Guild Wars 2

Zenith.1234:

You really are clueless aren’t you? Maybe read that text again and let it sink in.

So the manfesto trailer said nothing of the sort. Thank you. Glad thats finally been settled.

Zenith.1234:

AcidicVision.5498:

Alberel Leonhart.9640:

The manifesto stated the only thing you should grind for is aesthetics. Guess what? Legendaries were purely aesthetic!

So yeah, please, just give it up already.

Ok, which part in the manifesto said that. Give me the quote. Give me the time. Where in that video does it say a single thing about grinding for aesthetics, or mention gear progression at all?

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games – we leave the grind to other MMOs.”
- Mike O’Brien

I hope you feel real stupid now, no offense by the way.

Where in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E Does it say that?
Time and quote please. That is the manifesto trailer everyone is saying they lied so horribly in. I want to know where IN THAT trailer they lied as of the Lost Shores patch.

Also, the quivers or tome recipes I believe only cost one essence? But there is a possibility that I am mistaken. And you have very good odds of getting that essence by just playing through the dungeon on the way to getting the ring and the tokens needed for the infusion. Now, if those recipes cost 250, or even 50 essences, then I would be agreeing with you 100% that it is a ridiculous requirement for a level of progression.

Alberel Leonhart.9640:

The manifesto stated the only thing you should grind for is aesthetics. Guess what? Legendaries were purely aesthetic!

So yeah, please, just give it up already.

Ok, which part in the manifesto said that. Give me the quote. Give me the time. Where in that video does it say a single thing about grinding for aesthetics, or mention gear progression at all?

Yosoy Tupapi.2913:

AcidicVision.5498:

You can get the backpiece in your own time. All you really need is agony defense, and when you start needing it, the game gives you one from a chest.

You can’t get the backpiece in your own time. If you don’t rush for it now and try to start next month with lfg fotm lvl1, good luck

Wrong again. The backpeices are made in the forge. And you can get the mats in your own time. The game GIVES you an ascended ring from a chest when you get past lvl 10. Which is when you start needing agony protection. And infusions you get from the vendor with the Fractal tokens.

Srsly. It’s like most of you didn’t even bother looking into these things before just jumping on the hate wagon.

azizul.8469:

AcidicVision.5498:

azizul.8469:

manifesto u-turn. we have been lied to.

Which part?

Here is a link for you to refresh yourself…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E

Give me a quote and a time where they did this supposed u-turn and how it could have never ever applied before the Lost shores update.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Yes-or-No-Manifesto-Represents-the-Game

Right. As I thought. There was no u-turn. The only thing that could even remotely apply was about grind. And there was grind from day one. For Karma, or mats for exotics, or gold for exotics, or for legendaries, or dungeon tokens.

This patch was no HUGE departure from the manifesto and what we already had. So just give it up already.

azizul.8469:

manifesto u-turn. we have been lied to.

Which part?

Here is a link for you to refresh yourself…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E

Give me a quote and a time where they did this supposed u-turn and how it could have never ever applied before the Lost shores update.

You can get the backpiece in your own time. All you really need is agony defense, and when you start needing it, the game gives you one from a chest.

Dont play with pugs. Join yourself a nice active guild with people you get along with. A small effort finding a guild that fits and your experience will improve greatly.

Thats not cool at all. Lambasting a game on a retail site because of a patch you didnt approve of? The game was $60. And I am sure most of you got your $60 worth of entertainment.

Posting reviews with malicious intent like this messes with peoples livelihoods. Those programmers, engineers, designers, and testers have wives and husbands and kids. And out of sheer vindictiveness you are trying to take food of their tables for what? A hope of a roll back on a patch that in all liklihood was implemented from pressure by a publisher and investors?

That is petty. Especially near the holiday season. I have never been more disappointed and embarrassed to be part of a community than I am now.

My Wintersday wish is to not have Wintersday stuff locked away in a cash shop chest. Just let us buy the things outright.

Umbra Unu.4260:

As far as we know, this is nothing more than just a theory.

• We know Nexon invested largely in NCsoft.
• We know Anet created a new position just to be filled by a producer from Nexon.
• We know she was the producer of Maple Story
• We know the GW gem shop is looking more and more like Maple Stoy’s, while nothing like that existed in the original GW cash shop.
• Multiple times we were told dye unlocks were account wide and the first announcement that woman made was that they would be character specific and sold in a cash-shop. We haven’t heard from her sense.

Exactly how much more do you need? And on that last point, just to drive a nail home, why was a producer for micro-transactions releasing a statement on a game-design change as her first order of business? Dude, if that doesn’t give you shivers, nothing will.

