affect their reputation and their bottom line. They are counting on rolling out in China balancing the scales of angry US players who won’t buy more in the short term, but will come back in the long run. Perhaps they are right, but it really is a sad day when a company’s reputation and the good will of customers means so very little to a BUSINESS. I appreciate Curtis’ honest and clearly believed-in, if rather incoherent explanations, but a good business takes in stride that some customers are going to be angry, even if it does seem unreasonable, and they do what they can to act in good faith for the customer’s satisfaction. Of course, with most other business, there can be consequences for acting the way Anet is acting, such as getting reported to the BBB.

I am in a state of acceptance now that, no matter how many posts are made, the decision is final – however, I do not feel like those of us that are unhappy are being treated very fairly, and certainly not like valued customers. The message here is patronizing, like one would do for a child: “Trust us – we took away the toys you paid for, but you’ll thank us later when you see what other newer, better toys we offer to sell you someday.” And while I can understand the want to be patronizing towards some in this thread given the less-than-mature outbursts of a few posters, I think the rest of us deserve better than that.

Perhaps the outfits going forward will indeed be better. Perhaps Colin is right and we will like them, and that looking back we will also conclude and agree that the new approach is better than the last. But that doesn’t change that, right now, they have done everyone who has purchased town clothes a disservice, and that they have done so with little warning, bumbled the explanation and apology, and have still not offered a promise of making it up to the players that they have wronged financially.

It is this part that makes me feel uneasy about making any further purchases in the gem store. If we cannot feel certain that ANet will make every effort to apologize and make things right when their development plans leave their players with gemstore items that are nothing like what they paid for, then why should I purchase anything there again? Why should anyone purchase anything there again, when tomorrow we could be told “too bad, you wasted your money” with zero confidence that we will be compensated?

And I speak as a person that buys her gemstore items with cash, because I believe that given the volume of time I spend on the game, it is only right to show my appreciation for that. If this game had a subscription option, I would be on it. I have been a fan of this franchise and the company for a long time. While I know that having spent hundreds of dollars over the past few years doesn’t mean that I deserve anything in particular in return, seeing now the way I am treated as a customer leaves me with a bitter taste. I will likely not forget it.

Even if the new costume system will be better, I don’t see myself purchasing them, even if I might want to. I don’t have any confidence that, if I did, I wouldn’t be right back here in another six months when the best-laid development plans fall short and everything changes, leaving more customers holding the bag full of things that they paid for, but can no longer use the way it was promised.

I will still play the game, though; this is no “goodbye cruel world” post where I make some silly and reckless claim that this change is enough to drive me out for good. I still love this game and I love the time that I spend in it with my friends and guildmates. I still like most of the changes that are made, and I think the developers do have a vision of good things to come for GW2. I just don’t know how much I’ll bother spending on items in the gem store ever again if the players that did purchase these items are not issued a real apology and are not compensated accordingly.

The floor is yours.

It is not just “some combinations” that are no longer possible; it is almost all of them, even if I didn’t count the dye jobs. And honestly, the entire concept of costumes is not for me.

I am not looking for a way to turn a dungeon run into a costume party and fight along a few more chefs and pirates, all of who look the same (no custom dyes) and none of who has any hair on their heads (seriously!!). This, for me, is akin to buying a cheap. low-quality Super Mario costume at Walmart and then finding you’re one of five identical Super Marios at the Halloween party.

This is not the way the GW2 community, has, so far, used town clothes. We have used them to take the parts and creatively turned them into something new, awesome, and individual. We came up with our own combinations to create a multitude of unique costumes. Something that expressed our characters’ unique personalities, far beyond “chef or pirate or witch”.

To suggest that costumes would ever make up for the loss of that shows, I think, that the devs were ignorant towards the way the town clothes were used so far.

A question for the devs;

Would it be possible to just keep the town-clothes window in addition to the new wardrobe? Allow me to elaborate what I’m thinking. We already have the town clothes system in place, with the items functioning as we bought them. Looking at the notes, it seems to be that outfits and tonics are the features people have the most problems with, whereas the armor skins like fuzzy animal hats that can function with armor are generally accepted by the community. However, the outfits and tonics would be impossible to mix and match due to seaming and design issues.

