Guild Wars 2

I’m still not sure what to make of their decision to blow up the best received update of the first year of the games life.

Blog post, “People loved Zephyr Sanctum!”

LS2 “Let’s create a new zone littered with the smoking ruins of Zephyr Sanctum!”

I get it. If people loved it, what better emotional impact when it’s destroyed? But looked at from another angle it can have the flavor of thumbing their nose at the player base.

Not saying that was at all the intent. But it can easily feel that way.

I’m one of those happy quiet players you see around. I would say I’m a pretty content MMO player most of the time, even ANet lacking content updates doesn’t affect me that much. But not anymore.
I respect the work of ANet, with the impressive art style and high quality content paired with their good business model.
But, these can only go so far for so long, especially since I’m a gem spender. Most of the stuff that appeared after the first version of the game, is mostly lackluster. Content is reused (toymaker tixx for e.g.), short & boring (most of season 1 living story, that was horrible). The only good content update was few and far between(Fractured update, good job on that, we need more content updates like these).
tl;dr I’m starting to turn into an very discontented quaggan

Nope. I’ve played GW2 since Pre every day and the last year or so has been one of disappointments and rage rants. Oddly, that is not what I play a game for.

Things that I like and keep me playing

o The look of the game. Kudos to the Art Group

o Combat is easy to learn and hard to master

o Both the Economic and Customer support are Stellar

Things that are really wearing thin

o Living Story: Love the idea, hate the implementation. Even at it’s best it has all the depth of a mud puddle. It’s time for Anet to face facts, if Living Story was gonna work it woulda worked by now.

o These tiny Content and Feature patches. I swear from my side it looks like Anet is putting more effort into the PR side of the drop rather than the actual content. I feel punished every time I get excited for a release only to find the hype was badly distorted when compared to the actual delivered content. SouthSun Solo “Dungeon” anyone?

o Wordsmith Releases. It’s a Feature Patch, Content Patch or a Balance Patch or maybe some combination of all of the above. As a System Engineer living in Silicon Valley who has successfully managed many projects; this type of splitting frog hairs is typical of a team in way over it’s head. Get back to the basics: A patch is a patch.

o Development Priorities. For two years now players have asked for A and the Devs proudly march out B. To make it worse B is not only something didn’t ask for but it also breaks many players Characters play style. This is wrong on so many levels.

o The CDI’s. Walls and Walls of TL;DR text and few changes. Given the consistent outcry of the community the problems are well documented. They are not a tool for gathering requirements but rather come off as a ploy to calm the masses.

o Balance Team. Why do we even have a Balance Team? Why do they always seem to take the easy way out and nerf the players? Why does Game Balance always seem to be something that happens to us rather than for us? This is a sure way to annoy the customers yet they keep going back to that Well. Again, this is not something we’ve asked for.

In closing, Guild War 2 is a good game that could be a great game but not with the direction they are currently headed.

kta.6502:

So that leaves the question: What have the NA / EU devs really been up to? Just something to think about.

Don’t get your hopes up believing they’ve been working on other things.
They published the game with Kong Zhong, a Chinese publisher.
The NA/EU had assets related to them testing out eastern stuff in our version. Example of this is the datamined stuff from posted from reddit that caused an uproar over here.
ANet have been working on the game for the Chinese release, not some offshoot Chinese branch.

Believing there’s an expansion being worked on. Yeah…unlikely.
Problem is that they’ve done a lot of work leading up to now and threw many of it away.
The amusing thing is that they intend to bring back Living Story season 1, so expect them, at some point of time, to spend a lot of resources to redo it. And remember it needs to be redone to fit the journal format, so that’s a lot of work involved. Veterans look forward to it, haha!

It doesn’t cost me anything to get updates so on that note… I can’t say I’m being screwed.

But one thing that is lacking is any standout rockstar content developer.

Josh started to do well with Super Adventure Box, then he was put in some corner somewhere. The Fractals stuff was amazing, then it was put in some corner.

