Guild Wars 2

saye.9304:

well after 3 months and over 1000 replies

none substantial upgrade have made and now 2 pet skill don’t work properly, lick wound and search and rescue and if u play that class u know how suck can’t be ressed by the pet for a ****ing bug….
Ranger is my main characater and i’m rly disappointed how Anet manage it, i’m playing a guardian/warrior/thief too and i can say that: the ranger ar the most unbalanced class of this game with exception the mindless farming indeed is the most used for botting…..

ampy.1387:

pay monthly and was completely bugged (WoW).

:)

yeah, sadly WoW have the best customer service of mmorpg’s world…

Raine.1394:

drwookie.6391:

frans.8092:

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

Derk.3189:

They said they won’t add any new tiers of gear, this year.

Found it.

Colin Johanson:

Our reward systems need to be exciting and include things you want to earn over time, but we don’t want to force our players on endless gear treadmills for new tiers of gear we add every six months.

You won’t see another tier between ascended and legendary in 2013, for example. Our goal will be to use our existing reward systems and build new ones that are fun and exciting that step away from the stale gear grind reward systems you see elsewhere.

I don’t see the implication that they’re adding more in the future. They just used the example that no more are coming this year and said they don’t want to force players onto endless gear treadmills. They used the time examples to indicate the difference that Guild Wars 2 has with other MMO’s of similar design.

Just ‘reward system’ says enough, Guildwars 2 no longer is a game were playing is a reward in itself.

Reading some of the stuff that Colin and other developers mention regarding ascended gear and the “reward system” in this game…it seriously makes me wonder if they even speak to Mike O’Brien, the President….the dude who had that big manifesto before the game was made. Is there ANY communication? Is he locked in a dungeon never to be heard from again?

Or, as someone else pointed out, was the manifesto just PR bullkitten? That is the most likely truth. The idea that they don’t want to make “Grindy games” is a joke…they are now clearly in the business of “grindy games” because the longer the grind, the more people continue to play. The more people continue to play, the more money they get.

The concept that putting in hours of a grind would ONLY net you a visual difference, and not a state difference, is sadly long gone. There is really no way to look at the situation other than to accept that they COMPLETELY 180’ed on that aspect of their “manifesto”.

Mike is actually on-board with the new vision. In one response to a question he called GW1 ‘stagnant’ because it didn’t have a gear grind. I agree with you on the misfortune for all with their 180, but at least they did the about face in unison.

Ah I didn’t know that. Ya I guess, good to hear they are all in it together, with regards to changing their minds and throwing out the manifesto. How convenient it is for them that they stuck to their awe-inspiring, publicity-inducing manifesto until the game was sold en masse, then they conveniently changed their minds and reverted to the standard of every other MMO on the market. It’s almost as if it was planned…

HiddenNick.7206:

I’m really shocked that people take games so serious. Game companies are not your friends! The reasons why you like one company above another is pure PR.

Not true for many. I played WoW for about a month and a half after it launched. I didn’t like the way they were handling many things, so quit and uninstalled the game. Never loaded it again, and have not purchased another title from them since ( no SC2, no D3, etc).

Now that I see how Anet does business, they are now in that same category for me. I will never purchase another title (or expansion) with their name attached. Why? Because the title that I purchase will very likely not be what I end up with.

PS And the moderator didn’t threaten but just warn(inform) the OP so that the thread could stay OPEN! How is that bad?

It was very unprofessionally delivered.

critickitten.1498:

2) One of my favorite features of GW1 was the concept of horizontal progression. …

for me, it’s the sudden lurch away from that core philosophy which broke my heart. i’d always tried not to believe that all gaming companies were the same. tried to believe that there were some who were composed of gamers who wanted to do more than play glorified platformers. and everything i read about gw2 over the past years only made me drool.

but wow – the whole idea of horizontal progression just got thrown out the window so FAST! one day, i’m playing a game which makes me feel like i’ve found the holy grail, and barely two patches later i’m playing something with hideous shades of every other mmo.

what happened to my anet?

remember when it wasn’t going to be about the loot? remember when it wasn’t going to be about the raiding? remember when it wasn’t about the grind?

yeah.

me neither. not any more.

killcannon.2576:

Gotta love the GW1 player base. Always good for a chuckle. Still upset this isn’t GW1 part 2, or an expansion of that game. Because, really, that’s what it breaks down to.