I like to think it went like this:
(Dramatization)
Cox: “So i’ve gone over the initial details and I thin kwe can make some money off of these dyes, but not if you only need one per account. So lets change that.”
O’Brien: “umm…well we have already released info that…”
Cox: “Ok, I just need to call and give my weekly update…”
O’Brien: Ok we will look into it..but you can make the announcement."
Cox: -tappidy-tap-tap-tap-click-post-
Guru: RRRAAWWRR COMMUNI-SAURUS-REX RAGE
Cox: “Ok, that’s enough of that. From now on you deal with them.”
O’Brien: /snicker

Narkosys.5173:

Dont blame nexon for anything. I love me a good conspiracy but I think this is greed plain and simple. They surpass their sales projections and saw the signs. $$ signs – they are chasing it now.

I could see this as being 100% correct if it were most studios. But there are a few I can’t buy that idea from. Anet, Funcom, Telltale, and Gearbox. All of them have had huge success, made enough money to expand and keep making games, and have had the players in mind every step of the way (well except Funcom. Those guys have had horrible luck. But they have great ideas and they try so gosh-darn-hard).

I don’t think Anet turned around on seven years of iterative design, careful crafting, enthusiasm and planning, to have the life’s work of many of their employees lambasted all over the internet.

GuildWars is also the studios only IP. It actually is their baby. From a personal and business standpoint, the activity as of late doesn’t make any sense. Unless coming from someone outside with little understanding of the company culture, demographic or player expectations.

@Krookie, I have two posts in here previously that go in depth about all of that.

Attached is an image of the Maple Story Cash shop, which our illustrious new monetization manager was a producer for. Does anything look familiar?

This is what we are in for from now on folks. And Im not sure there is anything we can do to change it. Just gonna watch investors influencing bad design decisions and cash-shop mistakes ward off players and bury the Guild Wars franchise. Then Nexon will turn around and blame ArenaNet for players not wanting to buy the junk they tried to feed us before pulling Crystin out and sending her off to another studio to kill.

The real issue behind the skill was that there were a few skilled and creative thief players that figured out ways to min/max stats to maximize burst (forget the fact it was based around a 40 second cd). Their builds became the flavor of the month and 3/5 thieves in pvp were using them.

This led to a horrendous amount of QQ on the pvp forums from every one else mad that thieves were constantly killing them in less than two seconds. Despite the moderate init cost of pistol whip, the 40 second cool down on quickness, no endurance after the burst, and having only 11k health. They were to over powered.

So, instead of leaving it alone and letting people figure out how to defend and counter the skill (As Anet was infamous for in GW with Iway, earth spike, air spike, discord, trappers, curse spam), the designers just decided to cut the thief professions balls off, then take a baseball bat to their knees, then break their thumbs.

The problem with kittening the class beyond the point of uselessness…people never figured out how to handle stuns on reaction, they never learned to use defensive skills on reaction, then never learned to capitalize on a helpless opponent after a failed or denied burst.

The creative players are still there. They will keep finding ways to min/max traits and skills to achieve < 3 second kills. They will put those builds online and they will become new flavor builds. And the people that use them will continue to dominate the players that expect nerfs instead of learning and getting better at their class.

What I am curious to see is that when the time comes to nerf 100b because a vast majority of players are abusing it, if Anet tells players to learn to deal with it or if they give it the thief treatment. For some reason I expect the former.

ironzerg.3196:

There’s plenty of players out their who want nothing more than to give Anet as much money as possible, but perhaps it’s worth considering whether or not Nexon’s model for collecting such money is the right (or ethical) way to do it.

Ethical is a questionable word. Other games have used this roulette game in cash shops and been profitable. Namely Maple Story, which is where Cox found success and why we are seeing that garbage here now.

There is a segment of the demographic that likes that sort of thing and will spend money there. So for them it might be right and perfectly ethical ; however, for us it is not. Its on the forums, its in map chat, its on reddit and fansites, people hate the chests. And that is effecting the reputation of the game with regard to it’s players and the public.

The image of the company and the game is getting drug through the gutter and this lady for all we know is shrugging her shoulders saying “Maple story had an 18-24 demographic that was 40% female and this worked there, so it cant be me, it must be your game.”

As you mentioned, when you go from people wanting to throw money at you to requesting refunds from Anet and putting chargebacks on their credit cards…there is a problem. I hope someone, somewhere takes a look at things and decides maybe its better to let Anet run their game like they want to.

Ill admit I have not taken people in to fractals based on level. And I am one to commonly do lower level fractals to help people level up.

The players in my instance were mid level 20 and around 40. In one case the player didn’t even even have access to an elite or all of their utility skills and barely had any points in traits. The other was missing thirty points in traits.

They might have been scaled up, but still would have been a burden on the party. It wasn’t fair to expect the other three people in the group to be ok with carrying them.

