Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

These changes weren’t meant for you.

Except that they were. They were specifically implemented in such a way as to affect all players with a new character, not just those who struggle with certain concpets due to inexperience or limited capacity. Everyone creating and playing a new character has the new experience rather than the old. That was Anet’s decision. The ability to skip past or speed through a zone/level range rather than play through the experience as it previously existed doesn’t change the FACT that Anet opted to include veteran players as well as novices in the target for the changes.

I dont personally care for the NPE. Hate is too strong of a word but dislike works just fine here. I think that certain aspects go a bit too far (dancing for cows ?) but others seem like a great idea (dodge tutorial).

Vayne.8563:

I think a lot of people did change their views. I know some of them personally.

Day 1 you get a lot of off the cuff reactions. A good number of those reactions were from people who admittedly never even tried it. That’s good research right there.

I’m against this thing based on what everyone else is saying.

Those who tried it often didn’t see what the big deal was.

Unverifiable anecdotal evidence vs actual numbers that someone did the legwork to get.

I think I’ll go with the latter.

And right on cue, just after I made my above post…

Vayne.8563:

But page 1 was before changes were made to the NPC that solved some people’s complaints. This thread started BEFORE the change. A lot of people were complaining about the elite skill unlocking at 40 where as almost no one is complaining about it unlocking at level 31 by comparison. Likewise there were bug fixes where on your second character, you didn’t get locked out of stuff like skill points.

Taking it from the beginning means you’re ignoring changes that people thought were okay. There were even people who said (not sure if in this thread or not) that they were okay with it after those changes.

Even accepting your “people who dislike the NPE instead of hating it don’t really count as not liking it” point, are you seriously suggesting that 178 of the nays (the difference between the yays and nays) are saying that? I’d love to see your numbers supporting that claim.

Vayne.8563:

You have to count from when the changes were made, because it pacified quite a few people, except for the most vocal. You’d also have to exclude people who are complaining mainly about the trait system and saying that’s the NPE which is a bunch of other people.

Still not big on reading posts, I see:

Mojo Gris Gris.5941:

Any posts made regarding only the trait changes was ignored.

Returning player, decided to start a new character.

After 3 levels, I went to the internet trying to figure out how to turn off the tutorial pop-ups that were invasive, unwanted, and ultimately unhelpful. Turns out I can’t, so I just have to deal with it.

Then discovered that everything, including weapon skills, is now unlocked solely by level, rather than through usage or discovery.

If my wife didn’t want to come back far more strongly than I did, I wouldn’t still be here, and it would be a direct result of these changes; the max level stuff has changed so dramatically I honestly don’t even know where I would start, and going back to level 1 is borderline insulting…. like I have the option of either going to preschool or being a junior at university, with nothing in-between.

As a veteran player I’ve come to hate the NPE.

I bought an alt acct. with the recent $10 sale and its been incredibly painful leveling. In fact the project I had in mind, I’ve given up on. I just use the account to mine my mains home instance.

Additionally, and more importantly, buying additional slots doesn’t let you escape the road blocks for your main account. If you have a bunch of level 80’s I think it’s safe to say you ‘get’ GW2. Why I have to do a heap of PvE or spend lots of gold for what I was previously able to do with ease. My recent experiences getting a toon to level 80 left me with one overall feeling: NPE = toe cutters.

Literally I was just crippled trying to get my level 80 toon set up. I didn’t enjoy the new experience at all.

Mojo Gris Gris.5941:

How about if I do the work for both of you?
I actually thought about what Vayne was saying here, and I wondered just what the numbers were. So I decided to go to page 1 and make a spreadsheet. Any opinion which was stated as overall negative got a ranking of “nay.” Any opinion overall positive got a “yay.” Any opinion which was modified to be better after their own OP also got a “yay.” Any opinion which was ambiguous, but seemed positive got a “yay.” Every poster got only one rank no matter how many posts they made. Any posts made regarding only the trait changes was ignored. Likewise, some posters which had no stated opinion were ignored. I purposely gave the “yay” crowd more leeway, and was more stringent on all of the “nay” votes.

Vayne.8563:

It’s closer than you think.

Not even a little bit close.
The final number, as of now, is 47 Yays.
The final number of nays?
225… that’s 17% for / 83% against the NPE.

Oh, wait…here’s my input. Overall, I understand why Anet wanted to do something, but I think it went in a bad direction.

226-47

Granted, that is only this thread.

But didn’t you get the memo? Forum posts only count if they agree with Vayne. Any posts that disagree with him are just a “loud and vocal minority” and thus are invalid. Therefore the count is really 47 yays-0 nays!

In all seriousness though, you make very good suggestions. Especially the suggestion of an encyclopedia to reference. I know GW1 had links in-game for any skills, characters, etc. you encountered that actually took you to the relevant page on the GW1 wiki. Something like that could help in GW2, definitely more so than this abomination of an NPE.

