Guild Wars 2

We’re so excited that we have announced Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, and we know that you have a lot of questions. Here’s what we have planned to get you a lot of information about our upcoming expansion:

• We’ll be doing “deep dives” on various features in the future. The first one in the series will most likely kick off in a couple of weeks. These features will give you a lot of the information you’d like to have.
• We will be looking at adding a few questions and answers to the HoT Frequently Asked Questions section of our Knowledge Base.
• We will have a lot of press coverage in the future, and will highlight those interviews and articles on our website, on social media, or through posts right here on the forums. (If you see an interview that hasn’t been posted about here, feel free to make a post so that others can enjoy a good read.)
• We will be present with our first playable demo, as you learned during the announcement, at PAX East (North America) and REZZED (EU) in March. I’m sure you’ll see a lot of info coming out in relation to those events.

We’d like to ask that you not submit a ticket to Customer Support with questions about Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. CS is not able to answer such questions, and CS needs to be able to concentrate on helping players with support issues.

Likewise, we respectfully request that you not send private messages to ArenaNet team members to ask about the expansion. Let’s let everyone focus on his or her job to get the expansion ready for you as soon as possible!

If you have questions, you can post them here, but your best bet for info really is through the sources listed above, and we invite you to keep your eye on those resources.

Thanks!

Hey folks,

I just want to take a second to address this topic, because it’s something we state as one of our key philosophies – but don’t often clarify exactly what we mean we say it. And because everyone and their mother has their own unique interpretation of what grind can mean, it’s very simple for this to feel like we’re not following our own guidelines when we build and implement content.

When our company president said we have an anti-grind philosophy way back before Gw2 shipped, and when it has been repeatedly reinforced since then, our statement is simply: “We don’t think you should need to grind to get the best gear and stats in Guild Wars 2”.

So what exactly does that mean:

- The best gear/stats: This means to have statistically the best abilities in the game, you shouldn’t need to, by our definition of the word, grind. This goes for leveling and getting top gear (by our definition that’s ascended gear, legendary being an optional extra thing you can do, but don’t need to do.)

- Grind: To us, grind means being required to do the same boring activity over and over again. In particular, the biggest reference we’re talking about here in traditional MMO’s is having to kill the same creatures over and over again to farm for levels or gear. In Gw2, you can gain exp and levels from a massive variety of game play, game modes, and content types. Same goes for the ability to acquire the gear to build up your characters. Similarly, ascended mats can be acquired from a wide variety of content types and game modes to allow you choice and options so you don’t need to grind to complete those goals. Our new mastery system continues to this promise as well, which we’ll go into more detail on soon.

There are certainly optional activities in the game players can embark on that I think we’d openly accept fall into the category of our definition of more “grindy”. Earning certain unique skins, and in particular some titles absolutely qualify as things we’d put on this list. Legendary weapons have components to them that fall into this category, though we’ll be doing work in HOT to make this much less the case. We feel these are optional choices players don’t need to do, but can if they want, and because they are optional are acceptable within our statement that “Gw2 doesn’t make you grind to have the best gear/stats”. That doesn’t mean we can’t make those activities more fun as well, but when we say “no grind philosophy” we’re not including optional things you can do, but don’t need to do, in our definition.

Hope that helps a bit, that’s our philosophy and definition we’re going by when we make those statements. They may not align to your definition of grind, and that’s ok – we’re fine with that! It’s just important you know what we mean when we make that statement so you can make decisions about how you view Gw2 and judge us by our actions/words.

Thanks again for being so passionate about this topic and the game which ever side of the discussion you fall on. It’s something incredibly important to modern MMO’s and gamers in general, and we truly appreciate the dialogue you all are having on topics like this. It’s what makes better games for all of us.

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

And now the post is up in the trait thread specifically to answer that point specifically. I’ll say by our definition of grind because you can purchase traits for skill points and gold which you can earn from different types of content and game modes OR play the content, this would not be considered a “grindy” system by our definition – but that doesn’t mean it’s right for Gw2’s future.

EgonVenkman.1907:

No matter what current method chosen, it is still light years away from your very comment that by level 80, players should have the best statistical loot in the game.

Yeah to be clear on that one, as we’ve said before: we made that statement before the game launched, ultimately realized we didn’t think it was the right decision for Gw2 – and changed our mind. I fully own making this statement, the day I said it was our plan – our lead designer decided it was the wrong direction for the game after we stated it, and we changed direction.

Sometimes plans will change, I can assure you it’s never our intention to intentionally mislead/trick anyone, that’s simply the nature of development: from time to time things we say at one point later have to change.

Linken.6345:

3 days and 4 pages with no reply have Gaile forsaken us?

Never! I was in England for a few days. Lots and lots of meetings, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to post too much while I was away!

