Guild Wars 2

PopeUrban.2578:

Raedwulf.3712:

PopeUrban.2578:

From a purely factual standpoint, it is though. I’ve pretty meticulously laid out why. Influence costs scaled up as you unlocked things, but earning did not. Your ability to use your upgrades depended heavily on having larger guild populations and more highly active players on a daily basis.

{snip}

These are all statements of fact, not opinion.

Ummm… No, they’re not really. Banner A cost X. Much better Banner B cost Y. Think, oh, XP banner vs Heroes banner or something. The item costs were fixed, not scaled. Those are facts. They had nothing to do with the guild size. If you’d unlocked the pre-requisites & you had the influence, you could buy them.

Whether you think that’s better or worse than the system now? That’s opinion.

If you were a small guild, and you had & you did… You can’t now. Anet took that away. You’ve got to go through a huge grind to unlock the ability to purchase those consumables now; consumables that you had access to before. Now, once you’ve done that, it might well be that the cost for the consumable is the same whether you’re small or huge; X number of Y materials. But for Banner B, which you had access to prior to HoT, you have a kittening great wall to climb over to get the access that you had already unlocked once… Hard for a small guild.

Now that I understand your point a bit better, I think nothing has really changed. Instead of the wall of “I have access to this but need X amount to make it”, we have a wall of “I need X amount to access this, and then I can make it”. That isn’t easier for a small guild, it just puts the same effort in a different, earlier place. If you see what I mean?

No, you don’t have to go through a grind to unlock them if you already had them unlocked. That’s the central point of misinformation I keep seeing.

The acquisition method is only changed for guilds that didn’t already have access to these consumables.

If you had them unlocked previously, you walk in to the guild initiative, and hand the NPC some favor, though one poster has said that NPC is temporarily disabled, that’s how I have been spending all of the excess favor we don’t use for hall upgrades because it’s actually cheaper and faster than making them via the new scribing system, and that level of cheap and easy actually can’t be obtained by new guilds who hadn’t unlocked them in the old system.

You keep repeating that and it’s not true. My guild and many other guilds like mine had +5 supplies unlocked and it’s gone now unless we get a guild hall and grind out all the upgrades to get it back. I can try talking to that temporarily disabled npc till I’m blue in the face, he won’t be giving me back my upgrade even though I had it unlocked.

So maybe instead of repeating your “upgrades aren’t lost” mantra, how about you start reading what other people are saying to you? Not every player wants banners!

Also, not every player wants to have to grind some pve maps to get the materials needed for upgrading guilds halls (silverwastes shovels, anyone?). That’s why the old influence system was superior to what we have now – you could play the content you enjoyed and were still able to upgrade your guild. Now, if you don’t like pve, you’re out of luck. And you keep acting as if the players who complain about the new system were unreasonable.

Guild halls could have been a nice addition to GW2, but instead we got a system that seems to be purely designed to be a gold and time sink.

PopeUrban.2578:

Swift.1930:

As per several other comments… why in the world do people who are happy with how things are bother to come onto the forums to complain about people who are wishing for updates that would not affect the game experience of those who are already happy?

Honestly, it can only benefit you if things are changed to meet the complaints. You won’t face people complaining about the same thing all the time, for one. And then you won’t need to take the effort to complain about people complaining any more.

Often it isn’t about what’s better for a single poster. it would be better for me, personally, if I could unlock every skin in the game and every dye color just by logging in today.

It would, however, be horrible for the game as a whole.

MMOs are not about the experience of single players exclusively. They are about how those experiences add value to and interact with the experiences of all of the other players, both new and old.

This is why people have forum discussions about things, and they’re often pretty productive and occasionally useful to developers.

If every player of an MMO got what they thought they wanted, that MMO would be dead in a week. Players are selfish and often uncaring or ignorant of the long term consequences of their personal desires on the overall health of the game.

