Guild Wars 2

Astralporing.1957:

Barter is still a way of paying for things – except you pay in materials, not cash. The fact that you have gathered the materials yourself doesn’t diminish the cost of the end result in the slightest.
After all, you never say that “well, the gold i have is an accidental result of my gameplay, so the things i buy with it cost me nothing”.

Interesting…I say that all the time. In my entire time playing GW2 I have never once gone out of my way to make gold.

Do people not understand the basic concept of “free” anymore? Just because something has a value attached to it does not make it “cost” you when there is zero cost attached to ownership.

If I collect an item, that has no cost attatched in doing so it is free, REGARDLESS of its value.

If I enter a competition for a brand new car, and I win and I am given the keys and ownership of it, the car is FREE. If I then chose to sell it, that is PROFIT.

All mats gathered in the world are free. There are GIVEN to the player. The “time” involved in collection is not a cost, as your “time” has no given value in the game world. You dont get 10 gold just for logging in each day. You are not “employed” in any way shape or form.

jsduke.6537:

So the time-gating really just got in the way of the casual players while the rich/hardcore players just bought their way around it or marathon farmed it.

Timegating always gets more in the way of casuals than hardcores. Even if they cannot be sidestepped (like in this case), only hardcores can be expected to “clear” a timegate everytime it comes up. Casuals will ocasionally (and sometimes not even so occasionally) fail to clear the gate in time (due to not having enough mats, not having enough time, or doing something else, because it seemed more fun then).
Diminishing return is a way better method of slowing down hardcores.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

My personal story.

My L80 Main Character stopped her personal story when she hit the final dungeon.

When my other four L80 Alts found out there was a dungeon at the end, they ALL stopped their personal story too.

Now I have one Alt do a personal story once every 2 weeks when it comes up for the daily, otherwise I no longer do them.

At this rate I will be doing my personal story until about 2018 without having to complete that final dungeon.

Moral of my story: Did 49 personal story missions Solo, last mission required to group up and do dungeon, means all 5 Characters not expected to finish 50/50, oh well…moving on.

I agree with this for the most part.

I enjoyed my personal story up until the point I figured out that the Story Mode of the Arah Dungeon needed to be completed for me to continue.

In order to complete the story mode, I have to find 4 other people that want to do the story mode as well. Not once during the entire “Personal” Story did I need to group up with anyone else….why now? Why right at the end?

I was under the impression that the Personal Story line could be completed without the need to group up. It’s one of the things I LOVED about the PS. It was something I could do when I had a few extra minutes and I didn’t need anyone else to do it. Now, I HAVE to find a group in order to complete it. Believe me…..HAVE TO is true.

I tried going in solo, thinking the members of Destiny’s Edge and I could handle the Risen. This is SO not the case. The members of Destiny’s Edge couldn’t kill a poor defenseless puppy with a tank if you gave it to them. They’re not even good “meat shields”. Every single enemy blew right past them and headed for me. Getting one-shotted continually just isn’t fun. “Can a guy get a rez?” Nope!!! Why don’t you just stand there and watch as the enemies kill you.

There are so many parts of the content of GW2 that I will mostly finish, yet never complete. The “Personal” Story is just another one that has been added to my list recently.

I care very much so. It’s one of the main reasons i play games….any game. If it doesn’t have a deep lore driven story, i find it empty and shallow and quickly tire of it.

GW2 has done a pretty good job with PS imo (and I’m one of those few who don’t have a problem with Trahearne), but to me, it’s not enough. As I see it, PS is more like a set of side quests and there should have been a much larger picture type story that all players get to experience and could play together or alone.

In absence of such an epic story line, even if there was some kind of introduction to the game via a longish cinematic that ties a bit for gw1 history to gw2 and gives you an overview of the world of Tyria would have been better than what he have now, where we simply get thrown blindly into the world of Tyria. There’s even a perfect little example of Tyrian lore and history on wiki, so why not include that in the game?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tyria_%28world%29

Many wonderful intros could have been drawn form that little overview alone. Even with the current set up, a cinematic narrative that introduces you to the game and tells u a bit of history and what we’re fighting for, who our nemesis is etc, would have made a world of difference in immersing one into the game right from the start, especially for players new to Guild Wars.