Would it be possible to simply leave the town clothes that would become outfits or tonics as town clothes in the town clothes panel, as they were? With mixing and matching, but only with other town clothes? I mean theoretically, they could be toggled to work in combat as a replacement visual to your armor, but still be programmed to work only with other town clothes in the town clothes panel to prevent the seam and armor weight design issues.

I don’t know if this would be possible as well, but perhaps the town clothes you were going to make into armor skins anyway could be able to function as armor and town clothes, and thus interact with both? That way, you at least get to have a few items that are guaranteed to work with combat, but don’t lose their interactivity with other previously purchased town clothes. The same could work with toys, where they function both within costume brawl and combat.

I make this suggestion about keeping the town clothes tab in addition to the wardrobe because the community has expressed that they feel their purchase has been disrespected, but there’s really no way to fix some of the clothes they possess. Gem refunds on tonics wouldn’t necessarily lead players to want to buy anything with said gems, or purchase gems in the future. However, keeping the the town clothes tab wouldn’t necessarily do the game any harm, and would leave them to interact only with other town clothes, but interchangeable and dyable, out of respect for the initial purchase.

The only other solution I could think of to appease the people who wrote on the 15 pages of this thread is to promise to completely remake all the town clothes as interchangeable armor skins, designed slightly differently for the different armor weights, which would be a huge undertaking. However, that would secure future player investment in gem store items. I think the main problem arising from this is that players don’t feel safe or content to purchase in the gem store anymore, and that’s not good. Thus, I implore you to maybe reconsider whether you want to take away the town clothes tab altogether, or simply change how it functions.

Anet, you sold us specific items with specific functions and features. Upon the purchase of town clothes, it was understood that they were interchangeable and dyeable. I understand technically it was the gems that were sold to the costumer, but it could be argued that this was actually a currency conversion, as the digital currency “gems” has been used to purchase “goods,” in this instance, town clothes. The gems were often used by customers to purchase a specific product offered – a product that has been reduced to tonics, which the player did not purchase, and may have had no interest in purchasing. This is really, really disrespectful to your costumers.

In fact, this arguably could be a major conflict for consumer protection. Many US states have passed legislation to protect consumers, such as the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which specifically states “A person engages in a deceptive trade practice when, in the course of his or her business, vocation, or occupation, the person: … represents that goods or services are of a particular standard, quality, or grade or that goods are a particular style or model, if they are of another (Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, 815 ILCS 510/2, from Ch. 121 1/2, par. 312.)”

However, I do understand that you are protected under your own user agreement. “SUBJECT TO SECTION 12©, ANY SERVICE, CONTENT OR SOFTWARE FROM NCSOFT, ANY THIRD-PARTIES UNDER AGREEMENT WITH NCSOFT, ANY PARENT, SUBSIDIARY OR AFFILIATE OF NCSOFT, OR ANY EMPLOYEE, AGENT, SUPPLIER, LICENSEE, CUSTOMER, DISTRIBUTOR, SHAREHOLDER, DIRECTOR OR OFFICER OF ANY OF THE FOREGOING, IS PROVIDED AT YOUR OWN RISK ON AN “AS AVAILABLE,” “AS IS” BASIS IN ITS CURRENT CONDITION AND WITHOUT ANY REPRESENTATION, GUARANTEE, OR WARRANTY OF ANY KIND OR IN ANY WAY RELATED TO SERVICE, SUPPORT, INDEMNITY, ERROR FREE OR UNINTERRUPTED OPERATION, UPDATES, CORRECTION OF DEFECTS, OR THAT IT IS FREE FROM DEFECTS OR VIRUSES OR HARMFUL COMPONENTS OF ANY FORM WHATSOEVER. (Guild Wars 2 User Agreement, Section 12, paragraph a).”

Even if you are protected by a user agreement, that does not mean you’ve not been deceptive. Anet, your costumers paid for a specific, well defined product, town clothing, some of which have been owned for over a year. You gave no warning that they would no longer exist, change in nature, or be converted into another item (tonics). They were understood to be interchangeable items. In fact, you put many on sale recently, not informing buyers that the items they were purchasing would soon not be of the nature the costumer was led to believe. Even if legal, it’s unethical, and how a company respects its client purchases says a lot about how successful they will be.

