Guild Wars 2

Healix.5819:

Hero challenges should be solo tests of skill similar to the Queen’s Gauntlet. They should have never been group events. After all, they’re not called heroes challenges and besides, there’s no challenge in a group.

They should have kept the mastery requirements though. There was no need to nerf that and reduce the cost.

I had thousands of skill points turned into spirit shards what about my time I’d already put in playing the old classes? I don’t feel like playing the xpac on what I’ve already been playing for 3 years, surely fun must be factored in, no?

“Casuals” generally don’t go to the forums, they just stop playing. People who post on forums or other community websites are often the minority. I’d say even the people who’ve complained so far, are above casual because they actually care enough to leave feedback. Most people would just get a refund or quit if they weren’t enjoying themselves.

I would counter with

“What’s with people lying around waiting for a rez for fifteen minutes in these maps?”

Waypoints are further spaced specifically because they removed repair costs from the game, to make death hurt more. You see this trend from orr onward.

The problem is with people treating a rez as an expectation.

If I see you die in front of me? I’ll probably rez you. If I see you go down? I’ll probably rez you.

If rezzing you means diving in to a situation that would likely kill me as well? I’m not going to rez you until after the threat is dealt with, even if it means watching you go from downed to dead. I can rez you after the mobs are dead. I can not rez you if I am also dead.

If I have already rezzed you three times in the fight, and you’ve gone down within ten seconds of the last time I rezzed you? I’m going to stop rezzing you. It is a waste of my time and your armor durability. Your build obviously doesn’t have to tools to get back to fighting shape and continue this particular encounter, and it’s going to be over faster for both of us if I just keep fighting.

If you’re just lying there when I show up? I’m going to assume you died soloing and either went AFK, or are the type of person that finds your 3 silver more valuable than my time and has been lying around for 10 minutes harassing people rather than just taking the failure and waypointing.

I’ve never had problems catching a rez in situations where I died actively contributing to an event or helping people. I also haven’t had problems catching a rez after I fell off of something or bit off more than I can chew in a fight because I don’t assume it is everyone’s sworn duty to rez me when I make a fatal mistake. I see if anyone is around, and if it doesn’t looking like they’re clearing mobs to rez me, or coming over to do so, I assume that they have better things to do and own my mistake.

I rez people as I’m able. If I can get you, I’ll do everything in my power to get you; except die.

If I’m gonna join you in death by rezzing you, I think everyone else is better served if I contribute to the major boss fight or event rather than die on top of you.

But if you’re down (not dead) and I’m reasonably able to get to you, I’ll get you. If you’re like in the wyverns fire acid breath AoE or something… sorry, you’re kittened.

It’s not personal. I’m sorry you’re downed or dead. But I wanna live myself. Now if it’s just in the world in general, sure, absolutely. I’ll pick you up no problem.

If I can, I will. Likewise I don’t expect other players to die getting me. It’s very situational and yes it depends on the player.

A jerkass isn’t gonna pick you up if they can or can’t no matter what.

I’ve saved a countless number of players and had my bacon pulled out of the fire (but not that legendary wyvern fire… I’m SOL in that event ) many times by other kind souls.

Most of them follow the same philosophy.

In my experience there are far more noble souls than there are jerkasses. That’s the GW2 community for you.

Sorry about your outlier experience. Maybe you were in a really tough spot?

I just went tried to farm some events to get my Exalted Lore for the next story mission (story gating sucks btw).

Turned out it was impossible. Apparantly I was the only one doing events, I found events all over the map but there was not a single player doing them. And since soloing them is nigh impossible as most are scaled for entire armies, it was virtually impossible to progress.

This is going to be quite a big problem when most of the players are done with HoT and new players find themselves in near empty maps. Anet seriously needs to rethink event scaling in HoT.

yep, I sold all my crafting materials and decided to just grind the Silverwastes for gold to eventually buy a legendary from the TP.

It seems to be easier and faster that way.

Thank you ArenaNet! This proves what I have been saying, that you are a company that listens and considers the issues the community raises. The next big one I hope you will address is the Elite Specialization unlock path. I know the argument is tired, but please consider the community’s point. As implemented you have made it so for most characters coming into HoT (including the main character for a good number of us) the Elite Specializations will be a reward for us completing Heart of Thorns. Our trait line uplock only near complete and able to make a viable build right before the end of the game. Did you design the Elite Specializations for us to earn as end-game regard or did you design the Elite Specializations for us to play HoT with them? We were led to believe we were going to be able to play HoT with our Elite Specializations so I hope you can understand why we disapointed you have taken the most exciting part of the game that is core to play mechanic changes and made it an end game award. We just want someone from ArenaNet to properly addresss the question about unlocks from this perspective.

