Guild Wars 2

Oh god this must be the greatest joke ever.GW2 used to teach writing?With that level of personal story where the cabbage stole my glory?Oh god ROLFCOPTER.

Charming Rogue.8071:

I just don’t get how a game with so much potential, could end up in such a grindfest. Holiday’s are supposed to be fun, yet they suck out all the fun parts. There’s so many and easy ways to make money off the gemstore by just adding rehashed items people want, yet they add crap like fireworks or new boosters (who the heck buys this crap?).

If only there was one sane person left at arenanet that could make all the right decisions for them, cause for some reason they always pick the exact opposite of what people want.

“You want easy to access holiday items? lol think again”

“Oh, we read your feedback, the holiday items costs too much. You know what? We’ll just make them 50 times more expensive, you’re welcome.”

I agree, according to the /age I have played 3.5 hours a day over the past year. Even at that rate there is no way I can keep up with this ridiculous grind. Nor do I want to.

And yes, I want easy holiday items. I want to have FUN. Grinding candy corn is not fun. I want to enjoy my time with the game and not just waste another hour of my life doing something stupid.

Edit: Also to me, the labyrinth seems like another champion farm with a lower payout.

I genuinely think that the biggest mistake ANet has made was changing tack to make their updated/living world events so frequent.

While the events last year where not always perfect, the quality and depth of content in terms of new game play, crafting mates, achievements, rewards etc meant that it felt more like a “special event” rather than just an “game update”. By committing to pushing out new living world content pretty much every month, ANet is no longer giving its dev and writing team long enough to develop new and interesting content. Because of this they are forced to fall back on a set of templates around materials, grinding and limited rewards rather than allowing their teams to make something genuinely new.

This is why this year’s Halloween even feels “less” compared to last year. It is just the same skeleton template from 2012 but populated with less content because the dev team is only just getting over writing the last living world content. Same maps, same style rewards. just chuck in some zerg events and push it out there.

In summary, I love this game, that’s why as a 26 year old gamer im still playing regularly over a year since release, but ANet if you want to avoid killing off your own fan base you should go back to doing fewer but bigger, better and longer lasting event. Quality, not quantity.

:/

Stillkin.2859:

I have been an active player since january and really loved GW2. The last living story updates have been such a dissapointment to me – Teq most of all (5 days of overflows and i was ready to quit). I heard so many good things about the Halloween event that I thought i had something to look forward to again. I logged on last night realised its just another AP event – even living story is now gathered behind APs. Weaponskins i can forget – a grind that will not be realistic for most ppl. I logged out after 5 min realizing i am fedup/burnout/sick of the what this game has turned into. I really like doing achievement – heck i was the biggest achivementhunter in wow for years. But not like this not forcing me to logg on everyday in order to complete my meta APs. I guess its time to move on to other games

Just really makes me wish I could talk to one of the developers directly with these questions. Ive been playing this game hardcore for over a year now and most things I’ve been able to overlook. But this Halloween just feels like a huge disappointment.

You should realize from the past few months of content that anet ignores complaints.

Mainly the punishment. See rule change in announcements if you haven’t already.

Basically any attempt to criticize anything Anet does now, or does not know about a class or a game mechanic, can be called a “disguised” personal attack.

These forums are now useless. I’d go into more details but I have to use a different site now

Rachael Augg.2379:

Currently, Sonders the Seller will be available to upgrade your materials until Nov 12th and then the items are set to be removed once Halloween ends.

Why? Are you seriously going to tell us with a straight face you expect people to collect 100,000 of these in a month? The recipe was increased 1000 fold with respect to these mats. I am absolutely blown away. ONE THOUSAND FOLD. I don’t even know how to express how ridiculous this is without my post being half kittens. Whatever.

It doesn’t look like we’re getting new zones, new playable races, or new Personal Story content before next year, but the game is starting to stagnate for me. The throw-away content and the filler nature of the Living Story isn’t doing it for me anymore. There’s only so many times I can chase temporary content through existing zones before I start longing for that sense of exploration that can only come from new zones.

What’s more, I’m tired of being silent protagonist as we chase Scarlet from one event to the next. This game started with a beautiful cut scene and the line, “this is my story.” I want to get back to that, but the nature of the Living Story ensures that won’t happen without a more substantive content release.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there for me. The constant Living Story updates is going to lessen the enjoyment I’d otherwise have got from the holiday festivals. Since we’ve been bombarded with festivals and updates all year long, I find myself approaching these events with a “meh” attitude where I otherwise would have been very much looking forward to them.