GW2 is very fun to play, as one GW1. But the promise of “taking what made GW great and putting that into a persisent world” is just flat-out being destroyed in favor of “taking what kept the gear-addicts playing insert every other MMO and putting that into what was supposed to be a unique game”.

GW2 isn’t GW1, and it wasn’t supposed to be….but the great things about GW1 they did keep are being killed off in favor of being like everyone else.

Look at Guild Missions. All they are is raiding, on an even bigger scale. A raid that takes an incrediable amount of influence (and then Merits) to unlock, not to mention the disaster of trying to organize what is essentially an up to 500-player raid. It took long enough in GW1 to get a 12-player ready to do the Canthan “Elite Missions”.

Guild Missions sound a lot like this “preparing to have fun” part GW2 wasn’t supposed to have.
…I earned some influence and merits. …I earned some influence and merits again. Hey, I earned some again. That’s great!

I got excited when I saw a little red marker next to this thread name. Nope, just another threat to lock a thread that doesn’t put Guild Wars 2 in the best light. I guess they let this one slide because it was somewhat better written.

I’d like to echo some of the sentiments of the OP. I couldn’t have been more pro-ANet, really. I Loved GW1, and loved this game, on release. If anyone asked me 3 months ago “should I buy Guild Wars 2?”, I’d have said “heck yes!”. Now though? Especially with the February update? I dunno. I have a horrible feeling the game is going in the direction of many other MMOs which is simply: it gets worse with every patch.

I do feel like I’ve lost a lot of trust in ArenaNet. I try to remind myself that I’m in it for the beauty of the game. Well, I am…but…to paraphrase one of the new races: “ooo, shinies!”. Yes, the shinies. More shinies being introduced all the time and now finally some really feel out of my reach, or in the case of Ascended earrings, I feel like I’m being heavily penalised for only being able to purchase them through the laurel vendor. I try to tell myself sometimes that I don’t really need them. Exotic is fine. But you know, we all know there will come a time when only “full ascended” people will be wanted in Pick-up Groups, which I have to use often.

Then there’s rumour and speculation about Cantha. My beloved Cantha. If it’s ever confirmed those rumours are true that could be one pretty huge nail-in-the-coffin for me.

All in all, the lack of official responses on their own forum is very irritating. They often lock down threads that don’t put the game in the best light, but never chip in to debates. We all know why they don’t – if they said anything remotely out of line they get ripped to shreds. Most of us care about the game, a lot, even if we differ in opinion. After the introduction of Ascended gear, which many were opposed to, it now feels like unless we shout as loud as we can the staff might look upon that one post buy some kitten saying “uhhhhhh guise I wanna grind for one whole year for a 25% chance to get a special item” and actually implement it, like it’s something we all want.

I agree with the original poster, i no longer trust the developers of this game.

For me personally this game has been slowly dying since November and despite many people giving the developers constructive criticism they just ignore it completely or even delete the thread, because apparently you are not aloud to say anything negative about this game on these forums without it being seen as “breaking the rules”.

They have become very good at creating hype, they also assume that everything they do is grand, fantastic and fun, they assume that we will automatically love everything they do. Now to be fare all advertising people do this, but i thought ArenaNet were above that, at least they use to be.

Take a look at ALL there blog posts, they NEVER give any specific detail and get us excited about something that we know nothing about. They consistently lie and retract promises they made.