Personally, I like the idea of running around in my town clothes, guns ablaze. However, I don’t like the idea of items I specifically purchased to be interchangeable no longer being interchangeable, and tonics are a poor substitute. Gem refunds are also poor condolences, as many people used gems only to buy town clothing. Would it really be so much to ask that you find the models for the town clothing and set them to skins that can be applied to specific parts of an armor set, much like the current skins? Or at least provide a clear explanation as to why it would be impossible, even given time? As a forewarning, clipping is not a fair excuse, as the game is already littered with clipping issues.

If you want your customers to respect you, and continue to feel safe to buy in the gem store with trust that the content they purchase and its qualities will be preserved, please take the time to address this issue in a way that doesn’t brush under the rug the concerns of the player community.

Pretty much everything that can be said on this topic has been mentioned at some point, but I feel compelled to add my 2 cents as well. Namely:

1) The wardrobe changes are great. The streamlining of the UI and the ability to collect skins is fantastic and does a lot for my enjoyment of the game. The way it was implemented frankly went beyond my expectations in a positive way.

2) The town clothing changes are the only part of this update so far that do not sit well with me.

As it’s clear what you did right regarding the wardrobe, I’m unfortunately going to spend the rest of my post trying to explain why I am concerned about town clothing.

First, I didn’t mind town clothing being available only out of combat. While I don’t quite understand why the distinction was made given that you could fight in a wedding dress in GW1, I nevertheless was ok with it. Maybe I am in the minority, but it was fine. It was something fun. Moreover, it was something I enjoyed enough to spend a significant amount of real world money on back when new town clothing items were one of the few consistent updates on the gem store.

Second, I really liked the option to mix and match. There is no way to say it except that this new system is a step back from where we are now, which is that we can put different items together, dye them, and equip them without losing additional space in our inventory. Now, we have to carry around tonics and toys in our bags, cannot dye the (tonic) outfits, and cannot even pick what other clothing items go along with them? Can you really honestly say that is an improvement? Moreover, do you think this is a good precedent for items that were exclusive to your pay store and that were largely purchased by early adopters of the game to support a highly optional part of the game?

I don’t want to stand in the way of positive change. Clearly there are a lot of people excited about outfits and that will hopefully lead to more sales and more support for the game. However, if the problem was town clothing not mixing with combat armor, I don’t understand why you didn’t just enable town clothing to work in combat. That way, players still have to choose between their town clothing look or their combat look, but at least the customization within both realms remained the same.

As it stands, this change makes me question the integrity of the gem store. If I can’t trust that things I buy with cash will maintain at least a recognizable semblance of the functionality I purchased, then why should I ever spend more money to support the game? I understand the Terms & Conditions indicate that all content is subject to change, and we accept those terms every time we play. But you took something that was functional and removed everything I liked about it (customization and unique looks that could not otherwise be obtained with combat armor) in order to make it do something that I never needed it to do (function in combat). In any other part of the game, that’d be disappointing but acceptable. But this was part of the cash shop. It would have been nice if the community had been solicited for their opinion before such a major alteration.

Well, now I’m really “hyped” with this wardrobe system. Really cool. I was waiting for something like this for a long time. Visual customization is one of the most underrated things in MMOs, great to see this implemented here.

But, as many said, I don’t get why there is no chance to combine town clothes how you want. It make no sense, and endless tonics are not a good solution. I really don’t get why Anet gets into this trouble, specially when obtaining town clothes had cost gems what makes this a HUGE problem. And I don’t want a refund, I want to be able to use my “rider pants” with my female human. Anyways, people already gave examples, so it’s pointless to add mine.

As far as I understand after reading the anouncement and this topic, Anet combined the costumes in just one slot and removed the “Town Clothes” slots. If is designed like this I can imagine some of the problems of changing it in a short time, but it should be done sooner better than later. I can think on various solutions.

