Guild Wars 2

Not providing a character slot in an expansion that adds a new class, is kittening the playerbase, whichever way you spin it.

Not even counting the other 3 issues:
- expansion is very light on content for $50/bad value
- old players effectively subsidising new players/old players getting kittened over
- blatant bait and switch on discounting base game recently to suck in players with FAQ clearly stating base game required to play, then give the base game away for free, then editing the FAQ.

kittening your customers over is never a good move. The Anet/GW2 brand has just taken another serious hit, and for what? you could have given existing customers a free character slot or 2 (or some other minor upgrade) and the backlash would have been greatly reduced.

But you’ve shown your hand now (greedy, manipulative, disrespectful), and that perception is going to be hard to claw back.

warbignime.4610:

You know what’s funny? most people in comment section are defending Anet. Goes to show how mad GW2 community became. Sad to see but the problem is on community not Anet.

Yes this is completely the communities fault …

We all just woke up one day and thought “hey guys let’s get together and see if we can make a game we love(d) burn to the ground for no reason at all” “WHO’S WITH ME” !

Next you’ll be telling us that when a crime is committed it is always the victims fault because, maybe they didn’t run away fast enough …

What makes getting a character slot fair, value.

New players have received a value added nod in the way of a free copy of the game. By the way super smart and awesome the community needs to grow.

Some people say well you got to play all this time, true but I paid for that. I paid for the disk, I paid in time and I paid by promoting the game to others.

Some people will have you believe that you should just grind out the gems, again while that is possible, I like alot of people don’t play this game all day, To grind out the 800 gems take me week at an hour here and a hour there.

This costs me valuable time when I could be doing other things and while I enjoy the game I do not enjoy gold just so I can do what someone who just starts the game can do right away. If I value my time by the base wage I could make 11 something an hour every hour I am forced to play extra when I did not have to de-values the game.

I only as for equality if you value add for new players there should be a value add for existing players. It doesn’t need to be equivilant, a whole game versus a character slot is far from the same. I am not greedy I work hard for my money, I hate the new generation of consumers attitude, conformance through acceptance.

1. People who gripe but have nothing constructive to say please just don’t say anything as you hurt the cause

2. People complain about complain shoudn’t, your enither trolling or you think you are helping ANet, your not, your making more Rage, and in the end if we all get up and just leave never say anything ANet would never know what went wrong. How will they improve they cannot.

Voice your opinion in a firm but constructive manner. ANet you need to be faster at addressing issues like this, this wait time is getting on par with the Sony hack situation it make me and I am sure other feel like we don’t matter enough to take time to address things quickly.

In the end regardless of right and wrong Anet you hurt people feeling by not being fair and then being closed mouthed. Please even if you give nothing you should address and apologize.

Well they might not have anything else to annouce ^^
As for me i’d rather have those vet bonus in gems as not everyone will need a slot or bank slot for the new expansion.

The way I see it, it’s like going to eat at a restaurant. You go in, order your main, and eat it. Someone else arrives late, sits down at other table and decides to order. Since you’ve finished your main, you order dessert. You both finish your main and dessert and go to pay. The latecomer pays whatever the cost is and goes on his way. You, however, notice that your dessert had an extra charge – you were charged for the main again, being told that is was actually just the cost of the dessert. You also didn’t receive a second main, so you’re being asked to pay for something you’ve already had, but you don’t even receive an extra for whatever reason you’d want a second main meal.

At the end of the day, nothing is free in a bundle. Marketing aside, it’s all included in the price to try and make it look like a better deal.

To everyone angry at the BS bundle package for HoT, and to all the blind fans, I have a solution: Just wait a bit…

We don’t even know how much is in this expansion yet. They, brilliantly, haven’t even bothered to show us, just how much is in this thing. Along side of this, they quickly throw out a cash grab of pre-order bundles, to prey on the ignorant. How can we prevent this, how can we make everyone happy? I’ll tell you how. Just dont get it… yet.

One of two things will happen. Either A, they actually come forth with just how big, and “expansive” this expansion actually is (which may justify it’s ridiculous price tag, JUST under the price of a full friggin game). Or B, they make a separate purchase available, with JUST the expansion… ya know, the way its supposed to f***ing be!

So simply chill out, and dont shell out money to someone who’s obviously taking advantage of you. And to all the white knighting fanbois out there… if you chill out too, you could be rewarded with a better deal…. SO CHILL OUT!