Also, i agree with other people posting here that Martins response to this thread was very immature and unprofessional, he even threatened the original poster. Completely unacceptable and only adds fuel to the fire. Martin should apologise.

If this is how ArenaNet treats its customers what hope is there for this games survival.

Zeldain.5710:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Critickitten: You mention in your first paragraph that this is your opinion. I changed the thread title to reflect that (which you could have done in the first place yourself). The original thread title was sensationalist and broad to attract more views. I will change the title back to reflect that it is a personal opinion. If you change it once again, this thread will be locked and trashed.

I know I’m not the first to notice your casual moderation in favor.

EVERYTHING on these forums is “in our opinion” but you protect yourself by taking the edge off of the genuine problems.

I’ve never seen behavior like this before.

Not cool.

I’ve read this entire thread and stayed out of it thus far. But I really agree that this dev comment was a bad idea. It could easily have been said via PM, but instead was placed in public view… where everyone can see that the devs have acknowledged the existence of this thread via the rebuke to the OP… and have chosen to completely disregard the content of it. I would have preferred that they ignore the thread completely, because that post made the devs look bad, and the OP seem right… even though I (and I’m sure others) don’t even agree with what the OP said.

Vayne.8563:

Anet hasn’t broken any promises, because they didn’t promise anything. Look up promise in the dictionary and see what it means, then use the word.

- What about this video then?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=1m26s

I thought it was pretty clear vision statement that they don’t want grind in their game. Yet they have added grind to their game, more with every patch. And from reading interviews they sound “very excited” about it too. What are fractal relics (quantities starting at 5) for? Why does the back item cost 1,350 fractal relics in a game that is not supposed to have grind?

What about half the achievements? Kill 1,000 centaurs. Get 1,000 sword kills. The whole WvW tab in achievements is about massive grind. Kill a million players in WvW to get your title.

Guild missions: get 5th level unlock and grind 50,000 influence points before you even get a chance to try them out.

Based on these observations, I say that Colin Johanson has mislead the players.

Zeldain.5710:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Critickitten: You mention in your first paragraph that this is your opinion. I changed the thread title to reflect that (which you could have done in the first place yourself). The original thread title was sensationalist and broad to attract more views. I will change the title back to reflect that it is a personal opinion. If you change it once again, this thread will be locked and trashed.

I know I’m not the first to notice your casual moderation in favor.

EVERYTHING on these forums is “in our opinion” but you protect yourself by taking the edge off of the genuine problems.

I’ve never seen behavior like this before.

Not cool.

I agree. Honestly everything as you stated in this form is in your opinion. But in an attempt to dull the problem you force us to include in our thread titles. Why?

What the OP said really is true, sad but true. Honestly Anet has been so vague as of late its worrysome.

Honestly what happened to the old Anet from Gw1?

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Critickitten: You mention in your first paragraph that this is your opinion. I changed the thread title to reflect that (which you could have done in the first place yourself). The original thread title was sensationalist and broad to attract more views. I will change the title back to reflect that it is a personal opinion. If you change it once again, this thread will be locked and trashed.

I know I’m not the first to notice your casual moderation in favor.

EVERYTHING on these forums is “in our opinion” but you protect yourself by taking the edge off of the genuine problems.

I’ve never seen behavior like this before.

Not cool.

The game simply needs a test-server, pronto. If Anet would stop experimenting on a live environment of such a scale and actually take a moment to see what is really going to happen if thousands of people get their hands on the stuff they just put together; the game would be better off.

Instead we have to fight tooth and nail (after the fact), over every little thing with the devs and their sometimes blatant stubbornness (the ordeal with the FoV and camera distance comes to mind).

But no, we get the guild missions system as it is and completely shut out a substantial amount of people; effectively introducing a raid-gate into the game.

