Guild Wars 2

First people cried that temporary content was bad .. then we got LS2 with much
less updates than LS1.

Then people cried they prefer to have a “real expansion” instead of LS .. and thats
where we are now.

Anet now already works on the next “real expansion” and has not even enough
people to finish the first one .. but hey .. the “community” wanted it.

The same like the “community” was permanently complaining about armorsets
in the BLTP .. hey now we get nearly no armorsets at all anymore .. but the
“community” wanted it.

So .. say big thanks to the GW2 community.

Personally for me the best time in the game was when we had LS1 with new
updates every 2 weeks .. and new armorsets every month in the gemstore,
after that it went just downhill to grinding gold to buy everything i wanted
and no there isn’t even anything i can buy with my gold.

Ashen.2907:

Desiring a refund for a product that fails to meet consumer expectations by not delivering advertised features has little (or no) bearing on a willingness to lose a previously paid for product, without refund, that did meet the consumer’s epectations.

If I purchase a computer from a company and it delivers on advertised features. I am satisfied. If a year later I purchase a RAM upgrade listed at 8gb, but what is provided is only 4gb I might very well want my money back for the upgrade without losing the entire computer.

I am no lawyer and hence may be wrong but I think that what we bought is access to a service. When you click the “accept” button you sign a contract where you say " take my money so that I can log in the game" and Anet say " I take your money and grant you access to the game server, so long you behave properly. And since it is our product we have all rights to do any change we want".

We don’t really pay for features and somehow I doubt the legislation on games would change because what you buy is no material.

I just want to raise this point because I think it is ok to be kittened by the news and to express disappointment or whatever feeling but the discussion won’t go far if people try to overthink the situation to end up with arguments that they are robbers or incompetent people.
I don’t think we have any right to discuss company organisation, we can only comment if we like the product or not. Hell I hope nobody here feels he can teach me my job. Unless you own your video game company, I think you lack too much knowledge to comment on how the company is managed, how easy or not it is to implement feature A or B. We are customers, players, end users… so we should stick to comments about the end product : do we like what we have? Do we like the direction? Why… but pulling the discussion further than this (like “NCsfot decided this” or “they have money trouble” or “I’m sure they fired Colin”) is not bringing it anywhere.
I mean, I like french fries but it doesn’t give me the right to teach farmers how they should grow potatoes.

In the present case, they acknowledge they broke a promise about implementing 16 legendaries and apologize for it. From this point we can say that we don’t care or that we actually do and then explain why. The reason can totally be “I feel cheated”, “it spoils the game for me, I quit”, “I won’t trust your promises anymore and won’t pre order next expansion”… all of this is fine. But more than that is pure speculations and trap ourselves in thought circles where we get even more upset just by restating the same speculations over and over again.
And to finish about those who say they are too silent : what should they say now? The game director come and say he scrapped a feature that was promised, that he is sorry and that he understands we are upset. Now what, because one guy says it is robbery or calls the entire company incompetent, does anyone reasonably think he will post again and say " yeah whip me, I am bad, I do bad things since ten years and you all buy these…. I have no clue how to develop game and all I want is your money so that I can retire on a desert island "

Andulias.9516:

I think I’ve made my point very clear – nobody is forcing you. Legendary armor is little more than a vanity item with a bit of added QoL. it’s not even in the game yet.

You are simply actively trying to put the blame somewhere, which is just kind of ridiculous.

“Oh no! I want Chak weapons, but the only way to get Chak weapons is by playing the TD meta”! is an argument that sounds rather stupid, doesn’kitten But it follows precisely your logic, Vayne.

Give up with this complete BS, Vayne. You. Don’t. NEED. Legendary armor. You don’t. Nobody does. It’s not required for anything. The entire basis of your argument is nothing but a balloon of hot air. Enough.

I still see NOTHING constructive here.

Ya know I’ve followed this thread closely and Vayne has been very diplomatic and a gentleman at the very least while conveying his stance.

There is no need for you to feel threatened just because your views may be different than his, or that many like myself agree and get what Vayne is saying. Step back and take a deep breath. Their is no need to go on the attack.