I know the paradigm has shifted since release, but I’m sorely wanting something “meatier” than we’ve been getting through the Living Story. It’s been said several times that the team is working on a “big project” behind the scenes…I’m thinking it’s time to shed some light on that project. Wallowing through one Living Story update to to the next, not knowing if anything better is coming anytime soon, doesn’t leave me with anything to look forward to. More of the same just isn’t cutting it for me anymore. So here’s hoping the developers aren’t far from telling us there’s something in store that doesn’t involve the words Living Story, Scarlet, or festival.

They ruined Halloween. I didn’t think it was possible but they somehow did it. Can’t wait to see just how bad the Christmas grind will be. Do they seriously not care about what is happening to the game at all? It’s frustrating to watch all the potential Guild Wars 2 has be so utterly squandered.

Paul Belz.7351:

There are 3 legendary creatures in the labyrinth and they each have their own event and achievement for defeating them. They are:

The Labyrinthine Horror, the Grand High Viscount of Candy Corn, and the Skeletal Lich.

And here I see one of the biggest design flaws of the whole zone (or “event” in general). I’m no professional game dev; only did some indie niveau development so far, but from my experience of playing MMOs for about 12 years:

• There are indeed three different bosses with their own little events, although all three are very basic: giant meat bags with different aoe damage effects being able to kill most characters in just a few wills. There is no special mechanic, nothing to figure out, just brawling.
• There doesn’t seem to be any incentive to go into the dungeon besides those three bosses and their achievements. Why? The standard events inside seem to be essentially the same you can find outside in the world. Why repeating content?
• There is absolutely no exploration: Nothing to add here; there are no secrets, there is no jumping puzzle, not even some gravestones with jokes on them or whatever (unless I really missed those). It’s just an area filled with ressource nodes and tons and tons of fast respawning monsters.
• The area isn’t accessible without a zerg. This point essentially belongs to the previous two points: There’s no content for solo players or people being in small groups. In addition to that, most (if not all) encounters are dumbed down to “just wait till it dies” events once a “critical mass” of players is reached.

One more point, but that’s more opinion based:

• There are just like 3 or 4 different enemies in different colors/variations. While this isn’t bad in general, I’m not a real fan of “candy corn elementals” or “plastic spiders”. Let’s be honest, this isn’t mad in-character or anything and it’s definitely not something I’d consider apropriate for an RPG. It’s just mad design wise, although that’s really up to interpretation. Skeletons are a welcome addition considering most other undead are just zombies.

To be honest, this really feels like the most lacking living world event so far (I started playing earlier this year during the Flame and Frost arc). I’m not sure what changed compared to last year, cause I’ve read multiple times that people were looking forward to it. The generic appearance of the new zone is nice and apropriate. I also like the clock tower. But the events, achievements (ugh? why always make a grind out of events?), and the monsters are just stuff people won’t remember (in a positive way). I’d even consider it boring.

Boomstin.3460:

Free stuff = good patch

fail

Bread and games…

Free stuff = good patch

fail

Redenaz.8631:

Posting this separately both for clarity and because the forum complained that my post was too long when I included it in the one above:

mjharrison.3209:

Ahlen.7591:

lol @ OP, I actually think that MAYBE 1-5% of the GW2 population came from GW1. GW1 was an insanely tiny niche game.

Completely untrue. GW1 sold about twice the number of boxes GW2 did, 6 millions in fact. That is not a niche game by any measure.

http://www.guildwars.com/events/press/releases/pressrelease-2009-04-24.php

After twelve months, GW2 hit 3.5 mllion copies. GW1 hit 6 million in 2009, four years after it launched.(Released in April 2005, press release announcing 6 million is April 2009.) To compare those two numbers directly is just nonsensical. A more accurate comparison would be GW1 hitting 3 million in December 2006, twenty months after launch. Only time will tell how long it’ll take GW2 to hit 6 million, without the campaign releases that fueled GW1, but for their first year out, GW2 is trouncing GW1 in sales. Even if GW1 doesn’t hit 6 million, it also has gem sales to bolster its total revenue.

