Guild Wars 2

I have no problem with them using facebook. Understandably news reaches more people there. It just seems really strange that their news about their game or their studio isn’t on their website first.

It would just seem…tidier if update, promotional and press release information flowed from here. Instead of it flowing to here from various sources.

Agreed. I haven’t touched facebook in months. It just got way to invasive for me to be comfortable with. Same with google+; however, I do regularly check the dev updates and announcements sections on here and their twitter.

But my most up to date news always seems to come from my girlfriend, who sees it on facebook and lets me know. Im getting the information third-hand (we told facebook, who told your girlfriend, who told you).

That update section already runs along the right, why not have a feed there that echoes Anet’s posts to twitter or facebook?

I hear about everything eventually. Seconds after an announcement anywhere on the internet there is usually a thread here created. But…I dunno…feels sort of like Anet CMs have their own guild, a twitter guild, and a facebook guild; seems like they usually rep the facebook guild and everyone else gets the info as it goes down the chain.

They have said plenty about this. Spectator mode is a must and is still being worked on. Also the paid servers are being added in for teams to use to start practicing and paid tournaments for high competition/high rewards. There are also some maps in testing.

When it debuts on ESL or MLG, it needs to be fully featured and easy to spectate/commentate. That takes time and a good bit of internal/community testing. I think it’s getting closer, step by step. But may be a little while yet before esports leagues are ready to kick it off.

bojangles.6912:

“If you have 100% exploration” any mmo that has exploration as a huge part of content says a lot. That is the worst excuse for content.

What? No. Huge parts of the game are jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons, dynamic events, meta-events. That is the content. And 100% explorations isn’t even like cartographer in GW1; the only thing it requires in GW2 is that you go to the landmarks in a zone that mark hotspots for things to happen.

When someone is saying “you don’t have 100% completion” there is stuff you haven’t done because there are areas you haven’t been that contain DUH DUH DUN content. Realistically you can even get 100% and not have done some really neat stuff because you rolled by between events or shortly after a meta event. The first time I cleared Sparkfly I managed to completely miss Tequatl. But map completion and achievements are the only metric we have now by which to gauge how much content has been seen and done.

I’m not sure you fully understand the game you are playing.

Has at least 16 skills (5 weapon skills + 5 weapons skills + 5 utility skills + profession mechanic), says he is bored using same five skills over and over…and thinks solution is to have more skills? I think…I dunno…use the other 11 maybe?

Also, there is a difference between playing the game and playing a game well. If you are tap-tap-taping the 1-3 num keys to get through things, then yes you are going to get bored. And you are making encounters exponentially longer than they need to be. I image you would be a nightmare to run a dungeon with since you probably add an hour or more to every run.

Now when you find two weapon sets that you are comfortable with and work with your play style, you trait to maximize that style, rune out to augment it, and pick utility skills to make it more flexible…then you have something going on and can do some really cool stuff.

If you can’t see a reason to use all of your skills, class mechanic and utilities and can’t see how traits and runes can make two identical skill bars play completely different, then perhaps the other posts saying this just isn’t the game for you hit the nail on the head.

GW never was and never will be about giving you 200 skills on the screen. It’s about finding your build and fine tuning it to make it more efficient and versatile, and then pitting it against dungeons and other players. And you aren’t fairing to well without using every tool they give you room for. That just isn’t some people’s thing.

As a general rule, initial development takes much much much longer than any subsequent content. Mechanics need to be designed, tested and iterated on, assets need to be created, deals need to be made with middle-ware vendors, tools need to be designed, tools need to be learned, audio needs to be recorded/edited. And that’s just the absolute minimum it would take. There are hundreds of other little processes that come along with creating a new game.

It took them five years to develop, but now that they have their footing it may only take six months to a year to create expansion content of equal quality because the systems and tech are already in place.

Look at what we have had/will have so far in the few months since release: launch, Halloween, November content patch, Wintersday.

Anet has pretty continuously been feeding us content on a monthly basis.

If you are new to the company and franchise, check out their history:
Prophecies, Sorrows Furnace update, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North, Battle Isles, Codex arena, Embark Beach, War In Kryta, Winds of Change, Holidays, weekly events.

In short…there will be crap for you to do. And if you burn yourself out trying to consume it all as fast as possible and decide to take a break for a while, there will be new stuff waiting when you get back.

I’d like a LFD tool and it has nothing to do with not wanting to socialize. I would just like to maximize what I can do in my play time and some dungeons are harder to find groups for than others.