And we get living story which is just starting to be decent with season 2, but still the game itself lacks a sort of unified “this is why it’s fun all the time” idea.

It does. This thread alone already have so mamy great ideas coming from players and ive seen countless thread that all have good ideas. They choose to ignore it (if its true that thay are really reading these topics).

No im not forcing you to believe me as i myself do not have concrete proofs.

Im just stating my assumptions based on the evidence being shown which is making changes to things that do not need changes. And those that do remains untouched.

i really want mounts in gw2…. it is a little thing but it could change the game.

I know it is not that easy to fix things. But why spend resources on making changes that are not needed at all rather than putting those resources into better use which actually benefits the game. If they are playing they can easily see these stuffs.

Warrior change for example. Nobody is crying about gs warriors in pvp yet they nerfed it while not changing hammerbow which is the one needed tweaking.

Smart loot. I know you guys already heard enough of this.

Mesmer reworks sure the buff in scepter is good. But it still doesnt make them any better in pve.

New leveling experience. Gw2 said so themselves that the game starts at 80. Thats why they make it easy to reach 80. We dont need new leveling experience. We need more things to make us stay in game when were 80.

I’m going to skip the majority of the thread and just answer the OP’s question:

Kythan Myr.4719:

TL;DR: So are you happy with the state of changes in GW2 for the past two years? Sure there has been some good, but it seems most people are just unhappy overall.

I’m happy with parts of the game, but it’s fewer parts than when I started.

This game has strengths and weaknesses. Things it can excel at, and things it will NEVER excel at. One of the persistent problems is that the devs seem to be trying to boost the things it will never excel at, at the cost of what it can excel at.

This game has the makings of one of the best casual games on the market. Sadly, they’ve pushed away from that. Think of it like this: A truly good casual game should feel like you just got to take part in an epic storyline or battle, akin to what you see in a LotR or Narnia movie. Now, imagine if the added in a “gather 45 minutes before the battle and just stand around waiting” scene that actually lasted 45 minutes. That would suck, right? Well, that’s what we get for Teq and the 3Worm. That’s what you get for ascended weapon/armor crafting, too. Hurry up and wait is never fun.

Legendaries? The RNG and gathering of absurd levels of resources needs to go. Work is good, GRIND is bad.

Personal story? Despite disliking Trahearne (though it’s a bit better after I played a Sylvari), I think the personal story is by and large a good thing. Right up until the end, where it requires a dungeon run. PERSONAL story!

Hearts help to tell the story of an area, and give a sense of progression as you complete them. You get access to more places to sell, and maybe even a few interesting items as you finish them. There are only 5 PvE zones without them, and the only one that seems popular is the one with a different way to measure progression within the zone.

Immersion is a good thing for this game. Casual play is a good thing for this game. Sadly, a lot of the updates seem to go against these ideas and try to appease players that want things they can get better in other games. I still have good/happy moments, but not as many as I used to have.

pdavis.8031:

RubiBayer.8134:

pdavis, for what it’s worth, I’ve seen quite a lot of value in this thread over the past day. Reading through, it seems that a number of people are giving the OP’s question consideration and replying with both their own feelings and their thoughts on the general population’s mood and communication.

It’s nice to see so many players having a real discussion about the things that they both like and dislike, and I’m finding it personally helpful.

This actually does make me feel better. Thank you. I can understand the importance and value of such a discussion. I for one love this game. Ive brought my wife into it, and want to bring my son into it. (He’s only 2 so it’ll be awhile.) I love the game play, the art work, the friends ive made in my guild, the challenge of going after a legendary weapon, the story, all of it. Its very well done. But I find it distressing to see so many people just bashing on it. I took this game and made it my own, and seeing it so denigrated so many times on the forums, almost feels like a personal attack. I dont get how you guys deal with it. All the hard work, time, and yourselves you’ve all poured into this amazing game, to see it so raged against and abused. I commend you. I would have done much worse in your shoes.