• Make every piece of town clothes usable as a skin for every type of armor piece, like how it seems to be working with head gear. This has one mayor problem, and is that it will probably cost Transmutation Charges with the current system. Anet should impement a system to make sure this pieces are free to apply.

• Make a second set of slots only with this kind of armors, free to apply and with priority over the standard armor slots. I guess this can be easier to implement since there already exist the town clothes slots.

• Give an option to create customs outfits with different parts and apply them as one. I believe this is the hardest way I can think of, but there will be no need to change the 1 slot costume.

Anyway, any solution will be better that the tonic and unified costumes. Please, at least think about it. Fix it and this will be even greater

While many features of the wardrobe system are welcome and exciting to myself, the dismantling of the town cloths system is not. I enjoy mixing the various articles to create different looks and have spent a lot of money buying town clothes in the gem store. It upsets me that these items are being casually destroyed as part of an “upgrade” especially as the distinction between what is becoming a skin and what becomes a tonic seems arbitrary. If I am reading correctly the Top Hat becomes a skin, the Aviator Sunglasses becomes a tonic and I won’t be able to use either of them with the Bloody Prince costume (as I do now). I find it especially frustrating that I bought several items when it was announced they were being discontinued, not knowing this was because they were being made obsolete. Some disclosure then would have been appropriate. I will likely not ask for refunds, in the hope that someday the functionality of these items will be restored in some way. However I will be very wary of spending any more money on gems as there seems to be no guarantee that what we are buying will remain true to what was advertized. In business customer confidence is everything. ArenaNet has lost mine.

I have bought many outfits for my roleplaying character. I never use the entire outfit, only pieces in a mix and match style. This change will make it so I cannot use the items as they were presented to me when I purchased them. While I am thrilled with the bulk of the changes that come with the wardrobe, I will be requesting a refund for all of my town clothes that I can no long mix and match, as they will no longer be functioning as they were sold to me.

This is a bungled mess and it should have been the way it was day one minus the bugs. Dramatically altering content and the strategy used to complete it several days after players have learned how to do it is a terrible idea and should only be done in the most extreme circumstances, not because you wanted players to approach it differently.

Not only do players need to “relearn” this encounter, players who learned the old way are going to be unaware of the changes and are going to hold everyone back (no amount of map chat spamming with teach many people and some will return a week from now and wonder why they aren’t able to help for the whole fight, also holding everyone back). Time limited content should not be dramatically changed unless it’s severely broken, especially when it requires the entire player base learning the encounter (in this case , learning it twice).

I get you want to improve player skill and challenge people more and I personally dislike the zerg mentality as much as most do, but dramatically altering time limited content after many players have learned it already and forcing player’s hands like this by making extra players useless (we constantly hear that as an excuse for why WvW outmanned isn’t made better – if it’s too good players will be unhappy to see allies, this is abandoned with the current design) is simply the wrong move to make. Accept that you designed the encounter poorly to accomplish your goal (it was still a fun encounter and once you got up to the ship – more fun than the ground anyway and something many players simply won’t do with the current design, the zerg split anyway), learn from it and leave it as it is minus the bugs. There will be another chance to “force” zerg splitting in the future.

I vote to put him in Sorrows Embrace path 3 as “No-no Tron” to redirect the players to go the armory where Zadorjny is when they try to go past the giant chest.

1. I would change the sexist portrayal of female armor. An armor set would look the same on men and women—full body plate on a man would be full body plate on a woman. A bikini on a woman would be a codpiece on a man. I wouldn’t exclude sexy gear, but I would make it equal.

2. I would completely revamp the human character creation. I would remove the anime-style bodies and faces, and replace them with a variety of realistic bodies and faces. Both male and female characters could have a body from skinny to chubby, scrawny to body-builder, and youthful to aged. While a perfect, airbrushed look would be an OPTION, it would be alongside the option to have flaws, be ugly, be ordinary, be old, be young, or just be different.

3. I would make the personal story more engaging, with more options to develop your character’s individual personality and outlook. I would include options for your character to be morally ambiguous or wicked—without having them go completely over to the dark side.

