Guild Wars 2

Wait, did you start a thread on the same topic of a thread that got locked to discuss why it got locked? So you are asking for a thread with Dev responses to be stickied to make searching for things easier? Which is what the locked thread was about, and closed because we already have that. I am so confused….

I used to be like a lot of you here on the forums. Not one year ago I was avidly clamoring for “more permanent content,” “more horizontal progression,” and all those buzzwords and phrases you all cling to so dearly; and truth be told, I plainly said on multiple occasions that a paid expansion was the only way to proceed. And of course, all that noise wouldn’t be complete without the all-too-common ultimatum: expansion OR the game is screwed forever.

Well, where are we now? Season 2 is drawing to a close. Two more maps have been added to the game, and much more that I don’t care to recount right now. After seeing what ANet has done with this season of the Living Story, and more importantly, getting some real world experience for a new perspective, I’m convinced a paid expansion is not the right way to go at all. Why the change of heart, you ask? To answer that question for myself, I had to make an inquiry into why I even thought that nonsense in the first place, and the answer was quite clear: I saw the rampant negativity here on the forums, and I fell into the trap of thinking that people here have any idea what they’re talking about.

Needless to say, these many months after I (and so many others before me) predicted the doom of the game, it’s still going strong, arguably better than ever. So I just have to ask one question to all you people who are still making these claims today:

What on Earth makes you think that you know how to manage an MMO better than the people who have been successfully doing it for more than 2 years?

I implore you to take a step back from your delusions of self-importance and realize how completely unqualified you are to be telling an entire development studio that everything they are doing is wrong, despite all indications that they are doing just fine.

A common criticism of ANet is that they don’t listen to the players here on the forums. That’s not untrue: of course they don’t listen to everyone. But the implication frequently carried with that accusation is that they are foolishly plowing ahead on the path to destruction, despite all of these insightful posters’ well-intentioned advice. Consider, for a moment, that perhaps the real reason they are not listening is that these people simply don’t know what they’re talking about.

I urge all of you here on the forums to think twice about what you read on here before jumping on any bandwagons, because that mentality is a virus that spreads ignorance and misplaced malcontentedness.

I fully expect to now be labelled as a “white knight” in a malicious and fallacy-ridden attempt to discredit my opinions, but time will tell who is right, and who is too stubborn to admit they’re wrong. I’ve already been through the whole process; hopefully all you naysayers will one day join me in realizing that ANet is not an incompetent gaggle of fools, and they might actually know what they’re doing.

I want a season 3 … however one that is more like season 1 with some big open world events instead of those single player instances.

Of course they should also then add some new zones maybe where these events take place.

However, as much as many people seem to hate the temporary stuff from season 1,
that for me was the “living” part of the story. At the moment there is not really much
“living” in LS2, beside maybe some tendrils that appear / disappear now and then.

Aaaand … i want that old 2 week scedule .. and not only 4 new updates every 6 months, that was maybe another reason that i liked LS1 much more.
All in all i personally spent maybe 5-10x more time with LS1 than with LS2.

I’m not saying there’s a thread on the front page by “Nokturnal Lunacy.3186” complaining about cheese builds, and this thread is from “Nocturnal Lunacy.8563” talking about “cheese build white knights.” And I’m definitely not saying there’s a connection to the two.

Filaha.1678:

In all logic, we are their investors. Without the funding of the players, the game fails and the company fails.

In no logic are we their investors. I think you’re confusing terminology here. We’re their consumers. We don’t provide funding; we provide revenue. Without revenue investors are likely to withhold funding, so we can indirectly cause the company to fail.

Filaha.1678:

Any good company quite clearly has reason to keep its investors happy, rather than ignoring them and just saying, “Well, if you don’t like our policies, go fund our competition.”

Again, you’re confusing investors and consumers. If the game and everything in the gem shop were to be given away for free, then the consumers would be ecstatic. However, this would undercut revenue and the investors would be mad.

That situation was purely hypothetical, but a similar dilemma applies here. Everything has a cost associated with it, including much of the content that the players (i.e. the consumers) are demanding. This cost detracts from profits, causing making the investors unhappy. To be successful ArenaNet has to find the right balance between giving the players what they want without cutting so far into profits that investors balk.

Filaha.1678:

If they want people to continue spending, they have to show that the game is worth spending on. Without any knowledge of anything that’s being worked on, nobody knows if their money is going towards something good or just more ways to take their money.