We have done it with a few lvl 60s and I can tell you Fractals is a horrible place to level. I think in four runs the 60 dinged once. It’s also a waste of drops. Everything is scaled to your level, so no one will buy any rares you get and they can’t even salvage them for ecto.

Just level up. At least in to the 70s. So you can benefit parties, parties benefit from you, and the rewards are worthwhile.

I made a post on this just yesterday when people were complaining about the cash-shop and how Anet didn’t seen to know what it’s players wanted. But Anet isn’t actually at fault. There has been an interloper.

As mentioned in the OP Nexon bought up almost 15% of NCsoft. What came after that were some rapid fire changes: A new position for the cash-shop was created, it was filled by a former Nexon producer named Crystin Cox, her first announcement was taking account wide dye unlocks and making them character specific. Which ANet caught a lot of flack over, truth is it wasn’t even Anet proper. It was this broad monetizing them.

Look at Cox’s resume. One of the highlights is Maple Story. Look at Maple Story’s cash shop. All chests and different tiers of chests. What has someone tried shoving down our throats since release? Chests.

During Halloween Mini pet packs were a big seller. Mostly because they were the only sure-thing Halloween item in there besides costumes. So during the next event those are taken from us and put in random chests. It’s transparent and disgusting.

Worst of all is there is nothing ArenaNet can actually do about it because this woman was placed by their publisher who, in turn, was pressured by one of their largest share holders. She is shielded by corporate politics going all the way to the top. Meanwhile, guys like Mike, Chris, Colin and Regina catch all of the community wrath. Do you all think they are happy about that?

I would encourage everyone to just save their money. Don’t spend a dime in the cash-shop an left the low numbers send a message to NC and Nexon that this woman isn’t working for us. But that just ends up hurting ANet and players. We could not buy chests…but we tried that after the Halloween fiasco and what happened? She put minis in chests. When people don’t buy those, whats next? Chests for character slots and bank tabs?

Somehow I get the impression she is the sort to think that if we aren’t buying the stuff then there is something wrong with us and not her strategy. Rather than get anything in the shop we would want and gladly pay for, more junk will just get shoved into random loot boxes for cash.

Makes me wonder what else Nexon is pressuring NC to make Anet do and how much of the hell that gets rained down on the studio was misdirected.

Xenesis.6389:

dirtyklingon.2918:

they great members of the community will now descend upon this thread to blame you, the victim, for an assortment of crimes, from incompetence to RMT.

Looks like you called it…

And now you’re going to try to tell me there is no way the guy that just asked how to check their computer for a keylogger didn’t somehow have his account compromised right?

@ the OP. Most keyloggers are classified as Trojans. A virus scan should pick them up easy enough, but some can be dodgy. If you are using Windows, you should start up the computer in safe mode and run a full scan. Unless you have something truly nasty, that will find any issue.

In Underworld it was Ghastly summoning stones. Good luck getting in a group if you couldn’t show the party leader you had a stack.

In PvP it was hard to get in a group unless you could demonstrate you were above rank 6, at least.

As Andrew mentioned, it doesn’t matter if there is a gear score to display or not. Or if Anet did their best to remove any kitten waving. Players will make up a metric by which to judge each other by to get the type of person they want in their group.

11 hours ago Quidy felt strongly enough to let us know he was uninstalling the game and going to play somewhere else.

Well into the evening now he can be found in Queensdale running around care-free doing heart quests.

This is why fare-well threads get deleted and why no one takes the threats seriously.

Glad you are still enjoying the game.

dirtyklingon.2918:

they great members of the community will now descend upon this thread to blame you, the victim, for an assortment of crimes, from incompetence to RMT.

A spade is a spade yo. Accounts don’t just randomly get hacked. Do you know how long a dictionary attack takes if they have the email address? Two days of non-stop login attempts. Any of which results in an email authentication.

Brute force methods on strong passwords would take over two centuries.

So this guy was the victim of a sophisticated hacker that targeted him specifically to get both his email and GW2 account information…or he recycled passwords or used RMT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

Email authentication is there, security warnings and tips were there, even mobile key authentication is in beta. But a company can’t protect someone from themselves.

All that said…there should still be a remote way to disconnect unauthorized users. There are LAN centers all over the world. It’s not inconceivable someone would accidentally leave the remember information box checked. And that’s just one hypothetical reason to force a DC (I worked in a LAN center in college and people did this CONSTANTLY with WoW and facebook accounts).

Because most of them are just a lame grab at attention or people trying to stir up trouble. As you see them, add those people to your friends list and see how of those people actually leave the game. 9/10 of them are just blowing smoke out there kittens.

Why leave short posts on the board that serve to stir discontent when they mostly come from lying players?

