Guild Wars 2

probably a negligible detail OP chose to omit: Tera offers this feature ONLY on the few dedicated open PvP servers and you actively choose to play there from the very beginning of your character to cap.

well, well.. “unjust”… Unjust would be: having the exact same build, character class and equipment and do differing damage. Is that in game? Or phrased in a pop culture like manner: In soviet russia, damage caps you!

Browsing this forum every few weeks is as much fun as was playing the game. This community is comedy gold. I wish anet all the best in the future, a succesful GW2 occupies the crazy and keeps them away from other games :P

TheDaiBish.9735:

It’s quite sad that people can’t keep their negativity and jadedness out of threads like these ones.

Enjoy your time here

indeed. Enjoy the game by enjoying it and don´t let your fun being interfered by “but it supposedly sucks” from the forum :P In the end, what games you like is mainly a matter of taste and GW2 can be fun. And that coming from someone who finally deinstalled the game because it wasn´t really to my taste in the end probably speaks a lot for the product. (yeah, yeah, what am I still doing here then – frankly, I have no idea. Probably more fun than Excel while at the office :P)

I love how you want to open a reasonable discussion by diminuishing people with different oponions as “whiners”. Way to go, keep up the good work!

wow, that company statement… so people really acted rude, someone at anet allowed himself being drawn into that, from what I have seen, didn´t act insulting himself. Maybe not super professional, but understandable. Good thing I deinstalled the game today anway for different reasons. I am certainly not keen on supporting a company that so easily throws its employees to the wolves.

I dislike it too. And I just ignore it. But starting a public complaint about something being gone in a few days seems more reasonable to me.

no “trinity”.

great landscape/world.

Living World approach (the approach itself, not the events for the greater part till now)

Dee Jay.2460:

So why this artificial scarcity?

errrm, any drop chance of those is “artificial”, this is a fabricated world with arbitrary rules. Why not that rare? Why do they drop that often and not more rarely? and so on.

great, you are awesome, or very good at piking. The lesser creatures of the player base tremble in awe. Here, have a rng cookie.

I´d describe my feelings as utter disgust and horror.

it is not simple (on paper), but very boring. Possible interesting combinations (mostly of utility skills) are useless because of the very short duration of any special effects and the ridiculously long cooldowns.

it is a fun game, but anet seems to be bound to do everything ALMOST right for a few months now. Which in the end will lead to a game that is not fun. I sincerely hope they find the creativity to correct this course.

with the level content scaling, it makes absolutely no sense to raise the level cap. If they do this, it would show they do not even understand their own game anymore.

to clarify first: I am not talking about those horribly broken megascaled events which are an entropic bowl of colours, blurs and numbers.

You have more than enough ways to counter knock back/knock down and to some extent pull attacks. Kite, dodge, interrupt, block, stability, stun break, whatever. Most of those attacks, as was already pointed out, are easily anticipated. And if you cannot take on a bunch of knockbacking monsters, well, maybe you were not supposed to attack that group of 5+ enemies singlehandedly, Leroy Jenkins style. Seems more like a L2P-scenario to me.

Siphaed.9235:

Algreg.3629:

those are not races, but species. Real life racism ascribes negative traits to ethnic heritage that are not divided along these ethnic lines. Between species, that is totally different. For all we know, Charr, humans or whatever actually could be really stupid compared to asuran standard.

We do know that they are. Asura are the most intelligent race in all of Tyria. Every time there’s been a threat, there’s been an Asura there to analyze the situation and save the day for those races who just couldn’t comprehend it. Fractals gate was invented by an Asura; Asura Gates…duh, it’s in the name; Tixx’s flying toy factory is Asura tech; the laser used to help defeat Tequatl is also Asura based. So, there you have it.

yes, and? Is there a point or did you just have to antagonize someone to vent?

Yaki.9563:

There is a huge flaw with this system that I haven’t seen mentioned.

Under the old system, anyone could get the same level of magic find.

Under the new system, players who play more will eventually have far more magic find than new or less frequent players. Since prices will adjust to accomodate the average level of magic find, new players will be left further behind than they would be under the old system.

Example:

Someone who plays 2x as much under old system got 2x the loot.

Someone who plays 2x as much under the new system gets 3x the loot.