GW2 hit 3 million because of GW1.
GW1 did not have GW2 it started from scratch.

Taking a few ideas mentioned here, and some of my own, I have mocked up an idea of how in-game surveys could work.

1. Login Screen

(See first and second image below)

- When players log in for the first time after the survey goes live, they are presented with a prompt that asks them to choose whether they would like to participate in the survey or not.

- If players choose not to participate, they are shown a prompt that explains that they can turn on the survey in settings.

2. In-game survey

(See last two images)

- Once a player has opted into the online survey a new icon shows up on the menu bar.

- When a player completes an event that has a survey attached to it, they will be prompted with an alert icon (similar to when new mail comes), so they can see they have a new survey to fill out.

This could also be accompanied by a carrier pigeon, or some other animal.

- When players have time, they can open the survey panel and fill out the surveys they’re interested in (or skip the ones they’re not).

- Surveys are only displayed once, and once they’ve been submitted they disappear from the list, unless they’re updated and require a new survey (Eg. Tequatl)

*See images below for more

That thing is terrifying. I love seeing guild wars getting a bit darker.

I may have gotten this but 800 gems is far too much for this kind of content. That’s like a monthly subscription and I don’t think that’s worth a month in subscription fees.

Wow….. even your misses crit. CRITICAL MISS!!!

On the subject of immersion for the poll…

Do you think it really matters? We’ve already ran over the line and then some on breaking immersion. I mean, every time we complete a daily, monthly, Personal Story, or an Achievement milestone, we have a giant picture of a chest with boxes in the middle of our screen. Not to mention whenever we get “special” mail, we get a giant letter in front of our screen as well.

And then there is the gem store items. Baseball hats with the GW2 logo on them, RayBan Sunglasses, Fuzzy Animal Backpacks, 8bit Weapons and Backpacks, T-Shirts with the GW2 logo on them, a “legendary” bow that shoots unicorns with the Arenanet logo on it, Modern Hoodies, etc etc the list goes on.

I think we are way past breaking immersion with a small poll in the corner of the screen. Honestly, it seriously feels like you guys don’t even care about immersion with half the stuff you release, so I don’t think an in game poll is going to matter.

I hope they keep the skins out of BLC’s.

Luiz Swordbreaker.6547:

Building a game together you say? Well.. some guys on your team consider that “Violating my game mode”

Yes that did say rather a lot about certain developers.

Building a game together you say? Well.. some guys on your team consider that “Violating my game mode”

Lamir.6702:

So many misplaced commas…Thanks for sharing your point about criticism being listened to better if it’s done in a constructive way, but that was pretty hard to read.

Also, this really sounds like a dev crosspost from a thread a month ago. On further investigation that thread is now deleted? Wonder why.

Rofl, so true. A bunch of the paragraphs in this post are repeated in another post in:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-A-Dev-Think-About-The-Official-Forums

Why is a developer giving us rehashed developer posts. This is honestly getting a bit excessive now, and if you think your playerbase is too stupid to catch on to how part of this post was copy paste, then you severely underestimate us, and yet another dev post to calm people down, only infuriates me further.

We wouldnt be here if you had listened to us a long time ago, when we were right and you were wrong.

When I first started playing the game, I made a point of visiting the “player helping other players” section, so that I could focus on the positives. I was never out to get anyone. The last time I posted in these forums, it was a post that showed the numbers for how often ArenaNet gave substantive responses to “popular” posts. It was just data, without any editorial commentary from me. I explained my methodology so that it could be fairly discussed. What can be less inflammatory and more respectful than plain old data? It was promptly dismissed by a community manager.

You couldn’t even take un-editorialized data onboard. Given that, I find it really hard to believe that you listen to feedback. To be honest, I feel dumb posting this.

It appears that you only consider quantitative data, like concurrency numbers. So, while I’d like to log in to level my alts and wait for changes, I feel that just serves to make you more intransigent on issues I care about. And, I wouldn’t mind posting constructive criticism, but it does seem wholly unwelcome and a waste of time.

I really did like the game (especially the art because omg, it’s so good). I’m sorry that you have to deal with so much negativity now. But, I think that you’re not taking enough ownership for your part in creating this environment. And, if you want change, you need to be that change too.

Respect has to go both ways. Just saying.