Vlad Morbius.1759:

The whole lack of direct communication now has me feeling like the direction of the game itself might be in limbo and that is worrisome. Isn’t it odd that all these new hires and ads for specific people (one would associate with expansion like content) have hit so far down the road, 2 years in? I think to be honest the silence is a way to keep us all distracted from the truth, LS and rehashed holiday content is all that is on the horizon for a very long time and if they do lay out the roadmap the fear is that many will simply walk away and stop supporting the game.
Think about it and tell me you don’t draw the same conclusions at this point. Why the silence, why the lack of a roadmap, why the lack of specific answers regarding things like dungeons, classes, traits, races?

Ok, here’s some info on these specific comments:

• No, the game is not lacking direction. Nor is it lacking vision or goals, plans, ideas, concepts, or any of the other properties that guide our future. The quiet now is not an indicator of anything other than the fact that, at this time, the company is not talking about the future but is, instead, working on it.
• Game companies, like most major industries, experience a certain level of turnover, and hire to fill those spaces. They also hire for new or expanded roles. Nothing startling here whatsoever.
• The silence is decidedly not a distraction effort. As Mike O’Brien said, "We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: “We don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.”
• Living World and holidays are important, yes. They are not the only thing on which the team is working, quite clearly, when you see substantial updates coming out on a regular basis. (Case in point: feature packs, the coming PvP update, etc.)
• We are not “afraid” to lay out a roadmap. Quoting Mike again, “The intention of the CDI threads is to talk with you about the roadmap.” If you’re not participating, you’re missing out on a means of sharing your feedback and a method that we may use to give information, when the time is right.
• No, we’re not fearful of player reaction to our plans; we’re simply choosing a different path in communicating in the here and now.
• In general, with nearly anything, there are ebbs and flows in communication. If we’re in an ebb right now, you can count on there being a flow in the future. That’s just logical.

Hello All,

There was quite a lot of discussion around the proposal of removing white swords from objectives in WvW. We understand there are concerns about how this change might work in practice or how player behavior may change as a result of it. We felt like the best way to understand fully the impact, and give players a chance to see for themselves how it directly changes the WvW experience is to let people try it and see what they think.

We have decided to run a special multi-week event in WvW where we’ll be changing some of the “rules” of WvW for a limited time. This event will feature two major rule changes while it is running: we are planning to remove white swords from objectives, and add points per kill in WvW to the over-all score for the duration of this event. We are currently targeting December for this event but will keep you posted when we have dates nailed down for certain. If this type of event is successful, we may look to do more events like this in the future where for short periods of time the rules of WvW are changed to different rules, scoring and scenarios to help both keep the game fresh, as well as to change up the experience and try new fun things for WvW.

We look forward to your feedback once the event begins, both on the temporary event only changes, as well as the concept of these special events in WvW.

Thanks,
John

Blude.6812:

Anet (Gaile)—anyway to get Amazon(world wide) to get these at real retail value and review their 3rd party seller rip offs?
Can Anet provide stock to Amazon in numbers to meet demand? Or is Amazon refusing to carry the cards because they don’t sell or little demand?

There was a period of reexamination on the part of… someone. I don’t know if it was them, or us. But the decision was made to order up, which Amazon did, and provably that purchase was a resounding success because from what I’m seeing here, they sold out again and needed to order more. (Which I think they’re doing now.)

The Sales Director told me they’re looking at other options. But I can tell you, as a consumer (as we all are) your voice is powerful. If you want a retailer or an online seller to stock cards, drop them a quick e-mail. If you feel the price a third-party (non-authorized reseller) is charging is out of line, decline to buy from them and tell Amazon (or whomever) that you want them to carry the cards. (We have no influence on the independent sellers on Amazon, sorry.)

I’ve gotten in the habit of asking my local grocery store to carry a certain frozen entree. At first, they ordered it for me. Then they started carrying it. The same can be true if you let your favorite store or online seller know “If you carry this, I will buy it.” For to a seller, there is seldom a more persuasive statement.

Devata.6589:

Just wondering. How open world guild-halls are of the table. Is building your own guild-hall as well? So are we basically back to the most basic idea of an instance with an guild-hall that you can upgrade with different tiers (much like in WvW) and maybe decorate a little?

Or is building your guild-halls still on the table.

We can totally continue to chat about ideas around how a guild hall can be built/upgraded. Jon is discussing that right now with the CDI group.

Chris

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Anyone getting upset about languages needs to understand that…

the guy speaking that other language isn’t speaking to you.
the client filter and block function are there for you to use.
many people cannot speak any other language than their own.
and last, complaining in map chat about people using any other language will get you blocked and reported.

Anet have said repeatedly that no language is mandatory on any server.