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Calydro.7268:

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

I disagree. having people pay in advanced for content doesnt keep them around. Case in point, check the forums / reddit. You will find many posts especially around the time HoT launched of people claiming to have quit soon after launch and are thinking of coming back. With the core game purchase price they also got 3 years of free content but that didnt keep them around did it?

I even more strongly disagree with greedy business model. Look at what most other b2p MMOs do. They still cut their content in chunks, because it takes X amount of time to develop or on purpose is something thats debatable fine… but what they do is sell that content for “cheap” at regular intervals. $10 every quarter is most common. Well $10 per quarter for 3 years is $120 more then twice what Anet charged for the same period of time. How is that better?

Besides which modern MMO releases an expansion more often then 2 years?

Additionally were they really less greedy before? You had to pay Box Fee and Subscription. Sure content was less content and quicker to develop and you had an expansion every year which also carried a box fee. 2 years of your mmo back then would end up costing $480 are you really sure they were less greedy?

You’re equivocating. System A is bad but so Is System B, but System A is worse therefore we should exonerate System B.

I laid out the facets of the the game where the greed and underhandedness is evident. You’ve pointed me to prior games that also have a greedy model. Does that nullify the points I’ve made? does it exonerate A-net? Guild Wars 2 isn’t the first game to milk its players, there have been many before and will be many after. . .

of course because Everything is relative. Words are meaningless without context. Let me illustrate. Is a car big or small? How would you answer that question? You’d look at that car and compare it with all the other cars you have ever seen. If the car is bigger then most of them you’re going to say its big. If its smaller then most of them you’re going to say its small. Does it make sense to call the smallest car big just because this car happens to have larger then normal side mirrors? No.

Same here. You pointed out to one thing that may be caused by greed. I highlight may because while you say its evident we dont really know the reasons. Greed is a possibility, pacing content releases due to lengthy time to finish all the intended content is another. You feel greed is obvious which is fine you’re obviously entitled to feel anyway you wish. Likewise I feel development time is the driving factor, my reasons are that they have the largest development team we know of after WoW. Most other major MMOs have teams that are 100 people smaller or even less. With that in mind why would they employ such a large team if they actually have a surplus of content? Profit isnt just about selling more its also about cutting costs, employees are the biggest source of cost in a software company so why hire more then needed? That doesnt compute in my opinion. you hire more employees only when you have a higher workload. If they are incuring that costs it tells me that it takes that many employees for them to release what they release. no business is going to leave employees doing nothing and no MMO company is going to develop years of content in advanced.

But lets assume you’re right and its just a ploy to earn more money. Wanting to earn more money doesnt automatically make you greedy, every business wants to earn money. Its only greed when you make your customers pay more then the average. If your MMO over all costs less then competing MMOs using the same business model you’re not being greedy just like the smallest car with large side mirrors is not a large car.

If you think about it, using your approach you can call every business greed because every business tries to maximize their income through some way or another. If you call everyone greedy then the word greedy becomes meaningless because words like greed only have meaning when they are used in a scale. Why? because if everyone is greedy than none one is greedy because being greedy becomes the norm and words like greedy describe something thats outside the norm.

Hey, this is Gabriel. Since Anet isn’t stupid enough to answer your not-thought-through questions, I’ll have a go at it:

Daniel Handler.4816:

• How does this game make money?

Sales

Daniel Handler.4816:

• Is it primarily through the cash shop?

No

Daniel Handler.4816:

• Is it through the initial sales?

Yes, if by initial sales you include:

A) Purchasing the original game any time before HoT
B) Additional sales OF HoT
C) Other sales of the whole game post-HoT

Daniel Handler.4816:

• A bit of both?

Nope.

Daniel Handler.4816:

There are so many complaints everywhere on the forums and yet minimal progress is experienced.

Opinion, not a question. And it’s a very biased opinion because I just don’t agree.

Daniel Handler.4816:

• How many people are employed at anet?

“Over the years, ArenaNet has grown to 250+ employees”
Source: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/ArenaNet

Daniel Handler.4816:

• Why does it take so long for them to do things?