That is a problem imo.

yes, players who invested more time and dedication to raise MF will be better rewarded than a new player or someone who did not care to raise the stat.

that is not a problem imo, but a reasonable system of work for rewards.

those are not races, but species. Real life racism ascribes negative traits to ethnic heritage that are not divided along these ethnic lines. Between species, that is totally different. For all we know, Charr, humans or whatever actually could be really stupid compared to asuran standard.

or you just pass on this or that achievement.

as if “magitech” was invented by GW2, and pinkish colours for that matter.

thefantasticg.3984:

I know how it works

Still pretty confident I can get it maxed out in a week.

well, good for you then, I guess. If you really can spare that amount of gold, seems reasonable to max luck as early as possible if you aim for that.

thefantasticg.3984:

In the course of six hours I went from 24% to 138% account wide MF… So, Give me a week and mine will be maxed out.

certainly not, welcome to the world of exponential progression.

Rozbuska.5263:

So here is list of features what may prevent this misunderstandings (lets say it will be some checklist what dont allow players without those specifications even see party offer in roster):
- Level restriction
- Class restriction
- Gear rarity and stat type restriction
- Let party creator see players gear and build (like in SPvP)

yes for your first two, these seem reasonable and should also be rather easy to implement. It suits noone to have to kick/to be kicked because the party leader is looking for something specific. But a big no to the last 2, people are already way to concernced about other people´s way of playing. Imo, they should even remove the ability to link gear in chat. It only causes antagonism in the game.

Raine.1394:

Sylentir.8913:

Raine.1394:

Sylentir.8913:

Raine.1394:

SNIP

Um, you keep saying that a trinity is what’s optimal or what’s most used. This is false. A trinity (When used in gaming conversations) is specifically the Tank/Heal/DPS setup that is necessary to succeed in other games. You can run 5DPS, 4DPS/anchor, 3DPS/anchor/support, or any wild party composition you want, and still finish content. There is no trinity because it isn’t required to have the tank/heal/dps elements to finish content. Emulating the trinity may be possible, but it isn’t mandatory.

You are correct in how I am using the term. I am not using it to indicate ‘mandatory’, simply optimal and most desired. GW2 does have a trinity in terms of what is most sought out and most used.

Except that’s not what a trinity means. In every other context, a trinity is used to refer to a mandatory setup. You can say that you “define it differently”, but then I could just say pink bunny tree grass and say that with my definitions, it’s a valid sentence.

I learned in my first philosophy class in college that it was fine to use a word differently, or even invent a word, as long as you gave it a definition. I am using the term trinity to mean actually having a trinity as opposed to a game that designs in and mandates a trinity.

well, see what damage postmodernism did to philosophy even.

Laundry.5120:

Back to the topic, I can’t see anyone defending the current ascended crafting as being anything other than utterly lazy design from an RPG standpoint.

For example, to make an exotic greatsword, you need ONE hilt,ONE blade and the inscription made from 5 dowels and a bunch of secondary mats, and that was understandable and made sense.

To make a legendary, you presented “gifts” and a precursor to a genie and he gives you a legendary, it’s stupid, but ok, it’s not totally unimmersive.

To make 1 ascended weapon you do this:
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gw2-ascended-greatsword-crafting-32.jpg

How does that make any kind of lore, design or really crafting sense?

well, killing ghostly spiders (or whatever it was) and resetting once they were cleaned in UW/FOW did not make any more sense lorewise honestly…

Vayne.8563:

xephire.8324:

Vayne.8563:

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

Xcom.1926:

Vayne.8563:

No one seems to remember Eric Flannum pre launch telling us there would be stuff to grind for….just as there was plenty of stuff to grind for in Guild Wars 1.

Probably because ANet didn’t feature it somewhere in their official publications and advertising. I am sure he isn’t in the Manifesto.

Sure, he’s not. But what Colin was saying in the manifesto is pretty clearly not talking about GRIND, it’s talking about a specific type of grind.

Grind can mean more than one thing. The definitions of grind are:

1. Killing mobs to earn experience to level
2. Doing repetitive tasks to get higher level gear

When you look what Colin was saying, the whole paragraph…there’s no mention of gear at all. Nothing about that. He’s talking about combat and hes’ talking about “fun things to do”. How anyone can imagine he’s talking about gear grind there, when he’s obviously (to me anyway) using the original definition of grind, I don’t know.

I already settled this. Don’t you remember? He’s talking about the way combat looks. Here’s the indisputable proof:

When you look at the art in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s visually stunning. I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and then when you play the combat in our game, you say ‘Wow that’s incredible I’ve never seen anything like that.’

We want to change the way people view combat.

