I do not consider the act of leveling a character to be grind, so do not stick words in my mouth.
I put no words in your mouth.
I have to laugh though, you assume that everyone plays like you, or plays as much as you therefore when they hit 80, they must be in the same boat. Which is not true.
I made no such assumptions.
Did you perhaps accidentally respond to the wrong post ?
The addition of new things to Tyria via the LS is not an indication of the passage of time. It is functionally not significantly different than another game adding new content, with the temporary aspect as an exception.
Its pretty easy to test the lack of passage of time in terms of world evolution/story development in game, go to AC, CM, etc.
Personally I do not consider the lack of passage of time in game to be a problem.
Although, exotics are VP as well and required a certain amount of grind to obtain too.
That statement would only be accurate, for me, if:
1) you defined the act of leveling a character as “grind.” By the time I reached level 80 I had acquired, through the act of leveling (basic playing through the content), sufficient in game currency to purchase exotics.
2) By, “certain amount of grind,” you meant zero grind.
Getting Exotic at release took quite some time as well
The time required to get a full set of exotic armor for my main upon reaching level 80, without crafting, was a matter of minutes. The second set of exotic armor for the same character (I enjoy having multiple armor sets for different playstyles) took not much longer.
How long, on average, do you think it will take, without crafting, to acquire multiple full sets of ascended armor (for my main it would require two sets at a minimum, ideally three or four) with the specific desired stats for specific builds ? Is it comparable to the few minutes required for exotics ? Five to ten minutes is actually, “some time,” as you put it, but I really do not think that it is reasonable to compare that to a time period that could end up being measured in years.
The manifesto was promoted by Anet for a very brief period of time,
By brief period of time do you mean from the point at which it was released until the present (the manifesto is still present on the GW2 site) ?
after which other stuff was promoted by Anet. During the time the manifesto was promoted, the clarification was widely known and talked about. Anet stopped talking about it.
It was being promoted through launch and is still being used to this day. If you are running an advertisement I don’t think that you qualify as having, “stopped talking about,” the subject of the ad. Was this clarification linked to what it supposedly clarified ? Or did the ad continue to run while a supposed clarification was somewhere out there…
They came out with new videos and talked about new things. By the time they stopped talking about the manifesto, and face it, they did, the manifesto clarification was still up and around and easy to find.
So you had to go “find” the clarification while the manifesto was still being used as an advertisement to promote the game.
Now, three years later, of course it’s hard to find. It’s three year old info on a three year old video, about a game that changes every two weeks.
The manifesto is not hard to find (its still being present on the GW2 site), and yet something that was supposed to trump it, something released more recently, something that was supposedly “widely known” and extensively discussed is ?
I have a great idea. Let’s stop everything Anet is doing, go back and fix everything in every document they ever made, instead of moving on and working on the game now.
Because in essence that’s what people are saying.
No. Actually you are the only one saying that.
This one five minute video was so good, so prevalent, so important, that it closed down everyone’s logical facility, twisted are arms, single-handledly made us by the game without another spec of researching, and now, a year after launch, you JUST realized bosses respawn.
Give me a break.
You want a break from your own fantasies ? Its your strawman, if you want a break from it don’t post it.
(edited by Ashen.2907)
The clarifications popped up 3 days after the video, once Anet saw that people were confused. And it was discussed endlessly. Unless you can gainsay this (and most of it is a matter of fact) there is ZERO to disagree with. That is to day, you can’t disagree that the clarification came out 3 days after the manifesto released. It did. You cant’ disagree there were pages and pages of discussions because it’s a matter of fact.
You can disagree, I suppose that it wasn’t enough. But at that time, there was no reason to further clarify because most people seemed to understand.
Anet didn’t have a crystal ball to think that 3 years later, people would bring it up ignoring the wealth of information they provided after.