… and wait.

"" In a world full of people / only some want to fly / isn’t that crazy ? ""
- Seal , Crazy

edit note ; i learned how to add words

and , just in case you didn’t know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R51J6-V1xrA

Well seems everyone is having their two cents worth on this one so here is my view:

I actually find the people responding so negatively to the appearance of their hero playing aeroplanes like an imaginative little child and twisting it into a comparable event to recent lost of lives to be a disgusting devaluation of the tragedy that has happened.

The families are no doubt going through immense suffering, confusion and a deep sense of loss. They deserve genuine empathy that reflects this. What you are doing by raging about a very innocent in game event is to detract and cheapen what has actually taken place.

If you had a family member killed by a drunk driver would you go to Disney’s website and rage about cartoon cars being insensitive or would you focus on advocating for stricter blood alcohol levels? What is relevant and what actually honours those who have been lost?

If you genuinely care about what has happened regarding the plane crashes, go and do something productive in the real world. Don’t manipulate an unrelated situation to make yourself feel as if you are actually standing up against some great injustice so you can feel warm and fuzzy for what? Absolutely nothing beyond making yourself look like a self absorbed fool.

You people making correlations between 1940s sepia tone filter, 1800’s style piano, and your arms outstretched like an airplane have really big issues, id suggest a few months away from gaming to work on your issues. I have even seen people trying to say this is just like Ferguson. Seriously? First thing that popped in my head was being a little kid again pretending to fly planes, not any type of real life tragedy. That’s a real sick thing to even joke about let alone try to be an armchair activist about. This is a video game, the only real life links there are, are the ones that people bring in. This is seriously despicable that people have this frame of mind.

Silberfederling.9302:

JediYoda.1275, WereDragon.6083 my logic? btw i am german so yeah the whole ww2 games thing, i really do rather detest them. but be that as it may, i think you guys might just try to think for your self. think quite hard. so i have to compare dead people to others, just to say: welll too bad but so is life, and now i wil make fun of those who are actually taken aback by those comments.
i wonder what you guys would say if you were involved in this event

I mentioned last night that someone I knew was recently shot and killed. I have to deal with that, and I get to see guns in this game every day as long as it is running/I choose to play because they are built in to the system. This is a prank based on an old bug that will last a day. Bad things happen, and we DO have to deal with it. There are plenty of horrible things that happen without us needing to look for reasons to be upset.

The problem I have with what has been going on is that people forcing this comparison of a toddler imitating an airplane with a genuine crash are actually trivializing it themselves. Are we going to start fussing over TV adds for travel that show airplanes? Surely the person running the adds should have known better… That logic is less of a slippery slope and more of a complete drop-off.

When speaking about tragedies people shouldn’t make fun of them. Likewise, people should not be fabricating “wrongs” to lash out against.

Just because some people have worked themselves into a state of righteous indignation over an animation and a perceived relationship between it and something that happened a week ago and over 5000 miles away from ANet’s office, doesn’t mean their perception is correct.

Just because this was front and center to you, doesn’t mean it was front and center to people thousands of miles away on a different continent. This was undoubtably in your newspapers on the front page every day. That doesn’t mean it was given the same level of attention in the newspapers that ANet reads or on the US news channels.

What is local to you, is distant to us. There is no reason to think, except because you think whatever happens near you should have the same level of absorbing interest for everyone on the world, for ANet to consider a plane crash a week ago on the other side of the world.

When tragedies happen in the US, do you, in Europe, make sure that there aren’t accidental references to the event by the people in Europe and demand apologies if there are?

Should we be scrutinizing your words and deeds to make sure there is no accidental references to our tragedies, no matter how slight, and demand apologies from you?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Just because some people have worked themselves into a state of righteous indignation over an animation and a perceived relationship between it and something that happened a week ago and over 5000 miles away from ANet’s office, doesn’t mean their perception is correct.

Just because this was front and center to you, doesn’t mean it was front and center to people thousands of miles away on a different continent. This was undoubtably in your newspapers on the front page every day. That doesn’t mean it was given the same level of attention in the newspapers that ANet reads or on the US news channels.

What is local to you, is distant to us. There is no reason to think, except because you think whatever happens near you should have the same level of absorbing interest for everyone on the world, for ANet to consider a plane crash a week ago on the other side of the world.