The evidence lies in plain sight before you, yet you persist in persistently choosing to ignore it. And even if it wasn’t there and you didn’t persistently persist in choosing to ignore it, would there have been a difference in the laws of physics if Newton got bonked on the head by a Golden Noble instead of a Flower of Kent?

So what else in that entire paragraph, beside the single word grind, has you believing that he’s talking about gear grind. Because I don’t see anything in that paragraph that mentions gear. Or vertical progression. All he talks about is going through this awful grind to get to the fun stuff.

We didn’t settle it. You settled it. I didn’t agree it was settled and there are others who agree with me as well. They posted in that thread too.

You may disagree with Newton, too;
But gravity still has a hold on you.

Strawman much?

See what i mean name calling!!

Strawman is describing a type of argument, not name calling. Asking if you strawman once is quite clearly shorthand for suggesting that a strawman argument was used. I’m not sure how anyone can interpret that as name-calling.

I´d say calling “strawman” pretty much has become its own strawman. Anyways, I think pinning anyone down to that “manifesto” is silly. That was a rather loudmouthed “gig” during development and things change. Anyone who works in the development of any kind of products knows this. Personally, I indeed feel anet did a 180, and that´s ok – things just do not work the way you imagined sometimes in the end. What I loathe though is them not being upfront and honest about that. On the other hand, having a background in PR and knowing the problems with marketing (and actually legal departments, which really can become a problem in dealing honestly with customers), I can understand their dilemma. Still, makes me kinda sad, I´d rather have developers telling me, well, we were wrong, e.g. vertical progression simply seems to be needed in a MMORPG, than devs reiterating that “hey, look, it is not really a grind, treadmill, vertical progression etc., we are still the genre rebels” bs.

solid game, though lacking any long term motivation, that will push the genre into the right direction when it comes to combat.

I don´t know, infractions seem a bit like wb chests around here sometimes :P

PopeUrban.2578:

Algreg.3629:

errrm, skill points are actually used in crafting and similar systems in gw2, a lot of them.

I am aware of that. What I’m saying is that those systems are extremely limited (essentially to gear and tray crafting, or siege upgrades) when you’re dealing with a “currency” that’s as ubiquitous as gold.

Look at what gold can get you, now look at what skillpoints can get you. There’s a huge disconnect there. Gold is versatile, skillpoints are extremely rigid, and karma is… well I mean it’s basically gold you can only trade with NPCs.

TBH the game has too many currencies already so any place we add more uses for existing ones is probably a good idea.

ok, I can subscribe to that part. But I´d rather like to see a reduction of currencies.

Vayne.8563:

Algreg.3629:

I think we now reached the schoolyard stage of “no – YOU are!”. Time for a thread closure :P

I’m not actually calling anyone names or ignorant. People use such tactics when they run out of arguments. I’m against calling people names. It solves nothing. I simply point out when other people do it, because it weakens whatever arguments they might have had.

oh, not talking about you especially, just the general tone it reached in here :P

they should also tell you pet collectors to buy a few of each, they will be worth 10 times more in 5 years!!!

I think we now reached the schoolyard stage of “no – YOU are!”. Time for a thread closure :P

Chiara.9827:

“Daily and monthly achievement rewards now include Essence of Luck. To offset this, the amount of karma earned from daily and monthly achievements has been reduced.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/release-notes-for-super-adventure-box-back-to-school/

haha, ok, sorry, man, now that is one bad PR spin attempt. That seemed like such a silly concept I didn´t even consider the possibility. Suits me right for believing they do anything right with the first try.

PopeUrban.2578:

Honestly I miss the GW1 skill point approach they added with the EOTN consumables. We use our skill points for skills obviously (my alts spend way less time unlocking skills now, which is awesome) but also for a limited selection of crafting.

In GW1 skillpoints had a lot more utility mostly because the skill system was different, and you could be learning skills on a single character from various classes for years. So it was this nice bit of horizontal progression. Here we use them in a vertical or comsetic sense of progression too, which is great, but there’s not a whole lot of stuff to spend them on which is, I think, the OP’s problem.

What I miss is the ability to take your “levels” via skillpoints and use them to craft buffs. Doesn’t have to be anything major, just an extra sink, maybe something like a stackable extra MF buff, waypoint discount, catalyze them along with something else in to other currency types… heck IDK, I do feel like something that you’re earning no matter what it is you do every time you play should have a bit more difficult decisions in how its spent.