Loaded question based on a biased opinion.

THAT…and it’s software development…which I’m guessing you really don’t have any insight into just how complex that can be.

Daniel Handler.4816:

There are so many people unhappy with the game I’m just trying to understand why or how the game can tolerate such bad PR.

More people happy with this game than unhappy with this game. All the complainers go to the forums. Not so many people happy with the game come to the forums because it’s a cesspool of kittens complaining about stupid crap.

Daniel Handler.4816:

And whether it is even in the financial interests of the company to spend money fixing things.

Here’s the info you need to READ AND UNDERSTAND before you assume whatever PR you are referring to (I’m guessing just the forum’s kittens posting their daily rounds of hatemail).

http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx#none

Based on the income Anet has and the fact that their business is based on the concept of “going concern”, yeah, they have a vested interest in fixing things.

But because they are highly profitable, they’re going to do it in the priority THEY see as most income-generating.

https://taskandpurpose.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/FafHtxr.gif

lack of S1 content

I have been playing this game for 6630hours. I’ve been here since the beta. I’ve enjoyed every single second, minute, hour, day and year spent in game. My only regret is, that I have not had more time to spend in here. Though, frankly, it would take quite an effort to squeeze any more playing time into a game this young…
What I enjoy the most is the fact that: Compared to any other game I’ve been playing, Guild Wars 2:

1: Have the smoothest, Largest and most steady new content, feature update and balancing release stream.
2: Have the best way to listen to players feedback.
3: Make the most player inspired updates.
4: Have the least bugs.
5: Have the best community in game.
6: Have a staff who genuinely Care about its players.

I could go on all night, but I don’t write this as a praise to A-net. I am grateful though; Thank you Arena Net, For caring about your community. I hear a lot of players complain, and babel high and low about how horrible it is that you don’t do this and don’t do that and don’t care and so on and so forth, just because there’s a small thing they cant fit into their head. I humbly disagree with those people. I Love that you both bother to Listen to us, Respond to us and take us seriously…
As a developer, I would be a little discouraged, reading some of the posts on forum from time to time. I hope that the year 2016, will offer more grateful people who understand the amount of work it takes to deliver the sky high quality you do deliver.

No people, we don’t get an expansion a year, and the expansion didn’t come all at the same time, as were clearly pointed out to us prior to the release of HoT. We do however get a fully thought through, fully operational and properly optimized game. Much in opposition to any other mmo-rpg out there.
We don’t have to wait for weeks and months after an expansion release on the important bug fixes like “log in client overflow” or “The game crashing every other second” or “skills not working” or “disconnected due to encumbered servers”. We don’t have to deal with servers closing down for hours once a week. We have grown used to Anet listening to us, and even ASKING us for our opinion, to a degree that No other game show. When we do get serious bugs, they are fixed within a day or at two at most…

I love this game. I could spend another 5.000 hours in here without any content releases without getting bored. That is, AS IT IS RIGHT NOW. But hey, we know Arena Net, new content and updates and polishing IS ON THE WAY… So I suppose that as long as the servers is up, I’ll keep playing. Keep giving ideas and inspiration on the forum… and keep making new friends in the amazing, amazing community you have created.

Thank you Arena net, for giving me, and my family and friends, this amazing world to to explore and play in, together.. Thank you for the time and the effort you put into Our lives… In return, we are some, who believe in you, in what you do to bring a little light into our world…

EDIT: Thank you for doing so much more, than you ever said you would.

Merry Christmas, All you people on Arena Net.

It’s a flowchart, not a “chartflow”.

darkt.9450:

well if they cheat in dungeons they should get banned for it, or maybe anet should fix these bugs ? seeing they are here since day one already.

No one said they were cheating. Running past mobs is not cheating and ANet has never said stacking in corners was cheating either. But it was cheesing and many admitted to doing dungeons the fastest and easiest ways possible to get it done, get the gold and do the next dungeon. There was really no reason for the game to reward dungeoners a gold or more for 15 minutes of playtime and reward open world players a silver or two for the same amount of time played. The two rewards were grossly unequal and now they’ve been brought closer together.