This idea I can get on board with. Or at the very least get to work on the LFG tool or even a LFG chat channel. I’m sitting in LA now and for every one line of actual conversation trying to be had there are eight lines of LFG spam.

It’s reminiscent of before they had the trade channel in GW, when it was impossible to actually chat with everyone else because of all of the WTS WTB spam.

Danikat.8537:

No they didn’t. None of these things were in the game at launch (it didn’t even have a cash shop then) and apart from extra character slots and storage they weren’t added until the game had been out for 4 years.

I meant out of the gate with the store launch . I didn’t think that would need to be specified. But there you go.

It opened with stuff in it players would buy because it’s stuff ArenaNet players would have bought themselves. I doubt any Anet emps are dropping cash for chests. You haven’t heard any of them jump in here and defend those scams have you? Because they dislike them as much as we do, they just can’t do anything about it.

But way to pick out a single detail you thought was a historical inaccuracy instead of commenting on anything else relevant to the topic. /thumbs-up

The post I quoted from you didn’t say you hated dungeons. It said “forced to grind” for the purposes of keeping up with everyone else.

I pointed out that there are lots of activities that players can grind for an advantage over players that don’t. And I asked if you felt “forced” to do those. Because if you don’t then it’s just being hypocritical. You were deliberately ignoring all of those other factors to shine light on the one you have the latest problem with.

Also, WvW always devolves to running with a zerg or standing on a wall raining AOE. Dress it up as much as you like to feel you are doing something more unique, but that’s what the mode breaks down to.

And the devs have already told us, more than once I believe, that the items will also be available in WvW for the people that spend most of their time there. If you decide you cant get it fast enough that way and need to grind a dungeon for it, that’s your prerogative. But like other posters have mentioned, nothing is forcing you to do anything…except maybe your own feelings of pixel inadequacy in an imaginary rat-race.

This is a personal theory. There is strong evidence backing it, but its still a theory…

Before launch, and the details of the cash-shop were released, Nexon purchased a large number of shares in NCSoft. Not long after that purchase it was announced that Crystin Cox from Nexon was joining the ArenaNet team to work on the cash-shop.

I believe that since GW2 was expected to be NCsofts big earner that Nexon strong armed them as a large share holder to put someone at ANet to protect their investment.

This is sort of a corporate nepotism that means Crystin has a huge amount of influence over the cash-shop and there really isn’t much Anet senior management can do since she is protected by corporate politics.

The writing is on the wall. This lady produced Maple Story. You can take a look at Maple Story’s cash shop online. It’s nothing but different tiers of mystery chest. What have we had in the cash shop since launch? Mystery chests, followed by more mystery chests for events, and even more mystery chests for content releases.

Not only are we seeing more chests, but the things people had been buying have been removed from direct purchase and made as chance items in chests. Like Halloween minis to Lost Shore minis.

ArenaNet knows their audience and they know what people want. Out of the gate with GW they gave us make-overs, skins, name changes, character slots and storage. Mercenaries later were a really cool addition and outside of the box.

Do you think they just forgot who we and they were over the last few years? No. But there is someone in charge of that cash shop that _ doesn’t_ know us. The GW audience, especially the core franchise fans, are much different from the Maple Story audience. Yet she is still trying to force feed us chests at every opportunity. It really is borderline insulting.

Columba.9730:

Not literally forced, but unless we keep up with the JOneses in WvWvW and not get curb stomped, then indirectly, I am being forced.

Are you forced to grind for gold to buy siege weapons in WvW to keep up with those that do? Were you forced to server hop, when you could, to grind the jumping puzzle for blueprints like other servers were doing? Are you forced to grind up influence for your guild to keep up constant WvW buffs because the “Joneses” might be in guilds that do?

What about grinding commendations for WvW gear that has stats which can only be found there and with dungeon tokens, do you have a full set of that like the Joneses?

Of all the things that would have an actual impact in wvw, you say you are being forced to grind for items that mean next to jack and nothing when running around with a zerg or sitting on a tower wall.

Some of you people are seriously like the Risen of the forums. Having a very single minded, narrow perspective on things with no regard to anything else in the system. “Gear…bad….”, “Essence…die”, “Trolls come”.

Some of you had to have realized by this point that its not as bad as everyone was hyping it up to be and are just clinging on as a matter of pride. Let it go.

Xpiher.5209:

Too bad its bind on acquire. I don’t care if you don’t need it until level 99. The point is RNG is bad game design.

And how many games have you designed? How many classes have you taught on the subject? How many books have you had published on game design?

Every MMo, Rpg, A-Rpg, several popular RTS and FPS, and most kittening board games rely heavily on random number generation or random procedural occurrence.

You may want to educate yourself a bit on games, game theory, design principles, standard practices, and even historical evolution of game design.