I vote new consumable recipies for all crafting types, but make ’em soulbound. Basically, this is your XP, for your character, so why not be able to use it to “customize” your stuff a bit for yourself, maybe by reinforcing equipment so it has one more level of durability, mark a frequently used waypoint so you could return once for free, extend the duration of a potion, establish a “stash” at a world location that you can use as bank access.

Assign “camraderie” ranks to other players that would make your combos with frequent friends more effective, give you enhanced MF when in a party with them, or some other beneficial mechanic that creates individuality for your character’s interactions with others?

What about a favored enemy system where you could do the opposite for enemy types or even specific bosses, allowing you to gain the equivalent of a mob type damage potion because you decided to spend the character’s experiences studying specific foes?

I think there are a lot of ways skill points could be leveraged to create meaningful, horizontal, and individualized effects for characters, similar to the way characters can individualize themselves in WvW with the WxP ranking system. Then all those scrolls would be a lot more thematic as “written experience” for your alts, and would have a lot more utility for your main too.

errrm, skill points are actually used in crafting and similar systems in gw2, a lot of them.

what makes you think this is supposed to be a trade-off? Aquiring Karma was deliberately made harder across the board as it was apparently deemed to be too easy to get. The luck item is just a new boon to get started on the mf. You get 10 times more salvaging the items of like 5 minutes playing.

I only fought Golem Mark II and that fight has become a lot more entertaining. Still, they just don´t get it. I will welcome such a fight 1 time, 5 times, maybe 10, but then… yay, 3 champ boxes with the usual rng, 95 of people getting vendor/luck trash, 4 percent a rare, maybe 0,9 an exotic and 0,1 something worthwhile. One look at the facebook announcement of first Teq defeat was mindbaffling for me. 300 Karma, 1,something silver, yay! yes, yes, I know, you get more abysmal RNG boxes, great. Yes, I know, I have to find the fun in playing, not in the loot. But well, I´ll do this for fun once or twice, and then?

you do know they are used for more things than unlocking slot skills, right?

Hats – there, coats – oh yeah, rogue ranged abilities – there, crossbows – missing, but double pistol on thief pretty much fit other incarnations of this type, overused angsty emo-anime clichés – not there yet and hopefully never will make it into the game, but I guess you can roleplay/imagine that.

knives.6345:

lul at some people..

Typical MMO community.
Anyone better than you = no life. Anyone you’re better at = noob.

@topic

“Ascended” would be fine.

Edit: Just realized it’s the same as OP’s. O_O

pretty much the same in car traffic

or in a less sad sacky, passive aggressive, whiney and more problem solving oriented tone: give every incoming condition application above maximum a direct damage bonus on it´s underlying attack.

apparently the devs see legendarys as pve and pvp endeavours – as opposed to you. Discussed a million times, leave it as it is imo. Tough luck, dude.

Evans.6347:

Why all so negative?
“Trendsetter”
“Winner takes it all”
“Armed to the teeth”

more like jolly sarcasm :P

stop selling crazy, we have enough of that.

“Waiting for next gear tier” :P

Morrigan.2809:

I really dislike the trinity- even more so when your class is tied to race, like they are currently planning for Wildstar.
I could never get my head around the concept that if you want to play x you have to be y.
I love that I can be whatever I want to in GW2, it is very liberating.

I play with a friend who is new to the game and I find it impossible to explain to her that it doesn’t matter what race your class is- she just doesn’t believe me.

they are?? Oh man, there goes my hopes for a great version of GW2.

I have never heard that this is a bannable offense and I pretty much doubt it. What exactly is the low level guy doing with those unlocked WPs? Score grazing hits for no loot and no xp in events, get horribly mutilated in one hit solo? I call BS, that is simply not true.

Vayne.8563:

Algreg.3629:

Vayne.8563:

I know all about the backlash. There was plenty of coverage of the percentage of people who stopped playing completely. My experience with Guild Wars 2, admittedly this is just my own observations (but it’s backed up by what Anet has said) is that concurrency numbers are increasing.

When people make statements like Anet doesn’t listen to it’s player base because there was a backlash, my first reaction is to ask this….what about the people who didn’t backlash.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, in Eve was asking for a 90 dollar monocle. No one. People on this forums have asked for gear grind and raids and end game. As long as a percentage of people are asking for something, then Anet is listening to some of their players.

And if Eve’s devs are so highly regarded and thought after, if they’re so close to their fans, how did they EVER introduced a $90 monocle into their game. Did they think this was a service to their fans.