^^^ Lagely irrelevant as the Manifesto was an advertisement (even you have claimed as much in previous posts) and did not include the “clarifications” you speak of. The manifesto remained front and center, promoted by Anet, while the “clarifications” were not. You claim to be or have been an editor. You should know that if one is editing a piece of work one does not promote and circulate the unedited version while burying the corrected version and expect the edited iteration to be the accepted version. If the subsequent comments were supposed to “clarify” the manifesto why were they not kept up while the manifesto was ? The advertisement kept front and center by Anet right up through pre-orders, pre-purchases, and launch included no clarifications.
If I am selling a product on my website, advertising it as X on that site, it is not a defense against claims of misleading advertisement to argue that I told someone in a conversation, not linked to the ad itself, that I meant something other than what was said in the posted advertisement.
Exactly. And this is why all feedback is dangerous. Not because there is anything inherently dangerous about feedback but because acting on it/not acting on it is dangerous. Its the job of the development studio to try sifting through the feedback to navigate the best path for the game.
The problem I tend to have with fan feedback is the tendency for fans to equate “not acting” with “not listening.”
Agreed.
Then there is also the reality that no company could hope to act on every bit of feedback, no matter how good it is.
Nope, he just lacked any kind of common sense in that area. Read a synopsis on it on another forum, and he even goes to say that all critics are right.
You might want to base your opinion on what the author wrote rather than on a synopsis posted by someone else. What you are claiming is not quite what he actually says.
I read about half of it, got to the section about positive feedback being dangerous and useless, and quit reading there. His thinking that positive feedback is dangerous and useless got SWG where?
Again, you might want to read the whole thing before claiming that he said something that he did not.
Lets visit your example of Living Story again:
Player A says he likes the LS updates.
Player B says he does not like the LS updates.
Which of them is wrong ?
those that say it should stay as temp content.
That is an answer to a question which was not asked.
Again, you might want to read the whole thing before claiming that he said something that he did not.
Lets visit the example of Living Story again:
Player A says he likes the LS updates.
Player B says he does not like the LS updates.
Which of them is wrong ?
Neither of them.
But now the next question is; which one should Arena.net listen to? It’s easy to accept any and all criticism. It’s not quite so easy to decide whether or not to act on it.
Exactly. And this is why all feedback is dangerous. Not because there is anything inherently dangerous about feedback but because acting on it/not acting on it is dangerous. Its the job of the development studio to try sifting through the feedback to navigate the best path for the game.
Falling on someone who does the first make you look like a bunch of piranhas.
Hmm, not sure that this is a valid comparison when the thread starts off with a jab at other players who do not share the OP’s opinion.
Galtrix has visited every single server (both EU and NA) so he totally knows what he’s talking about.
I have guested to every single NA server. I have friends spread out on all different servers, that’s why I guest to different servers often. And guess what I see? A large pile of nothing. Please, if you have evidence that proves me wrong, use it instead of trying to insult my intelligence by saying I have no idea what I’m talking about.
He doesn’t need to provide evidence to prove you wrong unless he is attempting to counter evidence you have provided to support your claim. You have not provided such.
You mean if someone gives a compliment, it isn’t constructive? Telling someone you like what they did doesn’t help them keep motivated to keep doing good?.
No, but starting a thread by telling other players to buzz off is not the most constructive thing I’ve seen on a game forum.
It is, however it’s also far more PTW than WoW ever was.
PtW pretty much defines the TCG genre, from its inception.
A bit disappointed. Had hoped that the balance pass would be sufficient to counterbalance other game direction concerns and make playing and paying worth my while again. Perhaps next time.
While I agree with your sentiment it does not contradict the OP. You speak of the VALUE items, hobby, time etc. has to you. There you are completely right. That is an individual perspective and can vary widely from person to person.
The OP talks about another subject: the COST of in-game things expressed in gold. Only that. And he is completely right. When you collect mats and use them they are not free in the sense that they don’t cost anything. They cost you the opportunity to sell them, i. e. the sell price in the moment you use them up.
Exactly so. Cost and value are not the same thing. One is a subjective measure while the other is objective.
Not unless certain other aspects of the game were altered/improved upon. An expansion would not inherently address my reasons for opting to no longer spend money on the game.
More than a little disappointing. Had hoped that this pass would make returning to the game worthwhile despite other concerns with its direction. Maybe next month.