I agree with that, but if the cost of creating goods exceeds the amount that players are willing to pay for those goods then that content will still be considered a failure, regardless of its merit. This is why features like new classes and new models are not coming as quickly as some players would like. There are only so many players who are willling to fork out 600 gems for a new skin.

Filaha.1678:

This is, objectively, bad business. There is no spin on this that you can give that will make it look intelligent to ignore a vocal portion of the game and convince them to look elsewhere for better things to throw money at.

You stand corrected now. If a vocal portion of the game demands expensive content at unreasonable time schedules then ArenaNet can very well bankrupt itself by caving to each and every demand. Models and skins don’t come cheap.

Filaha.1678:

And remember, even if it’s a vocal minority, it’s still a vocal part. And being vocal also means spreading the information to potential new customers that it’s not worth buying the game. Heck, I’ve already turned people away from the game.

And that’s not helping your cause any. In fact, it’s providing even less incentive for ArenaNet to generate new content.

You should be ashamed attacking people for their opinions on something. Just because they don’t feel the same as you do about something. Discussions OFTEN need points and counterpoints to be a discussion. This is not the “Sit around and agree with everything everyone else says” forum.All people including you are allowed to your opinions on the matter and really you should be receptive to what others say sometimes. Or at least respect their right to not agree with you. I mean seriously.. there is no reason to attack someone else on a personal level at all. Its not productive or conducive to a healthy atmosphere. People of all opinions should be listened to and taken stock of. Not just those that share your personal opinions. We all would do well to do a little more of this, myself included.

The more I think of it, the less appealing seem customizable guild halls to me. Think about a 100man+ guild, or even multiple guilds forming alliances with one common guild hall… and then there’s you, a non-guildleader who has little to no way to customize anything.

Compared to the concept of housing (taking WoW’s garrisons as example) with heavy customization opions, tons of personal things to do in those areas and directly driving your game-progress (even storywise and the higher level progression) guild halls just seem lacking tons of things.

so my question to the guild hall supporters: what specific thing would make you want to be in a guild hall other than hanging around with friends? Why would I care about some crafting NPCs in there, when I’m not interested in looking at people while I’m crafting stuff. Why would you care about some tables, curtains,… that someone from your guild might have put at certain locations? What gameplay value is there?

I know making a Guild Hall available for small guilds have been mentioned and pretty much approved of, however there is then mention of doing dungeons or events with 5 members present. I just want to say that there is small and then there is SMALL.

My guild is just me and 5 RL friends, we are lucky if there is 3 or 4 of us on at one time. I am not asking for it to be quick for a guild like mine to get a hall but please make it possible. We may not do a lot of the major content but we have great fun running around open world together and doing general events so I would ask that at least basic items are available in open world and not just from world boss events, major WvW or dungeons (we aren’t keen on PUGs). Influence, random drops, crafting, even gold are fine to put into getting a guild hall as they are readily available to all.

I know its our choice to be small but I want the guild hall available to all.

Devata.6589:

I did and I did check out Landmark as well. And sure is had some hurdles to overcome but it also has some big pro’s. Seeing homes / buildings pop up, seeing people building them, getting resources there, seeing that complete build process does make the world feel much more alive and it also gives those people much more of a goal to work towards.

However you are correct that is at the same time has possible negative effects and looking at those I do think the sky-map approach would solve most of them in a pretty easy way.

But even if you would not go for something like sky-maps, the negatives like a guy builds something next to you that you do not like is also exactly what makes it feel that bid more alive. Then you can move to another plot and so the world keeps changing.

Also in AA people can just build from a selected few models, they can not really build the homes them-self. They can do that a little more with the guild-castles but it’s still very limited. I think Anet could take that a step further really letting you build your guild-hall yourself where there are models for walls and so on that you can place together to build your own guild-hall.

Not as far as Landmark btw what is almost like a 3D design game.

I haven’t played Landmark, but I’ll continue to share what insight I’ve gleamed from my experiences in Archeage. The last paragraph about house design is unrelated to “instance vs open world”, so I’ll leave it aside.