Because something isn’t to your liking doesn’t mean it’s bad design, especially when that particular mechanic is so prevalent to core game design itself that there are workshops during programming and design conventions to discuss the best way to make random more random.

NaughtyProwler.8653:

You need to stop holding on to the idea that non-subscription with gems is an automatic winning formula. Even if people continue to play, but boycott the gem store (which some have already posted they would do), that is not a win due to bandwidth and maintenance.

As mentioned before, Guild Wars survived for years after the last expansion was released on storage slots, character slots, make-overs, and skins. It’s not “holding on to an idea”, it’s seeing first hand that the model is sustainable. DDo went free to play with micro-transactions and has been more profitable from than when the game had a sub. That worked for Turbine because it wasn’t designed around the time sinks that sub games have. Just like GW and GW2 weren’t.

And you make a really naive assumption that people who “boycott the gem store” are actually sticking to their convictions. Its more likely since they are emotionally invested enough to take the time to make forum posts, that they are just blowing smoke. Like the dozens of people on here that have said they quit and are uninstalling the game, but can still be seen online on a near daily basis. Maybe you should stop holding on to the idea the whiners and “boycotters” are actually following through with their threats.
More than a few of them were probably ranting on here about never buying gems again and then buying dyes/minis or storage five minutes later.

hydeaut.1758:

AcidicVision.5498:

In fact, I know that’s the case, because 99% of LA didn’t even know about ascended gear.

Yes, you´re probably right here, the majority may not be against ascended gear and you gave the best reason why – though, don´t know why, your arguments seem still kind of flawed to me.

I better get over to the other thread where a handfull of whiners made over 10000 postings in a few days, maybe I´ll find out.

My fault. That was poorly worded. But had you read the entire post or one I quoted the context would have been clear. I didn’t mean that 99% (lets say 9/10) people didn’t know about ascended gear and only 1% did. I meant that not 9/10 people did know.

The post I quoted said that 99% of LA were complaining about the new gear. My retort was that his claim was impossible because of that 99% of people in LA, some people liked it, some didn’t, some just didn’t care, and some didn’t know anything about it.

Hope that was clearer so you can put your condescension back in its cage.

NaughtyProwler.8653:

So one game that is a success vs several that are failures and you want me to think this game will be as resilient as WoW? Really?

Those games all had subscriptions and were fundamentally broken or incomplete at launch. Most people are not ok with paying $15 a month for something that doesn’t work or isn’t done. And they will still perform poorly after they have gone F2P because they were designed around a sub model and have horrendous time sinks and grind.

GW2 has no sub fee, the campaign was complete at launch from start to finish (looking at you AoC), WvW was up, running and worked (Illum says hi)…I could go on, but you get the point.

Not to say launch did not have its problems and bugs. Stuck skill points or hearts that prevented map completions were particularly frustrating. But, comparing those games to this one is pointless. They are different animals.

Btw, Guild Wars was a resilient as WoW. Self-sustaining, profitable, and supported fully for over half a decade. It also didn’t have a monthly fee. That’s a factor you can’t really downplay.

NaughtyProwler.8653:

Honestly, I’m not here to trash the game but get them to fix what wasn’t originally broken before this patch. This isn’t out of anger or sick enjoyment or whatever other labels you want to use, it is out of necessity to try to save this game before it sinks. Get that through your head!

A buddy’s girlfriend spent $120 on gems for chest to get MINI PETS. Her character is only level 30 something. She doesn’t even really play, she just too-ra-loos around areas killing stuff and harvesting and considers that a good time.

My wife would never put her credit card into a game. She scoffs at the idea of spending cash on virtual goods. But bought a gem card from Best Buy when she was there shopping for other things because somehow buying that card was different than just buying the gems in the game. Don’t tell me how this doesn’t make sense, I know.

The point is, there are plenty of people out there like them. Naive or just don’t care and have some extra money so they buy stuff without putting a ton of though in to it. I buy max bag slots for all of my characters. It’s convenience. I’m not going to make my play-time more inconvenient as some sort of misguided protest against a patch. And I’m sure there are plenty of players like me.

Anet likes the money they are getting from the base of players that are active on the forums. But if you take that sub group of players, and then divide if further into those that are so unhappy they are “quitting” or “not buying gems anymore”, and then divide that further into the number that actually do quit playing and those that have bought gems before but don’t again…well, you can see how small that number gets.

Those guys aren’t the ones keeping the lights on at the Anet offices.

Generally there has been a lack of conviction on the parts of those users. Like I posted earlier, and anyone can check for themselves using their friendslists, most of the people that say they quit are still in the game almost every day. I bet they are also still buying gems and trying to get ascended gear/account bound dyes/legendaries/dungeon tokens and all of the other things they come on here and say are ruining the game.