Aye, and I understand that; my point isn’t that everyone should be given everything for free (not like $60 USD is free, but this is, after all, an MMO), but rather that when something would not ruin the game on a whole is suggested, why should someone who is cozy and happy in his/her own gamespace go out of his/her way to create a rant?

(I mean, three years of Guild Wars 1 and three years of Guild Wars 2 and I didn’t even start to add my voice to the forum conversations until a couple of weeks ago, when Heart of Thorns made a gigantic mess by being more of a replacement than an expansion.)

PopeUrban.2578:

From a purely factual standpoint, it is though. I’ve pretty meticulously laid out why. Influence costs scaled up as you unlocked things, but earning did not. Your ability to use your upgrades depended heavily on having larger guild populations and more highly active players on a daily basis.

{snip}

These are all statements of fact, not opinion.

Ummm… No, they’re not really. Banner A cost X. Much better Banner B cost Y. Think, oh, XP banner vs Heroes banner or something. The item costs were fixed, not scaled. Those are facts. They had nothing to do with the guild size. If you’d unlocked the pre-requisites & you had the influence, you could buy them.

Whether you think that’s better or worse than the system now? That’s opinion.

If you were a small guild, and you had & you did… You can’t now. Anet took that away. You’ve got to go through a huge grind to unlock the ability to purchase those consumables now; consumables that you had access to before. Now, once you’ve done that, it might well be that the cost for the consumable is the same whether you’re small or huge; X number of Y materials. But for Banner B, which you had access to prior to HoT, you have a kittening great wall to climb over to get the access that you had already unlocked once… Hard for a small guild.

Now that I understand your point a bit better, I think nothing has really changed. Instead of the wall of “I have access to this but need X amount to make it”, we have a wall of “I need X amount to access this, and then I can make it”. That isn’t easier for a small guild, it just puts the same effort in a different, earlier place. If you see what I mean?

Under the old system, the influence to get +5 supply was easily maintained by one player logging regularly. Multiple players did it in the past. The grind to unlock it was able to be done by a group of five or less in a very reasonable amount of time.

And to be honest, this is the only upgrade a small havoc guild really cared about. Everything else is a nice to have but not a priority.

The material cost under the new system to unlock +5 is am incredibly onerous burden for a guild of five to ten, which is how large most havoc guilds are. I am counting active players, not players who are on your roster and barely play at all or with the guild.

For this situation, it is definitely worse.

I had a guildie tell me we should be set on mitral ingots for a while because he had 1000. I told him that will get just one major upgrade we need.

The material wall is extremely high.

Well, we’ve got somewhere, Pope. However, it seems to be you stating as fact that the new system is better for small guilds, whereas many other posters state as a fact that it isn’t. So maybe your facts are, like theirs, just an opinion?

And as I’ve already said, I’ve no real interest in the guild mechanics. I have a guild hall, courtesy of assistance from my bigger guild (they get to see what the other guild hall looks like first hand! ). It’ll take me forever to get anywhere with it, since there’s only me to progress it. Such is life. I never did anything much with my own guild under the old mechanics. Beef? Not me, guv!

There needs to be a scribe trainer in the GIHQ if that’s going to be the intended location for people that can’t capture a guild hall. There is no way to learn the trade and craft without one.

That would be a start.

PopeUrban.2578

The only permanent unlocks in the old system…

You still don’t get it, do you? What people had (not consumables that they’d made, stuff they’d earned & unlocked that allowed them to do other things. such as making those consumables.) has been taken away. They thought it was permanent. Now they have to go through a far bigger grind to unlock AGAIN what they had access to before. And what you claim is “permanent” now could just as easily be taken away in the future, if Anet decide another complete re-vamp of the guild system is necessary (or just funny).

And if you understand nothing else, understand this. I don’t really care about the guild stuff. My own guild consists of me (my Raid Alliance from another game tried GW2, didn’t take to it, and I can’t be bothered to recruit). My GW2 guild has around 20-25 active players. I have no say in what happens with the in-game guild mechanics, mostly because I don’t want any authority (been there, done that). I do care about bad arguments & people not listening.