If you enjoy dungeons, do them. You’ll get rewarded for the time you spent there about the same as PvE players are now rewarded for playing PvE (and it will be a better reward that PvE players got for playing how they liked for the last couple of years).

“Give the players what they want” Which players? We want different things.

Further “listening” doesn’t mean “doing exactly what the other person wants” — sometimes, the people offering a criticism confuse the solution with the issue and the company needs to figure out the core concern and address that.

For each controversial change made recently, there have been good reasons:

• Players asked for more challenging content with rewards gated behind it.
• Players wanted more variation from what they had done before.
• Players wanted less visual clutter, so they could see what foes were doing.
• Players requested open-world and instanced content foes that would benefit stats other than zerker.
• Rebalancing is required to maintain a healthy PvE/PvP/WvW and a healthy economy.

And so on.

We can disagree about whether ANet succeeded in finding the right balance in all the above, but I don’t think it’s remotely fair to accuse ANet of not paying attention to our concerns.

tl;dr “listening” isn’t the same as “agreeing”, let alone doing exactly as demanded by the other party.

Speaking on behalf of the human race, arguably the most intelligent and adaptable creatures on the planet, I think you’ll find most players can still manage to use the maps and function in the game regardless of the presence of a few small, vaguely rectangular blobs on the map or, indeed, above a toon’s head. Some of the players are even capable of following the tag they want and ignoring all the others.

I’ve never seen so much drama about such a small thing. “Cluttered with tags”? Really? How many tags were there? Did you need more than one hand to count them? Did it stop you from using the map? Save the complaints for the important stuff….

I feel the need to write another post on small guilds being dealt a bad deal on the new “features” introduced for guilds. I lead a very small guild of friends and family, and this new update gives us nothing to strive for. The old system allowed us to progress. Yes, it was VERY slow, and we would never obtain the great things the bigger guilds could, but we could at least strive for something and attain it. It was weeks/months for us to get to 20K influence…but when we did accumulate it we researched something. It was fun….

With the new system, we cannot figure out how to actually obtain anything. It is so far beyond our reach it is very disappointing. I have no issue with how the system works for bigger guilds, mainly because I am not in one, and hence have no frame of reference.

I wish I had some great idea for how to improve this, but alas I do not. I preferred the influence system, as it gave us smaller guilds an ability to strive for something, even if it was slow. I understand that system had its own issues, but I think it was better than this new one.

I loved the idea of finally having a guild hall in guild wars 2, but its sad to see that the game doesn’t necessarily accommodate for all guilds sizes. Regardless of the party size, a group of friends that play together in my belief can be considered a guild whether it be a large group or small group. I have a guild with family and close friends which doesn’t amount to much as there are only 3-4 people on at the same time if we aren’t all busy. This can be a problem as many, if not all, of the guild missions require that a party of 3 minimum be required to gain favor which is in turn used to acquire and build up the guild hall. This doesn’t help small guilds at all and prevents small guilds with close buddies from getting the most of their guild halls. There are many guilds in the game that are small and consist of close friends or family that got the game together, and guild halls are supposed to be places where these friends can hang out and chill together. Yes we are able to join multiple guilds and can access the guild halls if we are in larger guilds as well, but i find it unfair that the game punish smaller guilds for not openly recruiting or having the numbers. Guilds shouldn’t have to be large in numbers to succeed. For example if scaling was utilized more efficiently within guilds, scaling the number of mats needed to upgrade based off of the total number of members, or getting rid of the party member requirement to finish guild missions would make it so that smaller guilds don’t feel abandoned or left out.

darkace.8925:

There are quite a few reviews giving the expansion a 10 that don’t even discuss the actual game, but rather try to discredit any and all criticism leveled against the it. Most of these reviewers have just one review in their history; perhaps they didn’t realize we could check that…perhaps they didn’t realize how thinly veiled their white-knighting would be when they rushed to ArenaNet’s defense.

