Guild Wars 2

SkyShroud.2865:

it will be hard to find a correlation that having ascended gears in wvw is necessary when numbers alone is capable of shadowing everything

A thief can let you know pretty quick in less than bis gear. :P

I go and see movies in the theater 1-2 times a month and come out satisfied at my purchase. As long as an MMO entertains me completely for a couple hours each month I’ve never had an issue with the concept of paying the sub.

But I am much more critical of sub-based games when they falter. If you are going to charge me the equivalent of a whole new game every 4 months, you have better (&^*&#$ing deliver something impressive no less than twice a year. Three times a year preferably.

Meehael.8240:

So, would you pay $10 a month for the game if the Gem Store ceases to exist, no need to buy bag and bank slots, expand this, expand that. Pay for boosters of various kind. Buy unlimited mining picks. What not…
That would probably also include less time gating, maybe a bit higher drop rates… You name it!

In short, you get a full service for $10 a month. I’d say if the game’s good, I’d pay that money.

I’m going to go a little off topic here. Rant incoming.

I don’t understand. Every subscription based MMO I’ve played had a cash shop in it too.

Aion was pay to play, and it had a cash shop. You could only buy black and white dye for your armor with real cash. There were a couple of weapon/armor skins too in their cash shop that you had to buy with real life money if you wanted them. There was no money conversion either. So even if you had a ton of “kinah” (in game money), you couldn’t buy things out of the cash shop. Cash shop was credit card only.

Tera was pay to play, and it had a cash shop. Want a cool mount that moves faster than the in game mounts? $25.00. Twenty-five real life dollars. There also was no conversion system in that game either, so even if you had tons of in game money, you couldn’t convert it to real life money to buy things out of the cash shop. The only thing you could do was use game money to pay off your monthly subscription.

Let’s look at a few other popular MMOs-

WoW is still pay to play and has a cash shop.
Lord of the Rings Online, when it was subscription based, had a cash shop – still does.
Eve Online, which is subscription based, has a cash shop.
Oh look, Rift was subscription based, and had a cash shop – still does.
Star Wars, The Old Republic was sub based and had a cash shop. Still has a cash shop.

Oh, hate to burst this bubble even more, but The Elder Scrolls online will be subscription based, and have a cash shop.

Why do people think that if an MMO is subscription based, they won’t have cash shops? I think Anets cash shop is very fair. Most everything in it is cosmetic and unnecessary. If you can’t buy it with real $, you can always convert gold to gems. Best cash shop in a game I’ve seen so far. Now, if we could only get rid of the BLTC RNG boxes in it, then it would be perfect.

Meehael.8240:

So, would you pay $10 a month for the game if the Gem Store ceases to exist, no need to buy bag and bank slots, expand this, expand that. Pay for boosters of various kind. Buy unlimited mining picks. What not…
That would probably also include less time gating, maybe a bit higher drop rates… You name it!

In short, you get a full service for $10 a month. I’d say if the game’s good, I’d pay that money.

Couple of thoughts:

1) If GW2 went subscription now, it would change the game in a way that may not be a positive direction. There are lots of assumptions floating around about how subscription would benefit the future development of GW2 in positive way. I’m not convinced that would actually happen..

2) If GW2 had been subscription from the start, yes, I would have signed up for it. Even though that would have meant that had it been that way from the start, it would have attracted a different set of players and probably had a different culture. I would have saved an incredible amount of money however.

3) Looking at GW2 as it is now, I would not pay subscription fee for what the game has devolved into from both a content and quality perspective.

I would opt in for a optional subscription fee, if it would mean we’d get proper expansions or other content that is better than what we got with the living story.

This forum is just so wonderful, some comedian should just print out all the threads, sit down on stage and read.

Killing with the Power of Love, Sailormoon since 1992. Probably responsible for endless atrocities.

then go and kill it then… what’s the problem?

if you’re getting abuse, report them.

Any kind of structure in a party would have casuals wondering what to do. It would probably put the spotlight on how they usually just get carried through pve.