You can keep can repeating yourself until you froth at the mouth and fall over backwards. And then, a la Monty Python, you can become a candidate for Tory MP. I’m sure you’ll do swimmingly. Those that bother to read the thread know your opinion by know; those that don’t you won’t reach by repeating the same thing over & over. If you see what I mean.

Other players’ opinions differ from yours, and they’re not happy. You won’t make them happier by repeatedly insisting that they’re wrong.

I’m MG in my small and lovely guild and I don’t want a full and free Hall Guild. It’s not that we claim.
On GW1, I was MG in the same small guild and i remember that the hall was very expensive for us. But with the time (and gold coins!), we have bought all the ameliorations. It was possible but slowly -because we have done the choice to be small-.

On GW2, before HoT,create banners or ameliorations required points of influence. We won this points with lot of patience, account’s connexions and many activities (together or alone). But it was possible to be a small guild and to have fun like big guilds,it just took time. No problems. It was our choice for our confort.

Since HoT, the only way to gain points of favor is to play missions guild, that’s sometimes impossible for small guild by lack of online players.
So… do you suggest us to leave our small guild and joining a biggest? It’s your solution? Are you serious? Do you think the fun of this game is to have only big guilds? One model? One gameplay?

Having a guild hall is a privilege. Right. We have bought the extension for it, so we should have the right to obtain it too. No preference about the cost in gold coins, this system existed on GW1 and veterants players knew that. Small guilds must be patients to complete their hall.
But WHY it needs points of favor who can only be won on missions guild? Why only this way?

PopeUrban.2578:

Anet does a great job of having their overblow microtransactions set up in such a way that they don’t measurable impact the ability to play and succeed in the game itself, which is why it’s one of the only games that I still tolerate despite the heavy handed lean on the gem store.

(Not sure how this is relevant to the topic, but will react on it anyway.)

Depends really. In an MMO hunting down cosmetic items is a big part of what many players like to do. This MMO is completely skin-bases / about horizontal progression so has those people as target audience.

If you then put most or best skins behind a pay-wall then that does effect the game-play enormously.

Sure you can still get them but by a lot of grinding for gold.

If you happen to like grind, or you are not into skins then the approach they take is great as it does not affect you negatively, maybe even positively. If you however like collecting skins ankitten ot a active gold grinder then it impacts the game enormously. The game-play of going for those skins directly has effectively for the biggest part been removed from the game for you.

HoT did make positive steps here. For example this year’s Halloween skins you could earn in-game, while the only rewards you could really effetely work towards where the Tattered Wings, not the skins. Also precursor-crafting crafting (while it seems that still has some issues), Legendary armor and mats for specific maps are steps in the right direction.

But I can’t say it don’t measurable impact the ability to play, because depending on your preferred game-play is measurably does extremely impact that ability.

One example: Hunting down mini’s is for most mini’s in this game only possible by grinding gold to buy them, or buying them with cash. There are some rewarded for achievements or special content (like Liadri) but even some of them are not viable to go for directly and grinding gold is still your main option.

You can compare that to some other games where most mini’s are available as quest rewards, or from dungeons or cheap vendor sales or mob-drops.

That is a clearly measurable difference and if you happen to prefer directly hunting down mini’s in game by doing quest, killing mobs, doing dungeons then that seriously effects your ability to play as you want.

Going back to the topic.
Like I said, I think that overall halls are fine, for smaller and bigger guilds. Smaller guilds should just focus on one or some elements of the hall instead of expecting to upgrading all, and also expect to have those unlocked in the same time as a large guild takes to fully upgrade the hall (according to Anet 6 to 9 months, while I feel the fastest is more like 2 months, but that’s another discussion).