When tragedies happen in the US, do you, in Europe, make sure that there aren’t accidental references to the event by the people in Europe and demand apologies if there are?

^^ Above post wins the thread

nickiehu.1674:

Sorry ANet-guys but this 1st April is the worst so far. The Animation is not funny. Under the current circumstances it’s a sign of bad taste. I could have lived with the animation,
but the “joke” music after jumping and dying is disgusting. I can’t even understand the
“ANet is settled in the US”-excuse for not knowing what’s going on in the world. Your market is made for Europe too. Pls think the next time, before patching something like this! Regards

No, this is not in bad taste, this is a great April Fools day in game gimmick.

I’m sure you are referring to the Germanwings disaster, however, this had to be planned and done long before some stupid fool did what he did. There is also the fact of not letting the idiots of the world affect how people live.

Perhaps it is you who should be thinking.

Suggestion:
Increase the vertical slider range downwards, so you can move the focus point to your characters feet if you want. This would make it easier to take screenshots of your character, including those that are laying down (so your camera wouldn’t need to know when a character is laying down, as player could just adjust it themselves)

Opinion:
(Not related to above)
Being able to shoot arrow carts over a wall in WvW is nice and we should have been able to do that a long time ago. Besides, the guy on the other side of the wall has equal opportunity to shoot his arrow cart over the wall, so it doesn’t really give any unfair advantages to anyone.

I absolute LOVE all these changes. It feels so nice playing Guild Wars 2 now … really Branden, you guys have done awesome work on this. Awesome!

I almost fear giving more suggestions/feedback, for fear the camera might change significantly from what it is now, because the way it is, is just so much better in every possible way. But alas, maybe a couple of suggestions:

• It would be nice if the vertical slider also gave the camera in increased height when zoomed it. I know some players like a full-body character on screen, some like half-body with more of the world to see over the character’s head … so increasing its effectiveness while also zoomed-in, might help giving players some choice.

• In essence, using the “camera height to character height” checkbox, gives you a very nice boost in height for all characters except Asura (where the camera is higher with this unchecked). Maybe this height boost can be applied to the vertical slider, giving us a bit more vertical control while close-up to our character.

I’m quite surprised how high you guys have allowed us to go on the camera while zoomed-out. I absolutely love it. I really never thought we’d ever see the day we’d get so much viewablilty. Just having so much forwards viewablilty and not having to stare at ground textures the whole time, is a huge plus.

I’ve not really seen a significant drop in FPS. I have a relatively old card (GeForce 580), and while I expected the FPS to drop quite a bit (because more are effectively rendered on screen when you increase your FoV) it still is surprisingly smooth.

Thank you again for all the hard work. The padding/collision issues are basically … gone. It’s amazing.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

Once again, PVE whiners win and WvW gets nothing.

Everyone once in awhile I get the feeling that Anet cares, at least a little bit, about WvW and then they do this….. kitten

“PVE Whiners”. Because whining never happens in WvW. I can’t say the “people should suffer because I suffer” argument is appealing.

BrickFurious.7169:

I think this ultimately was a good call on ANet’s part (and 90% of my time in this game is spent in WvW). For every person on the fence about WvW that this originally encouraged to try it, it probably aggravated 10 more who ultimately had no interest in it.

There are way more sustainable and fun ways (see the sPvP reward system) to encourage primarily PvE players to play WvW. I hope ANet is working on those.

Pretty much this. Map completion never made me want to try it, and after how rude and belittling people were the first time I went in to WvW I never set foot in it again for almost a year. It took a good guild to get me to try it again, and now I love it. Other players have a lot more of an impact on who stays and who goes than people seem to admit or realize.

I’m a bit confused here. Why is this a bad thing for serious WvW players? I’ve been honestly dreading going into WvW to do my map completion, not because I hate PvP, but because there’s this sort of cloud I get over it that if you’re not there to help then everyone looks down on you in annoyance or worse. The only bad thing I see about this change in particular, is maybe losing out on players who stick around after that wouldn’t have otherwise. But I have a hard time believing that’s a relevant number.

Disregarding other trends or perceived slights (however true they may or may not be) how is this change not a good thing for WvW? This is an honest question, I have done very little WvW but it would appear a good thing that there will no longer be people taking up slots doing this at busy times.