My favorite review is this one…

“Even if ithink it need improving, not-so-smart ppl using score to get theyr way needs to stop. And this 10/10 is to help that at leats in a small way. Go ANET”

That’s one’s ironic on many several levels. Objectivity, it appears, it not required to review video games on Metacritic.

Heyy, I wanted to post something similar but you beat me to it. Oh well, I’ll just post it anyway. Enjoy:

There are quite a few reviews giving the expansion a 0 that don’t even discuss the actual game, but rather try to discredit any and all praise leveled against it. Most of these reviewers have just one review in their history; perhaps they didn’t realize we could check that…perhaps they didn’t realize how thinly veiled their hate-mongering would be when they rushed to bash ArenaNet.

My favorite review is this one…

“So depressing and dull one loses interest in the new ‘content’ after say 20 mins of trying to figure out which mushroom to jump on to reach the champion you cannot fight. Soulless game that forces players to play the new ‘areas’. Problem is no one wants to play there.”

That one’s so ironic on many several levels. Objectivity, it appears, it not required to review video games on Metacritic.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

/sigh

(Silver platter) here yah go. The whole game unlocked for you. Enjoy.

People keep repeating this like programmed drones…
specs are not content, they are the means to play it. It’s not that I don’t want to work for something, I don’t mind that, I just want my spec while doing it.

I want to play hot with a Chronomancer, not play hot and get a chronomancer at the end.

When Nightfall came out, did you get heroes automatically or did you have to play the new game to get them?
When Eye of the North came out, did you get PvE skills automatically or did you have to play the new expansion to get them?
When any of GW1’s games came out did you automatically have all skills – both normal and elites – unlocked?
When you start a new character on GW2 do you have all skills and specializations unlocked and accessible right away?
When you played Mass Effect games did you get all abilities unlocked and accessible right away?

Those are not content. Those are how you play the game. So according to you, they should all be free. Every skill, every ability, every gear should be free. Because “they are the means to play it.”

I’m “sorry” to say but unlocking more means to play a game is part of playing the game.

Every game with progression – which is just about every game ever – has this.

You do not start a Metroid game with the best armor, weapons, and all abilities. You do not start a DOOM game with all guns. You do not start Batman Arkham games with all abilities unlocked. You do not start an Assassin’s Creed game with all weapons and abilities. You do not start ANY game with everything unlocked.

People keep “repeating this like programmed drones” because that’s what it is – it’s asking to be handed an intregal part of the expansion on a silver platter.

You might as well be asking for the function of legendary armor to be given just because you bought the expansion.

Does this mean that their method of locking the elite spec is good? No. But should elite specializations just be automatically unlocked for purchasing HoT? Also no.

Lue.6538:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Grind is not “time consuming”. Grind is not “playing through the game’s content multiple times.”

Grind in the context of video games refers to the repetitious act of repeating the same singular activity over and over.

Doing 40 different hero challenges? Not grind.

Doing 40 different hero challenges on multiple characters? Not grind.

Doing the same singular hero challenge over and over? Grind.

Doing the same singular event in hopes of getting that RNG drop called Sam? Grind.

Please people, get your dictionaries out and know what the words you are using actually mean!

By this logic farming keys from the level 10 story isn’t a grind as it is done on different characters.

Not at all.

Farming keys is the same act – doing the chapter 1 personal story over and over for its reward. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing it on one character or multiple characters, you’re still doing the same singular act.

Now, if you were to do a different chapter then one could argue it isn’t grind, but I would disagree. It’s just a farm that has multiple possible routes. And yes, I would consider farming to be grinding – because they’re both acts of doing the same thing for the same reward.

In GW1, it’d be like farming ecto – there were many ways to do it, but ultimately you’re doing the same thing: go into Underworld, head to location specified in guide, kill all the things, leave Underworld, start from step 1.

Sirendor.1394:

In the context of a video game like GW2… making the game timeconsuming (but easy) is the same as making it grindy. The game is timeconsuming in the fact that it requires you to repeat easy actions countless times (= grindy).

I didn’t want to include all hidden premisses, thought it was clear to everyone? But yeah I wouldn’t mind doing different content each time, but repeating hero challenges PER character is obviously grindy in the sense that it’s timeconsuming, and timeconsuming in the sense that it’s grindy.