And grats on doing the actual legwork. I definitely suspected that Vayne was way off.

I have had this happen to me excessively today when I was commanding in Eternal battleground (wvw). I have not repeatedely said the same sentence at all or spammed on chat….. The “your message is supressed sign” keeps on coming up and I am unable to command at all, because I cannot tell people where to go. The message is getting really irritating and only appears when I am using the “thief” character of my account….

Please fix this as soon as possible this message is really hindering my gameplay…
I was unable to grab a screenshot as I got frustrated and stopped playing and only realised I should have taken a screenshot after I had closed the game……

Also I am not a Big talker so I always keep my messages to the minimum (people never ask me to repeat myself), I have seen other commanders type long sentences and repeat one command 3 or 4 times but they do not hav supressed message notification…..

Whenever I post an item to the trading post, the displayed position on the list will jump to some random location rather than just removing the item from the list and keeping the scroll-bar at the same position. Although this isn’t a game-breaking bug, it does make using the TP more difficult since each post I need to re-find items.

Ideally, the position on the list would be based on the scroll bar on the right, and keeping that position between TP posts would make sense. Why, when scrolled to the bottom, would selling an item reposition me to somewhere in the middle of the scrollbar?

What is now clear for us but not for a couple of posters here: don’t sell items via LFG system. Directly or indirectly. And I would like to continue: use TP only to sell items – then there is no need to advertize, and you’re doing it anonymously as well.

Like in real world, exchange fees and taxes are for some a pain, for some obscure reason.

I can honestly say I dislike this change very much. I just bought extra character slot and was looking forward to leveling a new character of another race and oh boy talk about disappointment. I liked the old story line and if the reason for this was the key farming they could so easily just move the keys to level 20 in the story. They just ruined the flow of the game. I certainly hope they will listen to us players here and change this back along with the minis being visible ALL the time not just in your home instance. I know a lot of people that wont be buying any more minis, and I thought they would welcome the money from the shop? Please rethink this!!!

I think it can be simplified like this:

“If you are not going to do stuff together for at least a some minutes, then you should not use the LFG tool for it.”

So, someone looking for people to help them do Goemm’s Lab or The Long Run would be allowed since they’ll have to be together between checkpoints, but someone just sitting next to the chest on Skipping Stones and cashing in from portals would not be allowed.

Could really do with some clarification on using the LFG to advertise for these particular circumstances:

-Player X Selling Portals to Golden Badges etc in the Silverwastes (and thus achievements)
-Player Y Selling spots in their party to complete Story Achievements
-Player Z Selling Portals to particular Jumping Puzzles
-All of the above when money isn’t involved (from what I understand it’s the act of advertising “non-group” activity rather than actually selling it that’s the problem, but I could be wrong)

If all/some of the above count as infractions, where does that leave dungeon selling?

I was wondering if its griefing to join the item seller and disband the lfg then to get it off the list

They don’t have to as posted above. Like you I read the EULA stuff, not many do. Changing it will not get the message to most players because most players don’t bother to read it. However, based on the EULA and what I posted Anet does not have to change it. People that violate the LFG rules can be suspended or banned and they won’t have a leg to stand on if they try to fight it.

As I posted a bit back in this thread, the best thing we can do is spread the word in game that using the LFG tool to sell is a violation. The in game word spreads faster than some legal documents 99% of people don’t bother to read.

NA LFG is starting to feel the difference already, have not noticed anymore item sellers yet.

Here we have a full transcript of yesterday’s presentation (thanks to the guy who wrote all that down).

Interestingly, twice Colin mentions “our no-grind philosophy for Guild Wars 2”.

It appears ArenaNet really believes their own Manifesto, when the same Colin said, “We don’t want players to grind”.

We just need to let them know that, between Ascended items and slow dungeon rewards and Legendaries and the new level-based unlocks and the new trait system unlock and etc etc, well… Their “no-grind philosophy” has been extremely grindy.

I recently bought the game and was immediately kittened and felt completely ripped off. The reason being because when you start a new account, 90% of the things on the map are not shown, nor are they explained in any facet UNTIL you reach a certain level.

This is by far the most counter-intuitive system I have ever found in a game, especially one like this one where the majority of leveling is done through exploration. It basically boils down to “to level up you have to explore these things, but to even see these things on the map so you can explore them you have to be leveled up”.

Fix this system please, because after getting over a certain hump, I’d say around level 15, I’ve been having an absolute blast, and I almost missed it because of the terrible way the map is drawn out for newer accounts.

I think this thread is a good candidate for being stickied.

I’m happy to see this. I’ve been reporting people for this because I assumed it was against the rules, but it’s nice to see confirmation. Thank you!

A rare clear policy statement

+1, hope for more

Clear and straightforward. Thanks Gaile.

Thank you Gaile for the clarification and not having to feel bad about reporting people now as it was the proper thing to do in the first place.