This is great news honestly. If you’re an active WvW player, you should know this alleviates the amount of map queues filled by PvE map completion players. We all know how these affect servers, especially T1 servers where guilds are sometimes unable to get into home BL that needs help because it’s filled by PvE players doing map completion.

We’ve seen a BL with 50+ queue but only 25 people on the commander pin. It gets ridiculous sometimes. So this is indeed a good change. And while I wish they would remove PvE requirement for those of us that are only interested in WvW, I’d rather they do just this for now than not doing this at all. Removing PvE players from WvW zones will immediately help with the situations many servers are facing with queues. In other words, doing something is better than nothing. And this will help WvW be more of a place for WvW players & guilds.

I’m actually glad about this, if true. I haven’t seen a red post confirming what was essentially a translation from a chinese patch note. Unless I missed it over dinner.

I have completed world completion old style 3, almost 4 (just missing a few blue borderlands things) times. I don’t need anything back and I think it will actually increase the quality of WvW experiences, though I barely play it. There will be less roamers, making a full map essentially more effective when people aren’t just trying to get that dreaded map completion.

I don’t mind doing WvW for my legendary, it’s 500 badges if you exclude map completion (I hope it’ll stay the same amount) and when spent with a group, not all that unbearable. The map completion however makes me feel like I am playing a horror game; I’m in constant terror when I’m traversing a borderland on my own. I don’t enjoy the feeling.

If anything the lack of prior “getting ganked all the time though I just wanna complete my map” experience might just make it seem less daunting. Meaning that potentially, with other advertisement for it also in place, more people will be drawn to WvW, having missed out on this ugly bit of it.

My sole problem with PvP of any kind, in any game, is always the situation where you can’t do anything, the 5v1s or the ambushes by people specifically out to hurt the experience of others, the trash talk about how badly you suck after you just tried to run away, uninterested in the battle at hand because you know you are inferior, in knowledge or power. It’s the most off-putting thing possible to me. I found it doesn’t happen as often in sPvP and can bear it, heck I get my dailies that way -This is from someone who loathes PvP of any kind in any other game-. In WvW I found it occurs constantly and therefore avoid it when I can, bar the cases where I need badges or world completion. Guess when I’m actually happiest to be there? When I’m gathering badges, with a group.

Removal of WvW zones from map completion would mean that the most daunting, the least appealing, part of WvW is no longer something you basically -must- do to achieve some of the most obvious goals in this game. Sure, the people that basically band together to hunt for these solos specifically get shot in the foot, but arguably, they too are just doing things that may not be entirely beneficial to their world in the end.

I finally, after 8 months from this update, decided to make more alts than the normal 8 for wvw/other build purposes.

I recently got my new mesmer to 80 and the trait system has positively made me sure that I don’t want to make new charas anymore. I was planning to buy a set of 8 new chara slots and slowly work towards having alts for other build purposes, but a with a hefty forced price of 43g per alt for unlocking traits only (or like 35-40g since I’d pick part of them while leveling)… 344g for the traits of 8 characters or spending my time doing harathi 100% and waiting on lyssa or whatever to appear 8x time?

Alts are already pretty useless and waste of money, requiring their own set of gear, time to level, with rewards being acc bound, using skill points that could be used to gain gold..
As the sort of player who will change weapons and builds on the fly so this is very much a deal breaker.

But I do like the idea of the system, it just needs to be better thought out… like maybe 3 locked skill points per trait line with reasonable challenge instead of map completion? or the first one starting at level 1 where you have absolutely nothing to do anyways?

Illysharia.7286:

8 months of the run-around. 8 months, 3.3 thousand posts, and just under 160,000 views on a topic that has become thesis-worthy on the scale of What Not To Do for corporate/customer The other one agrees wholeheartedly with the general sentiment here and has stopped making alts as well until it gets fixed, but finds the sheer mass of this feedback thread to be too much to go through to write about. I say keep sending emails to writers. Maybe someone will pick the story up.

Tell him it’s so bad, that he can actually just pick one page at random to find reasons why the new system is bad and ways to fix it, even in a way that wishes to help anet(!) to implement it how they actuly meant it to be. I don’t know an reporters. I’ll try posting some stuff on gamespot FB page and see where it goes.

Let’s make this happen! Folks, go on Twitter, facebook or whatever and get attention to this thread. Anet themselves have “told” us that nothing changes unless enough noise is made. We want this to change, right? Let’s start making some noise.