4. I would direct the Living Story toward the old Guild Wars 1 lore. I would explore the unanswered questions and mysteries left in Guild Wars 1, and work towards opening up the areas of the map which are currently inaccessible.

5. I would make certain that each armor fits each race correctly, before releasing it. The charr would NOT have clipping issues. The asura would NOT have to try so hard to find a good-looking outfit. The sylvari would have more plant-themed choices.

6. Thieves would not be called thieves, because that’s a stupid name.

7. Redo the Edge of Destiny story so that Logan isn’t portrayed as such a loathsome blockhead, and so he maybe has some redeeming features.

JustTrogdor.7892:

When someone is reported for verbal abuse Anet reviews their chat logs. So there really isn’t a need to add additional descriptors. If the person reported has violated the ToS as evidenced by their chat log they will be dealt with accordingly by Anet via suspensions or possible account termination.

Ah. In that case, you’re correct. I wasn’t certain how the reports were handled.

As for those of you who claim that one should just ignore people who say foul things—I disagree. Games, like guild wars 2, should provide a safe and positive environment for the diverse peoples who play them. Vulnerable groups—women, racial minorities, and so-on, already have to deal with discrimination in daily life. Ideally, an online game should provide an escape from the challenges of real life.

I don’t think it’s oppressive to require the community to treat one another with respect. I don’t think it’s oppressive to punish people for disrespect, or verbal abuse. There are plenty of private ways—whisper, party chat, or guild chat—for people to talk about whatever they want. But when a person is speaking in map chat, they have to consider that their audience goes beyond just their friends. Those who have been victims of abuse or discrimination, and hear similar abuse in chat, can be hurt. Blocking and ignoring is fine, but these people should feel that they are protected—that the community is, for them as well as everyone, an escape.

As a big fan of the emote system, I’m happy that they continued in GW2, but I sure do wish we had more. GW1 offered almost 3x the emotes that GW2 does, and since I’m hopeful we’ll see more in the future, I thought I’d put in some of my ‘most hoped for’ emotes….

/patselfonback – for when you’ve just done something really awesome
/beg – to be used just before opening a big chest
/pout – to be used immediately after opening a big chest and not getting anything great
/console – aimed at another toon, to make them feel better, when THEY’VE just opened a big chest and didn’t get anything good.

TL;DR – just what the title says, I’m not abridging my carefully thought-out reasons. You’re on a forum, so read.

Is it just me, or does ArenaNet seem to like taking the opposite approach to an ideal solution? Every time there’s something imbalanced or abused, ArenaNet prefers to treat it as a loop hole to close rather than a free ride to make more challenging.

Let’s take dungeons, for example. Path A of a given dungeon is run frequently by people because they have developed a strategy to overcome a boss’ strength, thereby making the run easier. Path B is too long and nobody wants to do it because all of the bosses have hit point pools that border on preposterous. Path C involves a boss who flagrantly abuses crowd controls to the point people have to fight him in a small corner so people aren’t wiping left, right, and center.

Now, people are making a choice regarding what path to run based on one factor: player skill. Path A offers the most rewarding experience for what they’ve spent the last hundred hours or so levelling to learn. Path B, on the other hand, is tedious because you watch your damage barely scratching the surface of the boss’ health fight after fight. Finally, Path C is merely an exercise in stacking with the rest of the carefully thought-out (or not so much) dungeon being ignored.

In this fictitious example, there are two solutions that are available for ArenaNet to choose from.
1. Reduce the health on the bosses in Path B (like they did in 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons for solo monsters upon realizing that the fights go on to the point that all the players have spent all of their encounters and dailies and are, essentially, trying to melt a glacier by kitten on it) and make the path quicker; and for Path C re-do the crowd-control so that it allows players to use their abilities to avoid or outlast it. OR
2. Destroy the only redeeming feature of the dungeon, Path A. Spawn tons more adds, buff a bunch of boss abilities, add frustrating unavoidable crowd-control.

The most aggravating thing as a player is for all of my strengths to be negated. Going back to Dungeons & Dragons… it is the hallmark of a bad DM to make a challenge that intentionally neutralizes all of the party’s strength rather than giving them the opportunity to exercise what it is they’ve built their characters to do. It’s much the same with dungeons in Guild Wars… we’re punished for being creative.