John Lucier.5486:

Interesting considering all my guild chats and 99% of the map chat in LA (not counting the lfg Fotm) are badmouthing the ascended gear, and justifiably so.
So much for the minority. If you take 100 people from multiple facits in game and 99 are against the ascended gear, you can therefore say the majority does not want the changes, even if the total population is something like a million or even 2.
The forums against it as well just make it oh much more obvious the majority is against ascended gear

I disbelieve. The opinion of my guild as a whole is different. And the tone of /m, from what I seen all weekend long, was generally positive. People were having fun with Fractals and trying to discover the recipes. There were a few people screaming about treadmills and ascended gear being a problem, but largely those people were treated like the bum on a corner with a cardboard sign that had “Jesus is coming” scribbled on it in feces. They were ignored.

I would be inclined to believe that maybe there’s a difference in attitudes between servers, but overflow meant we were all intermingled. So I can’t even give you that consideration.

Perhaps your guild doesn’t like it because you don’t like it. Birds of a feather flock together. It would be weird if they all loved it but you. And perhaps the few complaints jumped out to you in /m because those were the ones you agreed with. In fact, I know that’s the case, because 99% of LA didn’t even know about ascended gear. People with friend invites were asking noob questions, some people were indifferent and were looking for groups for story, others didn’t know Fractals and Lost Shore were two different areas and a lot of people could care less about ascended because they were under lvl 80 and wanted to do the dungeon and events since they scaled up.

So you are bad at math, bad at reading, or are a selective listener.

Awards being level appropriate is fair. You get something you can use or sell, and max level, highly desirable items still retain their value. What would have happened to the prices of lvl 80 exotics if two million people suddenly got two apiece at the same time?

The only thing that could potentially make it more fair, would be if they made sure chest loot was usable by the character that looted it. If I only have a lvl 55 Mesmer and lvl 80 Guardian and Thief, then a lvl 55 rare rifle or piece of medium armor is pretty useless. It can’t event be salvaged for ecto and would only fetch a few silver from TP.

But if that happened then the TP in general would probably dry up of anything below lvl 80 since everyone was getting stuff they could use. Only undesirable weapons and stat combinations would ever be posted.

So in short…awards are fine. They are as they should be for other things to keep working. You have something else to look forward to at 80 now.

Forum posts aren’t really indicative of the over-all attitude towards the game.

If you pay attention though you’ll notice it’s the same hand-ful of people that complain and try to stir up a frenzy over everything. And they perpetuate each other by going to one another’s threads and agreeing or “furthering the cause” as they seem to think. I could give you five that have posted in every single gripe thread since launch. Multiple times.

Fun game: If you are browsing the forums while playing and come across something where a dozen people “quit and aren’t coming back because argharghargh”, add them to your friends list and see how many are still running around having a good ol time.

People aren’t quitting. And it’s rather hypocritical they come here and call Anet liars for whatever reason, then lie to the community about going away.

Dude…everything is RNG. Ecto for crafting high level stuff comes from random rare drops, T6 mats come from random mob drops, even if you buy those things it was from stuff you sold and the most profitable were still chance drops.

And from the recipes I have seen, you only need one essence to craft a Ascended item. You also get an ascended ring as a reward for beating level 10.

srsly. Just play the game and you will end up with what you need eventually. Every one I have been doing fractals with found in essence in the first 1-8 levels. But even if they didn’t find one until lvl 15, they still didn’t need it sooner than that because Agony isn’t a huge factor yet.

So many of you posting with some agenda against the dungeon failing to see the point. Its meant to be “end game” content. A dungeon that escalates in difficulty so it can never really be mastered or memorized and run through routinely.

Agony may seem like an artificial difficulty mechanic, but people are not taking in to account things like the monsters getting extra abilities at higher levels, doing more damage, changing paths or more densely populating areas, environmental traps moving faster, new environmental dangers being added, a familiar boss suddenly being something entirely different. Those are all also part of Fractals.

The level gating is to reward the players that have beaten higher difficulties. Opening it up totally undermines that. So for it’s purpose it works.

My OP was to encourage players against totally discriminating against lower level folks so it’s easier to find groups for everyone down the road. To decrease the instances of lower level players making slower progress because higher level players wont group with them, and higher level players sitting around waiting for groups because there aren’t four other people around at their level. And the higher they get, the more of a problem that will be. If you are spending more time looking for a group than it would take to finish a complete run, maybe its time to help some people get closer to your level.

As a friendly reminder to players…

You shouldn’t overlook players for Fractal runs because they are getting started or a few levels lower than you. In fact, it’s in the community’s best interest to take a little time now and then to help those that might be on the lower end.