We understand your business model. We understand the company depends on money from the gem store and if we had a gem store option to buy a scroll and unlock a random map hero point, well at least then those of us with really busy schedules would have an option other than grinding though map competition in the core game to enjoy our Elite Spec in HoT. I don’t think anyone wants full Elite Specialization unlock coming into Vertam Brink, but by time we’re done with that first map we should have the full trait line unlocked and be able to at least equipted the weapon and have a viable build going into the last two maps of the game.

We just want the option to play though Heart of Thorns with our Elite Specializations without having to go back to the core game and grind map competition. Is this unreasonable? Is there any middle ground?

“You should have to earn it. It is an elite after all!!” Reallly??? Besides Anet tagging these specializations with the word elite what is truly elite about them? Are they more powerful than the regular professions? If so we have a pay to win problem(expansion players vs. non-expansion players) These new trait lines and utility skills shouldn’t cost anymore than regular trait lines and utilities. Using buzz words to justify 400 hero points is simply ridiculous.

AivenPrimus.9184:

Rodzynald.5897:

So you can unlock about everything with just HP you already have back from Tyria ?
How about move your sweet bottom and do dem challanges, its an elite after all.
Show everyone that you are not a lazy bum and you can take a hard hit to the face
because of such demands, elite specs won’t feel elite at all.

We just have to deserve it.

Because it is a CHORE not acomplishment,
and having to do it on EVERY character proves that.
It isnt something like Legendary crafting or anything, since you unlock it on every character.

And it goes like this:

1. You enter HoT map…unlock some waypoints for THIS character, then walk kilometer to 1 challange, magic happens, then move a kilometer to next challange (which is nothing but walking).
2. If you die, fail or anything… you must teleport to >>Uncontensted<< Waypoint… which is kilometer away, and then run back to Challange.
   
   And you must do this on Every character … does that sound like fun to you?

Sure you unlock masteries on every character, but process of getting those challanges doesnt change.

Don’t forget that walking to some of these challenges will kill you because you didn’t have a mastery that costs 5million exp to unlock.

Don’t forget that some of these challenges won’t even work for you because you can’t even begin unlocking the right type of frog mastery until you’ve been to the final map.

Honestly these mastery’s are just a reputation grind from WoW just somehow more boring.

From a post I made on June 25th: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-GW2-Becoming-F2P/first#post5210528

* “My concern now is instead of getting glider skins and weapons and armor sets to earn in the x-pac that we are paying money for, we are gonna be paying for the x-pac and they will release a bunch of stuff on the gem shop instead of it being earn-able in game. With how they have been handling stuff lately, that doesn’t seem altogether an unreasonable educated guess as to how things are going to go down and it’s disappointing.”*

There should be a lot of armor skins, weapon skins and glider skins in the x-pac to earn. Lots. Like as many as were in the base game at launch. That’s not an unreasonable expectation. I don’t pay money to play only then to pay more more to get items. There should be rewards and rewards that don’t incur a gem shop with conversion tax on top of it. Hopefully they will add in lots of armor, glider, and weapon skins that the players can unlock by just playing. The players already paid the money for the content. They shouldn’t be double-dipped. That’s just rude.

It’s very annoying to not be able to do any of the content with elite specizalations. Like you said we need to get all the masterys, then the HP, then unlock elite specizalation when everything else is done already. Unless you want to spend a very very long time in wvw. I’m very against how they set this up for sure

100 cobs is too easy and unfair? Get out. That’s like 400 gold.

Op is on point with his argument. It’d be a different case if Anet officials didn’t release relatively specific information on incoming expansion systems, but from what they directly said in interviews it feels like people who were preparing were deceived.

I want a Mursaat legend with spectral agony.

There are far less white knights defending the 400 hp than there are people complaining about it.

Xernth.8561:

The content is what you play, the elite spec is how how play it.

Having to play a large portion of the new content with your old spec of the last three years is absurd. Having the new content invalidated isn’t the point, not being able to play it with the elite specs is the point.