I still remember my time in Beta. I got a character to lvl 20 and did the PS up to that lvl. All along, i was waiting for something big to happen, but it never did. Going form my gw1 experience, I remember thinking, surely this PS isn’t all there is! There must be more to it! And if so why aren’t they giving us a taste. Then i concluded they must be saving it as a surprise when they launch, so you can imagine my disappointment when there was no surprise.

I still can’t believe that Anet is content giving us just the PS when there’s so much more they could tell us and despite the weird direction the game has taken, I still keep hoping something more solid will come along in not too distant future.

I do like the personal story. I do the personal story on my alts when I just want to relax. Yes, the personal story is not SWToR level of twists/turns/choices, but the personal story can be fun and relaxing.

Hey Chris,
I have to ask this once more on this tread – will we have any opportunities to share our thougths on storyline and in which direction it should follow? Due to high numbers of post it could have been missed by you.
I, and I bet many more players, are very fascinated about the lore of Tyria and the ways it’s handed to the player base. Is there any chance we will see the same collaborative bridge between devs and players – such as me – at the topic of storyline, or some new possibilities of introducing it to the player base?
Greetings, Pat

I have a concern about the collaborative process. At the moment, enthusiasm is high and I’m seeing posters who have been very negative recently making more optimistic statements — cautiously optimistic, but optimistic. However, if changes don’t occur, or if changes are limited only to minor areas, this optimism will quickly change to pessimism again.

That said, it might be helpful to know what sorts of things are going to be considered. As an example, take one of the hot topics, Ascended items. Some posters see the Ascended initiative to be a reversal of one of the pre-launch game’s fundamental design directions. Others are fine with the change in direction, but don’t like some of the nuts and bolts of how it was implemented. Changing some of the nuts and bolts would be change on a micro level. Changing the direction of the game with regard to this gear would be change on a macro level.

I know it’s not possible to say what types of change the collaboration process might cause — after all, it’s in its infancy. However, it might help to know that macro-level changes aren’t off the table if there is an overwhelming desire for same.

As someone who loved the game at launch, but who has felt alienated by changes in direction, I’d rather know now that macro-level changes are off-limits than find out later. I’ve no idea how many others might like to know this, but I suspect there are more than a few of us.

I haven’t said much in this thread, but I have been reading it. And there is something that needs to be brought up, I think. BTW, this is a PvE-focused post. For a variety of reasons, I don’t PvP much.

Not everyone is massively unhappy, and ANet needs to be concerned with hundreds of thousands or millions of players who aren’t on these forums. And some of those folk, probably a lot of them, are content and even happy with their current status.

I do have gripes, most of which other people have articulated.

But I’m also quite happy with my ranger. Really. I find her enjoyable to play, and have few problems with her pet. I run an atypical 0/30/0/10/30 build, wear all exotics + a few ascended items, and use LB or GS most of the time. I play as a symbiot with my frost drake and enjoy most PvE, from Tequatl to dredge farming (hate the moles). Generally, I play all areas of PvE except dungeons (too hard to find a beginner group, even with LFG) and jumping puzzles (I’m a klutz).

I should also point out that I’m partially paralyzed (left hand is still wonky, but getting better) after an accident in January. I wish temporary content was persistent, but it’s not a major issue.

Why detail all that? Because, in general, I’m HAPPY with GW.

Doesn’t mean I don’t have gripes.

But it’s a pretty kitten ed nice game, and as someone who has been a pro game dev, I appreciate the challenges ANET faces.

The game is a complex system. It will never be balanced, though balance can be improved.

I’d like to see bigger, permanent changes to the world, driven by player actions. I want to feel as if my characters have an affect on their world, and not just thru silly elections. We’ve killed Zhaitan — do something interesting with Orr.