Unless you are doing the long since determined “easiest/quickest” path for each dungeon, then it can take half an hour or longer to get a group together. That’s hours of lost play time with consideration to the dungeon master and dungeon runner achievements.

It would be nice to be able to queue up for a group for one of the lesser played dungeons and then go about crafting, harvesting, doing my daily, some sPvP matches, or DEs until four other people come along.

Anyways, Im pretty sure Anet already acknowledged somewhere that this is something they are working on. We really don’t need to bicker about it or prove a case for its existence. It’ll be coming eventually.

Agreed.

This does seem like a really specific and minor thing to put resources in to. Meaning it mechanically effects nothing, doesn’t block anything, and isn’t causing performance or stability issues. But it was really jarring when I put the witch hat on my Psylocke inspired thief that has long, luxurious, purple hair…and suddenly bald.

As far as I know though, this has always been how it worked. My thief didn’t seem to have hair with the free baseball cap we got at launch also. But that was a novelty costume thing that didn’t really fit with the world (like goofy boxing gloves), so I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I just put that hat in storage and never thought of it again.

Some visual indication of still having hair underneath hats and hoods would be a really nice thing to have eventually.

I wonder if this is a design limitation or an engine limitation.

Mine showed up a soon after the game’s release date. Wish I remembered more specifically, I just recall having the game for a little bit before the soundtrack showed up in the mail.

It was a signed copy, but i’ll admit the packaging seemed a bit cheap and flimsy. I actually took out the CDs and put them into a booklet and stored the signed case in my CE tin because I was scared it would fall apart from being opened and closed.

You should definitely dig up that order number and email their CS.

The two unknowns are more likely for the November 15th content patch than they are for thanksgiving.

BUT the original GW did have a treat weekend the coincided with Thanksgiving. Monsters dropped pie and apple cider. There was also a Sweet treat weekend that coincided with Easter that had chocolate bunny and egg drops. Oh, and lucky weekend around St. Patrick’s day.

These weren’t events with giant patches and activities on the scale of say Halloween, Wintersday or the Chinese New Year. No real decorations. Just a few themed consumables that provided temporary buffs and gave a nod to the holidays.

Come back in here and let us know how that works as far as quality, options, usibility and what kind of performance hit the game takes. I’ve never used or heard of that one.

I dont know about automatic compression and uploading, but Fraps is pretty much the standard for video capture in games. An alternative is MSI Afterburner which IMO is much better than Fraps, but a bit more complicated to use.

If you are using Windows then you can use Windows movie maker to edit and compress without having to download anything else.

Xsplit is used mostly for live streaming to sites like justintv or twitchtv.

Dejavu.2349:

Is there a solution that wouldn’t have punished PVE-motivated transferers?

PvE motivated transfers like exploiting the system to harvest tier 6 crafting materials, or dragon spawns, or mini dungeon chests, or botters? Or PvE motivated transfers by players that want the passive world buffs for being on a winning server?

Before I kicked him, I had a guildie that was server hopping every week to get on a winning server for the xp buff for crafting and additional resource harvesting.

Thats the type of PvE motivated transferring that has been running rampant. Bloating high population servers, encouraging migration from smaller servers, negatively impacting the market and empowering botters and RMT.

The problems it caused for PvE may have been less direct and immediate than the problems it caused for WvW. But there were still issues.

Why are some of you just out-right ignoring facts and that this is the best intermediate solution for the game as a whole, in favor of thinking this is some kind of love letter to PvPers? Defies rational thought.

Most of the times I have seen “random crashes” have been GW crashing itself because there is not enough memory available. Most evident on 32bit systems. If that’s the case you can either upgrade to 64bit and get some more RAM, or run GW on lower settings without any other apps or web browser open and set your desktop background to none. There are other things you could do with virtual memory on the Windows side, but im not familiar enough with them to explain the process.

Im a big fan of the Ebon vanguard weapon skins. They don’t have effects but they have their own style thats not similar to much else in the game. Unlike the Seraph stuff which is about as vanilla as you can get.

oooh Ring of Fire was a really good guess. What about the Battle Isles? Are either of those still even above water after Orr rose?

I have a feeling its the Domination of Winds, Tengu zone. But on the map that area isn’t an island, so they may be saving it for an expansion.

Looks like we’ll have plenty to do coming up. Post Halloween catching up, content patch in November, Wintersday in December. And it was all within a few months of launch.