^This guy gets it.
I don’t mind working for something, I just want to use my spec while doing it.

I plan to NOT get to play my Glint elite!

Vayne.8563:

My concern isn’t doing WvW. My concern is people in my guild being left out because more and more of the guild isn’t on my server.

Maybe you think it’s okay for me to say okay I’m doing a guild mission now, the rest of you can listen to us on mumble and feel left out, but I don’t think that’s okay.

This is the issue 100%.

Last night, we had the largest group at guild missions that we’ve had in months. Guildees are excited about Friday and everything that is coming, but not about being pushed into doing guild content that we cannot do together in order to gain the favor needed to start the guild hall expedition.

And, unfortunately adding insult to injury, to avoid this issue for the foreseeable future, we also realize that we will also have to forfeit the 10% bonus we could get from having all of the options checked – simply because we don’t want to have to (possibly) exclude people due to the RNG of the system. Large multiserver guilds will have to always select only pve guild missions, even if they have other interests.

They went out of their way to make sure small guilds had the same opportunities as large. Now they need to make some small changes to do the same for multiserver guilds.

I was going to let this drop because of people whining at me on the forums. I decided that people can whine and call that entitled if they want, but my guild counts on me to act as an advocate on their behalf – and that is what I’m going to do. This is something that is going to dampen our enjoyment of the game day one – and needs to be fixed anyway it can be (easiest would be to just drop favor cost associated with guild hall charters at this point).

Couldn’t help but remember this ridiculous thread upon reading the twitch notes.

“Gift of Fortune/Gift of Exploration not being used in new legendaries. Gift of Exploration is for map completion in Central Tyria and not required for new legendaries which require only world complete in the new HoT zones. After HoT ships, we will be add a salvage table for Gift of Fortune so you can salvage the parts and get back all the components you can put in the new Mystic of Fortune.”

Coulter.2315:

Astralporing.1957:

Coulter.2315:

Astralporing.1957:

Coulter.2315:

Yes they retracted it, the tweet has been deleted. If you look at many of the threads discussing this topic you will see both sides of the argument confirming that.

Not. They did remove the tweet, and mentioned, that ascended is not actually required

This is the definition of retracted. Thanks.

Nope, because the tweed did not say “required”. It just said that the devs thought you will likely fail without ascended. Which hasn’t been in any way corrected.

If they never said Ascended was “required” then what the hell are you arguing?? Like seriously, you’ve tied yourself in a knot – your position is ridiculous xD

Nope again. There’s no practical difference between “full ascended is required” and “if you go in full exotics i don’t think you will succeed”. Still, if you argue semantics (and Anet always does), the second one doesn’t actually say “required”. What you call a “retraction”, i call “arguing semantics”.

shion.2084:

log in … get Laurels… have trinkets.

repeat that for 5 months for a set

Coulter.2315:

Yes they retracted it, the tweet has been deleted. If you look at many of the threads discussing this topic you will see both sides of the argument confirming that.

Not. They did remove the tweet, and mentioned, that ascended is not actually required ( which just means, by the way, that being in full exotic will not be an automatic failure), but they didn’t actually deny that the fights (and the enrage timers) are balanced around full ascended.

Coulter.2315:

Ascended Weapons and Trinkets are pretty easy to get access to

Easy, yes (so is armor, to be honest – no actual difficulty required). Doesn’t mean it is fast or effortless, and regearing is a pain unless you happen to run very specific content. A lot.

Nike.2631:

Ashen.2907:

From September 27, 2011 Source

Colin Johanson: Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base.

Yeah, they unabashedly dropped that like a hot rock when they found out how many players would get to 80, put max progression gear in all their slots, play around another day or three and NEVER LOG IN AGAIN.

Which was dumb, because the majority of those people left for completely unrelated reasons. Mainly just because they ended up not liking the game in general. Happens for every game out there (and is especially visible with MMORPGs)

Nike.2631:

The true testament to ANet’s skill and survival instincts was how fast they jettisoned some of those high-minded and utterly toxic ideals.

Inexperience, you mean. They should have known about and expected the content locust, and realized that changing game for them is an exercise in futility.

And about toxicity… that’s debatable. In fact, some of the ideas they are implementing right now are far more damaging.

Nike.2631:

Losing an overwhelmingly large segment of your playerbase because stat progression stopped dead at Exotic is the toxic part.