Add a few new zones, and NOT ones like Southsun.

Change old zones, to reflect the spirit of the manifesto.

Make the “Living World” live.

To be honest

I played an MMO where each patch had a survey to fill out. With a box for being descriptive. It was a simple multiple choice form.

I believe that was a great system, because the majority could voice thier opinion and it showed truer statistics to what majority of players wanted.

A panel of players and direct forum collaboration only speaks for the 10% of the playerbase typical, the fanatics as I call them, myself included.

Watching to see what and how players react silently is great for bug fixes and hashing out exploits, but doesnt share their feelings of the system.

Also, there should be a level of negative criticism that should be considered. It can be hard for people to word their opinions in constructive foremat in text that gets to the bottom of the issue. This could easily be set up with a proper format to state the key elements of whats the problem, where does the problem take place, when does it take place, why do you feel it took place, how do you feel it could be better.

If you made a form that asked questions like above, people tend to be more receptive in trying to give their feelings and it also helps in the developer in understanding whats truly the root of the problem so they can deliberate on whether to undertake a task at changing it to better facitate the playerbase.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think the thread is getting pretty of track at this point. We have discussed implementation of the 3 threads and had some pretty enjoyable conversations.

if we have nothing more to contribute about the Collaboration process then i suggest that we think about closing the thread, as folks who want answers on questions that are not on topic are going to get frustrated if i don’t discuss it with them.

Do we want to continue talking about the main topic of the thread?

Chris

Chris, thanks for posting and being willing to address these issues.
BUT, word of warning. Quite often players (myself included) are a bit short sighted on what they want, and as a result they clamor loudly for what really is not in their best interest. Ten thousand players yelling loudly that they want more DPS for their class does not make it a smart move, regardless if there is a poll indicating 99% approval for such a move.

Also, I read that you intend to send DEVs to speak on the Class sub-forums. Well I don’t know who it is you are going to send to the Ranger sub-forum, but whoever it is needs to be paid bonus hazard pay, and he should be advised to take out a life insurance policy before he goes in.

Using the Ranger sub-forum as an example, just look at what is being asked for. On the one hand there are the terri-bad players that according to them the pet is 100% useless, dies from a breeze and makes them useless. On the other hand are the elite-pro players with 4k rigs and the reflexes of a tennis pro who are asking for a dozen more buttons to push so they can micro-manage the pet down to when it takes a poop. And all of this will be asked for despite the fact, that in general, the class plays fairly well and is highly competitive in most venues of the game (WvW roaming, Open-world PvE, PvP, and depsite the outcry – even in dungeons). Now of coarse this class needs some work and some tweaks (especially in a few boss encounters in dungeons), but be very careful – because you could end up breaking what is not broken – despite the whine.

But I only used the Ranger forum as an example – I’m not picking on them at all (I have an 80 Ranger). Because you are going to encounter this in each and every single sub-forum regardless of the class – and yes, even in the Warrior and Guardian sub-forums.

Anyway, best of luck and thanks for the feedback,

Ision

Rama.6439:

NEGATIVE FEEDBACK ON THE FORUMS IS NOT ALOUD!

Handling of Ascended Weapons was atrocious

Anet totally forgot GW1 fans?

Is this game fixable?

Things I don’t like in GW2

Bosses got harder, loot is still meh

Despite promise, still no carrion ascended

Please don’t make us craft Ascended armour

Ascended Armour impressions

Condition Catastrophe

The only time I’ve seen threads (both positive and negative) get shut down is when they’re whining threads, are discussing another game, or have devolved into a ’I’m right you’re wrong’ match.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Meanwhile we are still discussing how to prioritise the topics of the 3 threads here.

Chris

This is one area where you don’t really need player feedback. The topics to be discussed should be determined by the development team itself. What topic would bring feedback that would most help the devs RIGHT NOW? What are the topics that you are discussing in-house next week? Where are you stuck, where would a sliver of inspiration drawn from the brainstorming of hundreds or thousands of players most help you? That’s the topic you should choose.