Remember…most of these accounts are compromised, so the names you see are hapless victims of other nefarious individuals. Which is why it would be better not to display the names on the forums. I’m sure we all would rather not have our Display Names associated with breaking the ToS, if our account were to be compromised by someone using it in this way.

So happy to log in every day and see this bug still alive and well. At this point it almost wouldn’t be GW2 for me anymore if they actually fixed this, or I actually got rewarded with more than blues or greens for difficult content…

Gonna give this a bump, this is happening to me still as well.

I admire that you actually went and did the spreadsheet thing.

Also I agree with your suggestions, especially what you say about adding real tutorials and removing the level gating to the personal story.

Vayne.8563:

You’ve got it in one. Seven people complaining over and over again does not a stampede make. You named people who have posted dozens of times in this thread, while ignoring the drive bys that say I’m fine with it, or it’s not as bad as people say, or even I like it better.

I’m not going to do your work for you. Look at the thread and start putting marks next to people who complain about it multiple times such as yourself and people who don’t have a problem with it.

How about if I do the work for both of you?
I actually thought about what Vayne was saying here, and I wondered just what the numbers were. So I decided to go to page 1 and make a spreadsheet. Any opinion which was stated as overall negative got a ranking of “nay.” Any opinion overall positive got a “yay.” Any opinion which was modified to be better after their own OP also got a “yay.” Any opinion which was ambiguous, but seemed positive got a “yay.” Every poster got only one rank no matter how many posts they made. Any posts made regarding only the trait changes was ignored. Likewise, some posters which had no stated opinion were ignored. I purposely gave the “yay” crowd more leeway, and was more stringent on all of the “nay” votes.

Vayne.8563:

It’s closer than you think.

Not even a little bit close.
The final number, as of now, is 47 Yays.
The final number of nays?
225… that’s 17% for / 83% against the NPE.

Oh, wait…here’s my input. Overall, I understand why Anet wanted to do something, but I think it went in a bad direction.

226-47

Granted, that is only this thread.
In the interest of providing constructive criticism and not derailing the thread completely, I offer the following suggestions:
-Remove the level gating of PS.
-Remove the dancing for cows/other bundle changes. Those things were much better before.
-Add more actual explanation of game mechanics that are “confusing for new players” instead of removing functioning content or level gating content or features. Actual tutorials or even a GW2opedia to reference in-game would be great.
-Fix the stat slump and give SPs earlier.

I did like what they did for dodging, but I feel it came too late. I also liked the rewards, even though some of it becomes useless as you level.

I will hold any trait comments/complaints until the new system is launched.

Guess I’ll just reiterate what I said in my thread;

There’s dozens of kitten plotholes all over the place, characters constantly referring to events that have been REMOVED (Such as trahearne telling me he was sorry about the death of a character that NO LONGER HAPPENS), and NPCs I’ve never met acting like we know each other, until several missions later it’s like we’re meeting for the first time. (The cleansing of Orr comes to mind, who is this weird butterfly lady? Oh wait, I was meant to do her mission BEFORE the cleansing? So why is the cleansing— I don’t even—)
Not to mention the removal of an entire plot segment relating to your character’s greatest fear, which is still heavily referenced throughout the story but is now never a significant point beyond foreshadowing that ultimately now leads nowhere.
Please fix these gaping plot holes, 1-70 is perfectly serviceable but from that point on the Personal Story just becomes a mess. Some of it was done for convenience (Such as moving most starting points onto the airship), some done for ease of access (The level requirements) but there was zero reason to jumble around the missions into a completely random order until many, many things make no sense. And there was no reason to remove the mission where your character accidentally bombards a pack of his or her own soldiers whilst they were under an illusion, that was a powerful moment for the story and it had a great sense of purpose. Now? Your character is basically… never wrong. Which feels very two dimensional.

Hell they could make it split up into 5 levels rather than 10 if they feel they drag out. It honestly seems to me during the restructure of the last ten levels of story, the testers just skipped all the text and just said whether or not they were able to finish it. A complete shame, as up until the Battle for Claw Island the story is neatly tied together, but after that it just became less interesting, and now it’s even worse because characters keep referring to events that either didn’t happen, have yet to happen or are just plain inconsistent.
Heck the missing missions are STILL ON THE WIKI, listed as being after the battle for Fort Trinity.

Why do some players like the NPE?

Rewards!

We get some good stuff out of those level-up panels.

…that we can’t sell or salvage. How utterly polite of ANet to force exemptions on garbage gear that would serve to confuse and frustrate new players.

“I’ve outgrown this item. Time to use my salvage kit and… Why won’t it work? …Maybe I can sell it? No… Well, this is some bullkitten. It’d be a waste to destroy it, but…”

So yeah, stop making the level-up gear unsalvagable. But maybe that’s just me. I know I can at least Mystic Toilet it with a few same-rarity karma items, but new players aren’t going to see that.

#tinyrant