I can get why people feel a certain way, that they are not happy with the game and where its going. But comparing it to other games? Its like comparing the mona lisa to a salvador dhali. But are amazing and wonder pieces of art in their own right, but neither holds a candle to the other. Demanding changes while prophecying the games destruction if its not done? Seems a lot like threatening to burn down a steak house if they won’t start serving tofu. Calling the devs lazy/liars/incompetent because they wont add a feature you want? Its like calling those who built the pyramids lazy/incompetent because they didnt add in an elevator. Im not saying any of this was in the post, but the forums in general. If there is any portion of this game that I am unhappy about, its the forums.

Right but there is blatantly no update beside the LS and QoL improvement which mostly is cash shop related.

Dont’ get me wrong, I think the LS is well done, and I see lots of effort putting into it.

But the other parts of the game is pretty much ignored. Anet developer even said they ignore it. (because adding more to it will fraction player base).

Since this thread hasn’t died, yet, I thought I’d post an update. I ran my fractals, because, as I mentioned, I think that Mawdrey 2 is worth it. If it wasn’t for Mawdrey 2, I wouldn’t have bothered, but I will say the Mawdrey back piece is nice.

I’ve had Mawdrey 2 for about a week. So far the plant has yielded about 30 silver worth of stuff every day in exchange for my dust. I don’t think that’s insignificant. I would’ve run the fractals and done all the other stuff just for those rewards alone, but the plant also puts out some pretty sweet rewards: I got a Vision Crystal, once.

I’ve attached a screen shot.

I just got finished with all of the steps to create this lovely little creature. When I first found out about it my first thought was “ooh a pretty plant for my Sylvari Mesmer!” So that was my motivation.

The first parts were admittedly a little tedious and kinda boring, but then I got up all of the components to make it and that was when I got my first taste of connection to it. Crafting this took me to several maps and I got to revisit old places I did with friends/guildmates back in the day. Needless to say it was a trip down memory lane, and while I was meandering down that lane I ran into some people doing what I was doing.

This is where it gets a little weird for me, as I am generally a solo player (now that my old guild fell apart due to internal reasons), I whispered one of the people who seemed to be having trouble. Along the way we ended up having to do all the escort and pre-events to all the mini puzzles and such. This person and I ended up partying up! I had so much fun doing it too and we ended up with a large group toward the end. We decided to not just stop at the components. We finished the whole thing, cheering each other on, helping each other figure it out.. for the first time in awhile I put down my Solo player mentality and opened up to find that despite my run ins with some bad seeds (pun intended) recently, this game and its community are filled with awesome people!

It made me stop focusing on my end goal for once, and instead I ended up just having a lot of fun. The journey to get there was just as rewarding as the end product! I’m glad I didn’t let the daunting task of its steps prevent me from accomplishing this.

tl;dr: I love this aspect of creating an item! It not only attached me to the item (and the little shop of horrors homage tugs on my nerdy side), but also it gained me a couple new friends. I generally enjoyed my time making it and now I am proud to have done it. Thank you ANet, whoever dreamed this up is really on to something!

Stormcrow.7513:

WTS stack of Otik’s spicey potatoes 100k+10e

http://www.dlnexus.com/fan/recipes/11897.aspx

Actually a plate of those right now might make me happy!

. . . is it weird I looked at that recipe and said “oh my god, that’s practically how my family makes ‘home fries’, except with some vegetable oil instead of butter”.

Still think I want omnomberry chocolate cake more. Just need to get the materials . . . the local grocery store doesn’t have omnomberries but I think I can substitute.

WTS stack of Otik’s spicey potatoes 100k+10e

http://www.dlnexus.com/fan/recipes/11897.aspx

Actually a plate of those right now might make me happy!

Tachenon.5270:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Especially the Caramon/Raistlin dynamic. Which is not really how Braham/Taimi ring to me . . . more Bronn/Tyrion. Or “Sergeant Bothari/Miles Vorkosigan” . . . (more people need to read those novels, seriously).

I was thinking more Bamm-Bamm/Great Gazoo.

So long as it’s not Elroy/Gizmo . . .