…Nah. I don’t buy it. I mean, out of the hundreds of thousands of people out there I am sure there are some cases where people legitimately jump servers to play with friends.

But I would bet money 9/10 people that are QQing about guesting and the limited transfers affecting their ability to “play with friends” are just upset they cant exploit the system any more to get double the Orichalcum, Ancient wood, Mini dungeon chests, Orr Meta events, and dragon spawns.

And this is a case of the good of the many. One third of the game (WvW) was totally busted because of transfer abuse. The rankings at this point mean nothing. And as I pointed out above, PvE players and bots were taking advantage of transfers to the detriment of server populations. A massive percentage of the game was negatively impacted to provide a convenience for the minute number of people that used it like they were supposed to.

This solves a few of the issues with those things, but if you have somehow not managed to get on the same server as your friends and they have not managed to find a way on to yours…
– dungeons can still be run cross server
- sPvP can still be played cross server
- even WvW can be played cross server once a week because you can likely still transfer to a server you are matched against (which was never supposed to be allowed).

Try looking at the game as a whole for a minute and how this helps server populations, WvW, server stability and community building for a huge portion of the player-base.

Srsly, vulture. Just come up with a different name. You don’t know that person’s story. They might have a sentimental attachment to that character. Maybe it was a teen with a social disorder or learning disability that used GW as tool to over-come their limitations. Maybe that account is seven years old and the owner is off fighting in a war, waiting for the days he can come back and appreciate the simple things he might have taken for granted, and finally get to play a game he has been waiting for for years with the descendant of one of his oldest virtual friends.

Perhaps a tragic and unfortunate event befell someone before their time and their friends have name added to their friends list in memorial. Could you imagine if it was shown as “online” one day? You would cause people to freak out.

Stop circling the carcasses of GW accounts and start your own legacy :p

Example 1: The six worms and worm boss in TA
Example 2: The torch section of Rhiannon’s path in CoF
Example 3: Mark I and II golems in SE.

I can keep going…but just looking at those three you can see how stopping, deciding where people will go and what they will do before running in mashing your face on the keyboard will make the encounters smoother and faster and leave you with less of a repair bill at the end of the dungeon.

You know those “tricks” you talk about? The ones where people know “stand here and have the thief do this in this room…”? You think they just made those up? No. That stuff comes from people that play and actually think about how to complete something and the information trickles down to all of the other players.

You want to narrow that down to single mobs? Groups of Wardens and Necros will chain KD players and can easily wipe a party in TA if a group just rushes in. The pack of Icebrood wolves at the beginning of HoTw will at best be a long chaotic fight, and at worst kill half the party if the group immediately aggoes without stopping to consider them.

Oh, but what about smaller meta events that require communication beyond “3…2…1…”, well you can get the light passing or golem escort sections of Arah done on the first try or you can die a few dozen times hoping you get lucky.

Do we need to continue?

I like farming the GW events. Do you have any idea how many of Dhuums skeletons I have trapped in little candies and handed over the to Mad king over the years? Thousands. Tens of thousands.

Wintersday was usually less exciting for me, but I always made sure to farm up enough candy cane shards to get each weapon type. I gave the Jingle bear a good shot or two at.

And I hate farming. I refused to do voltaic spear farms, and faction farming, trolls/griffons/raptors or anything of the like. But something about hoarding holiday stuff tickles my fancy.

I think people are having the same compulsion for the clocktower. Everyone kicked and screamed and swore in its general direction, but lots of players just keep repeating it for hours after their initial completion.

I need to get back to dungeon running…but as long as mad king dungeon is there thats what I’ll be doing.

Agenteusa.6380:

It’s pretty easy to tell from most of the posts like this the people that just like difficult stuff and would like more complicated mechanics, and the ones that complain the dungeons are too easy because they can, and choose to, die their way through each room instead of doing things efficiently.

Since you seem to fully approve the mechanics and people who get one shotted on snipers I would like to know from you what’s your take on CoF p2 when Magg has to cross the field.

You surely know what I mean right? Along with all the other shortcuts people take cause they aren’t fun and don’t bring anything to the table.

A few people pick up extinguishers, the rest run behind them across the platforms and CC or knockback the mobs as you go. Once you get to the rock, they drop aggro anyways. Waypoint back to the path and do the next part. Zero deaths, zero downs, zero time wasted. Not sure what you think the problem with that is?

lollie.5816:

@above guy – no it’s just the mob AI is simplistic. If you got to see the coding on mob AI here and then compared it to another game I think you’d realise.