That being said, I wish they fixed or tried to implement what they said they were going to implement (dmg, support, control). Right now it’s just dmg; something casuals are having a field-day with.

If GW2 had the trinity combat wouldn’t be nearly as fun as it is now. Leave that to lesser MMOs.

GW2 is more of a WoW clone than a GW1 was.

I know one thing for certain: I would walk away from this game.

I play the game as I see fit and not as how other people demand I play (LF Tank! LF Healer!). The lack of a trinity has been a good thing. it means that I can roll whatever build I wish and use my own skills to advance through the game, rather than rely on stats and other people to back me up.

If I wanted to play a WoW clone, i would already be playing one of the many clones out there. I don’t. I want to play GW2.

It would be worse.

Not because it’s a bad idea, but because it would be implemented poorly.

It would make me stop playing.

ronpierce.2760:

Suddenflame.2601:

Harbard.5738:

ronpierce.2760:

If you can play an MMO with absolutely 0 rewards, what is most peoples’ “fun factor”, that’s fine, but in that case you’d enjoy just about any game well designed or not… You’re a rarity, and frankly a lazy game designers delight.. x.X

Oh yeah, because it’s not totally lazy to make a game that’s just like a food dispenser that trickles down rewards instead of making a game that is engaging on it’s own and doesn’t need you to bribe you with illusory gains of money/shinies.

See, it’s way harder to design a really good game with really engaging gameplay than set up loot tables for you to roll on.

I agree. Challenging content over easy loot dispenser

Ugh you’re so dense lol. What is CHALLENGING about hours of farming gold? All the other nonbuyable stuff isn’t hard to get it’s just grindy. The only CHALLENGE is being able to bare how boring the grind is to ever make it through it. That IS a challenge. Hats off the the challenge team. >_>

I failed the challenge lol. When I thought about grinding out all of that ascended for WvW I uninstalled in disgust.

It’ll be interesting to see the future impact this thread in particular has on the game. No MMO has really nailed the horizontal progression (altho most of us seem to agree GW1 did a fine job) and yet so many players gravitate towards it.

There’s a huge potential in this thread alone to direct the game to something quite unique, but combined with the living story thread, we could see a intriuging 2014/15 for the game. WHilst the game hasn’t embraced the horizontal progression quite like its predecessor, it is well set up to embrace many ideas here. Many MMO’s aren’t that lucky. It’s a great position for GW2 to be in.

On a slightly side note, only a small proportion of the community are contributing to this discussion, as good and valuable as it is. If you as devs are as behind this as you say, it might be worth highlighting these initiatives a bit more to the wider community. Granted, if people don’t use the forum now, they probably wont, but may be a link on the news part of the login page is a good way to alert ppl to visit here.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

We are getting close to the formulate section of the thread now and you will see more opinion and metric based discussion from me and everyone else.

Chris

This really gets me excited Chris, I think we need a bit more direction from you devs what works and doesn’t work for you in order to develop good ideas together.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Anet once stated in an earlier interview, that it’s more likely to add more weapons to current professions than adding another profession. I like this decision because this means I don’t have to level up another character but instead get more depth to my current characters.

I’m going to look for the source for you.
Edit: source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Weapons-before-Professions/first#post2426745

Oh don’t worry, I remember this. I reply to you that if they add weapons, then they are going to fit the theme of the profession more than anything else. The Warrior has currently the biggest ar…se…nal (( seriously, forum admins, do your homework of censored words, this is ridiculous)) of smashies right now, so if anything, it is going to be other professions who are getting more weapons unlocked first. Also, by saying “new weapons” it doesn’t necessarily mean “previously locked weapons accessible.” I could totally think of new weapons finding their way into the game, let’s say, while the Warrior gets a Greataxe and a Crossbow, other professions get more than two weapons added/unlocked, while Engineer and Elementalist might only get one, due to their inherent profession nature.