For example: No matter how many people say they would like to talk about guild amenities, if the team is not focused on those issues right now and the topic goes forward the player base will end up believing nothing has changed — even if the thread is gone over with a fine tooth comb 3 months from now it will seem to the players that they are still being ignored.

Perception matters. Let us see that our collaborative process does indeed have an impact on the game instead of humoring us on what we want to talk about.

Does anyone else see the irony of spending thousands and thousands of gold to attain a stat that will net you a marginally better chance at getting items of higher value? It seems counter-productive. Definitely a long-term payout.

Fragment.2793:

Stop moaning, would you rather have no ascended and have a huge gap between exotics and legendary.

Simply put, yes. A couple of points everyone seem to forget.

1) Before ascended gear legendaries had the same stats as exotics, so there was not a huge cap in stats.

2) Currently people argue that there is not a huge gap between exotics and ascended, therefore, without ascended there would still not be a huge gap between exotics and legendaries, even if legendaries kept the same stats as the current Ascended.

3) Nothing about crafting an ascended item helps you craft a legendary. So, to me, using the huge gap argument to support the introduction of ascended gear is like saying there is a huge gap between a Toyota and a Ferrari so we’ll introduce a Mercedes. If you get a Mercedes, you have in no way shortened the gap to getting a Ferrari, in many ways you’ve made it longer.

If it’s going to be a free-for-all, no-holds-barred feedback session, the priority list would just deteriorate into a wishlist.

I think there should at least be some context about the topics being discussed. Maybe Anet can start the ball rolling by starting a few threads like:

[Discussion] Crafting
[Discussion] Ascended Gear

So by looking at the thread and post count we know which topics garner the most input.

More importantly, the devs should at least share what confines/constraints they are working under:

Some issues may have technical limitations (eg condition damage)
Some issues may require significant academic knowledge (eg economy-related issues)
Some issues may have political or strategic business implications (eg Cantha)
Some issues may have divided views among playerbase (eg Scarlet as a main villain)
Some issues may conflict with Anet’s philosophy (eg no instanced raids, no traditional trinity)

If we don’t understand these constraints, then our feedback won’t have much value.

and then you had to go and make the jack-in-a-box scythe.

It reminds me of the Phantoms mask in Phantom of the Opera.

Zacchary.6183:

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

Critical Fail actually. When that happens you trip and stab yourself in the eye.

No seriously, look up Critical Fail tables for D&D and the like. A really bad one and you fail so badly with a dagger swing you KILL YOURSELF.

I simply have two bits of advice for you, Chris:

1) No matter how much you beseech the player base, there are GOING to be elements that their sole goal is to simply scream and complain as loud as they can. To them, you aren’t there to discuss things, you are there to yell at. They WILL look for any reason to be insulted, and if worse comes to worse they WILL make up reasons to be insulted if they have to.

You can NOT let that small group of people dictate the conversation, and you can NOT let them run you (or other developers) off, nor can you use them as an excuse to ignore the rest of the feedback. Yes, they are going to be crude and hurtful and spiteful, but you’re gonna have to power through it, no matter how unfair it is, if you want to keep those lines of communication open.

2) Metrics and customer feedback, be it through forums or polls or beta test realms or surveys, are all well and good. It never hurts to know what your players like or don’t like. But at the end of the day, this is YOUR game (and I say that in the plural sense encompassing the entire company); and you shouldn’t be afraid to do what you want to do, or reject ideas from the community, no matter how popular they sound.

Players will respect decisions that they don’t like if it shows a creative passion rather than a feeling that you’re simply trying to milk as many dollars as you can.

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

From what I have seen personally, and from our guildies these are topics in need of discussion for each section:

General:
1. Guilds (General)
a) Guild
b) Guild Content is nearly nonexistant, all attempts so far have just been stop-gaps. Guild Missions were a great idea, but lacked sustainability (especially once maxed on merits).
c) Guild
d) Guild
e) Guild
f) Guild

2. Guilds
-snip-

Oh god no, please not more guild stuff. I hate that there is content which is doable for guilds only. Yeah, I can participate in a certain way, but won’t get the rewards.