I’m not saying that dungeons and fights should simply be a matter of hitting the boss until it breaks. But when we have to resort to stacking in a corner or otherwise subverting the dev’s attempts to subvert our abilities… the entire exercise loses its meaning.

This also applies to character builds. In Guild Wars 1 I saw so many abilities get nerfed into uselessness because people had learned to base viable strategies around them. Again, ArenaNet could have, instead, improved other abilities within the class — or in other classes to more effectively counter a build. No, the solution they went for, and they continue to go for in Guild Wars 2, is to simply chop off any effective strategy at the knees.

I’m going to use an actual example this time… d/d elementalists. I am afraid for what will happen to the class when ArenaNet decides to “improve online play”. Here you have a class that has been broken by the AoE cap, and they’ve had to find some other way to be useful. The d/d bunker ele build is strong and should remain that way… it’s the only thing elementalists have left in pvp/wvw. Take it out and I am retiring my elementalist from wvw because it would be an exercise in futility to take him in expecting victory. Elementalists are outclassed in armour, health, and DPS. It takes an entire build based around survivability to make them able to hold their weight in a fight.

What can you do instead of nerfing them? How about improving other classes to make a natural counter to d/d eles? How about giving elementalists another viable strategy (i.e. by removing that stupid AoE cap and fixing the various other obstacles in place for elementalists)? Please develop a solution to the cause of the problem, not the symptom. That goes for all other “imbalanced” builds, too.

Okay, here’s the thing, you, right now, are no different than the speed runners you’re so annoyed with, trying to force your way of doing the dungeons on everyone else.

Don’t give me that “it’s not the way the devs intended it” line, if the devs had truly intended to force you to kill every mob in every room as you went then that’s exactly what we’d have. But we don’t. Hmmm, interesting.
but I digress.

People enjoy dungeons in different ways, that’s the key thing you need to realize. Yes, some just want to get to the end and grab the loot and leave, while others want to “play it how they think is the right way and do everything how they think the devs want it done”, and then there’s actually a group of people who just enjoy seeing how fast they can do it. That is the challenge of the dungeon for them, trying to figure out the most efficient, streamlined path to do it. For them it’s not about the loot, heck dungeon loot in my experience is largely garbage anyway.

Before the game came out ArenaNet talked about dungeons, and while I can’t find the exact article I’m talking about the gist was basically they didn’t want to copy other games and have a system where you ground out the same dungeon/instance over and over hoping for a rare drop, thus we have the token system.
Now, when I heard that I was really excited, that was a fantastic idea.

Except, when the game came out a set of dungeon armor cost 1380 tokens, I was flabbergasted. I immediately started asking around for information on how many tokens you got for a run, which is 60.
Which means to get a full set of dungeon skins you have to run the dungeon twenty three freaking times. And that assumes that that particular dungeon has a set with the stats you’re looking for. If not that means another twenty three runs to get the stat set. (Plus the real money cost of Fine Transmutation stones)
So I’m looking at 23/46 runs for a single set of armor, and you want me to stop and fight every single mobs that happens to cross my path?? Are you nuts?

Now, sometimes I don’t mind doing exactly that, if that’s what the group wants to do, but let me just insert here an example: the whole stopping to kill every mob thing, can mean the difference between a 17 minute run, and a run taking an hour and a half on the same dungeon, same path. And all because several people in the group insisted they knew the “proper” way of doing it.
But like I said, I don’t mind doing that sometimes, but I sure as heck don’t want to do it every stinking time, because even if the skin I want has the right stats, on a 3 path dungeon (AC for example) means doing each path 7-8 times (because story mode gives nil).
That is mind-numbingly irritating, with the current implementation of dungeon rewards, IMO, they completely and utterly failed at delivering on that pre-release article.
At this point some might point out that some of those extra mobs drop bags of (not quite so) wondrous goods, which give extra tokens!
A whole 3 extra tokens, which if you get 3 bags every run takes your total to 69 tokens a run, lowering your total runs all the way….to twenty.