I really don’t know why they like to make it so hard on themselves and the players; who’re left in frustration about forced implementations of changes in the game which sound good on paper to a group of 4 people in an office, but are horrible to ten-thousands of players who have to live and play with it.

thisolderhead.5127:

Movie critics that feel the director has personally slighted them generally won’t cast the film in an accurate light. Small issues that the viewers might not even notice become enraging to the critic, why doesn’t the audience hate the director’s consistent failure as much as they should – the critic has explained clearly to them all why…

Critical success and economic success are not as linked as one might think.

It’s almost like you’ve seen Transformers 3!

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

They’ve said that they aren’t adding any new gear levels after ascended. They are going to add ascended armor and weapons, but nothing further after that point. I don’t know the exact interview or whatnot but you haven’t given us any links either.

What was said (and was a bone of contention at the time) was “we currently don’t have plans to”. Which all it says for certain is . . . they weren’t planning on it at that time. I don’t think they will anytime soon, but what I think and what really is don’t always meet.

And today I completed my dailies without realizing it just by playing the game, and I was in Orr. Didn’t feel like I was forced to do anything. The dailies also help educate new players on aspects of the game they likely haven’t encountered before.

And they also serve to entice people to look into parts of the games they weren’t interested in. “Hey if I kill 10 people in WvW I can knock out 20% of the daily . . . hmm, well maybe I can try it?” “What the heck is keg brawling? I guess I can give it a try for the daily.”

Daily Dodger was clearly (to me) a case of a tutorial masquerading as a daily. So was Daily Laurel Vendor.

Information about a developing game is never accurate because you cannot predict problems before they occur if you are attempting to create new content. Working on something and having it released are different things. The culling thing was likely released then a large problem was found related to it most likely so they removed it. I don’t know. It’s not my game. It would be interesting if they released information with every single little decision that they make, but that would be impractical and likely hamper progress through criticism of content that has not yet been tested or released.

It would be very interesting, but it would also possibly fall under “information we don’t want to give out about how our game actually works”. Some games where the source code is more open can get away with that, and some companies probably tell players a lot more than they should.

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

They’ve said that they aren’t adding any new gear levels after ascended. They are going to add ascended armor and weapons, but nothing further after that point. I don’t know the exact interview or whatnot but you haven’t given us any links either.

And today I completed my dailies without realizing it just by playing the game, and I was in Orr. Didn’t feel like I was forced to do anything. The dailies also help educate new players on aspects of the game they likely haven’t encountered before.

Information about a developing game is never accurate because you cannot predict problems before they occur if you are attempting to create new content. Working on something and having it released are different things. The culling thing was likely released then a large problem was found related to it most likely so they removed it. I don’t know. It’s not my game. It would be interesting if they released information with every single little decision that they make, but that would be impractical and likely hamper progress through criticism of content that has not yet been tested or released.

Essentially I believe you have good reason to believe your viewpoint, but I disagree with you. Have a good day!

They said they won’t add any new tiers of gear, this year.

Cleared it in slightly over an hour yesterday minus breaks.

1. Took a whopping 5 minutes to figure out Ghost Eater.
2. Howling King and Colossus NoHPus pretty much applied themselves out of the fights.
3. Kholer got Aldus’d as I bloody well predicted and now can spawn necros. What FUN and joy.
4. Unskippable spider queen with spider vomit like ye olde Colossus. Meh.
5. Ghosts have way less HP and apply themselves with 2 warriors.
6. Remove that kittening FPS feature on Hodge defense event and Detha’s spike trap events. Do it now.
7. WHY OH WHY did you make mini Alpha trashmobs with mondo evasion? It’s just wasting my group’s precious time. Think of all the Lupus kills we could’ve gotten in the time it took us to kill a pack with 2 stalkers.

Verdict: Still an easymode joke for anyone with IQ > 50. I give the changes no points, and may Kormir have mercy on your soul.

So I just ran AC all paths with what I suspect was a very dungeon experienced group (all level 80s, kitted out, fractal weapons) we had a ranger, warrior, ele, guardian and something else (I think a duplicate of guardian or warrior) so it was a decent party.