Would be, if your assumption about why those people left was true. It’s however completely unsupported by any data, and in fact runs contrary to experiences gained from all the previous MMO’s launching in between wow and gw2.

Hint: no matter how good the game, you can expect between a quarter up to even half of your initial game population to leave within first months. The precise numbers depend a lot on how big a title it is, how wide/narrow the ad campaign targeting is, and how descriptive/precise is the prelaunch info. For a niche title aimed at a specific and very precisely defined target group, those numbers will be small. For a big title that claims to be revolutionary, has some catching features that bring attention, has good graphics and good word of mouth, you can expect the percentage to be much, much higher.

I’m quite sure, that Anet would have been as succesful in retaining the players then, if they have only introduced Fractals, with no ascended. In fact, they might have retained more players that way (after all, quite a number of people left due to the ascended debacle).

paintpixie.7398:

Edit: If you read one link, out of the slew of the ones I posted, read this one:

http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/we-dont-need-you-anyway/

It has the most relevance, I think, to this topic in general, and thus can best be applied to this game in particular.
Quoted from one of the comments on the above article:
“The absurdity of the Rick Heaton numbers was pointed out by many people in many ways. It was a terrible move from a customer relations standpoint as well. I think the final nail in the coffin for that argument was Turbine’s own actions two years later as they, after a mass exodus of players, began making group instances and are now releasing a new PVP map. If only Rick Heaton were still around to face the players as his ‘resource allocation criteria’ were contradicted by Turbine’s own development.”

I read that one. The thing that stuck out to me was this one:
“Yet I would argue, that in these times of MMO tourism, where playerbases are incredibly transitory, raiders and PvPers are likely two of the types of players who are invested for the long term, and have probably been playing and paying for a while. That’s got to be worth something right? What sort of community are you left with when a large segment of your long term players are gone, effectively told the game isn’t for them anymore?”

Raiders and PvP players tend to stick to a game. They don’t pick up a 3-year old game for a single raid instance and then stick to it: they go back to the game they’ve BEEN playing, the one that has been serving their wants and needs for the last several years. meanwhile, the people who HAVE been playing GW2, who have been enjoying the game for what it is, are being disenfranchised. We are being told that there is shiny new raid content, which is fine. There are also new rewards, which are gated behind the content that we really never wanted and never missed not having.

There have been a lot of MMO’s that,somewhere along the line, decided to change their core philosophy in order to chase some demographic. It rarely works out well, because the people who are ALREADY playing the game, ALREADY enjoying the game, and ALREADY making the game money are unlikely to enjoy a paradigm shift away from the game that they like. Meanwhile, the new demographic almost never materializes: they have games that were built from scratch that meet their needs already, and no incentive to simply uproot themselves to a new game where their favored content is just a bolt-on addition.

Games that have included raids for the last 3 years have raiding communities. They have far more than a single raid instance worth of content. They have guilds built for raiding, experienced raiders, a dev team that has spent years refining and developing those raids. Why in the world would raiders come to a game that has none of that? I made a prediction in another thread that the raiders will come, they will beat the content, and they’ll basically say “And that’s it? I’m going back to my main game, then.”

If GW2 becomes all about the raiding, where if you don’t raid, you don’t matter, then as a long-time player of this game, I personally will have to move on. I bought a game I enjoyed, and if this game is going to become “raiders are more important, they get exclusive access tot he best stuff,” then it is no longer the game I bought, and no longer a game that interests me.

Ayrilana.1396:

The vast majority of the content within this game doesn’t have a need for a specific tier of gear. Almost everything can be completed in blues.

Players wanted challenging content and it’s very difficult to do that if you make it so that all tiers of gear can complete it. If players in blues and beat a specific piece of content, while find it very challenging, how challenging do you think it would be for those in exotics and ascended?

Let me ask you this, then: When players ask for “challenging content”, how many of them do you think mean “mobs that have higher numbers attached”? I would argue very few players are asking for that specifically. When most people hear that, they think of more interesting and complex mechanics that are difficult to trivially ignore or abuse. Higher tier requirements are just higher numbers, not more interesting content.