I started with the following comment on their FB page:
https://m.facebook.com/GuildWars2/photos/a.135044094208.103264.114036714208/10152657569199209/?type=1&ref=bookmark

“Before you guys get excited, take a look at this thread. It regards the terrible traits system. Over 3000 useful comments with ideas and alternatives and over 150000 views. It is running for 8months now, but Anet will do nothing to address the problem or the community. If you care about this game, help raising awareness to this Anet-made fiasco. They have shown in the past that they will only act upon public interest (remember the gem exchange?) so let’s get that public interested!!!
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Traits/page/68 "

I only began playing after these changes but I thought my input would be useful.

I found it strange that I could only consider making a weapon specific build once I reached near level cap, most other mmo’s have you deciding on your build as you level and change it when you want to, I actually felt like I wasn’t making much progression at all until the higher levels, by level 40 I expected to be able to trait into different bonuses such as increased defence or attack however it seemed those choices where tied down to my utility skill choice instead.

The unlocking traits from bosses thing is good I found however it was confusing at first when I went to an area to find either no boss there or that the boss was there but was too difficult to solo or even kill with 3 people, instead I would have to stand in the zone and spam the map channel asking for help which lead to nothing on most occasions meaning I went without the trait.

The unlocking skill tiers at 60 and 80 are also irritating, they made my guardian use traits on skills I have no interest in and would have made no difference having no traits.

More variety on the unlocks would be nice too, so far it is just kill bosses or complete maps to unlock them as far as I know but it would be good to have to do something like visit vistas or to talk to a specific npc to hear a story that is class related or even use a specific weapon to get so many kills to unlock something which would fit perfectly with the traits that reduce weapon cooldowns.

3000 posts, over 6 months of activity and being often seen on the first page. And yet despite that there has been so little of substance in response from Anet that we can see. I there has been some big movements, why not try to restore confidence and trust by showing us, and hang your frankly stupid policy? Unless of course said policy helps to cover up the fact that nothing has come of our criticisms and concerns. Such a pity the gaming sites didn’t get a hold of it. That Anet cares more about bad press than the players who supported and support their game speaks wonders.

This thread represents all the bad things about the game. That things were changed isn’t the problem. That they were changed, overwhelmingly for the worse and Anet got panicked and closed off all contact for so long is. It was a bold idea, and just needed refinement once it was live. But to appear to do absolutely nothing on this issue for over 6 months is just ridiculous. It raises the question of when will ou feedback be considered and used? Anpther 6 months? A couple of years? When Anet finally figure out that constant tweaking of things making the core mechanics worse will deter new players and get rid of old ones? Or are they going to be singing the “we are listening” tune well into the twilight hours of this game’s life, whenever that may be.

I love the game. I still do. Even now I do things and see things that blow me away. Just a few weeks ago I went on a quest to do as many jumping puzzles as I could (only ever bothered witht he Queensdale one for the daily). I found, snuggled in Lions Arch, Weyandts Folly (Is that what its called – the pirate ghost fellow). And was blown away that such an intricate and atmospheric place was made and then slapped down into a major hub. Every step felt like delving into the unknown. I felt like Indiana Jones meets Jack Sparrow. So many amazing ideas all put in one puzzle that I was amazed I hadn’t found the place before and experienced its awesomeness.

The point is that even now, after over 2 years of playing I see things that make me appreciate the greatness of this game, and the skill and creativity of those who made it. The problem comes with the crushing disappointment of marrying that to recent design decisions regarding game mechanics. I love the game, the world, the puzzles, the Living Story. But when I fear for what features and changes to mechanics that may are being made every patch, it always is something I am wary of. Shouldn’t the feeling Anet be after is one of excitement and anticipation for new features, and not dread?

To re-iterate my position, the idea of doing things to unlock traits is fine. But it needs to scale a little better. The first tier of traits I believe should be automatically unlocked, to have a starting point. I think that the intermediate tiers need some work just to reduce the effort needed on some. Perhaps gating them behind events that aren’t at the end of such chains may make it a little easier and get players used to the idea of unlocking traits this way. By all means have the final tier of traits as they are, as a greater challenge for greater rewards. If you have to have a system of unlocking traits, at least make the requirements appropriate to the level of trait you are unlocking. If build experimentation is truly one of your goals, the current system is far too unwieldy for it, to the point I jsut use my old chars for it. Its a huge barrier to new ones.