So why keep comparing this game to WoW, when it’s nothing like WoW?
Are you sure about that ? To be like something else does not mean to be identical. I’m pretty sure that it would not be difficult to come up with a list of similarities.
Don’t do it !
(did it work ?)
I think the most important part of what Chris said is that the game is made up of communities not individuals. I honestly thing a lot of people just ignore that fact.
I would personally ignore that “fact” because a community cannot exist without individuals. How active would the GW2 community be with zero members ?
Focusing on communities doesnt mean you ignore individuals. It means you’re looking at the greater good rather then individual wants.
Thing is individuals have a lot of different needs and likes. Some players will tell you Ascended gear is not enough vertical progression
some will tell you its a step in the right direction but its too slow to be acquired
some will tell you its great but not powerful enough to justify the effort
some will tell you its great but there is no content that requires it and thus useless
some will tell you no vp is bad we should not have any
some will tell you vp is bad but since its not required i am okey with it
some will tell you vp is bad required or not i have to have bis so as long as it exists I am forced to get it
some will tell you vp is bad, I want it but i dont enjoy what I need to do to get it so i’d rather not have it
some will say no vp, we want just cosmetic stuff
some dont want vp but they dont care about cosmetic stuff either
some dont like vp but they dont care about hp either they just want cosmetic stuff
some will say no cosmetics, thats childish/girlish/(other offensive terms i’ve seen used) the only thing worth to have is more powerful gear
and I could go on with a many more variations..if you were a developer how can you address each and every concern about individually? You cannot because everything you look it you can bet there is some other player playing in your game who thinks exactly in the opposite way. Thus its impossible for any developer to address individual needs without at the same time ignoring individual needs. Its only a question of who gets to be listened to and who gets to be ignored for this update. You cannot act like that you need to keep everyone’s tastes in mind. You can do that at a high level but you can never do that at a low level. Ascended gear is a good example, its there for those who want it but optional and easy to get for those who dont want it. of course individually there is no way to give 100% what they want. Some of those who dont want it are happy by it being optional, for others optional or not doesnt really make a difference to them.
You cannot make everyone 100% happy no matter what you do but you can make something that gives a little to both groups and doesnt cut out any of the groups either.
Requoting the below because it is what I responded to, not the subsequent comments.
I think the most important part of what Chris said is that the game is made up of communities not individuals. I honestly thing a lot of people just ignore that fact.
There is a huge difference between saying that you cannot address every concern of every individual and saying that the individual customer does not exist.
There is nothing inherently wrong with reposting a message that the devs wanted us to see. The disrespectful part is choosing to not make clear that it was a copy/paste.
I really wonder how a tool of this sort was/would be used. Think about it. It asked people who were new to the game, a game whose combat mechanics deviated from the MMO norm that those people were accustomed to, to judge content difficulty.
Good thing each account could be separated into “/Age” Parameter. Any good statistic analysis, would take in consideration deviations to it’s mean distribution. Also, the amount of new accounts to older accounts is imho way smaller to affect negatively the outcome!
/cheers
Right, but back at launch we all would have had the same /Age, and were all new accounts, right ? In theory any content (intended to represent some degree of challenge) is more difficult when it is new.
I really wonder how a tool of this sort was/would be used. Think about it. It asked people who were new to the game, a game whose combat mechanics deviated from the MMO norm that those people were accustomed to, to judge content difficulty.
I think the most important part of what Chris said is that the game is made up of communities not individuals. I honestly thing a lot of people just ignore that fact.
I would personally ignore that “fact” because a community cannot exist without individuals. How active would the GW2 community be with zero members ?
Trying to throw logic at an idea that will fix a problem doesn’t cut it.
Perhaps, but he was attempting to throw logic at an idea that would not fix a problem.
How would it not fix the problem?