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Especially the Caramon/Raistlin dynamic. Which is not really how Braham/Taimi ring to me . . . more Bronn/Tyrion. Or “Sergeant Bothari/Miles Vorkosigan” . . . (more people need to read those novels, seriously).

I was thinking more Bamm-Bamm/Great Gazoo.

To the OP, I’m not unhappy, but I am underwhelmed.

Offair.2563:

I am still a happy gw2 player, although i highly dislike the directions developer is taking. Take WvW for example, such an awesome and potential game mode bleeding to death since they dont do anything with it. Sad times. This game could easily be the bomb of all MMO’s with its great combat system but all is going to be lost to the living story temporarily content.

No more temporary content in the living story. But yeah, WvW needs more love for sure.

There are three types of gamers.

1. Casual gamers – they play games to pass the time in a fun way. A lot of this demographic has moved on to mobile gaming because it’s able to take away time in transport and whatnot while computer gaming is somewhat more restrictive in terms of required equipment.

2. Hardcore gamers – there are two variants: those who play a game because they are immersed in the world/community of the game itself, and they live the game as a second life; those who play a game because they want to feel a sense of accomplishment, and since games run on fairly consistent rules, it affords the ability to achieve in a fair environment, while in reality you could throw all your resources into something and never be rewarded when your luck is bad.

3. Professional gamers – they play games to earn money, either through tournaments or through converting ingame resources to real finances.

Professional gamers always go where the money is, and as they have a somewhat higher profile (and occasionally industry sponsorships), games sometimes like to have some of them in play every now and then for marketing exposure. But since their aim is to actually earn money, restrictive costs tends to turn them off from a game. Aside from attempts at ‘e-sports’ (which frankly will likely fail because the complexity of Guild Wars 2 mechanics is way above that of your average esports audience’s ability to grasp without doing prior research), there’s been limited effort in this department.

This thread is started and populated mostly by the achievement-type hardcore gamers. However, traditionally, game companies have relied more on keeping systems generally consistent and fair as the only effort towards this entire community, since the amount of time already invested in the game presents a very high cost to leaving a game. From Marketing’s eyes, it’s not a dollar-efficient effort to retain hardcore gamers.

Casuals seem to be the main target of a lot of these recent updates at the moment. Without time to invest in a game, pay-for-convenience features like gem-gold conversions, buying skins, or gambling RNG are ways to monetize this crowd, but it seems like to avoid turning them off from the rest of the game until they spend more, disproportionate effort has been spent in the initial phases of the game (pre-lvl 80). Once they play enough to become invested as a hardcore player, retention is no longer as much of a concern.

If you want to see things change, the hardcore gamer as a community has to undertake relatively drastic actions, involving cutting the monetization source. It does not necessarily mean you stop playing Guild Wars 2, but it means you stop spending any real world money, if you already do, and limit gold=>gem conversions. Then we engage them in dialogue over certain non-negotiable updates – say, precursor crafting.

Once a promised update has been conceded, spend money or convert gold to gems the moment the patch hits, then if the update frequency stalls, stall the monetization process as well. Once the message is clear that the community will financially support the developers only if they acquiesce to the desires of the community that supports it, it’ll be easier to see updates that you want.

If not prepared to coordinate spending behaviour in response to updates, there will be little or no chance that even developers who are interested in improving things for us will be able to convince the other departments within the company to give them the go-ahead.

I’m serious about the spending phase bit. If you’re expecting them to work for free to create patches for us when only the casuals support them financially, it’s just not going to happen.

I totally agree with the OP’s post many things you posted are things me and my friends have discussed many times on TS/Vent, and is a good reason why nearly everyone I know has quit this game, I refuse to do FotM now because of the terrible loot system, and its general unrewarding nature, I felt sorry for the people who where forced to do it to make that recent back piece, although funny to see loads of LFG lvl 1 fractals,

However sadly your post will fall on deaf ears, we all know the reason the devs started posting was part of operation “damage limitation” from the recent interview where they basically said screw you dungeon/fractal community, sad by true.

killcannon.2576:

Keeping veteran players is not and never will be a priority in b2p or f2p games..