As for cost of unlocking traits at the NPC, it is too prohibitive, and particularly hits those players with large number of character slots. Often, but not always, many of those slots are bought with gems, so its strange that you are potentially hitting your supporters more. I know thats a natural thing, with more alts comes more gear to buy etc, but the vast costs here do nothing to help new player or altoholic alike get a foot on the ladder.

If the current system is to remain, and given its development time and Anets utter silence on tweaking the system (saying they are listening is not the same as showing they are listening), it is, then eventually it will need an overhaul to fit into the current design philosophy. Because ultimately, cost and requirements mean it is not a system that is friendly to new players. Unless of course Anet do not believe that the New Players wil stick around long enough to use the system. With their current silence on major issues, your guess could well be as good as theirs.

Imagine you’re on a trip to Madagascar and want to buy a souvenir for 25 Malagasy ariary; unfortunately, the currency exchange guy only lets you exchange 400 Malagasy ariary. ‘Why?!’ – you ask; ‘Some travelers found it confusing that you can exchange any amount of dollars,’ – he says. ‘What? I’ve never seen such people, everyone I travel with can deal with currency exchange quite fine!’ – you say; ‘I tell you there are such people. Period.’ – he says. ‘What I gonna do with the extra 375 Malagasy ariary?’ – you say; ‘Spend it the next time you visit Madagascar,’ – he says; ‘But I’m never coming here again!’ – you say; the currency exchange guy smiles and shrugs.

Gaile,

thank you for jumping in and posting the reasoning behind the change, but I’m afraid it doesn’t really help in this case. I feel like explaining.

Why people are raging:

• They feel like ANet is covering marketing decisions with good intentions, this being not the first time. The new system forces to buy extra amount of gems for small purchases; once done, the extra amount of gems forces people to get more gems to spend on something else as otherwise it will feel like wasting money. Unfortunately, many people past the teenage age have seen similar systems many, many times and know how they feel about those.
• ANet’s gem shop has always been the best in terms of honesty among many non-sub games: only cosmetics and convenience, no P2W. Tactics which can be considered by players as dishonest undermine the trust in the model for many people (me included). Similar marginal tactics have already been used previously with 900 gems, 500 gems pricing.
• They feel like they’ve seen it before and know how it ends. Windows 8 told us it was comfortable easy; I spend most of my day at a PC and I hate it at how unintuitive, non-customizable and counterproductive it is. Microsoft knows better, as always… yet the sales were awful and now Microsoft has to roll out a free OS, removing their “improvements”.
• They feel they can come up themselves with similar “required” reasoning for anything which requires a change, depending on the goal. Like, “cannibalism is okay because human body requires meat to function properly”. The evident faults in the reasoning are omitted for the sake of the goal.
• Game designers have known for a long time how “removing things” affects players, especially loyal ones. If you remove freedom they had once, they are not happy. If you do it multiple times (limited skins, server identity, traits, phasing out BL key skins, mixable town clothes, PvP armour skins, NPE level gating, estimated profit, variable amount gem exchange), they start raging with torches and pitchforks. It kind of builds up.

Why people are not giving feedback:

• Because previous system worked for them.
• Because there is one best source to model currency exchange after (if you’re aiming for increasing usability, not gem sales): real world. Look at the example in the beginning – it describes the situation perfectly. Luckily, 375 Malagasy ariary is less than a dollar; this is not the case with gems though.
• Because artificial limits are nothing but usability, no matter how many times you say it. Even if we omit the currency exchange model, one can always take out their wallet and see what banknotes they have inside: 1, (2), 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 dollars. Why? Because it was determined to be efficient. Now tell me of an ATM which only gives you 400 dollar banknote – I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like that; when they give out money, they even mix large cash with small cash!
• Because customization (along with backward compatibility) is the core of usability which has been used for a long time. That’s why so many people prefer Linux to Windows. Want a new UI without testing it? Okaaaay… but then just add a large horizontal arrow bar on the bottom which switches to the old UI. Here, I fixed it!

That’s my share of feedback. I don’t think it will change anything, really, because businesses are ruled by marketing departments nowadays, not the “we want to create the best game ever and make all the gamers in the world fall in love with it for the rest of their lives and never feel cheated or tricked” departments.