You wanna list grind in GW2? Sure.

Slayer achievements are grind (especially that dreaded Giant Slayer one). Weapon Master achievements are grind. Fractal Frequenter, Hobby Dungeon Explorer, and just about all PvP and WvW achievements are grind.

World completion is not grind.

Doing something on multiple playthroughs is not grind.

Time consuming != grind. Time consuming is boring. Grind is also boring.

People are using the term “grind” interchangeably with “boring due to time consuming” but they are NOT the same. It’s just that both result in the same feeling: Bored.

AWACS.6537:

Guild Wars 2 with the best community?

What?

It is the best community.

But it can be so mean to the developers.

I’d love an inspect option which pulled up the forum post history and if there was any posts regarding mounts, DPS meters or capes, etc. I could immediately know and not group with that person.

Please keep salty attacks & comments out of this thread please and thank you!

Ability to buy Favor with Gold please Anet.

Would like to open this thread with this

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Why not have the ability to buy favor with gold, just like influence can be bought with gold. Big guilds don’t need to buy, they’ll have enough favor from missions. Small guilds, personal bank guilds, can buy and slowly progress their guild. Why is this suddenly so bad when it hasn’t been a problem for 3 years?

From my thread here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Guild-Mission-Favor-problem-for-1-2-p-guilds/first

Ability to buy favor with gold, just like influence would fix the following

issues/arguments:

• Help me I help you log off scam

• LFG Tool and Map Chat Spam

• Semantics argument what makes a Guild

• Balancing content argument/problem for micro/tiny/small guilds

• Guild Credit taking turns creating 2x or more work for players so everyone gets credit.
• Temp invite players and kick each week for Guild Missions.

• Some players may feel forced to do content they may not want to do earn Favor.

• Added stress to players by toxic players with forced increased interaction that will be required, while some players would like to relax while having little interaction with others as possible.

• Others issues not listed:

For the past 3 years none of this has been any issues at all in anyway until upcoming expansion.

Compromise/solution

• Keep the weekly Favor cap in place with the ability to buy favor with gold and it would be a gold sink I feel it would be a fair compromise to above issue that everyone can live with. Since buying influence under the current system has never been an issue at all with anyone for the past 3 years, Guilds from 1-500+ plus have been happy no issues while everyone has been able to progress their guild at their own pace slow or fast.

It would a be a win, win solution for ever player regardless how they want to play the game or how social players are or not. No one can game the system with Favor caps and time gates in place.

Dahkeus.8243:

@ Shalien: Totally agree that people should be able to have their 1 or 2 person guild, but the moment that those 1-2 people guilds start stating that the entire guild system needs to be balanced for them is when it just gets ridiculous.

I mean, a guild for 1-2 people is kinda like using a hockey stick as a hammer. Yea, you’ll be able to knock in a couple nails with it in a pinch, but you shouldn’t take it to a wood shop and expect it to be suited for a carpenter’s daily use.

Again NO ONE is asking entire guild system needs to be balanced for us in anyway at all. All we are asking for is to let us have a way to earn Favor also even if its at a slower paces as bigger guilds. What’s so hard to understand about that? Guild missions will be the only way for a guild to earn Favor. By letting any guild of any size earn favor hurts no one at all as its not hurting you is it? Do you really care if I want to earn things at a slower pace than bigger guilds? I bet not, so let us have a small piece of the pie is all!

I predict and I hope I’m right after H.O.T goes live there will be more threads like this!

Test.8734:

I won’t buy HoT because it’s a desperate gambit to try to save a sinking ship, and it’s obvious it’s a very rushed product as a result.

ArenaNet itself said, when talking about the Living World: “If we do this right, we will probably never do an expansion and everything will be going into this Living World strategy”.

And here we are with an expansion.

Which means, ArenaNet realized they did not do the Living World right. This is obvious – they followed a model with the first season, then went in a completely different direction with the second season, and now, instead of a third season, we’re getting an expansion. Between that and the falling GW2 earnings during the LW seasons 1 and 2, it’s very easy to see that ArenaNet’s original intended model was a failure.