However, while I did think they were completely fine for smaller guilds before I might have been mistaken there a little. Because there is one element that messes with what I say here, and that is the XP.

Let’s say as smaller guild you want to purely focus on the Work-shop. I did not do the math bas as far as I know, some of the highest tier upgrades are directly or indirectly not available without getting to level 40. But by only leveling the mine and the workshop you will likely not get up to level 40. That would require you to also start upgrading other things effectively removing your ability to focus on specific parts of the hall.

While I think the level system is good for some things, XP seems to go on a good rate and things like guild-hall-expansion should be locked behind a level 40 guild. I also think that they might want to drop the required level for other upgrades giving smaller guilds the ability to focus on parts of the guild-hall.

Basically it should be possible to only unlocks the mine and the Arena, or the mine and the tavern or the mine and the work-station by lowering the required levels for their upgrades. That should help the smaller guilds. But other than this change I think everything is indeed fine for smaller and bigger guilds.

PopeUrban.2578:

I don’t know how many times I have to say this.

The new system is massively more friendly to small guilds due to the permanent nature of unlocks.

Oh, keep repeating what you’ve been repeating for the last 4 days. The last system had permanent unlocks (of a different variety). Until Anet threw it all away with HoT because it suited them. When will they decide to throw it all away again?

End of your argument, really. An argument that lots of people disagree with, anyway. With good reason. So will you stop repeating it? I doubt it…

@PopeUrban: That argument is very tired. I could make banners two weeks ago. Now I cannot. I’m done with this as far as you’re concerned.

Devata.6589:

carythanis.7940:

I’m MG in my small and lovely guild and I don’t want a full and free Hall Guild. It’s not that we claim.
On GW1, I was MG in the same small guild and i remember that the hall was very expensive for us. But with the time (and gold coins!), we have bought all the ameliorations. It was possible but slowly -because we have done the choice to be small-.

On GW2, before HoT,create banners or ameliorations required points of influence. We won this points with lot of patience, account’s connexions and many activities (together or alone). But it was possible to be a small guild and to have fun like big guilds,it just took time. No problems. It was our choice for our confort.

Since HoT, the only way to gain points of favor is to play missions guild, that’s sometimes impossible for small guild by lack of online players.
So… do you suggest us to leave our small guild and joining a biggest? It’s your solution? Are you serious? Do you think the fun of this game is to have only big guilds? One model? One gameplay?

Having a guild hall is a privilege. Right. We have bought the extension for it, so we should have the right to obtain it too. No preference about the cost in gold coins, this system existed on GW1 and veterants players knew that. Small guilds must be patients to complete their hall.
But WHY it needs points of favor who can only be won on missions guild? Why only this way?

There are also small mission doable for a small group of payers. You will make slower progress (however, you said that was not a problem) because you cannot do all missions available. But you can still make progress. or what am I missing?

Well, for a start, a “small group” of players isn’t just one player alone, is it?

Previously, I could (slowly) level my bank guild, by just playing normally, on my own.

Now I can’t; simple as that.

Not only that, but I have just lost the 10K influence I had already spent on an upgrade and the other 2.5 – 3K (maybe slightly higher) influence I was on, which I intended to use to build the final bank upgrade.

It’s just gone.

Maybe some people don’t care?

Maybe some people don’t think anyone should be able to build up a guild alone, in this game?

Even though it’s a game where you can join up to 5 guilds, simultaneously.

So, being able to do so shouldn’t (and didn’t) stop anyone joining bigger guilds, as well.

But, either way, that is the situation we are in and some of us are less than impressed.

ETA: You know what?

I’m just sick of this kitten in games, lately.

I came here from WoW, where I spent months fruitlessly trying to persuade them to reinstate things like LFR difficulty and rewards, personal loot and flying at max level.

I’m sick of being expected to beg for things we had previously and that were removed for no good reason and to the detriment of the game, as a whole.