Path one was fine. The final boss is a little easy but for the most part I didn’t mind it. I liked watching the gravelings die as they ran into the fire rings and I liked that instead of making the entire group’s success dependant on everyone leashing the mobs into a certain direction (like the Jelly Fish fractal or the Dredge fractal boss) this fight used the same mechanics, but you herd mobs attacking you into the fire. Your success is dependant on you and you alone. I don’t need to worry about any baddies who don’t listen or are just terrible – they can continue to strafe mobs or be defeated by them. This is how I prefer to see the leash mechanic used, if at all.

Path two is one of the worst dungeon experiences I’ve had in the game, and I was doing dungeons back at launch when people didn’t have a clue, I’ve also tried to four man AC SM with 35s that were undergeared and had no idea what they are doing, so when I say the experience was horrible, I mean it. The final boss was so incredibly boring and tedious, I couldn’t stand to be in there fighting it. It took a very long time for the people who wanted to operate the guns to figure out how to work it. In the mean time people kept getting downed and then two other people would die resing the downed because of the ridiculous AoEs (both the amount of damage, but mostly the duration). The actual encounter wasn’t really engaging, the only challenge was getting two/three people to sync up two skills. This was really boring to sit through and I lost my patience with my party after about 15-20 minutes. We made it, but no-one enjoyed it. I’m sure the meta will evolve and will make this encounter less frustrating once people get used to it (I suspect dragging the boss on top of the trap and charging the trap he is standing on will be the eventual meta) but even then this encounter is enough to kill path two for most pugs. People just won’t want to deal with the random syn fails on those pull weapons. I personally don’t get any joy, pleasure, fun, satisfaction or w/e from successfully syncing the lift and pull on those skills. The challenge it provides is solely to communication, something I don’t think should take place in AC. I hated this encounter more than most I’ve done in any dungeon. I also hate that this appears to be another encounter which dramatically favours high DPS teams who can get the boss down before the shield comes up. You guys are doing a very good job at pushing out lower DPS builds out of the meta when you design DPS rush encounters like this.

On top of all that, it clearly isn’t ready for release. I have no idea how it was approved by QA because it is really buggy (and the last thing AC needs is more bugs). We had the boss mob on top of the east trap and it triggered it, but it stopped moving. Once it became immune again, it continued to stand still and we were unable to pull it off. It got stuck on top of the trap and even once we charged the trap, because the boss was already standing on it, it wouldn’t trigger. I had to use ranger longbow 4 to knock him off of the trap so that he would become unstuck and we could continue the encounter. All of this added up to a very long and frustrating experience for all of us. None of us want to do it again, not because it’s hard, but because it takes too long and we didn’t enjoy it.

Path 3 felt better. The scream before was an incredibly lame skill. The falling rocks were very frustrating to deal with because the AoE circle appearing and rock falling were too close together. I enjoyed the new boss better, simply because I found it easier. We were lucky, Grast didn’t die so we were able to stand in his shield for most of the fight. In that sense, it felt a little too easy but I enjoyed it nontheless (I guess after the frustration of two I just wanted to get out of AC).

Chuo.4238:

KOLZ.4501:

Chuo.4238:

I don’t think this is about whether or not people want things handed to them. I think it’s about them being forced into a playstyle that they don’t like (large guilds). The guild missions are a fantastic idea…but they need to remove the influence cost. It’s not necessary. All it does is create a long, pointless wait where you can’t do anything anyway.

Ah not exactly. They aren’t forced to do anything. If they still want those awards then they just got to work a bit more than (yeah I know it’s a bit more, exaggeration there so what :P) than the large guilds. I didn’t see any where in the patch notes saying that it was mandatory that you got to be ina 250+ person guild to get item X or whatever. Plus if they don’t wanna do the work then simply go on do something else. No one is forced to do anything really. If they want then work on getting it, if it’s too much trouble then don’t and move on.