Look, it’s fine to enjoy doing it the way you do it, and there are plenty of people who do, but others of us enjoy the dungeon in different ways, and asking that the dungeon be changed in such a way that only people who enjoy doing it your way can actually enjoy it is pretty mean. Having stuff be optional is great, nay, fantastic. It means you, well, have options, you can choose how to do the dungeon, it allows different player groups to all enjoy it. The speed runners get their enjoyment from quick completion, you get enjoyment from higher reward and more complete completion.
Honestly, each path within a dungeon should have had multiple ways of getting through it, that would really have been interesting (but yes, there would still be people who picked the most efficient way to get from A to B, it’s just how we’re wired and how we enjoy the dungeon).
As a small aside, I will never willingly fight Kohler as he is now, a mere 3 tokens isn’t worth 1/1000 of the annoyance that fight is now (to me), but hey, if you enjoy fighting him go ahead, just…stop trying to make me have to just because you like to.

There are plenty of people falling into each of these categories, it’s just a matter of finding them. Look for a guild where they do everything, they exist, find regulars who want to do it that way, not every dungeon run has to be a pug. Heck, if you aren’t familiar with it gw2lfg.com is great for finding groups, and the site even lets you specify you want to do everything! I have several groups I run with, each with their preferences in how we do things, and I find that makes things more interesting, brings some variety to the table.

Also, nothing against any of the other suggestions, they all seem solid.

Minipets need a bit of love where their functionality is concerned. I’m a minipet addict, but in GW2 I gave up using them. A few things that I think would make the minipets amazing (and no longer frustrating) would be:

1. Summoning the minipet will keep it with you regardless of waypoint/portal/changing zones/dying and will only leave your side when you desummon it or summon a different minipet.

2. Your summoned minipet matches your character’s speed. (I found it quite annoying to be constantly outrunning my minipet with my various characters that have run speed bonuses only to have it blink to my location while I again outrun it… over and over.)

3. Some kind of UI thing for summoning whatever minipets you own without having to keep them in your bags would be awesome, too ;)

I looooove minipets, and I really hope that at least those first two points are considered so that the minipet system isn’t something that feels like a cumbersome thing to remember to do all the time, but instead is just you and your little buddy who’s always with ya.

Hi,
how about this: There is some fighting going on in WvW and you are entirely outnumbered, happens often enough. So, what if the commander had the possibility to talk to a NPC, similar to Siegerazer, and trigger a message to all players on the server. Something like a bright coloured message in chat saying: “Commander XY asks for your help in the Eternal Battlegrounds!”. Of course it should be limited in use, by cooldown and/or by currency (badges?).

While this is nothing spectacular, I find it would be somewhat helpful and add some sense of community.

Y/N?

As the title says. Please label asura gates, by destination, on the map and mini-map. I still don’t know what gate goes where in Lion’s Arch by heart, and Rata Sum is needlessly confusing.

Dear Arenanet,

There is a serious flaw in the system put in place to block other players. That is, blocked players can still hear and see you, and you remain on their contact list. I’m the leader of a small guild, and have learned that two of my members have been verbally harassed in a graphic sexual manner by other players. The content of the harassment involved threats of kitten them, and was extremely explicit. This game is a T rated game, meaning that this shouldn’t even be an issue, and the dialogue was in the say channel for all to hear. This apparently has happened to them more than once, but this particular occasion was three days ago. They reported this to the game mods and the leader of the players’ guild, with screens, in an attempt to have someone take care of it, and so far it has not been addressed. I understand that addressing so many report can take a while, but in the mean time, the players have continued to stalk them. My argument, thus, is that another player shoulder not be allowed any interaction with those who block them outside of perhaps pvp and wvw zones. They should not be allowed to have said person in their contact list in an effort to remember his or her name, hear said person’s dialogue, see the other person, or interact with the other person in any manner. Some form of moderation should also be in place to observe areas and prevent such from happing. There should be a notification that someone received a report and is reviewing it. The blocking system needs to be overhauled to protect players from stalking and harassment. Reports on such matters should also be dealt with much more swiftly and severely. My guild members are disturbed by what has transgressed, and I’m very disappointed in the lack of response by management.