The problem you will run in to with the mentality of “LFM FotM lvl10+” is that you are climbing a pyramid. The closer you get to the top, the narrower the pool of potential party members you have. The more you neglect lower level players, the more you contribute to narrowing that pool. When you do finally manage to get a group and you level 3 – 4 more times, all you have done is furthered the gap between yourself and other prospective party members.

A working example…today I seen a person “LF3M Fractal lvl4, 80s only”. I myself am lvl 8, but jumped in a group that could only do lvl3. Now maybe we just got lucky draws, or syngerized well and finished in really good time, but when we exited to LA after a successful run, that same person was now “LF1M Fractal lvl4, 80s only”. I got a group to 4 and we were going in for 5 before he even got started.

Had that player been willing to just party with some people a level or two lower that had time for multiple runs, he would have ended up helping others level, leveling himself, and making money from drops, and expanding the number of potential players for groups. Instead he sat in LA for over an hour spamming chat and accomplishing nothing.

There’s no point in getting to the top if there is no one there to play with.

Players having trouble finding a group:
Look for guilds that tout Fractal leveling and have some good people in them that don’t helping out. I don’t know how many times my guild-mates have “played down” to bring people up to speed, but the investment in time pays off. We know each other, we have voice chat, we play well together. Guild groups should be more efficient than pugs. So it benefits everyone to help your guildies get leveled up so they can help you and reduce down time later.

Guild leaders:
Encourage you members to help one another level up, if they are not. It means more influence. It means more team activity. There is no benefit to your guild if you have five people form a little clique and neglect the other members because they don’t want to “start over”.

Fractal leveling is a nice mechanic that can encourage team work and helpfulness in the community. You help players obtain higher levels, so they can help you and others down the road. If finding groups becomes an issue, it’s not a failure of the design. It’s a failure of the community behaving like a community.

Saying “hey, I don’t need this trait, it doesn’t help me, it doesn’t hurt anyone, Ill take MF instead” doesn’t break arithmetic. Its common sense…

Unlike expecting everyone to min/max traits (even ones they don’t need) thinking it will somehow help carry other people through content.

Crater.1625:

It’s amazing you can specifically address a flawed argument multiple times in the same thread and yet people will just repeat it back at you

It’s not flawed. It makes perfect sense. If a player excels at damage avoidance and mitigation, then 40 extra toughness or vitality means little to them. So it goes in MF so that trait slot can be a benefit.

if that same person goes down less (because of what they excel at) than most other people in the party, then you cant say that stat is effecting you or anyone else because it never came in to play. So you have no business telling people what they should be using.

’nuff said.

This is a ridiculous idea. It assumes all players are equal in gear and skill. That everyone is maximizing their stats and playing at the most efficient level possible. Essentially, all other things being totally equal between all members of the party, the guy that takes MF is contributing less.

But that’s not reality. In reality you could have a player in greens or rares that is just outright better than someone in full exotics. What do those stats mean if the player doesn’t know how to capitalize on their potential? They don’t mean squat, in case you were confused.

And shared MF is laughable. I know a Mesmer that uses a MF set and would bet money she would work circles around most of you. She is constantly on point and a top performer in dungeons. Meanwhile, I have pugged with players in high-end gear that were so pants on head stupid that I wished I could reach through the monitor and smack some sense into them. Now some of you are proposing players like the latter should get a stat bump from players like the former? Or that good players should not sacrifice stats they don’t need for an economy boost so they can carry more than their own weight and compensate for bad players?

You guys should think about this stuff before you just throw it out there.

Wendigo.7931:

Greyfeld.7104:

Way to misunderstand the patch notes.

These are additional daily achievements that are pvp-only, in addition to the regular pve-centric achievements. They do not effect your pve gameplay whatsoever.

They award achievement points. (did you see the word “completionist” above?) That’s why I play. So no, they do effect my gameplay. Way to read.

You are not a completionist. Completionists do the tasks for the sake of completion. It doesn’t matter what that task it is, how repetitive it is, how difficult it is. Because the task doesnt matter. The little number or bar that goes up when it’s done is all that matters.

You like to think of yourself as a completionist for whatever reason, but want everything to be tailored to your liking or come to you easily so you don’t have to make the full commitment.

Transfer to Dragonbrand and join my guild. We do dungeons almost exclusively, besides the random days everyone rolls an alt to power level so we have another character to…do dungeons with. Our entire purpose to exist is just so we have to spend as little time LFG and playing with randoms as possible, and when we do it’s a 4/5 guild group so the person can’t really act up for fear of das boot.

Pugs are bad. At their absolute worst when 1:1 interaction is involved and at their best when they are amassed into a giant zerg running in the same general direction as your purpose, but in that case they can barely be considered individuals, which makes them no longer people.