But that’s exactly my point. Sure, you don’t have to do anything…but if that’s the case you may as well go do something else.

A really creative game designer would find multiple ways for people to accomplish the same goal. That, I think, would keep more people playing, because it would cater to varieties of playstyles.

It doesn’t take a really creative game designer, it just takes a mediocre one. There are tons of different implementations of guild quests they could have chosen that not only would have given the mega guilds the content they wanted, but wouldn’t have done it at the expense of the micro guilds either.

Does the concept of equal pay for equal work, not ring any bells with the frothing defenders of this mechanic? By allowing tiny guilds to access the same content, but scaling the rewards down with the difficulty, would have made this a complete non-issue. Everyone gets to play, no one gets left out, and everyone gets a shiny commensurate with the effort they put into it. The way guild missions are set up now totally fails to accomplish this.

Just the gating system itself is designed SPECIFICALLY to accommodate larger guilds. Not only that, but concealing these missions behind a PvP-specific track, that even when completed, provides a set of rewards that are absolutely USELESS to a large number of the guilds who earn them, is again, painfully stupid design. Add in the fact that AoW is the most fleshed out track already, while other tracks have entire tiers empty of any kind of reward whatsoever. You buy those empty tiers only so you can unlock the next one.

You don’t need to be a genius designer to circumvent these problems, you just need the willingness, the common sense — and to not be hopelessly mired in your own hubris. ANet is lacking in at least one of those three requirements.

Eliyahu.1467:

Chuo.4238:

Ojimaru.8970:

But you don’t have concrete proof that these new content, which you include Shadow of the Mad King and Wintersday, alienated “significant groups” of players. All we have are sporadic outcry from vocal forum goers, with positive counterpoints. Are one side’s opinions more valid than the other?

You can kind of tell when the forums are just a low buzz of people QQ-ing over this or that, and when a large number of people are actually upset about something. There’s a difference.

I’m pretty sure that ArenaNet has their head in the sand over it, though. I bet they are still wondering why a large chunk of their playerbase left back in November…

The forums for every game released in recent years is full of pointless whining. The people that enjoy the game spend their time playing the game. The people who enjoy whining post on the forums.

The real tragedy is that the legitimate criticism gets totally drowned out by asinine complaining. I honestly wish the mods would do more thread mergers here. Far too many topics on the front page of these forums are all about the same topics because everyone who has a problem with something like dailies or guild missions feel like they need their own personal soapbox.

I’d like to think that this is probably the reason why ArenaNet doesn’t seem to really listen to their customers. Good feedback is just drowned out in the general QQ.

But I think what’s really going on is they have some formula for how they think they’re going to maximize profits, and they’re trying to fit that square peg into the round hole of what would otherwise be a pretty good game.

So we wind up with poorly implemented gear grinds, content that divides up the playerbase (fractals/open world, big guild/small guild, and so forth), and funnels that push people towards certain areas of the game, away from others, and discourage people from “playing how they want”. It’s like they’re trying to please everyone, and that’s mostly just kitten everyone off.

Moreover, they just can’t seem to fix something without breaking 3 other things. Every major update has been bugged badly when it released; and they had to go into damage control mode to try and fix it.

And they just don’t seem to be in touch with the remaining fragmented community at all. Any given communication might be on 1 or 2 social media sites, but it’s never consistent and everywhere. When mega-threads start forming on their own forums, they either let them go ignored, or the moderators look for the one jerk who violated the ToS and use it as an excuse to shut the thread down.

All this tells me that they aren’t listening to anyone, really, and don’t want to. That certainly doesn’t endear them to me at all.

Who are you people, and what have you done with the wonderful ArenaNet of Guild Wars? This fan’s muti-year loyalty is about stretched as far as it can get, all in the course of a few months.