Would you believe I have/sometimes still do program AI? It’s entirely possible you have used or played something I worked on if you play a certain genre of games on 360/PS3, or went through any sort of convoy training in the Army in the last year.

Guess it doesn’t matter either way. Yes, I recognize the AI, and the methods used, and could make some pretty good guesses on how they are implemented. And have some good ideas as to why they are implemented as they are.

To begin with, AI and path following in particular are incredibly expensive in terms of resources. They can also be relatively slow. The more complex you try to make them, the slower and more expensive they get. We won’t get in to the complications of complex AI and the UDP protocol (which is what I assume GW2 is using, never checked, but its standard for MMOs).

The most reasonable compromise for capability in regard to performance and data transmission is would be something along the lines of a simple state machine and a greedy path following algorithm. And it looks like that’s pretty much what we have now. But some of the states aren’t available unless there are a certain amount of people around, which is a pretty neat twist.

If you are wanting some award winning, industry recognized, evolutionary AI to come from an MMO… that’s a long wait for a train won’t come.

I think OP and other critics are missing something really important here. The general complaint is “run, run, die”, “fight boss, die run back”, “fight, res, fight, res, waypoint” and finally “there is no strategy or team work”.

Im going to let you in on a secret. :: looks around :: srsly, this is going to blow your mind…the strategy is not die, have to contantly res or waypoint . Iknowrite?? It was always there. Right in front of your face, but you couldn’t see it.

Two snipers at the end of a hall? Teleport mechanics, shield mechanics, stealth mechanics, group stealth combos, invulnerability, aegis, confusion. And there’s no rush to talk with your group and see what they want to try or experiment with. You can even change all of your skills pre-encounter to adjust to the situation.

The content doesn’t fake difficulty. It forces players to stop for a second. Think. Adjust and engage. Who’s fault is it you are impatient or joined an impatient group and got shot in the face?

It’s quite common at this point in the game for groups to be running dungeons and not having a single full-death, yet alone an entire party wipe. In the paths I have done the most (AC, TA), I don’t get so much as downed any more. But it’s a challenge. It’s difficult. And it took some experimenting to see what will and wont work. And as a benefit, when you don’t die…the dungeon goes faster. Yep, you get done sooner and can do other stuff. It’s amazing! Who would have thought taking a minute to figure out how to do something right would be quicker than getting downed/dead over and over.

It’s pretty easy to tell from most of the posts like this the people that just like difficult stuff and would like more complicated mechanics, and the ones that complain the dungeons are too easy because they can, and choose to, die their way through each room instead of doing things efficiently.

More titles? Sure. Easier titles? Nah.

After completing both, my mind was blown that there was a title for the pumpkin carving side quest, but not the rage inducing Clocktower. I mean…for one I just too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra ran around the continent carving up pumpkins as I went along, and for the other I physically, emotionally and mentally abused myself hours for that moment of sweet sweet triumph.

I also wish titles were more visible. But I’ll reserve complete judgement on that until I see how they are listed on the character inspection screen…whenever that comes out.

Yeah, best of luck to you all. Stay safe.

Not sure what waste-land you are pulling a Nightcrawler in, but WP really isn’t that big a deal. Follow these easy steps for total mitigation of WP fees:
1. Waypoint.
2. Pick a direction and run until you see an orange circle (usually 15-30 seconds).
3. Enter the orange circle.
4. Do the thing that the circle demands.
5. When the circle is satisfied then you are given money, karma and experience + all the loot from monsters if the circle required killing.

If you have no time to screw around with circles, run in the direction of your goal and kill some stuff along the way. This is usually the case for Dragon spawns or meta-events; the rewards for those will reimburse you travel costs and more. Possibly lots more.

If you just need to get to a town, go to the Mists, then go to Lions Arch, and then to a town portal. Its two more loading screens. Maybe 40 more seconds of your time.

The only way I can see anyone being affected by waypoint costs is if they are jumping between every single one in a map to expedite map completion. But even then, completion of a map rewards more than you would spend on the tolls.

Or maybe if they are role-playing a pacifist, vegan, animal loving, Patchouli smelling Tyrian hippy that is trying to get to level 80 only by doing non-violent philanthropic events. Then some money constraints might come in to play. But those characters shouldn’t be using waypoints anyways because I heard they are fueled by the tears of baby Quaggans.