I see two (broad) categories of open world housing(or in this case, guild halls): In-zone housing and housing-zones.
In-zone housing provides housing in actual game zones, it is intrinsically the most immersive as it resides in the native game world, but has very hefty real-estate issues. This limiting of space, I feel, makes it incompatible with GW2. There’s already worry about the accessibility of guild halls to smaller guilds, adding further limits to the number of players who can access the content through space restrictions isn’t going to be conductive with community desires.
Housing (guild hall) zones, on the other hand, provide large expanses of space dedicated to housing, outside(or beside) the native game zones. For example, a “guild hall zone” in the Mists, or an “airship zone” above the skybox. This for the most part circumvents the limited-space problem, but you’re now dealing with clustered hog-podges of halls that don’t serve much purpose. This makes it difficult for Anet to actually implement any content around the houses because they have such little control over the surrounding landscape. No GvG, no dynamic events, no living story integration. They essentially become home-instance 2.0, the only difference being that your neighbor can see you, and you customized/built it yourself. That’s nice… I guess? But it’s not aiming very high for a new, dev resource-intensive to make, feature. I’ll go play The Sims if that’s all it’s going to be. I want my guild halls to supplement my immersion in the guild wars experience, not be some place I build, say “it’s pretty yay” and then only occasionally stop by to use vendors or as a loading-screen short-cut.

What I’m interested in is what “positive” things being in the open world uniquely provides, and if “I can see strangers” is as far as it goes, then I don’t feel it’s worth.

Airship halls above zones strikes me as useless. From the ground, the ships would be indistinguishable from the airships floating above Orr. That is to say there would be no difference whether it was an actual player’s ship or some random NPC that floats by. From the ships, the ground would be indistinguishable from a backdrop that matches the zone it’s supposed to be over. All this does is limited the “type” of guild hall you can make to being variations of Airships, instead of Castles/Airships/Lodges/etc that you could otherwise have available. Edit: just saw your post on this matter, your suggestion makes the whole “it’s above the zone” idea even more pointless, it would be completely and utterly indistinguishable from the ground. It might as well just be a sky instance with a backdrop that looks like “insert zone here”.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning All,

Due to recent events I must confess that I am only properly knowledgeable up to roughly page 12 but I want to jump in and start discussing things with you. I hope that is ok.

I want to emphasize that my questions, thoughts, and brain storming are theoretical and should not be taken as a given. With that said I want to start at the foundation.

Ok lets assume that in the world of the CDI Guild Halls have a lot of horizontal progression such as the ability to create buildings, upgrade them and customize the whole experience. What is the smallest guild size that this would be suitable for. Even more specifically is it ok to have a ton of progression in this Guild Hall example and have small guilds work through it.

An idea I wanted to throw into the mix would be could small guilds have a shared Guild Hall with an Alliance?

Chris

Even the smallest guilds could own and upgrade their halls in GW1 if they were willing to work towards it. I feel that it should be the same here. It may take more time, but there is no reason a husband and wife guild (for example) should be excluded just because they don’t have ‘x’ number of people. Guilds are not about numbers, they are about companionship and cooperative play, and sometimes 2 is enough for some people.

The system should, in essence, be like in Guild Wars 1 – every Guild with at least a bit of money, or, even better, influence (but please. stay away from guild merrits, because you basically steal smaller guilds the possibility to experience the whole game. I am the leader of a smaller Guild, we are around 10 people and play together once or twice a week at max, and we don’t have a single guild merrit.)
There should be the possibility to choose the environment the hall is located in, like in an old mine, one of the little fortresses in the maguuma jungle, a pirate or bandit hideout with a ship, or a cave that must be entered via water, a lá Order of Whispers,
Crafting areas for all professions, which can be purchased for gold or maybe even built in a lenghty series of crafting stuff, I wouldn’t mind if I had to combine around 400 items for a crafting area, that would at least be a fun project for the guild.
Give us the possibility to have fights with our guild members in the hall, which, of course, should be instanced. It could be placed in the mists and entered via a portal stone, like the one for the hall of monuments in the eye of the north.

The most important aspect is the possilbility for every guild, no matter how big or small, to achieve a full guild hall, with things that are easy to access, so no gems, no merrits, just gold, crafting material and influence.

You then could visualize some of the upgrades – the guild vault, the secret cave, heck even the asura helping you with building new upgrades and banners, rooms like dining halls, places for sleeping…

The only request I have is: please give small guilds (2-5 people) something to strive for, too.

Not all players are comfortable in mega-guilds; some people enjoy the comfort of a small nuclear guild with just their family members or best friends. It would be a shame if guild halls were introduced and there was nothing in there for them because the feature only unlocks with merits, or somesuch.