On the rare occasion you find a few good ones, befriend them immediately to start building a social circle for the things you like doing. It will slowly grow and you will be less dependent on the general population of kittenheads. That’s how I ended up with a guild ^.^

Chris said outright “We are not going to be releasing a new tier every three months” as a direct response to people screaming the sky was falling and posting “omgerz there will be a new tier every three months! ANet represents all that is evil and wrong! boo! boooooo!”

If we are talking about the same blog concerning infusions, its for infusions to be more specialized with regard to new mechanics. They can be tailored to fit content. That doesn’t indicate a raw stat increase. But I won’t discount the chance you read something I missed.

And Ascended are not the last tier for armor in the way they are not the last tier for weapons. There will be legendary armor. But just like Legendary weapons mirror Ascended stats, the Legendary Armor is expected to also.

So other than wildly pessimistic speculation and pure paranoia, there is still no good reason to stay or jump on that vertical progression/treadmill bandwagon.

So, after the Ascended set and Insfusions are rolled out in their entirety (since they are coming piece-meal so we can get them as they come instead of being overwhelmed by grinding for everything at once)…where is the vertical progression?

Legendaries will share stats. It’s been said over and over this is to fill in a gap and accommodate a mechanic and new tiers won’t be added. To have progression you would have to keep going. To have a treadmill there has to be another tier, then another.

Soo….everyone is just being paranoid and blowing smoke out their kittens basically?

Also, worth noting the feelings of the player base at large do not reflect the feelings of forum users. It may be anecdotal, but in /m on my server yesterday everyone was pretty excited for the changes and outright mocking the people on the forums that have been throwing hissy fits.

So things like — “Lots of us are quitting over this and I doubt this change is going to help the game that much, because many of the people it appeals to also like things like raids, specfic roles, addons, etc.” -- are pretty hyperbolic and probably why noise in game is taken more seriously than on the forums.

Exaggerations and empty threats of quitting (yesterday I again checked a handful of people that “quit over this and were never coming back”) and nine out of ten were online and playing at some point between 7pm-3am EST) pretty much invalidate any arguments and opinions you could have because it shows you’re clearly unreasonable.

One new tier does not vertical progression, or a treadmill, make.

I had a Wii, the most fun I had with it was making little homebrew apps and experimenting with the accelerometers.

So the thought of using the extended experience stuff on my TV and controlling it with an independent touchscreen display is exciting.

Skill activation, inventory management and chat via the touch-screen? Superfluous UI elements, maps and additional monster info? Solves the problem of lack of input and communication methods using traditional console controllers and opens up so many neat possibilities.

Realistically…it’ll never happen. But srsly, how cool would that be?

I know that as soon as the dev kit leaks, one of the first things I am going to try is writing wrappers around the extended experience API that will let me use my Wii U and controller as a GW2 “command hub”.

The thing I find interesting is the really transparent shifting in items…

During Halloween, players were pretty unanimously disgusted over the chests. Usually chatter on forums doesn’t mirror what people are saying in /m. In that case basically everyone was raging everywhere.

So, a lot of the people who bought gems purchased the pet pack instead. Since those were the only “guaranteed” Halloween items and gems had already been purchased. This was a visible transition. At first there were a handful of pets on display and people screaming about keys. Then there was no noise about keys and a TON of pets EVERYWHERE.

Now, instead of taking that observation and coming to the conclusion people would rather spend money, and more money at that, on a sure thing…it was decided to just put the pets, items people like and bought by default because they weren’t a gamble, into a gambling mechanism that people didn’t want and are more reticent to spend money on.

GW2 is not Maple Story. Consider the audience.

You weren’t around for Halloween were you? See, they did this same thing with BLC and keys. And people were really mad. Players pretty much declared en masse that they were done buying keys.

So…Anet introduces a new chest for an event that doesn’t require keys.

Their solution to people raging over spending money to unlock chests on a gamble was to sell unlocked chests instead.

I think Crystin may have totally missed the point somewhere…but this still amused me and had me laughing out loud for a good few minutes. It just didn’t amuse me enough to make me want to spend money on a slot machine again.

These changes are pretty upsetting. In GW1 they left Ele and Warriors alone for years and told people to “figure it out” when a large portion of the player base was screaming about IWAY and spikes.

But now Thieves get a lot of QQ from other classes, even though there are very valid ways to counter our non-sense, and devs keep taking baseballs bats to our knees because of it. What happened to letting people learn and adapt?

Every other class (minus Guardian) was buffed significantly. Warriors get even more utility despite being the top profession in PvP and PvE and thieves get half a page a page heart-break.

I liked seeing that PvP emotes are incorporated now GW1 style and was excited to get in there to rank up. But I will def be playing a Warrior. I play to relax and have fun, not to feel like I am ice-skating up-hill to get glory.