I think, also, very few players are asking to have “all tiers” able to complete these things. The issue is the perception that (at least some of) the highest tier (statwise) will be considered required for all of the content they’ve been pushing and marketing, which is tied to both very expensive components (especially silk, but that’s another thread) and mechanically simple daily crafting. (Or of course dumb luck.) That’s not challenge; you aren’t having to earn anything meaningful or surpass your limits, it’s just a transparent time and money sink you have to wade through before you can do stuff.

They could’ve deincentivized dungeons by making other content more appealing but since they aren’t doing that it goes to show that ANet themselves lack confidence in their HoT content standing on it’s own merits.

If they had said the raw gold generation was the main problem, one could sympathize but clearly this is not the case and it simply looks like ANet is forcing dungeon runners to do other content by ruining dungeons.

There was no real need to gut dungeons, their rewards were already behind SW chest farming, tp flipping and selling fractals. Heck even gathering with a watchwork pick yields more nowadays.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Raid being balance around ascended gear doesn’t not mean its incomplete-able in other gear. It is hard core content and more than anything gw2 isn’t about your gear.

Oh, it’s very much about the gear. Just not only about the gear. That isn’t that much relevant to the point OP made however.

The fact is, that dungeons, that (as far as the difficulty and ease of acces go) are aimed at the middle of the game population are being phased out in favour of Fractals (that definitely are about gear) and Raids (that by their very design are a niche content aimed at a tiny minority). It seems that Anet is trying to funnel that middle part of population into content that was never designed for them in the first place.

In the words of the famous Tyrian strategist, “that won’t end well”.

Harlequin.8593:

In short we’re being gently but firmly pushed in the full ascended direction

There’s nothing gentle about it at all. And if it won’t work well enough, expect for more not so subtle kicks to arrive later.

lorddarkflare.9186:

Cdoto.4920:

lorddarkflare.9186:

I think it is extremely disingenuous to label Fractals as simply ‘gear-gated’. Not to mention that Raids actually have a much less stringent gate than Fractals.

Even on the current system, you can get pretty far with fractals in just ascended trinkets.

And it is not like crafting Ascended Armor is dark magic.

What would make it a more honest description in your opinion?

Are you disputing the claim that a certain grade of gear is a functional requirement to complete this content? That would be odd, given that you go on to say that one can “get pretty far” if you already have some of the gear behind which it is gated. So… you can get part-way through the gated content when you’ve partially overcome the gate.

Ascended trickets are not difficult to get. In fact, most ascended trinkets are notoriously easy to get. You can get a full set with just normal play.

The actual hard gate only comes into play after you have placed agony infusions in all those slots.

My challenge stems from the implication that fractals are virtually unapproachable unless you are fully decked out in ascended. That is what calling it ‘gear-gated’ suggests and that is clearly not true.

Ah, I see the disconnect.

What I said was “required to complete”, not “required to attempt”. Strictly speaking, you can walk into the raid in full exotics. It might even be possible to complete that way, given perfect play. Good luck finding a group willing to let you try, though… and that’s what I mean by a “practical requirement”.

There was certainly no attempt to deceive or misrepresent.

phys.7689:

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’m okay with reducing the gold output of dungeons, but I’m not okay with reducing the value of playing dungeons. Replace parts of the gold with T6 materials, lodestones, or something that matters to someone and can be sold to recoup some of the value. Don’t just take away the gold and give it nothing in return. A number of people play dungeons because they’re valuable even in spite of how old and unsupported they are; reducing their value will move those people elsewhere and that’s not good.

He answered that in mines, they dont want dungeons to be as desired an activity regardless

This leads me to believe it is exactly what I stated in another post about this. They are nerfing dungeons because they are afraid the new content won’t look appealing unless they finalize their abandonment of dungeons and make it not viable.

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

We did see them in GW1, following the Forgotten, though we didnt know they were called Exalted at the time.

If you assume that Enchanted Armors were Exalted. And we only saw those in the crystal desert.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Enchanted_armor

reapex.8546:

Glint lived for thousands of years, there is no way she would tell us everything in one to three encounters. Our minds wouldn’t be able to absorb everything she knows.

Ok, but these events, turning humans into exalted and building a golden city in the middle of the maguuma, happened only 50 years before we met glint. We went to the maguuma jungle there were no forgotten there and no exalted there.

The only things humans had turned into were druids.

This whole thing seems like someone took the lore regarding mursaat cities, ascension and the forgotten and the idea of druids being protectors of the maguuma, but only understood half of it all, then tried to mush it back together, getting literally every part of it wrong.