Your solution, and I think it is very interesting BTW (One of my favorite team PvP scenario in another game involved friendly fire rules), does not address the player perception (reality in most content actually) that Berzerker gear is best. Instead it creates a situation in which each of the party members who chose to equip in Berzerker gear for its superiority would want to hold on to their gear (because they have already demonstrated that they have the mindset that calls for them to pursue the top performing gear option by picking Berzerker in the first place) while wanting the other guys to drop theirs. Add in the upcoming increase in the cost of having more than one BiS gear set (ascended armor) and the effect is exacerbated.
What you have proposed does not fix the problem, it just gets people excluded from groups for their choice of gear. Which is part of the current problem. You have merely changed who is excluded.
Trying to throw logic at an idea that will fix a problem doesn’t cut it.
Perhaps, but he was attempting to throw logic at an idea that would not fix a problem.
2013 gaming, serious business.
Yup.
Millions of dollars, peoples’ livelihoods-ability to put food on the table, etc. Business upon which people depend for their daily bread is kind of serious.
I would like to second the sentiment of the poster who pointed out that respect needs to go both ways.
Also a collaborative relationship is limited when one side restricts information, or spreads misinformation, to the degree seen from ANet.
Respectful collaboration and communication is also limited when comments on elements affecting that communication are deleted, not for being abusive but rather for pointing out the impact of throttling discussion of a topic of relevance.
When the original post turns out to be, either in its entirety or at least in significant part, a cut and paste quote of an earlier post, without indication of such, the tone of the entirety is altered in a negative manner.
Laurels are account bount (ALT Friendly), Dungeon tokens are Account Bound, Dailes are account bound, Character slots? (No Comment),
The others are not alt friendly, I agree.
Can you do the dailies multiple times in order to get Laurels for multiple characters ? If not then it is not ALT friendly.
@Chris: I hear (and believe!) you guys reading these forums a lot and trying very hard to separate the good from the bad suggestions discussed here and take some of what we say into shaping the future of this game. I also fully support the urge for people being polite (evidently that’s not a given in the gaming community, sadly as is).
However, communication is a two-way process.
Personally I sometimes wish that if the community is engaged in a very lively discussion about something (a recent example would be the issue about hardcore vs. casual content), that developers would weigh in and offer -their- perspective and reasoning and plans for the future. It can be frustrating offering a lot of feedback and ideas (and yes, I know that some of what we say might be silly or infeasible), and getting not a lot of reaction in return. Being able to listen is good. Being able and willing to explain is better.
This ^^^
And my thanks to the OP for taking the time to address the community.
lol @ OP, I actually think that MAYBE 1-5% of the GW2 population came from GW1. GW1 was an insanely tiny niche game.
Completely untrue. GW1 sold about twice the number of boxes GW2 did, 6 millions in fact. That is not a niche game by any measure.
http://www.guildwars.com/events/press/releases/pressrelease-2009-04-24.php
To be fair that 6 million number includes multiple games (Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, and of course Eye of the North). A significant percentage of the number you quote are likely to have been the same person buying two or even three of the campaigns, as well as EotN, and so are not likely to be an indicator of GW1 population.
Add in the fact that those numbers were achieved over the course of four years rather than GW2’s 3.5 million in its first few months, and the scope of the difference becomes more apparent.
Still the, “1-5%” stated by the poster you quoted seems awfully low to me. Even if those 6 million GW1 sales only translated into a million and a half players (after all those who did not enjoy their first campaign would be unlikely to buy others) and only a third of those bought GW2 (which is a low projection if they were fans of the original) that equates to 500k GW1 players buying GW2. These seem like very conservative numbers to me and still represent almost triple the high end of the percentage range quoted.
An interesting point to me is that GW1 seemed to achieve its sales numbers without the same degree of hype and advertisement we saw leading up to GW2’s release. A product that sold on word of mouth and return customers vs a product that sold based on advertisement.
Imagine a completely new person walking their way into Orr. Imagine the rage that would be generated by the said person on the forums. Levels serve their purpose as a tutorial with increasing difficulty.
Pretty much this.
Level gate content allows the developers to increase challenge incrementally to match increasing (hopefully) player familiarity and skill.
Anet makes a manifesto, a series of ideals.
Used as part of the marketing for the game. An advertisement used to sell the game.