This is the best quote from the topic, do they really care for the long term vet players, ive stated it before that anyone who plays this game for longer than 1-2hours a day are not the target playerbase, they want causal players who log in take an hour for dailies, maybe do a quick dungeon run then log out, as these players are less likely to complain about loot drops etc, or notice bugged/nerfed events, the Vet players are the bain of the dev team,

Some of our "new " feature updates are just updates that where put into China from launch and they are rolling them out here, I did question do we really need a new levelling system in a game that is 2 years old already, when they could have spent that time making new dungeons/fractals and or actually fixing many of the bugs in game….

I like many others will await this weeks blog posts about what the vet players are supposed to get in terms of updates to keep them interested in the feature pack, but right now everything is either “it worked in china so here you go” or “we only cater for new players so suck it up”

I really do/did enjoy this game but its not living up to its potential not even close.

Thing about the loot.. anet at first made it seem like a great thing that you wouldn’t be competing with other party members over loot that drops from a boss.. no cases of 40 people and only 3 pieces of loot to share. Everyone gets their own loot.

Unfortunately. Most of it is junk. There might be a valuable or desirable piece of loot on that boss. But it has a 1 in 250 chance or so of dropping.

So instead of 40 people trying to figure out who gets one of 3 pieces of loot, 100+ people doing Tequatl might find that 1, maybe 2 people got something that wasn’t junk from Tequatl.

That’s a worse chance at decent loot.

I agree with everything Phineas said x 1000000. Unfortunately, GW2 has chosen to go the completely casual route. If you want t play more than 30 min or so a night this game is not for you.

They’ve already said they aren’t making more dungeons and it’s clear by now they also have intention of adding any real endgame content or making any meaningful changes to WvW.

They are going with the living story, and all the casual players will be thrilled with their 2h of single player content every 2 weeks.

Personally I think it blows because imo this is the best mmo out right now. unfortunately we can only replay the same content so many times before it gets old. And when we finally land that fractal skin after 450 runs we’ll be so kittened we won’t even stick around to admire it in another 450 runs of the same dungeons.

killcannon.2576:

The only reason to keep veteran players around is to populate the world and make it seem like a bustling, active game.

With the Megaservers, that is not quite as important any longer.

And, let’s be honest here, you’ll be back. Maybe not next month, or even two, but vets will always come back and check out the new content….because it’s free.

I don’t think that criticism is fair. The megaservers are actually one of the things that I liked most about the April feature pack. Even if it did ruin server-organized events like the world event train and threw everyone in with everybody, it has made lesser tread ground more populated and has offered players outside of Sanctum of Rall to participate in our Teq kills.

And I am not in any way insinuating that I will not return. I would be more than happy to come back provided these types of overhauls get implemented. But that’s kind of the point: I’m not coming back unless they are.

I think something else needs to be established here: I love horizontal progression and I enjoy having a finish line. I don’t want new tiers beyond ascended added into the game, nor do I necessarily need a new carrot to chase. I would certainly like new dungeons, fractals, and world raids to be added into the game … but who wouldn’t?

The reason why I’ve quit is not because I have nothing to work on. The reason why I’ve quit is because the path to get what I want is abusive with rewards randomly delegated. I cannot stress this point enough: the RNG has to go.

To apply a little more context, going after legendaries would be a lot more enjoyable if the process to obtaining your precursor involved an actual quest line. It can be long. It can be incremental and require crafting. And it can be challenging. But standing at the forge dumping in hundreds of gold is equated to rolling a pair of dice. There’s no personal achievement in that.

as a newbie, I actually think the downed state mechanic is totally awesome, and pretty easy to understand. However there isn’t a tutorial about it (nor, come to think of it, do about 80% of the game’s features get explained without coming to a third party or pestering people in games)

I don’t see a reason for level restricting such a cool feature, but I do feel that new player tutorials need to be more extensive considering the vast amount of features in the game. If it wasn’t for friendly players taking all my nub questions, I’d be quite lost