People took a chance jumping the gun. Some assumed they knew the only ways to get them and tried to take advantage of that. I figured something like this would happen so I have been saving my mats, but not spending any money to craft anything right away.

Cant really blame the event for assumptions you made over somethings availability. Maybe next time a week long event rolls around you wait to see how it plays out instead of gambling a dozen or more gold within the first few days?

Not since the Mile High Achievement in CoD 4 have I been more frustrated with something in a video game, or had such a sense of triumph when beating it. At least with the clock tower I completed it before something got broken; I can’t say the same about Mile High.

Reapers rumble and Lunatic inquisition were both fun and challenging PvP style events. The labyrinth was fun and challenging and has chests that are rewarding enough considering the content and repeatability.

The scavenger hunt was fun and challenging so long as you didnt use the internet to cheat and actually tried to solve the riddles yourself and explored to find the ghosts. And the reward is a no level req item with nearly max lvl stats.

If you didn’t like any of those things…well sorry. A lot of people did. There was lots of stuff to do besides the puzzle. But I guess it’s impossible to completely please everyone.

Really though, its not that hard. Just takes patience and persistence. if you keep falling in the same spot then you are doing something wrong. Experiment with different paths and placement until you find what works for you.

Ive seen dozens of people fall in the same spot by doing the same thing time after time. Like they think its just going to magically work the next go. Change it up.

Also, fun is subjective. I had fun spending hours as a kid trying to unlock the Akuma fight in SSFII. I liked Ninja Gaiden. And most recently X-com is brutally difficult and lots of fun.

If I wanted an interactive movie or choose your own adventure story i’d play a JPRG. GW2 is great, but beyond Lupicus, the clock tower, and select sections in some of the explorable dungeons, there hasn’t been very much challenging PvE content at all. At least not on part with what we had in GW (ToPk, Uw, FoW, Urgoz, Hard mode EoTn dungeons, et cetera…). Albeit those were added in over time.

A little bit of content for the people that want to be challenged is A-ok. And a title of some sort for those that take up and complete the challenge is exactly what achievements are supposed to be for.

Human
Thief & Guardian
No Boost

Done and done. It’s really satisfying when you finally make it. And then for some reason there’s a compulsion to just keep doing it.

…make everyone Asuran sized seems like a solution that could be applied to almost everything.

Oh noes, soulbound! This was my fear. Now I have six alts I need to get through all of the Halloween stuff this weekend.

TonyHoyle.3458:

Ahh that explains it.. I’ve been looking all over – it’s in an area that’d be instant death for my squishy low level-ness. Maybe next year :p

Gendarran isn’t particularly high level. If you have a lvl 80 guildie or friend, they could run you there easily. I think I heard that you are auto boosted to 80 when you enter the Mad Kings realm.

What is the benefit of being in a group? Does everyone have to succeed to win? Are there switches multiple people need to hit? Are there things that kill you and require other players to be around to res you from? Is it PvPish or Roller Beetle Race-y and rewards bigger prizes to people that finish fastest?

If it’s time constrained, then its not like you are chatting away with each other. And if its random people each time you cant exactly strategize, meet up on voice chat or adapt to each other. So unless there is some sort of mechanic that encourages it, they might as well be NPCs or nothing at all.

Other than just making it bat-kitten crazy, which goes right along with the theme, has anyone noticed a reason for requiring others?

I hope the OP isn’t right. I knew something was going on with the fountain, but I was hoping it was just content fluff for the holidays and not anything permanent.

The LA fountain is iconic. Rebuilding it after the city sunk was sort of like a memorial, and I liked the lore behind all of the races contributing something different to it. Really a symbol for the whole hub-city excepting all comers and encouraging inter-racial peace thing LA has going on.

I was thinking it would be more along the lines of the Nightfall plot. The Mad King shows up and starts merging Tyria with his realm. Act 4 has the players stopping the merge and driving off the king, but some areas remain twisted and corrupt or have the “veil” between realms thin enough to jump between them. So the event scars Tyria forever, but not to the extent that the Dragons did.

Or maybe, the Mad King raised Zhaitan from the sea and reanimated or reinvigorated (since we didnt actually see the undead dragon die) him. We might see Os come riding in to Lions Arc mounted on a vengeful elder dragon!

lol. It’s 3pm. Not AM.