I got away from games like WoW because I wanted to get away from this heavy organized playing on a schedule. No to large instanced group content, the open world direction is so much more fun to me than having to find a whole group of players who have the exact same timetable as I and actually the morale to stay a couple of hours in the game, just to complete content. I’m a family man now and can’t do this anymore. GW2 shouldn’t change it’s direction 180 now. Don’t make GW2 another Raid-game, there are enough others there already.

Tequatl was an awesome first step, there certainly are problems but I feel this is the direction that works for GW2.

I really wonder how many GW2 players are part of a larger guild because they want to, and not because they can only complete certain content that way for the rewards.

If your team really reads the forum every day then you already know that we don’t want to gamble with our money. Since the beginning of GW2, this is one of the things that come back regularly. DON’T PUT RNG IN YOUR GEMSTORE.

RNG in-game is OK. It doesn’t belong in the gemstore.

Safari.3021:

In game Polls:

Barmen.

You talk to a barman in a tavern, they chat yto you, ask you questions, you give your responses.

Anet get their poll.
Player recieves tankard of ale for their time.

Encourage participation by making “visit tavern for a drink” a daily achievement when a poll is needed

This is actually kindof brilliant.

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

Kaon.7192:

I’d like to hear what the Devs feel about taking this idea of Collaborative Development a giant leap further by introducing infrastructure to support Community-Created aesthetic content: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/User-Created-Skins/

Community content has been proven to be a more than viable model to sustain the demand for skins in hugely successful horizontal progression based games like TF2 and Dota 2. I firmly believe it could do wonders for the aesthetic progression issues Guild Wars 2 is facing as well.

Sorry for the double post but just saw this and this would be really neat, in the Sims you can go download better hair and whatnot for the game. None of my Sims use hair that EA created because the users create better hair. Not sure how we’d go about getting the skins in game though. Perhaps replacing heart vendors generic skins with the user created ones, I always thought heart vendors would be a cool way to get unique skins, gives more of a reason to do hearts too.

I have a suggestion for the “polls”. I don’t think the forums would be a few good idea. My understanding is most players do not use the forums. I myself avoided them for the first 6 months I played the game. Therefore, I believe the polls need to be taken in game, however, I agree with some of the other posters. They shouldn’t be a check the box, or on a scale of 1-5, you need an explanation in a players own words of what they do and do not like.

My suggestion is open up a research lab within Rata Sum, not Lion’s Arch. Put the little Asura’s to work, have a PvP, PvE, and WvW divisions within the lab. They should take the surveys which can be emailed to you for reading. The ideas you’d like to follow up on, make a forum thread for posting the original idea, and what you can/can’t follow up on out of it and start a discussion about it here. Give credit to the guy with the idea so when something pops new comes out in game that person can feel a sense of pride and say, “I influenced this update.”

Another thing I would like to suggest about the living story is that you have a whole world and one person is creating a ruckus. Who says one storyline has to happen at a time? The biggest compliant I’ve seen about Scarlet is that she does not seem to have anything to do with the dragons. Personally, I’m waiting to reserve judgement of Scarlet until her storyline plays out. If Scarlet has nothing to do with the dragons, I would like to suggest you start putting out another storyline to progress the dragon one. I feel the world would be more alive and dynamic if you didn’t just have one villain moving at a time. To do this you would have to lengthen the amount of time “temporary” content is in game which would address another common complaint.

I’ve suggested on another thread making us care about the npcs. One of the things I really like in console RPGs is you can do side quests with npcs to find out more about their background and what makes them tick. Perhaps Braham is responsible for his father’s death and that’s why Eir doesn’t seem to like him much. Maybe Rox is actually working for Scarlet. I don’t know anything about these characters but right now they feel like they had no life before the Scarlet saga began.