Now, is ArenaNet in trouble? We know NCSoft, which own 100% of ArenaNet, has already began trying to distance themselves from the company (which Mike O’Brien admited when he mentioned that NCSoft won’t publish GW2 anymore, now it’s ArenaNet itself which has to do it). GW2 was also earning less than Lineage and Blade & Soul, and more or less the same as Aion, which isn’t exactly a good sign.

Then we have the HoT content itself. It’s obviously extremely rushed – “we will release only 3 legendaries and more ‘later’”, “we will release only the first wing of the first raid with more to come ‘later’”, “we will add more specializations ‘later’”, and so on and so on – and we have no idea when that “later” will be.

Add to this that ArenaNet’s track record of “later” isn’t exactly nice – all the way back in 2013 ArenaNet said, “On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013”, and look at that, it’s two years later and we are still waiting, only to get three new weapon skins and more to come… “Later”? How much later? Two years, again? More?

This scarcity of content applies to many aspects of the game. Only 4 maps, with a few of those having multiple layers? Only a handful of new armors? Very few new weapon sets? Looks like ArenaNet has made more art for the Gem Store than for HoT.

It’s also very debatable how well tested the expansion content is. In one of the first beta, the main event chains were so broken that people couldn’t even test them properly, because they would simply get stuck. The specializations people played with were a complete mess, needing massive changes that, in some cases, have yet to be done (see Hunter, the Tempest, and so on).

And honestly, the latest content ArenaNet has been adding to the game is poor. The Silverwastes is a copy-paste map repeating the same events over and over. It’s the opposite of what ArenaNet claimed they would do, when they said: “The more persistent events we can provide in a specific area, the less often each of the events in that area needs to occur, which in turn adds to the sense of an ever-evolving open world”.

Looks like at some point ArenaNet gave up on creating a sense of an ever-evolving open world, and then decided to just leave us with the same two events repeating over and over, while we fight the same few kinds of enemy through the entire map.

What does HoT appear to be, then? A rushed, poorly tested small piece of content based on a system which tries to make players repeat the same few activities over and over, while promising more in a very vague “later” date.

In other words, it’s a low quality DLC. Trying to pretend it’s a season pass.

What amazes me is how people defend paying $50 for this mess. If you think wasting your time with this is a good deal, you should be in your house running in circles. You can waste 10.000 hours doing that too, and it’s actually for free – how great a deal is THAT?

Your rewriting of history and your desire to quote something that someone said at a point in time without understanding situations can change decisions is just like being a black knight. You don’t like the game so everything Anet does is wrong.

For example, you say that Anet said if the LS was done right, they would never have to do an expansion and that’s true. Anet did say that. However, the fact that they’re doing an expansion after that statement doesn’t necessarily mean that the LS wasn’t done right. It means that the situation has changed.

It’s entirely possible that the LS was done right and the MMO subculture demands and expansion anyway. There’s no way that Anet could have predicted that would happen. You’re taking a single quote that was said before, and drawing conclusions from it, based on the premise that the person making that quote knows everything about everything before it happened. It’s an inherently unfair conclusion to draw.

Anet came out with an expansion because the playerbase demanded one. Even if lots of people liked the LS (and many did), they could still need an expansion because of how vocal the forums were about it. They could have had meetings and made decisions based on perception.

I’ve been called a white knight and the shoe probably fits. Which means people will take what I say with a grain of salt. I recommend people do the same with black knights too.

I’m just curious to those people who consider, HoT, P2W, have none of you ever bought an expansion before? Like, I’ve read a lot of mind-numbing threads in forums for a lot of games in my life, but complaining about an expansion and labeling it, “P2W”, takes the cake…

Hey

I just wanted to come by and thank you guys in A-Net for the Mordrem event we had.