Also, as a matter of course, I add all the people that say they are leaving over something menial to my friends list to see how many of them actually stick to their guns. I think the longest I see one hold out was about four days.

So good luck to you sir. Im sure youll be enjoying the game again soon. Maybe spend the downtime figuring out your time zones.

Have you ever been on a vacation that you needed a vacation from? Like gone to Disney or something and everything had to be so tightly regimented that it was exhausting?

That’s sort of what GW Halloween events have been like for me. But that’s not to say they aren’t fun. Buy costumes, check out decorations, start doing Don’t Fear the Reapers on each of my characters I need titles for, farm skeletons of Dhuum for hhhoouuurrrsss, get burnt out on UW and do flavor quests, back to farming skeletons, get on Mad Kings Schedule so each of my characters make it to at least one appearance, community costume contest/scavenger hunt events, maniacally turn in thousands of mob-stoppers, take screen shots before decorations come down.

Then I soaked my fingers and wrists in ice and didn’t touch the game for about two weeks.

This event has been much more relaxed so far. I miss the binge playing and gathering as much as humanly possible in limited time, while also juggling characters to make sure everyone gets the stuff. But i’m getting old so it might be for the best.

Then you may want to have a friend log in for you. If the finale is the appearance of the Mad King, I’d wager some sort of novelty thing will be involved.

Kana.6793:

I don’t understand how the current system is a gimmick to make money, but putting Chainsaw straight in the shop at 500 gems isn’t?

It’s not. Not at all. You are 100% correct. Thats where the bit earlier in my post came from about perception vs. reality. In reality you are still spending the same amount of money, you end up with the same thing but had to take a few additional steps.

But the perception is, the customer bought something and has to throw it away and then buy the same thing again. 1 – most people don’t like throwing away something they just paid for. Especially if they are attached to it (like the ghost mini). 2 – there’s a psychological factor to consider in how someone feels about paying for three collectible things but then only ending up with one. 3 – people tend to not feel great about a purchase when they have to turn around and purchase the same thing again moments later.

As implemented now, it feels like a sneaky and underhanded way to sell more minis. Where as the other way, people would have spent the same amount of money but felt better about spending the money. And when people feel good about spending money, they spend more.

I am really, really hoping that this first holiday event has just been a trial and error experiment with regard to the cash-shop and what players will and won’t be receptive to.

I know Anet emps play the game. And I don’t see how any of them would ever think buying the same 3/4 of a set twice and throwing one of them away to get the final 1/4 would be enjoyable.

Minis really don’t do a thing. They are just a fun little collectible. Just about everyone buying them is doing so with collecting or re-selling in mind. So was there an absolute necessity to put a little caveat in there to weasel more money out of players that like to collect them?

No doubt the gimmick made a little bit of money. Not as much as some other things as I’ve only seen pretty few of them in LA server proper and overflows. And it just looks bad on the gem store.

Customer perception is everything in sales. So I think whoever is running the shop should take a look at how things like this will be received and how that could hurt future sales instead of what twists they can throw in there to make a few bucks right this minute. If that mini was put up for sale individually from the pack as a “limited time GW2 inaugural Halloween event miniature”, and made gold or orange while dropping the pack minis rarity one level below it…it would have sold like hot-cakes and not been another blemish on the gem-shops record.

*All this is taking in to account the only way to get all four actually does end up being buying a pack, forging a pack, then rebuying the same thing again. Doesn’t matter that you may be able to get it on TP. If someone still had to go through that process it still feels dirty.

…

There was a problem, it was addressed, and I feel addressed in a fair manner to everyone that participated. Some people will still be upset that they misinterpreted the words “chance” in the ads for the rare skin in chests. Some people threw away all of their tonics and that is unfortunate. It was really a lose/lose situation for Anet and there was no way to make everyone happy. Even if the skins alone were posted for purchase, then the people that have paid 30g+ in TP, or twice that much buying mats for the recipes would be enraged.

It was a problem that could have been foreseen, and could have been avoided, but it happened. And I appreciate Anet’s decision makers recognizing that and getting out a solution, that most reasonable people will find as fair, as quick as can be expected in software.