There is precisely one line people can legitimately complain about, and that’s “everything you love about Guild Wars 1”. As I’ve already pointed out, here and elsewhere different people like different things. So you have to be pretty naive to take a line like that at face value…but some people are.
Probably the most negative thing that I have seen you say about ANet, “you have to be pretty naive to,” believe what ANet says. A few years ago I would have scoffed at that opinion. Now I share it. Anything that ANet says should be taken with a grain of salt and met with skeptical consideration.
Simple example is Ree saying “the boss you killed spawned ten minutes later”. Three days after the manifesto, Anet published a clarification that said she was talking about the personal story, not the persistent world. Do people still bring this up, regardless of the fact that Anet took the time to explain it? Sure they do.
I can face the same boss that I killed in a personal story encounter ten minutes later. Even if we are to believe this clarification (remember that it is naive to believe them though) it remains inaccurate even under the terms of the revision. Keep in mind that ANet opted to NOT revise the manifesto and kept using it as a form of advertisement for the game right up until launch. The supposed, “clarification,” was something you would have to hunt for.
And then there’s the line about “we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2”…a line continually and consistently taken out of context. When taken with all the lines around it, the entire paragraph, there’s not one mention of grind or gear grind. And when you look up grind in something like wikipedia, the first and prime defintion is killing mobs over and over again to level. He was talking about combat and making combat interested, instead of this “boring grind” which he already referred to.
And that boring grind exists. One may very well have to grind through levels in order to get to the fun stuff.
(edited by Ashen.2907)
Take the drops from specific creatures. Do you have any idea how many times I ran Bogroot Growths with the hope of getting a Frog scepter. I can’t count them…and I never got one. That’s some how fun? That’s somehow not grind? Anet took that out because it bugged the hell out of some people.
Arenanet did not take out grinding for cosmetics.
I’m not talking about any item, I talk about best in slot items and explained with an example how these are quite difficult to obtain. Ignoring this won’t get you anywhere. You can complete a raid in WoW only once a week, 2% chance per week means that you’d grind your time out of that raid for weeks/months to get the best in slot item. And then you’d have to do this for most slots.
Are those BiS items in WoW being implemented as part of a system of increasing difficulty/level progression ?
If so then it is not comparable to GW2 where the level cap remains the same, new “raid” tiers are not being introduced, and the gear is not being introduced as part of an overall game progression.
I am not disagreeing with your point about the time/effort needed to acquire BiS in WoW, or any other game for that matter, but the context of that effort is rather important.
The article seems like a term paper written by a college student who understands the subject sufficiently to pull quotes from his text books, while applying them incorrectly, out of context, or misunderstanding their meaning.
Reasonable start for a university student though.
many people find armor obtained mostly through gold not to be as entertaining.
And I am sure that there are many people who do not find the idea of hoping for a rare drop of just the right skin with just the right stats of just the right level to be entertaining. If the desire is for more RNG involvement in the acquisition of armor, ick.
Spending currency earned in game to buy the armor piece you want is essentially the same whether you are using gold on the TP, dungeon tokens at a vendor, karma at a vendor, or gold for gems in the gem shop.
This is why the best armor in games tends to be crafted/drops/gated content. Because it enriches the world, its not so much just the gold angle but thats all there is to it.
In some games the best armor is exclusive to real money transactions.
In some games the best armor is tied to vendors.
In some games the best armor is acquired through drops and is bound on acquire (this is often because the financial model of the game is built around subscription fees.
In some games BiS armor acquisition is as you describe. This is usually because such feed into the game’s financial model.
Also lets be clear, only 5 armor sets have been added via gem store after opening game. 3 of them have the same theme, soooo still not really growing much in terms of new appearance options
A different topic entirely in my opinion. I agree that faster introduction of new armor sets would be an improvement, but I tend to favor the gem shop approach over crafting and/or rare drop approach.
In some ways it’s alt friendly and in some ways it’s not. So depending on how you play, it may or may not be alt friendly.
Pretty much this.
the only thing it does is produce crybabies, community division, and elitist attitude.
One could as easily apply the same statement to PvE. It would still be wrong.