Stop causing your Eve hierophantism make you posting assumptions about games you apparently do not know much about

because people there are not infallible, just as GW2 devs are not. Still, that does not change you post about stuff you have apparently no idea about.

Well you’d have to disagree with not just me. There was plenty of commentary at the time by Eve players about exactly what I’m saying. So if you’re disagreeing with me, you’re also disagreeing with a percentage of the Eve population.

So, how many players of Eve do you know personally? And what does that reaction tell you about Eve devs? Sorry, stop musing about things remote from you still.[/quote]

I’ve had people in my guild who played Eve completely and left over that debacle and didn’t return. Some of course did. But you insist I know nothing about something, because I don’t agree with you.

That’s like me saying you know nothing about Guild Wars 2 because you don’t agree with me. I didn’t say it, because I don’t think that way.[/quote]

a game which we both play as opposed to a game you did not play, I played quite for some years. But whatever, talking with you about GW2 is like discussing Carthago with Cato, have fun in here, I am out.

Vayne.8563:

Well you’d have to disagree with not just me. There was plenty of commentary at the time by Eve players about exactly what I’m saying. So if you’re disagreeing with me, you’re also disagreeing with a percentage of the Eve population.

So, how many players of Eve do you know personally? And what does that reaction tell you about Eve devs? Sorry, stop musing about things remote from you still.

Vayne.8563:

Algreg.3629:

Vayne.8563:

Thrumdi.9216:

Laundry.5120:

Vayne.8563:

Crapgame.6519:

Someone said:

Let’s pretent that the 400k concurrency number is from launch…well so what? Are you saying you can name an MMO where the bulk of the population doesn’t play less over time? Do you think ANY MMO has more people a year after launch than on launch day concurrently?

snip

snip

The fact that WoW was mega succesful at a time when there was virtually no competition and made a name for itself means what exactly?

EVE isn’t just successful because of it’s numbers, it’s successful because gamers, whether they play EVE now or have played it, respect EVE and CCP. They cater to a niche and they serve that niche, and serve it well.

I’ve tried EVE once and wouldn’t play EVE, it’s just not for me, but you know what? I respect it, because it’s not trying to be everything to everyone.

How many books or movies,or any medium really except MMO’s, do you know that cater fiction/non-fiction/science/fantasy/drama/comedy/horror/suspense all in one volume?

Developers in general need to stop making games that appeal to “everyone” because there’s no such thing as “everyone”. WoW was the only one to do this, and it was popular because of it’s polish and there was very little competition for it for years.

GW1 strength was unquestionably it’s PVP, and that’s been sidelined in GW2 not only for PVE but PVE that’s poorly written, poorly delivered, while the real meat of the game, WvW has been tossed in the backburner for a year.

Invasions, Rift does it better (and fits in their lore). Personal stories, ToR does it better.
GW2 needs focus, and less fluff.

One other point to make about EvE is that they actually listen to their player base.

When EvE had “Monoclegate” and tried to introduce an expensive cash shop (where Monocles sold for something like $99), the players staged a mutiny. Many quit, and EvE reversed their decision and removed the shop. And so EvE continues to grow.

What did Anet do with the backlash against Ascended gear? Double down against it and introduce more Ascended gear.

Ascended gear might lock in their existing player base, who can’t take their equity out of the game and so will do the grind. But why would anyone else come here when you can get better progression elsewhere?

This is terrible logic. Eve didn’t “listen to their player base”. Eve ignored their playerbase, until their bottom line was affected. The playerbase brought the game to nearly a halt. Eve didn’t cave in until they realized they were in danger of going belly up if they continued.

Guild Wars 2 had a backlash…but obviously they carried on, because they also experienced a surge in people playing, at least according to Anet.

What means that Anet listened to its user base too. The fact that you personally don’t agree with the rest of the user base is another matter entirely.

no, not that it really belongs in here, but as you argue along those lines: Eve devs were (and are) rather close to their players and appeared to be rather shocked at the backlash and were interested in player-to-dev interaction. I was there. Stop causing your GW2 hierophantism make you posting assumptions about games you apparently do not know much about.

I know all about the backlash. There was plenty of coverage of the percentage of people who stopped playing completely. My experience with Guild Wars 2, admittedly this is just my own observations (but it’s backed up by what Anet has said) is that concurrency numbers are increasing.