This incident can also be seen as indicative of how other community issues are handled. The first response from Regina regarding the chests was, and I paraphrase: “Its a rare chance, there were other ways to get it, tough luck”. But either her, or somebody else looked over all of the feedback again and seen a legitimate problem. So we heard later that “a fix was on the way”, and then we had one. The conditions of it were unfortunate, but this is an example of our voices being heard on the forums, deliberated on, and influencing changes. Because we don’t see something happening doesn’t mean nothing is being done. I have more confidence now, after seeing BLC-gate unfold from start to finish, that all of the posts regarding free transfers, skill points, class bugs, and bots are not being ignored but require more finesse than adding a recipe to the mystic forge.

Some people may not like the solutions or decisions that come from player feedback. But at least there are solutions and decisions that come from it. Most developers could care less about the players. I worked for one where the boss would print comments from forums and read them to the team for everyone to get a good laugh over how petty or clueless the person was. When you have developers that respect player input, you have every right as a customer to not like it. But respectfully disagree with it. Developers are people too, and I’m sure they recognize a few names from the forums at this point. Employees don’t want to become jaded with their work because it’s met with vitriol from the players at every turn. And players don’t want low quality, junk content because the employees didn’t care about what we thought and what they were doing.

To Anet, thank you for listening and taking action. Even knowing it will never please everyone.

To us as a community: “Don’t bite the hand that feeds” is a phrase that can apply both ways when considering the player/developer relationship. Both groups want something the other has or can provide.

With all that…I’m cool with a mod just locking the thread.

I was one of the ones to quickly raise my pitch-fork over the lack of festive items in the BLCs.

I never expected to get all, if any of the skins. And I am the kind of player that really digs that. Historically I buy every costume, do every event to get every hat for every alt, and collect enough candy cane shards to make every weapon. Anet holiday events are a tradition now that is celebrated along with the actual holiday in my household.
So when I bought 20 Black Lion Keys, feeling good about supporting the company and excited to see the neat new Halloween items, I was pretty furious when the chests were stocked with all of the normal crap I never cared about, never wanted, and never would have spent money on.

The marketing led me, and many other people to believe the BLCs were modified to fit the Halloween theme. And they weren’t. I realized this after the first two or three opened; however, keys are account bound and worthless for anything else so if you have them then you might as well use them.

The issue was not that there was an item gamble. The issue was not feeling entitled to getting the rares. The issue was not the idea that Anet was only rewarding those that could buy hundreds of keys. The issue was that I felt swindled by a company I trust into buying something I had decided I didn’t want a long time ago on the merit of it being modified to coincide with an event I have always had fun with and was looking forward to.

Enter Mad King Chests. This is what I thought the BLCs were going to be. Halloween tonics replacing mystery tonics; Halloween crafting materials replacing limited use, non-stacking black lion harvesting junk; a chance to get Halloween gear, but things to play with if you don’t. If you could get ghosts in a box, then I would have been downright giddy.

It was a respectable solution on their part. To take all of the crap I was never interested in and would have never spent money on and let me trade it back for the chest I was expecting to begin with. Also, due to the nature of drops from the BLC, I bought 20 keys, out of those I may have gotten 5 more keys and opened about 25 chests, I also had some chest stuff from looted or story mode keys along the way. I created 50 Mad King Chests. So not only did I get what I initially thought I was paying for, I got double back what I bought.
…

This ceased being about what people were going to get and more about if the company was going to recognize and respond to something that a good many cash dropping customers felt completely spurned by.

They recognized the issue and time and resources are being directed at creating some form of recompense. The snafu is over and done with now. There are a certain number of people that will not be happy with anything they come up with. Even a refund wouldn’t be enough because of the aggravation of it all. There are a certain number of people just won’t buy mystic keys again, ever, regardless of how this is resolved. And there are some that will inevitably scream “unfair” because a solution wasn’t implemented faster and all their BLC goods were trashed or sold. But the effort must be recognized…

There was a problem. We were basically told by CS, and I am paraphrasing “it was a random chance, suck it up”. That didn’t go over well. So now some effort is made to rectify the situation and perhaps the entire fiasco will weigh in to future cash-shop strategies to prevent it from re-occurring.

This is now more about the gesture of action being taken, rather than the problem just being ignored and all mention of it forbade and stricken from the forums. Thats worth trading 100 Black lions Axes for.

…chickens aren’t shiny?

I would like a list. I wouldn’t expect every detail but something like “5 new DEs added in Kessex, 1 new mini dungeon added in Frostgorge” would do just fine.

A nudge in the right directions rather than a detailed road map if you please.