With the ability to purchase gem shop armor with gold earned in game I am not certain that the distinction between in game armor and gem shop armor holds up. You can get armor skins introduced after launch by playing the game.
GW1 in a persistent world with better graphics.
I can’t honestly say that I share your view of the game, but I am glad that you are enjoying yourself OP.
Just about everything costs less in SWTOR than it does in GW2, and it has a swathe of QOL features. Those hairstyles I was talking about cost two dollars to permanently unlock on your account. A friend of mine on here accidentally deleted a character to which gemstore gear was soulbound, so he couldn’t access it- That wouldn’t be a problem in SWTOR because of the systems they have in place.
I like the idea of buying an unlock for your account much better than buying individual items for specific characters.
Still, I think that it is perfectly reasonable for a company to charge for a product that they have spent resources to develop.
I am really concerned if they will continue this trend and only put the good looking armor sets into the cash shop – for doubly obvious reasons.
That would be a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Cosmetic skins in the shop.
There’s a flaw in that stance.
ANet seems to want to revert to horizontal progression rather than vertical once Ascended is all out. We’ve yet to see the proposed skill system, so we have no idea if that will work out. Skins have been part of horizontal progression going back to GW. Failing to provide skins that people can feel they are playing to get (not just farming gold to buy gems) is going to sink that part of horizontal progression.
There needs to be a mix of skins so that some can be obtained through play and some can be bought. It can’t just be unappealing skins and back pieces through play. Well, not if they’re serious about horizontal progression as a major component of endgame.
There are plenty of nice skins, both in-game ane in gem shop. And there will be more.
You can’t complain if the weight is going to be more on the shop. That’s how the game was always supposed to be funded.
Agreed. But horizontal progression, seeking gear skins, was supposed to be how people were kept playing the game in order to be enticed to spend money in that gemshop. A mix, as Indigo mentioned, would be a solid way of driving that interaction between gemshop sales and player retention through horizontal progression.
How is that different than ANYONE else?
Giving up money that they’ve taken in now (loss of some number of all the sales that have already taken place by people willing to pay to use the new looks) to have instead hand out valued items for free as enticement in the hopes that people not buying stuff will buy something in the future (and some portion of the players will say that next thing should be given to them free to entice them ’til the next item they want arrives…) is a landslide into financial oblivion.
If the game isn’t good enough to make you stick around, them cutting their own throats over hairstyle kits sales is NOT the solution to player retention.
I did not say that I agree with his position, merely that asking for the company to release something he considers worth buying is not the same as what you seemed to be saying.
Cash shops are here to stay. They have much greater earning potential (whether that potential is realized in a given game is something else entirely) than expansions due to repeat purchases.
That doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with a customer saying, “I won’t buy X, but I will buy Y.”
Wait, you’re threatening that since you don’t pay money (ever, seemingly), you’re gonna stop paying money if they don’t give you something for free?
No, he is saying that he is willing to spend money on the game if they offer something he is interested in buying.
What content exactly do you like to play that made it impossible for you to complete dailies playing just it?
Some days dailies were achieved by playing as I saw fit that day. Other days I had to choose between making progress toward getting ascended trinkets or playing the game as I chose.
Its not like the same content is boring without an ascended weapon but amazing once you get it.
You are mistaken.
Without BiS gear I am not playing the way I want. The same content is not enjoyable if I do not have BiS gear.
“I am not sure where the disconnect on the concept of paying for something you want comes from” and this line is just stupid as I have been saying I want expansions in about every comment here and guess what.. you need to pay for the,. So there is no disconnect on the concept of paying for something you want.
My apologies, this part was not directed at you. My attempt to format it as a separate paragraph failed. The point is a valid one though as people in this thread, which exists for the purpose of decrying not getting something for free, are complaining about just that…having to pay for something they want.
Resources were spent to produce the new cosmetic options. It is completely reasonable for there to be a price tag associated with attaining them. ANets approach is more than reasonable in that they allow one to potentially get these items by playing the game.
I don’t think they look bad. I would transmute over them because I don’t think they look particularly good either though.