It’s NOT OK and it is also not the job of people like me to have to try to make developers see sense, when they appear to have lost the plot entirely.

This is not why we play games.

Ill have you know my 2 man guild is working on our guild hall right now. And with a little work and time, it will be upgraded the way we see fit. Yeah maybe it will take 80x longer, but it will happen. So guild halls for everyone!

Small guilds aren’t the only ones complaining about guild halls. Large guilds complain about them, too. Why?

Because some of the requirements really are annoying and because everyone knows that in any large group of people, a small minority do all the work and the larger majority does nothing.

So, what do they do? Complain about things because if only 10 people in a group of 100 are really contributing, then it feels like a small guild. Or they force a tax on their non-officer members and the members leave because they want to use their money and items to do other things. Then the large guilds come and complain on the forums or in-game chat about losing members.

Either way, both sides are doing their fair share of complaining.

Pandgami.6745:

I get it Guild Halls are ridiculously expensive and almost impossible for small guilds to obtain and upgrade.

That was the point from the very start. People knew it was gonna be expensive so why all the complaining?

Guild halls are suppose to be meant mainly for large guilds. Why? Incentive.
Let’s be honest in a large guild, if a person gets kicked not many people are gonna care. If its a higher up or an officer there may be some drama but people get over it. If its someone of the lower ranks the people kicking and many of the other members wouldn’t really care. This is the downside of a large guild who don’t have the emotional/personal incentive of a small guild.

Smaller guilds are a tightly knit unit that have grown strong bonds as they have grown attached to the other members as there only a few so its easy to know everyone and be friends with them. And you could have a fully upgraded guild too if you pulled enough money which was not hard to earn pre-HoT. So why join a large guild when you can be a small guild with your close friends? Benefits from the large guilds.

Large Guilds have numbers and vast amount of resources to back up their large numbers/presence. With the old guild system the incentive of repping and earning influence for large guilds meant 24 hour buffs like exp, karma, harvesting, wvw upgrades, etc. But even small guilds could accomplish this feat pretty easily if they earned enough and farmed things and did events together which they most likely did as they would do everything together.

With the new guild system the only way to keep members from constantly leaving (or at least to constantly recruit to fill those that left) is the guild hall and its various upgrades. So of course large guild will get those upgrades and flesh out their guild hall easier and faster than the small guilds.

If you really want a fully upgraded guild hall and those buffs and stuff, merge into a big guild. If you don’t like them or how they conduct things, leave. Otherwise don’t complain about a system that was clearly intended from the very beginning to benefit to large guilds hold their communities together. Guild Halls are suppose to represent the effort of hundreds of players and their dedication to the guild as a whole.

tl;dr GH meant for large guilds not for small guilds

Sorry my guild in GW1 was a small guild 10 ppl or so yet we had a guild hall with every vendor in it.

Captain Suzuki.8067:

(Blah Blah)
We appreciate your patience and understanding while this is being addressed.
Regards,

reapex.8546:

Anet said look for a possible patch this Tuesday.
(Snip) we’ll keep you posted."

Sources?

It’s one thing to have Joe Blow post what is supposedly a comment about the issue, it’s a whole other thing to actually have someone who matters come to GW2 official forums and post a response to the hundreds of players here.

I only have 2 characters levelled and at 100% central Tyria currently being affected by this bug.
some people have a dozen of more characters all levelled and 100% explored.

To get started, Realistically I would need:
A free Character slot Or a Free Bank tab(to swap inventory from existing characters)
158 tomes of knowledge for 2 characters,
2 makeover kits,
2 Boxes of exotic armour,
4 exotic weapons.

I could recreate the same 2 characters that are affected; artificially level them (minus 100% world completion) and then spend a few hours re-exploring the HoT zones, and get the rewards that way.Then Re-explore Central Tyria later.

**This would however also have the upside of allowing me to replay the Personal Story for those same two characters who are unable to finish all the steps because of other bugs and changes that were made since launch that permanently broke their stories.