My constructive criticism:

1. Put in the old UI alongside this with every functionality. Not having to keep guessing the amount of gold you need to put in for gems for instance is good, but only together with the option of custom amounts. Also removing the history graph is just a blatant, shameful attempt to keep customers in the dark. Imagine if people at the stock market could only ever see current rates.

2. Apologize to the playerbase for trying to screw them over and sugarcoating it with obvious nonsense about new players and convenience that no one kittening believes.

3. Stop insulting the playerbase’s intelligence with moves like the one mentioned in point 2. Veterans are no fools. New players are not mentally handicapped.

4. Read up on current business practices, what is trending and what is not acceptable anymore (hint: this).

5. Have some dignity and get rid of the utterly incompetent skrittheads sitting in the business/management department to whom nothing is sacred on their crusade for the almighty buck. I’ll have to add, they are trying to win battles in that crusade equipped with rubber swords and catapults that shoot flowers and supplies at the enemy. Meaning they have absolutely no idea what they should be doing to actually not alienate players and increase profit. Which is, read up on actual player suggestions, do stats on which aspects are most popular, and work on those. It’s really not rocket science.

Pretty much my only complaint about the old system is that the exchange worked the wrong way round. Nobody wanted to type in the gold value they want to turn into gems – they wanted to type in the number of gems they want to buy and get told how much it would cost.

Maybe this is what they were trying to fix when they screwed this up? Like I gigantic failure to understand the problem resulted in this being implemented as a solution?

ShadowKatt.6804:

I made it to about page 7 or 8 of this thread… took a while, and now I don’t have time to play.
But what is worse… now I don’t really WANT to play.

I just came back to the game today, after having played ArcheAge, WildStar and SWTOR for the last month or two – having been bored out of my skull and with no desire to farm in GW2 – and I don’t know if I’m going to bother logging in tomorrow. I mean, they make these ridiculous decisions, then try to justify it with horrible reasoning, and just when you think, maybe they’ve learned, maybe they’ll focus on what actually needs to be done, and “it can’t get worse than that”… they totally outdo themselves.

My hope for this game has been waning since the launch of LS2 and the stark contrast to the fun that was LS1.. but now? Now it’s just bad. I want to want to play this game, I want to enjoy it, and yet I can’t. And these decisions just kill any hope I have for the future, and the potential that they’ll eventually figure it out and offer something worthwhile.

Sure, they’ve been trying to balance with the China client, and perhaps they’re preparing for an influx of new players, but they’re also kind of setting the grounds for a second mass exodus by repeatedly insulting and alienating their players. And that’s unfortunate and unwise.

I was a producer for an indie dev, obviously on a different scale, but I honestly can’t understand this change. I can’t figure out the logic of the person who made this call, and others like it. It’s like they’ve never played an MMO beyond some precursory QA testing. They just don’t get it. They seem to have never have lived the MMO player experience, with the rise and fall of title after title. And that’s sad, because this is a beautiful game with amazing potential.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• Does that mean you should suggest something? Yes, of course! Because they’re expecting player input.

Interestingly enough, many players’ suggestions fall into oblivion, even though most are really about game breaking (or at least experience hindering) issues.

So, let’s say, if I submitted a ticket because it was too confusing to have a legendary for me, would you remove legendaries for every other player? I think not, so why does the team do that with the rest of the game? Sincerely, it seems like all you care about is money and new players to buy a new game. Here’s a secret: if you made a high quality expansion (not 3 missions then 6 months before a broken update) instead of awful, useless, terrible, and buggy updates, new players and veterans would buy it. It’s hard to believe, is it not?

And if I’m being too rude, I’m sorry: I’m confused by good manners, so I removed them from my education.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.

I am trying to remember the last time that, in order to buy a t-shirt at Macy’s, I first had to buy tokens that were only sold in denominations greater than the price of the items I desired to purchase.

The goal was to increase revenue without providing any more product or better service to the customer. The closest thing to making, “the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences,” actually going on here is Anet’s attempt to follow retail trends surrounding creative repackaging in order to increase revenue while providing less product.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ok, guys. Some of you are unhappy about this change, I can see that. BUT… quite honestly, most of you are sort of (I hate to use the word) ranting (sorry!) instead of offering suggestions.

You have a point.

[suggestion] Please avoid unethical business practices.