Ojimaru.8970:

But you don’t have concrete proof that these new content, which you include Shadow of the Mad King and Wintersday, alienated “significant groups” of players. All we have are sporadic outcry from vocal forum goers, with positive counterpoints. Are one side’s opinions more valid than the other?

You can kind of tell when the forums are just a low buzz of people QQ-ing over this or that, and when a large number of people are actually upset about something. There’s a difference.

I’m pretty sure that ArenaNet has their head in the sand over it, though. I bet they are still wondering why a large chunk of their playerbase left back in November…

“To make playing in our open world worthwhile, we’ll make it rewarding enough for players to spend their time there across all levels. It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards”.

The above quote is from Colin Johanson from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/. Why is it then that we are being FORCED to get ascended accessories through guild missions only? This is a DIRECT violation of your “philosophy”. Placing extremely high barriers to access rewards through other gametypes is going DIRECTLY against this. Why? I think it’s safe to assume that this company has lost A LOT of credibility from launch…imagine, such radical changes to philosophies only 6 months after release.

I’m astounded, surprised, and extremely disappointed that GW2’s LEAD DESIGNER actually just typed that.

Seems like Anet has decided to go with the portion of the player base that wants newer and better items to constantly work for. Fair enough. I hope for Anet’s sake that that portion of the player base will continue to play the game because they will eventually lose those of us who bought the game with the idea that once you got the best gear, new gear would be more focused on looks and not stats.

Which is fine. Its Anet’s game and they can do with it what they want.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

These items are mainly earned through guild content, we included them on the laurels vendor to give players the opportunity to earn them if they are not in a guild but they are priced high to encourage players to try and accomplish them via the guild content.

On one side I really appreciate the fact that you’ve atleast allowed multiple options to gather the gear.

On the other side at launch it was promised that people that would put a lot of time in items would only get better LOOKING items and not items that have better STATS.

There are a lot of people here that have come here from other mmorpg’s because this game doesn’t have the pressure those games had that forces you to farm items or do dailies in order to have equal stats as everyone else. You guys are completely going in the wrong direction by making us work very hard to unlock these items and even then we have it on only one character.

Guildwars 1 was my favorit game for a very long time because it allowed me to not feel pressured into farming gear but still gave me something fun to do ( gathering nice looks for armors or miniature pets for example and a lot more ).

So long story short:
Don’t go back on your word and keep the rewards for farming nice LOOKING gear instead of forcing everyone to pick one character to grind gear with better STATS on it.

arcaid.6983:

I really don’t understand this line of thinking. If you want the better loot join a bigger guild, it really is that simple. If your need for the better loot is more then your need to be in a guild with your friends, that is a you problem not a game problem. I am in a relatively small guild(it’s just me if your wandering, created it so I would stop getting random guild invites), and am currently working on leveling all the classes before I join a more permanant home. I can do all the content in the game, with the exception of guild missions and I am fine with it. I can do all the content in this game without top end loot as well. This self imposed need for shinies is once again a you problem not a game problem. Play the game, have fun, get the gear when you can and most of all relax. No matter what arena net does someone will always have better stuff then you. Deal with it and just have a good time.

It’s not about the shinies.

It’s about the community being collaborative and supportive rather than divisive and adversarial.

It’s about equality of opportunity (not equality of outcomes, I’m not looking for, what were they called, welfare epics).

It’s about supporting, and absolutely not disrupting, the social fabric of guilds which are one of the anchors retaining players in a game.

And it’s about all of us being players in GW2, without, how did the guy in chat yesterday put it, the concept of the “elite” who had just launched a guild event and the “peons” who were invited to come watch. Ever see the “there’s no second class on Southern” TV ads 30 years ago? (Southern was a regional jet airline which did not have a first class cabin on its 737 jets, their commercials had you walking through the usual first class cabin of that era with all the people in the wide seats looking down at you.) That feeling has no place in GW2.