Without wanting to play the devil’s advocate here, but I stopped believing in any earlier interviews as many of those became not really accountable any more, because since then and launch there was so much change, and we all remember the flak ArenaNet had to take from the players for “breaking promises in earlier statements.” I believe it when it goes live.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I want to emphasize this:

Anet

It can’t be something that when players run out of things to do we give them more challenges that they need to grind out to do and that add another 100 hours to the game.

It’s pretty clear that Anet is against some of our ideas here.

It is pretty clear, that ArenaNet was against their OWN ideas. Or maybe it wasn’t ArenaNet who shafted them. °wink wink nudge nudge°

At any rate, not wanting to continue idle banter but putting something more constructive into the topic;

Mr. Whiteside, is there any estimate when this topic will be closed, which CDI is going to be next, how many are there still to come, and can you already mention what your plans are to inform us about the brainstorming you had in-house?
Is there any chance we can get related coders on board to answer the likelihood and difficulty of implementation to the highest ranked suggestions?

Thank you

I just want to actually get the horizontal progression we were promised instead of the horrible vertical power grind bs we got instead. Weapons and armour out dated because of ascended grind. Endless wxp grind. Insane legendary grind. Awful enforced crafting grinds with colossal gold farming needed for resources.

Return to the horizontal promises we bought this game (books gems etc) based on. 2 decades of mmo experience and gw2 is now one of the worst offenders for grind with all the ascended crap. I honestly preferred raiding schedules, in previous mmo’s, it was less work and far more enjoyable and didn’t force you to do so many areas of the game you might dislike.

P.S. It should be possible to gear for wvw by doing wvw, without big disadvantages, unavailable slots, stat penalties, or 50x longer timeframes. Fix it.

I want to emphasize this:

Anet

It can’t be something that when players run out of things to do we give them more challenges that they need to grind out to do and that add another 100 hours to the game.

It’s pretty clear that Anet is against some of our ideas here.

At one stage Anet had the plan to integrate tons of new events in already existing zones. Because of poor player feedback (?) this idea was somehow scrapped.

I think it would have worked out quite well, if players would see a purpose going to the zones in the first place. Either the purpose is events which are so fun, that you love to return to that zone just for these events, or decent rewards. The nature of dynamic events – dynamic = not always there – makes it really difficult to visit specific events though, so I guess you need just a better reward system or a MUCH higher density of new events.

AlanaTheStrange.1463:

These are the perhaps-not-so-horizontal ideas that people still would like to see:

Stat Swapping 8

Eh, I’d argue that stat-swapping, if implemented in such a way that you unlock the stats instead of just being granted them, is a form of Horizontal Progression in the sense it’s broadening your options.

Stuff from other games that would work well and in keeping with the horizontal theme:

1.) LOTRO’s Wardrobe system. Turbine has been copying you guys at ArenaNet for a while now and that is a good thing. You guys should copy this. Only good things can come from it.

2.) Neverwinter let’s you swap out skills on the fly out of combat. It’s grand. You guys talked about this a long time ago with the traits and it was a major draw for me. What point is there to having switchable stats on ascended/legendary weapons if we have to buy the trait respecs or go to a town to do so? At that point, I can just store weapons that go with those builds in my storage, I would be in town anyway.

3.) Guild Wars 1 let us save build templates. Taking a step back from your previous game isn’t a good idea to me. In fact, I would call it the antithesis of iteration.

4.) Star Wars Galaxies Housing system. No system was ever better for housing. You could use any item and put it anywhere. Garbage became decoration when you put it in interesting patterns to make things. Google some of the stuff people came up with using mundane items. Really solid stuff.

Draco.2806:

Company puts out an ad for the product.
Ad makes it sound like the best thing ever.
The company doesn’t deliver.
Customers feel betrayed and lied to.

More like:
Company puts out an ad for the product.
Ad makes it sound like the best thing ever.
The company delivers a mediocre release.
Instead of fixing the problem the company decides to take the easy way out with a tried and tested method: grind.
Original customers feel betrayed and lied to.