When people make statements like Anet doesn’t listen to it’s player base because there was a backlash, my first reaction is to ask this….what about the people who didn’t backlash.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, in Eve was asking for a 90 dollar monocle. No one. People on this forums have asked for gear grind and raids and end game. As long as a percentage of people are asking for something, then Anet is listening to some of their players.

And if Eve’s devs are so highly regarded and thought after, if they’re so close to their fans, how did they EVER introduced a $90 monocle into their game. Did they think this was a service to their fans.

Stop causing your Eve hierophantism make you posting assumptions about games you apparently do not know much about

because people there are not infallible, just as GW2 devs are not. Still, that does not change you post about stuff you have apparently no idea about. And if I was a blind hierophant about eve as you are about GW2, I´d play that and defend every apparent shortcoming there as you do here.

Vayne.8563:

Thrumdi.9216:

Laundry.5120:

Vayne.8563:

Crapgame.6519:

Someone said:

Let’s pretent that the 400k concurrency number is from launch…well so what? Are you saying you can name an MMO where the bulk of the population doesn’t play less over time? Do you think ANY MMO has more people a year after launch than on launch day concurrently?

I’m not going to get into the middle of this cat fight but actually if you would recall, Warcraft actually gained subscribers (paying mind you) over the years. It increased year over year and only after cata and the 10 million mark has it subsided. Most would consider its current population of 6 million a success yet here we are talking about 400K active maybe at best and 3.5 million copies sold.

Look, not going to pee in the wind here but I do find it rather interesting that people ask “do you still play that game” (e.g. GW2). I really don’t know how it fits in the public space but for me, it is only really WvW that I care about and it is pretty much dead in regards to return on investment (playing time mind you).

Anyway – Figured I’d throw that out that at least one MMO grew. The others while good failed because they tried to measure success like the two ton heavy thing…

Actually, you’re right WoW did grow. But at the 1 year mark where we are now, it had less sales than Guild Wars 2 does now and it didn’t grow by that point to it’s high point. So how do you know what Guild Wars 2 will do in the same time period. If Guild Wars 2 has two or three years of updates, how do you know it won’t grow?

More to the point, Eve, also considered a successful MMORPG just managed it hit 500,000 subscribers…I think it was last year.

The fact that WoW was mega succesful at a time when there was virtually no competition and made a name for itself means what exactly?

EVE isn’t just successful because of it’s numbers, it’s successful because gamers, whether they play EVE now or have played it, respect EVE and CCP. They cater to a niche and they serve that niche, and serve it well.

I’ve tried EVE once and wouldn’t play EVE, it’s just not for me, but you know what? I respect it, because it’s not trying to be everything to everyone.

How many books or movies,or any medium really except MMO’s, do you know that cater fiction/non-fiction/science/fantasy/drama/comedy/horror/suspense all in one volume?

Developers in general need to stop making games that appeal to “everyone” because there’s no such thing as “everyone”. WoW was the only one to do this, and it was popular because of it’s polish and there was very little competition for it for years.

GW1 strength was unquestionably it’s PVP, and that’s been sidelined in GW2 not only for PVE but PVE that’s poorly written, poorly delivered, while the real meat of the game, WvW has been tossed in the backburner for a year.

Invasions, Rift does it better (and fits in their lore). Personal stories, ToR does it better.
GW2 needs focus, and less fluff.

One other point to make about EvE is that they actually listen to their player base.

When EvE had “Monoclegate” and tried to introduce an expensive cash shop (where Monocles sold for something like $99), the players staged a mutiny. Many quit, and EvE reversed their decision and removed the shop. And so EvE continues to grow.

What did Anet do with the backlash against Ascended gear? Double down against it and introduce more Ascended gear.

Ascended gear might lock in their existing player base, who can’t take their equity out of the game and so will do the grind. But why would anyone else come here when you can get better progression elsewhere?

This is terrible logic. Eve didn’t “listen to their player base”. Eve ignored their playerbase, until their bottom line was affected. The playerbase brought the game to nearly a halt. Eve didn’t cave in until they realized they were in danger of going belly up if they continued.

Guild Wars 2 had a backlash…but obviously they carried on, because they also experienced a surge in people playing, at least according to Anet.

What means that Anet listened to its user base too. The fact that you personally don’t agree with the rest of the user base is another matter entirely.

no, not that it really belongs in here, but as you argue along those lines: Eve devs were (and are) rather close to their players and appeared to be rather shocked at the backlash and were interested in player-to-dev interaction. I was there. Stop causing your GW2 hierophantism make you posting assumptions about games you apparently do not know much about.