Jeff Kaplan drove that caste system into the WoW playerbase based on his own experience as a raid leader in EQ1. He was trying to shame people into raiding. What he accomplished was to tell 90% of Blizzard’s customers he didn’t want them, and cause maybe 1% of customers to “grief” the rest of the player base by acting entitled in many antisocial ways. As a business person I think that was a really, really, extraordinarily stupid business move. Gaming is an entertainment business which delivers an emotional experience, in the end. Why, if your livelihood depends on people staying in your game, would you set out to damage the emotional experience of the vast majority of them? Can you imagine Mickey Mouse walking down the street in Disneyland shaming some little kid? Or the staff on a cruise ship or in a resort? Or even the proprietor of a local restaurant? Even the kid behind the counter at the local McDonalds knows better.

I’m not here for the shinies either.

Actually, I will issue the following statement: I have absolutely NO interest in doing ANY of the new guild mission content.

And I absolutely agree that new content was needed for large guilds or ANet would have attrited a section of their playerbase.

I do not have a problem with the concept of the content itself. And take full responsibility for not wanting to pursue it, understanding I may be missing a few rewards that might be BIS. And yes, I am a hardcore min/max type of player.

Having said, I will state that I do have a problem with how the content was implemented.

I care about this game. I care about the obvious impact the new content has had on the overall feel of the game. I posted about that on the massive thread about guild missions (page 3) even before the content was released. It was such an obvious outcome to anyone who has studied social science or uses pattern thinking regarding social environments. And I really really wish that ANet could afford to hire a social scientist and have them on their staff working with an economist. Sadly, most of of the ones I know are consulting with large universities world wide, and headed to major capitals across the world, including Washington D.C. (And they are very needed there!)

I digress.

What I stated days ago was concern about a growing dichotomy between the “haves” and “have nots”. And in horror, I’m seeing that play out on the forum and more importantly in game. The content had not been live more than 30 mins before I saw players at each others throats in map chat over guild recruiting. And I’m seeing more of it.

This is not a positive trend for a game that differentiated itself before release. That differentiation is now devolving rapidly to the point where it is close to joining at least 4 other MMO’s that foster a negative customer experience based on a “haves” and “have not” dichotomy.

My guild deliberately, carefully researched this game and joined only because it offered hope of a “real” community feel in its marketing messages and in the experience we had during BWEs. We have played in games that actually had that, that fostered community-building with game mechanics.

So, back to the essence of the questions asked by the OP: why did that change?

Because if it was simply an “oops”, we didn’t catch that, or “wow, we never expected our customers to react that way” the following axiom regarding software has held for at least the last 30 years that I have been involved in the industry:

Customers will never use your software the way you intended or expected.

Hence the need for focus-group testing to broaden the developer’s perspective.

And keeping an open mind, and a listening ear when players, en masse, provide feedback.

Tweekon.2510:

Very long post.. Says exactly the same as all the others.

‘My small guild deserves to be able to do this new content. I will not change my playstyle to fit.’

EQ2 had guild levels. Hitting max guild level gave nice things. Small 2 person guilds whined it was harder for them to level than big raid guilds.

Dev response – so go join a raid guild, or recruit to your guild.

I hope the devs stick to their guns here. And wrap these inane entitlement posts up into one big thread.

So how’s EQ2’s playerbase looking these days?

Hell, how are any of games built around TheVision™ doing anymore

You don’t succeed by starting with a broad base of potential customers and then excluding more and more of them over time. You succeed by looking at your entire customer and making sure whatever changes you do will appeal to as many of them as possible.

Sure, it’s possible to build a niche game and make some money at it. However, GW2 isn’t intended to be a niche game. They started out with a game that had appeal to broad swaths of customers…explorers, socializers, achievers, PvP, WvW, dungeons, etc. Their goal should be to keep all that viable.

The new changes exclude what is likely the larger segment of their player base: players that are active in smaller guilds. Sure, there might be tens of thousands of players in the 500 man guilds. But there are so very many more in the so very many more smaller guilds.