I currently have a lvl 80 with 99.9% world completion (I am missing one Poi in a WvW keep that my server never seems to have an interest in) and a level 50 something that’s in the later parts of the game and has most of the map completed. The world is huge. It would be cool to see the new stuff, but finding it feels like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I understand the practicality of letting everyone discover the stuff. Without a checklist, 80% of the player population won’t flock to a single area waiting for a new DE to start trigger. But I get the feeling that it would actually be easier to see and do everything by making a new character and going to map completion, a third time, than it would be to try to hunt the stuff down on an existing character. Hrm…will probably wait until November content patch so I don’t have to start over again.

I heard a good one in LA last night…

How do Dwarfs sleep?
Like a rock.

If I recall, the costume and hat makers didn’t come until way down the line. Maybe in a meeting at some point they will re-come to the realization as to why they needed them to begin with.

I guess one could form the conspiracy that they take up slots because people don’t want to throw away things they paid money for. So costumes will eventually drive people to buy storage space to prevent having to trash their holiday outfits.

That does seem a bit sinister for Anet. Even after the whole BLC Halloween snafu. Just playing devils advocate before it comes up anyways.

But yes /cosigned on wanting costume and hat makers. At least they are account bound.

I learned that despite the trends laid down by other games, and despite ArenaNets design principles, people have formed their own expectations and standards based around die hard habits and the shock at having to adapt to non-gated content and progress and not having a bread crumb path to guide their play is met with an instinctively negative response.

A player may have accepted years ago in another game that to get the piece of gear he needs to be relevant enough to find a group to get the next piece of gear he needs, that he must grind this same dungeon and boss dozens of times and hope to get lucky. But for some reason that player thinks they should get dungeon gear from GW2 in one pass.

Some players remember the experience of an MMO and having to trudge around on foot for 30-50 levels while saving every single copper they came across so they would have enough money to buy a mount when they were high enough. Only to then find out that the level appropriate areas after most people attain mounts have everything spread further apart so the amount of time wasted traveling is roughly the same. But despite that, they will come on forums and complain about the cost of instant travel to anywhere in the world.

Pick your feature…

Crafting – we were used to having to watch a little bar slowly fill maybe or maybe not accompanied by some idle character animation. Painfully boring if you were crafting in bulk. Recipes were expensive and had to be hunted down, and crafted gear was almost always inferior to looted gear. In GW2 your crafting speed doubles for every item you make, you can discover nearly every recipe you want on your own and gain 15 levels for maxing a craft, and you can effectively gear yourself up to 80 if you so choose with items on par with or better than what you will loot and with the exact stats you want. But people complain it’s boring do to and there’s no point.

I could do this all day. But i’m sure everyone gets the idea. It’s a really interesting social commentary. You have a group of people reared on Oranges that are suddenly given Apples. They were self-reportedly sick or oranges, but the apples skin is too red, there aren’t enough seeds, the apple would be better if it were green, they only like apples cut in to slices, they are over oranges but these apples would be better if they had more orange like qualities. But despite all of the problems they have with apples, they join an internet community and wile away the day talking about them!

There is a grad student psychological thesis paper to be written there. What makes MMO players, apart from fans of other genres, want to be put in a Skinner Box? In a console game or non-mmo, we as players can adapt to new systems and mechanics to absorb the experience the game has to offer. But when an MMO comes out that removes the limitations players built habits around, everyone loses their kittening mind and doesn’t know what to do, they just default to “this new thing is bad”.

As an aside, the “new thing isn’t enough like old thing I don’t like it” mindset is exactly why video games are so derivative. Developers and publishers can’t afford to take chances with something new because even though everyone says that want something different, they are resistant to change. This is why we have things like: Medal of Duty Calls 45, Street Brawler IV: The eighteenth edition, WoW clone: WoW killer for realz this time.

I know what I want from an MMO, and other games for that matter. And that’s an experience different than the generic mold for the genre. For my money I want something new. Not an “Un-official, spiritual successor sequel made by another company to a game thats still available version 2.0: Now with Pokemon and Zombies!”. But never having participated in an MMO forum before (besides Guru for a brief stint before launch), and from the chatter here and on /m, I can say I learned a lot about MMO players.

Yep, I stand corrected. For whatever reason I was thinking that green weapons didn’t have an inscription. Not sure why. I used Wenslauss’ Faith and Chalice forver. I think there are still equipped on my monk to this day.

Still have no problem with this implementation. Golds as story rewards and exotics and rarer skins as something to shoot for after you have completed the story seems perfectly reasonable.