Two entire weeks this thread has been here. Tens of thousands of people affected…. Hundreds posted in this single thread… and still no official reply regarding map completion rewards not being awarded. The only acknowledgement regarding this issue has been either buried in Reddit, or in other official forum threads where an employee mentions something along the line of “someone else must be working on it, its not my problem.”

All we want is some kind of reply on the official forums explaining what has gone wrong and when and how it will be fixed and compensated for.

They handed out GEMS to people that were affected by the simmilar bug where map exploration was lost and players simply had to rediscover things forcing them to replay something they had already completed and earned exp for(Getting Double the exp and rewards for the trouble) . They gave GEMS to those affected as way of apology for the inconvenience of having to run around re-exploring 4 zones. Even Assuming these players had 100% exploration in all 4 of the new zones that’s still such a minor inconvenience of only a half a dozen hours at most of re-discovery.

With no official recognition of the 100% map completion rewards bug for 21 days now… what are we going to get for our 500+ hour inconvenience?…where our only option is to create a New character of the same class, level them to 80 and re-earn everything on that character.

Once again it seems the loyal veteran players that grind away day after day get the shaft once again. no reward here either.

Albadaran.1283:

Ok, I’m offering a solution: Make it so that all adjustments can be bought in the gem store as well as by playing the content. This would satisfy most small guilds and offers Anet some profit too…

I wanted to “LOL” at first, but you may be on to something. The price in mats has to be in the thousands. Guilds could hold RL fundraisers at their local K-Mart. Have some kids? Make mo’money! mo’money! mo’money!

Must remember to have the annoying bell that the Salvation Army uses as well. Along with the bell, a terrible Santa Claus outfit, since it tis the season. People will give you money over fist, to shut off that bell. Guaranteed!

It doesn’t matter how many people are in a guild. They should all have access to the same content. As it is they do not.

This is not about Ferrarris or the game economy or how easy it was for someone else to blow through guild hall requirements. This is about smaller groups of people not only not having access to features they earned and could use a few weeks ago, but also cannot earn new ones because of seemingly unnecessary and arbitrary changes that were made.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes. Let’s have every single char in game a member of a huge, anonymous guild where few care if you are there or not or if you get kicked, just so that guild halls can be built.

I’m sorry but you don’t need to be in a guild of 500 where no one cares to have and upgrade a guild hall. There’s a huge difference between 5 and 500. 50 is between those numbers and some of the closest knit groups I’ve been in have been 50 man guilds.

I’m in a guild of 200 with 100 reguilars and a core of about 30-50 people who are very close and very welcoming. We go out of our way to help new people integrate into the guild, and some of them stay and become core members, if they like what they see.

Those people who choose to be part of the family are in fact part of the family. The idea that 50 people can’t be friends in an MMO is simply misguided.

I have a ton of friends on my guild and a few people I’m very close with. I’m not sure why you think you have to limit your guild to five to have friendships.

That was a sarcastic rejoinder to the OPs post where he said Let’s be honest in a large guild, if a person gets kicked not many people are gonna care. If its a higher up or an officer there may be some drama but people get over it.

(It’s also where the other poster’s comment about cesspool guilds is coming from)

Context Vayne, context.

Vayne needs more sleep and less forum time. My bad. lol

They need to up the aetherium cap and balance the upgrade costs based on the time it takes to produce. The mine upgrades should just be for high tier stuff and if you want upgrades completed faster.
I.e a very basic arena should be capable without too much of a grind. Add arena size, capacity and structures as things that would require more people/farming.

zaw.6741:

got all 4 maps 100%, still nothing. they said about fixes comming monday. its almost wednesday now, still nothing. same as fractal master collection. HELLO? CAN WE AT LEAST GET SOME INFO THAT SOMEONE WORKS ON IT?