This is accurate. I don’t know that someone would actively report another player for saying “Use [language] in chat!” but they might. And depending on the aggression of the statement, that rude player might be given an infraction, it’s true. I suggest that if you feel strongly about not seeing another language, simply make your personal choice (as above) and move on, without making anyone else feel bad and without stirring the pot.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I’d call this linguistic or cultural discrimination so much as I’d call it the behavior of someone who is not being very pleasant or reasonable.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Looking over the LS season 2 blurb I spotted this “Past episodes will be available for purchase for 200 gems”

Does this mean if we want to reply any LS content we need to pay for it in gems? Is it an unlock a chapter forever fee for every account or is it character bound? If we pay for a chapter can we team with people who haven’t?

Personally, not sure how I feel about this move. To me it seems to step over the ‘morality line’ and move GW2 to a payment model I don’t really like..

Hmm

If you log in during the release window of an episode (e.g. two weeks) you unlock the episode for your account. You can replay it as many times as you want for free. If you miss the release window and you want to play an episode that you didn’t unlock, you can purchase it.

It’s a lot like watching television in that you can watch (and record) an episode for free when it airs. If you miss it, you can buy the episode off iTunes later. Does that make sense?

LordByron.8369:

John Smith.4610:

you mistakenly perceive a fantastic and functioning system as broken

Might i dare you to post your statement (without anyone involved just saying you believe economic system is fantastic and functioning) in general section or on a CDI?

out of this subforum would gather thousands answers in few hours.

I’m tempted to register to reddit and link that sentence without ANY comment.

My current role on these forums is not to debate on a subject, but to inform you of my thoughts, feelings, process…etc or to answer questions and educate.

Instead of goading, I suggest you write a detailed description of why you feel the way you do and you may PM it to me and I’ll respond.

eekzie.5640:

John Smith.4610:

The TP Issues are technical issues. While they could fixed, it would be time consuming and we feel there are bigger issues we should be putting engineers’ time on.

Couple weeks ago the TP was absolutely flawless and super fast.

Any easy way to get it to be like that again?

Yes. The TP runs on Scotch. We put in a nice 25 year in that week and it really kicked it up a notch.

In seriousness though we’re constantly working on improving performance and I expect the TP will get better and better over time.

Bettik.4982:

Hi John, just so you know, one of those cupcakes over on https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cupcakes-for-arenanet was bought for you. You might not actually get one, but hey, RNG…

Thank you!

Hitman.5829:

Hi John Smith,

Chili peppers, lemon grass, and a few other crafting materials are ridiculously high on price. What is anet doing to solve this problem?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Farming-Prices-on-TP-must-go-down/first#post4326876

I’m not sure we’ve all agreed that’s a problem.

Ayrilana.1396:

John,

Can you provide an explanation of what a player-driven economy is?

Do you feel GW2 falls under this and why?

Super very simple:
Players set prices, players set supply. Prices are set by the players. Players can change the supply of items by changes in their play activity.

All vendor based economies are not player driven. The TP is player driven. Apologies for the terse response, remind me sometime to revisit this more thoroughly.

Psientist.6437:

Imho, honesty without tact is the cliche of ’keeping it real", and tactful honesty is difficult to balance in an anonymous forum. I think John Smith does a decent job, even though he never answered my last questions.

1, Have you ever made a statement concerning the ethics of economic punditry in game or in the forums? I imagine you see posts from people giving not only bad information but purposefully misleading information.

Perhaps a for instance would help. Say I am convinced that Fishing game-play will be released on Monday and want to talk about the effects of fishing on the economy. Would you have pointers or standards you would want players to apply to such a discussion?

Yes, the first time I was less than tactful was inspired by someone clearly attempting to mislead people about economics and game design. The rules are pretty intuitive though. Do not attempt to mislead people, making an argument using a different set of inputs is good business we always need more perspectives, making those inputs intentionally fallacious to prove some that isn’t true will end poorly.

It’s basically the opposite policy of news stations

Mckeone.9804:

In general, do you consider the impact of magic find when deciding on rewards for LS & seasonal events? For example, in deciding to change Queen’s Pavilion from mob drops to event reward chests.

Nope. Changes like that aren’t made because of magic find, they’re made because it’s superior design.

Michael Walker.8150:

Hey John, thank you for answering the questions here and talking to the community in general, it’s appreciated.

1. When you came up with voluntary/charity gold sinks, how far did you take it in concept and did you turn down the idea of more visually impactful donations? Such as speeding up reconstruction of certain parts of Lions Arch or rewarding donors with a name/donor’s plaque, depending on how generous donations were.
   Did the money that went to Heal-o-tron actually had an impact on reconstructing Lions Arch?
   If the Asura ever decide to crowd found a biggest-mega-laser, I’d be happy to speed up construction and fuel corruption.
2. Why does a bottle of Elonian Wine cost 25s 4c instead of a flat 25s or 24.99s?
3. What was the hardest decision you had to make since Launch?