I played it a bit on Friday. When our event ended, many people didn’t get a reward (me included) and the map chat just went mad. People were complaining and calling names all over the place. It was quite sad to see this, there was also an A-Net member there and it must have been horrible for him/her. I myself weren’t really bothered that there was no reward for me. I mean, come on, I come to play the game I like, and playing it is fun. I don’t need a reward for doing something I like. If you don’t like the game but play it just for rewards then you are probably burnt out, go take a break, watch some Netflix.

This brings me to why I wanted to say thanks.
Guys, A-Net added an event to the game, for free. You could play it if you wanted but you weren’t forced to do so. Don’t start swearing and calling names in map chat because you felt entitled to a reward and, oh no, you didn’t get any. Be grateful that a free update was added and play it if you enjoy content like that, or ignore it if you don’t. To be honest, the content wasn’t quite my cup of tea. When I played it a couple of times all I did was run around in zergs and kill mobs, that’s not the gameplay I enjoy. But I don’t go calling A-Net names because I didn’t enjoy the content. I payed nothing for it, I wasn’t forced to participate. I think it’s cool that they added something to the game, maybe not something I myself would enjoy, but something none the less.
I guess it kind of boils down to people taking video games too seriously. Don’t use video games to get that feeling of achievement in your life or that feeling of success. Go find a job, pick up a hobby, do charity work, whatever. These things make you feel way better at achievements than scoring a shiny sword in a video game. Video games should be a means to relax, sit back and do something fun. and I mean DOING something fun, not doing something you don’t like for a shiny reward in the end.
But maybe that’s just me, I guess everyone’s got their own opinion.

Anyway, this is getting long.
Once again, thank you A-Net for the free update.

Torolan.5816:

What would someone like you do with the SELFLESS potion anyway? OP, your position is nearly as salty as the people that had electro blue for sale and were salty when it came out for free for some people^^

OP already have a permanent Thoughtless Potion active in RL.

Iason Evan.3806:

I am not trying to blackmail ArenaNet. I’m not making threats. I’m saying if you want my money, let me know what I am getting. My argument is that if they want me to give them money, I don’t want to give it to them and not know what I am getting. For the millionth time, I am not asking that they reveal story beats or plot points. Neither am I asking for spoilers. I want to know how many maps there are. Knowing how many maps there are coupled with the knowledge about how much there is to do in each map in the base game will give me a good indication of how much there actually is to do for my $50.

Then why bother making a thread about it?

I don’t care what you do with your money. It’s your money, I have all of zero say in what you do with it. If you don’t feel like you don’t know enough about Heart of Thorns to comfortably buy the game, then don’t.

It’s when we see a million “This Expansion SUX!” threads, and a bunch of people who are threatening/blackmailing/calling out ArenaNet, demanding to know more about the game RIGHT MYEOW – much like your original post did, come to think of it – that you get people who come in and start arguing with you.

If you want to make an informed, in-depth decision about whether Heart of Thorns is worth the fifty bucks they’re asking for it, then wait until the game comes out, people play it, and the information you want is available. If you want preorder bonuses, BWE access, and first crack at the content when it does release, then preorder the game and deal with the fact that you might be spending fifty bucks less than optimally.

You can’t have it both ways. My beef isn’t that you don’t want to preorder a game you don’t know everything about, it’s that you and many others seem to feel like it’s only your due that ArenaNet tell you absolutely everything there is to know about a game which is still actively in development.

They couldn’t do that even if they wanted to. If they knew everything there was to know about HoT, the game would be done and they’d freaking release it. Either they’ve told you enough to warrant a purchase (or an active no-purchase decision), or they haven’t. Stop with the unrealistic expectations and make a decision.

Don’t inflict your indecision on everyone else, man.

I keep reading these threads and trying to fathom why people keep threatening to hold their breath until their face turns blue to make Anet give them an ice cream cone.

I guess I should make a similar demand… something like… “Give me source code to the game and server side software or I won’t preorder HoT.” Oh, wait! I already pre-ordered. Darn it! I guess I’m just out of luck. Time to take a breath again.

Since I pay more in internet access fees every month than I’ve ever spent in buying and playing this game, the price of HoT is trivial IMO. I do not understand the OP’s demand to know everything up front. That’s like asking for the last chapter in a who-done-it novel before the book is released.