We have gotten information, but not on this thread. The post about four responses above yours is a quote from a developer who addressed the issue in a different thread:

Edit: Missing bonus rewards is on track to ship with an upcoming patch. I believe they’re doing a bunch of testing to ensure we don’t have another issue like what I’m fixing today happen again.
-Bill

For reference, that was posted four hours ago. I know it’s frustrating that they aren’t responding on this particular thread, but please read before you start “yelling.”

Thanks for your response. I chose legendary line. It maxed out and shifted automatically to fractal line, Now it won’t shift again. The result is that I am now not advancing in any line because, yes, I am out of Tyria mastery points, I suppose that I could get a point by doing something like the last two achieves in Teq or killing 50 karka babies in LA, or collecting spoons or something but I don’t think I should be forced to do specific tricks (immediately! drop everything else!) to gain ANY xp. I am a journeyman player with 10.5k AP and 37 mastery points spent and I know how I want to play. Are we to be denied ALL xp if we don’t play the game specifically to get mastery points? Very strange. Your question suggests the answer is yes, and it is very dismaying.

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

Lol. Not your best example of what they won’t do to you, since they did do it to one guy. He “deserved” it, but still. ANet will do it if they decide to. :P
Character stripped naked, jumped off cliff, then deleted

I was specifically referencing that (hilarious) event actually.

Greed has no bounds, which is why regulations are applied sooner or later. In fact its already happened in some nations that recognized their people were being taken advantage of. My example is forsaken world. The game milks the heck out of players.

Funny thing is the game is in fact a product of China. While the players of China are protected from many of the fleecing game mechanics in Forsaken World, those same rules don’t apply to their U.S. or Euro markets…Which are bending players over the cash register at every turn….

“Free to play games” have turned into a one trick pony that always leads the player down a path of walls and obstacles that strongly encourage players to open their wallets.

Which is another gripe of mine. When you actually purchase a game up front you shouldn’t find trash mechanics like that in the back bone of the games economy.

I don’t blame Anet for this. I loved GW1 and with GW2 they created a beautiful world with many amazing new concepts. They have my respect here.

However I do blame those that hijacked the game out from under them. Their history and hand is all over the vampiric squeeze towards the paywall….

On the same note I realize you are a huge fan and you don’t agree with any negative remark made towards the game. I respect that, but by the same token I am entitled to my views and opinion, and I strongly feel that I’m either close or on the right track till proven otherwise.

I don’t know if you’ve checked my post history, but I agree with a large number of negative points about the game.

Attempting to discredit me as a “white Knight” whos feedback and opinions are thus valueless doesn’t address the point, nor does using a completely separate game and company to back up yours.

They do push people to open their wallets, and they do so by a quite frankly overpriced gem store which sucks most of the art assets and rewards from being avaliable ingame to being microtransactions. The amount of new “rewards” added to the gem store compred to the rewards added to the base game is, quite frankly, a disgustingly heavy amount of lean on the cash shop for a game that just released a fifty dollar expansion. RNG cash shop boxes are a similarly disgusting and predatory microtransaction tactic that only persists because poeple are dumb enough to buy them.

However!

Anet does a great job of having their overblow microtransactions set up in such a way that they don’t measurable impact the ability to play and succeed in the game itself, which is why it’s one of the only games that I still tolerate despite the heavy handed lean on the gem store.

However, the assertion that the ingame economy is balanced around gems to gold conversion is flat out wrong.

No I didn’t look up your post history, but yes I did assume you were a “white Knight” having ran into other post by you on the forum. To be quite frank I had to take pause when I read an actual negative statement from you concerning the game LOL.

First I never said I believed the entire game wrapped around gem/gold exchange. I do however strongly feel that with HOT players are being “squeezed harder” making purchasing gems to exchange for gold more attractive.

My mention of “another game” was an example of regulation and non regulation being applied to a player base and how it differs in a positive and negative way.

When I just started playing GW2, which wasn’t that long ago. I blew a pretty penny fast tracking my avatars. I was crazy in-love with the game. Especially with WvW.