I have searched through your messages by highlighting “hobo” and “heal” but I didn’t find anything. Didn’t look for the other questions.

Have a great weekend

1. We prototyped several ideas, but ended up going pretty basic. I really like the idea of charity sinks that have a larger visual affect on the world or help surrounding people.

2. I’ve been meaning to check up on Heal-o-tron. That money should have been used properly, but I did see him recently with what appeared to be a very expensive fur coat, definitely need to follow up on that.

3. It never occurred to me to think about it, I have no idea.

4. Identifying exploiters early in the game had a lot of very hard decisions involved.

Supermagnum.3458:

John Smith.4610:

Supermagnum.3458:

John Smith.4610:

Mckeone.9804:

Has anyone ever given you an award for good communication, ie, giving straight answers or, if you don’t have a straight answer, admitting it and explaining why?

No and while I’m here answering questions often, tact clearly isn’t my strongest skillset, so I’ll need to continue developing that before any awards are in order.

Well it’s about time we fixed that.

I will treasure this.

Well its obvious that you deserve it. With this recent backlash I’ve seen plenty of references to the effort you put into this section.

“While some forums get Anet attention and dev interaction (ex: BLTC forum)…”

“I’ve loved the back and forth with John Smith in the q&a thread over there, it’s been pretty fascinating even with the understanding that he WILL NOT answer questions about anything specific that might affect the current economy or future releases.”

That was just in the last 2 hours and if the search function worked properly I could probably find the rest.

Also for Christmas, can you convince Anet to rebuild Fort Marriner Waypoint. I’ll donate all my bloodstone bricks and some gold to have it reconstructed.

I truly do appreciate this community’s support. The positive reaction here from all the players is what allows me to continue posting despite my numerous errors. Thank you for reading, playing and supporting us here at ArenaNet, you all rock.

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

Wanze.8410:

Are there still Mystic Forge Recipes/items that havent been discovered yet that are not recipe sheets for food feasts/pots/trays or recipe sheets for satchels/boxes of armor?

Does Zommoros still have some secrets up his djinny sleeve?

Yes.

Is it Mounts?

It’s the Christmas present you always wanted, but never received.

Wanze.8410:

Are there still Mystic Forge Recipes/items that havent been discovered yet that are not recipe sheets for food feasts/pots/trays or recipe sheets for satchels/boxes of armor?

Does Zommoros still have some secrets up his djinny sleeve?

Yes.

eekzie.5640:

My only real concern with the current economy is that I think the following is a huge flaw, and I would like to see your opinion about it.

The Watchwork Mining Pick, an infinite use mining tool, gives a clear advantage over other infinite mining picks. Big enough, in it’s current shape, that the ‘’Return on Investment’’ is drastically shorter than any other (I don’t really like to use that term and I’ll explain in a bit). The other issue I have is that because watchwork sprockets are a wanted item it will maintain a certain value that I believe will hold for a considerate amount of time. Now this is a good thing, that items are desirable, but I don’t feel like the mining pick should come into this equation.

The reason why I don’t like to use return on investment for an infinite mining pick is because in the original design it was a convenience item. Therefor the return would be irrelevant. However, with the Watchwork Mining Pick it doesn’t feel like this to me.

Can you perhaps share your vision regarding this item?

I’m sorry, I don’t have an answer I can share about this one.

Mckeone.9804:

Supermagnum.3458:

John Smith.4610:

Mckeone.9804:

Has anyone ever given you an award for good communication, ie, giving straight answers or, if you don’t have a straight answer, admitting it and explaining why?

No and while I’m here answering questions often, tact clearly isn’t my strongest skillset, so I’ll need to continue developing that before any awards are in order.

Well it’s about time we fixed that.

I heartily endorse this post.

Another serious question:

Do you have different measures of money supply that you track? For example, M1 = all gold in player wallets, M2 = all gold in player wallets + all gold tied up in TP bids, M3 = all gold in player wallets + all gold tied up in TP bids + gold held in the gem exchange?

Also, do you track the value of tradable assets held in player accounts?

Yes, and it is pretty close to what you’re saying, but the manner in which I track is a bit different since we have to apply some weights. For example, accounts that have achieved X or haven’t played in Y time to kitten raw wealth or realistic liquid wealth.

Supermagnum.3458:

John Smith.4610:

Mckeone.9804:

Has anyone ever given you an award for good communication, ie, giving straight answers or, if you don’t have a straight answer, admitting it and explaining why?

No and while I’m here answering questions often, tact clearly isn’t my strongest skillset, so I’ll need to continue developing that before any awards are in order.

Well it’s about time we fixed that.

I will treasure this.