Thank you <3

Imho the Hall of Monuments was the perfect solution. A place where I see my personal progression and can show it to others while I’m free to do the content to achieving these goals a.) by myself b.) with some friends c.) with my guild.

whatever you do, do it with the little guilds in mind.

My only recommendation is make sure you implement it so that small guilds can be involved as well. Guild missions are a great example of something that small guilds can’t really do. If the guild hall requires tokens in a similar manner, small guilds are essentially shut out.

The problem with a Vet player reevaluating the NPE

I was considering an attempt at just such a thing; however, I realized that I would be unable to unlearn that which I already knew about the game no matter now I try.

One of the first sobering principles I learned in my Cultural Anthropology class was the restrictions of the evaluator on enculturation.

• Enculturation is defined as: the process by which an individual learns the traditional content of a culture and assimilates its practices and values.
• Now in this case the reference is: the process by which an individual learns the traditional content of The Game and assimilates its practices and values.

The main restriction in developing an equitable opinion and thus a subsequent unprejudiced evaluation lies in a person’s inability to slough off our engrained learnings and experiences established throughout our personal development.

An Example: Edited…My Example has been removed and can now only be unlocked at Level 80 as it tended to confuse members of my test group

In conclusion: No matter how hard those good intentioned souls try to ignore their previous thoughts, beliefs and considerations, they are unconsciously bound to influence their attempt to deliver an unbiased evaluation of the NPE.

Edit: Example edited for clarity

LOL

I’m not against new stuff.
I mean I’m happy with the game as is, but skin hunting gets dull.
Sure if a new dungeon came out I’d be like… “Cool, too bad I can’t do it.”
Same with any “End game content” Reminiscent of Urgoz, The Deep, Underworld Fissure, and Domain of Anguish from GW1. I barely finished Sorrow’s Embrace. I’m not social enough or belong to a big enough guild to enjoy traditional End Game. So living story is cool with me. It’s something my wife and I can do together, that doesn’t require us to follow some screaming 12-year old across a map or listen to a few elitest players at the higher world bosses insult people.

Yeah, GvE would be nice, but my guild is only 5 people, and only 2 are really active. So we have difficulty with the guild content that is already there.

Personally, I’d like to see a new race. That would bring at least 3 new maps to explore, unless it’s placed to share a 15 – 25 map with another race. I like mapping. All of my 13 characters from GW1 are Legendary Cartographers. Because it can be done with fewer people.

Conclusion

Overall, I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since beta. I waited from its announcement in 2007 until 2012 to play. I played Guild Wars 1 from 2006 until Guild Wars 2 came out. I can tell you one thing about these games. You can stop playing for months at a time and get right back into it. I took a 6+ month hiatus from GW2 between the Dragon Bash Festival (right before Aetherblades) to right after the Nightmare Tower fell and fell back in love with the game. I did the same in GW1. So when people say that they’re leaving GW2 because their “tired” of it, I say both “Good bye” and “Welcome back” because I know you’ll be back. ANET has done a lot of work on this game and made a truly stunning world, and to be honest, is still testing the waters with a lot of things. They won’t have everything right in the first year, two years, even five years. But one day, with our feedback, they’ll manage to clean up those little (and sometimes huge) bugs that we all complain about. I say all good things come with time…so just give them time and enjoy the ride.

Uh considering Karl is on the balance team and probably made a lot of the changes he’s talking about himself, he knows what he’s talking about.

You on the other hand sound like you don’t know what you are talking about.

And the fact remains. Without the gem-store we would most likely have much of a game left to play now. At least we doesn’t (as of yet) have pure OP and/or gamechanging things in the store, as we had in GW1. [/quote]

Than trie to play a new account (new player) with only 1 bankslot and the normal 5 bagslots and you will understand very fast how annoying it is. How you need in this game more space but you can´t afford it anymore as a new player just from gold and you have to use creditcard. Its Pay to win – even when whiteknights in this forum still bring same kitten over and over : “So… what in the gem store is necessary in order to play the game?”
[/quote]

You’re joking right? I’ve played this game since launch and have never once baught bank expansion slots or character bag extension slots. Even with an 80 character you can hold everything you can use on your given character with just 1 or 2 invisible bags. I have been playing for over 2 years and still have 5+ open slots in my unupgraded bank. Call people white knights all you want, your just an MMO horder.