My investment extended to purchasing it for friends and family (x7 all together).
It was something we could all do together as a family.

The significance’s of this need was made even more personal because after this year my eldest son will be leaving home to go off to collage. So yes my tiny family makes a very tiny guild, and while Anet may have had their reasons to change things to the way they have, their reasons don’t usurp the very real reason of why I was originally sold on the game and purchased then pre ordered it. To say I’m disappointed with the changes that HOT brought to the table is an understatement.

I wasn’t looking for the worlds help when I invested in GW2 for all of us, I was simply looking for fun things that we could engage in, and accomplish as a family.

PopeUrban.2578:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

Lol. Not your best example of what they won’t do to you, since they did do it to one guy. He “deserved” it, but still. ANet will do it if they decide to. :P
Character stripped naked, jumped off cliff, then deleted

I was specifically referencing that (hilarious) event actually.

Greed has no bounds, which is why regulations are applied sooner or later. In fact its already happened in some nations that recognized their people were being taken advantage of. My example is forsaken world. The game milks the heck out of players.

Funny thing is the game is in fact a product of China. While the players of China are protected from many of the fleecing game mechanics in Forsaken World, those same rules don’t apply to their U.S. or Euro markets…Which are bending players over the cash register at every turn….

“Free to play games” have turned into a one trick pony that always leads the player down a path of walls and obstacles that strongly encourage players to open their wallets.

Which is another gripe of mine. When you actually purchase a game up front you shouldn’t find trash mechanics like that in the back bone of the games economy.

I don’t blame Anet for this. I loved GW1 and with GW2 they created a beautiful world with many amazing new concepts. They have my respect here.

However I do blame those that hijacked the game out from under them. Their history and hand is all over the vampiric squeeze towards the paywall….

On the same note I realize you are a huge fan and you don’t agree with any negative remark made towards the game. I respect that, but by the same token I am entitled to my views and opinion, and I strongly feel that I’m either close or on the right track till proven otherwise.

And by the way the entire world watches the NY exchange market daily, yet year after year there are always those that are being indited for insider trading. And a games economy doesn’t even need a person at the keyboard to monitor it. A running script can keep fluctuations within a set parameter while increasing or decreasing inflation and sinks to just an individual. I’m not saying Anet/NCsoft is doing that. But I am saying it is not beyond the capabilities of what can be done with code.

Shademehr.1397:

I’m in a small guild. Anywhere from 5-10 players on consistantly. We’re up to GH Level 17. A fully built Guild Hall is going to take some time and effort and that’s just the way life is. This isn’t about instant gratification. In fact most of the things in HoT aren’t instant gratification. However, lots of people seem to want everything NOW NOW NOW and not have to work for them.

I can’t expect to own a Ferarri if my bank account is only big enough for a Civic.

This is SO FAR from what is being discussed in this thread that the wrongness is making my head hurt.

Here’s what happened: I owned a ferrari, but then the city said that my garage was only suitable for a civic, and that I could earn back the ferrari if I jumped through a bunch of hoops.

Now everyone is saying that I should be happy there’s a Civic in my garage, because there’s no way one person deserves to own a Ferrari, and that I shouldn’t feel entitled to my Ferrari. And I’m like, “Yo, this Civic doesn’t even have a motor in it.”

And you’re like, “So greedy, wanting everything NOW NOW NOW. GO EARN YOUR MOTOR.”

And I have no idea why people think that’s even appropriate.

Chris Cleary.8017:

We don’t need to see it in-game, sometimes good video evidence is enough for me to track down who it was. In this case, the video was enough for me to find out who it was and take action. Thanks for the video, and to accompany your video, I give you this video of his account’s last moments:

https://youtu.be/bqfUi9DzBuo

Oh yah, he’s also banned

Ok that’s pretty gangster. And the dev of the year award goes to……………….