Gw2 gives the freedom to play the game any way you want… really play the game any way you want.
I want to play the game at max level with BiS gear that I do not have to craft or grind for.
a cash shop or a subscription fee.
Well thats one of the common ones indeed. But Anet used cash shop and initial box sale. So thats not common. GW1 was also not common as it used box sale and expansions. Exactlywhat GW2 also should have done because both cash shop and subscription are not as good as B2P.
The main reason Anet and GW1 became big was because of this model and many people went for GW2 thinking it would have a similar system.
GW1 had a cash shop that included cosmetic options as well.
GW2: box sale + cash shop + no sub fee
GW1: box sale + cash shop + no sub fee
I am not sure where the disconnect on the concept of paying for something you want comes from, particularly since you do not have to pay with real money.
MMO players are the most spoiled out of all gamers.
But in all the MMOs I have played I have never seen a more spoiled fanbase than GW2.
I wouldn’t call the players here spoiled. Being spoiled is always the fault of the person who does the spoiling of the persons that are spoiled (as in parents who let their kids do anything they want or get everything they want).
Now people that come to these forums just to hate on the game or to troll would you say that is Anet’s fault? No they are not spoiled and this is NOT the most spoiled fanbase at all.
Well actually it could be said that we are the most spoiled but that would be speaking of those that DO NOT come to the forums to complain because they are perfectly happy with the game. So in that context it would be a good thing. :P
I respectfully disagree.
Most people posting here are spoiled. All I can see is “I want…”, “I want this now…”, “I want this fast…”, “I want less work…”.
That’s how most posts translate for me. It could be just me but I think I could name a few (not link a few) topics that commonly imply “I want…”.
I am going to have to respectfully disagree. There is nothing inherently spoiled about having and expressing wants.
I have paid more than a sub. The difference is I paid mostly for what I wanted when I wanted. Some months I paid nothing. Others I over spent.
^This. It’s not about how much money you spent, it’s about being able to pay if/when you want to pay. You pay and get stuff in return, you don’t pay just to be able to keep playing.
Agreed. I really love GW2’s financial model and hope that other games give it a shot in the future.
The game is going downhill. This is not rubbish, it is an opinion on a completely subjective topic…the perceived merits of the current direction of the game.
You may not agree with that opinion. I am glad that you express your opinion that the game is not going downhill.
I am pretty sure that ANet can decide for themselves what they do and don’t appreciate but don’t let that stop you from expressing your opinion on the content of others’ thoughts.
No, you don’t have to pay to access content ADDED into the game. Unless I’m mistaken that’s true. Accessing the game itself is a completely different story.
So a friend who has not spent money to buy GW2 can play the added content? Or does he need to pay money before he can access that added content ?
When you buy the game you are buying the current content and all future content that may be added (with the possible exception of paid expansions). That is what B2P means. You are paying for all content, but are doing so once through a lump sum payment, rather than in smaller increments over time. I like the model. Its a great idea. I love the concept of B2P with a cash shop filled with interesting cosmetic options. Doesn’t change the fact that you are paying for the content.
1) Exploring.
2) basic combat gameplay wielding BiS gear.
You clearly haven’t read my post properly. I’m not moaning about moaning or saying people can’t have there opinions. I’m just saying its annoying seeing posts about the game as a whole going downhill or “breaking” or whatever. Because its not.
You specifically ask people to not express their opinion if it disagrees with your own about the state of the game. Not sure how that was supposed to be read.
At least you said please though.
(edited by Ashen.2907)
Yes it’s B2P but you don’t have to pay anything besides the game price to get anything you want. That’s a fact. How much did you have to pay to access any of the content they added in the game? ZERO, that’s also a fact. You may twist it as you see fit and miss the point entirely that’s doesn’t make my claims false.
What makes your claims false is that they are inaccurate, not anything I say. If one does not have to pay to access content added to the game then anyone could access it, even those who have not paid for the game.
Lets do a test. Call a friend who has not paid for GW2 and ask them to access that added content without spending money on the game. I’ll wait…
The fact of the matter is that you have to pay in order to access either of the mentioned games to its fullest. In LOTRO you can play without spending any money at all, but will miss out on some significant portion of the game without spending money (or spending large amounts of time grinding). In GW2 you cannot play any of the content, including that added content you describe as being accessible without spending money, without dropping some cash on the game. In LOTRO you have the option, if you have more time than money, to get pretty much everything without spending money.
Personally I prefer GW2’s financial model. I really don’t care for dividing the playerbase through content gating as implemented in LOTRO.
Now you are completely wrong here. Turbine IS one of the greediest MMO, that’s a simple FACT.
No, that is an opinion, not a fact.
even if you don’t get them as drop you can still get them completely free…
This is incorrect. You cannot get them without spending a minimum amount on the game. Remember that GW2 is B2P not F2P.
Last I checked Anet doesn’t prevent me from entering ANY of the zones in the game like Turbine does,
You might want to check again then. See how many zones you can enter in GW2 without spending any money. Hint: The number is zero. You have to pay to access every zone in GW2.
How much did I HAVE to pay over the last 1 year to access all of the content in the game? ZERO.
Are you claiming to have hacked ANET in order to access, without spending money, content that everyone else has to pay for?
Get your facts straight before posting again
You really might want to check your own facts before pointing fingers. As it stands almost every claim you made is demonstrably false.
I spent hundreds of dollars in the first six months or so after release.
I’m not sure that an OP that essentially translates as:
“you should not post your opinion if it disagrees with mine.”
is particularly better than what it is preaching against.
Except that long before Guild Wars 1, players were playing with hundreds of people at the same time, so Guild Wars 1’s 12 player instances (and there were only two of those, most of the game was 8 player), couldn’t be considered massively multiplayer.
Your personal experience doesn’t change what the industry defines itself but what’s out on the market.
I mean WoW with it’s open world released before Guild Wars 1 did, and beyond that, Everquest, DAoC and others released before.
So a zone with less than 12 people (for what its worth you could potentially have as many as 24 people in one instance in GW1-not counting towns and outposts) in it is no longer an MMO ?
Where is the exact number of people required for something to be considered an MMO listed ? I think that you will find that the industry does not define itself in this regard.
A game’s release date, you mention WoW, EQ, and DAoC is not a number of players or a definition of a word (massive).
A company can call their product anything they like. They can even claim that it is not “X” if they like. That decision has no bearing on what the product actually is. If ANet opted to claim that GW1 was not a PC Fantasy computer game but rather a suped up digital adding machine pseudo medieval world simulator…it would be no less a PC fantasy computer game.
fellyn.5083:So sorry. We’ll use Anets definition.
GW1 was one of if not the first b2p CORPG games in the NA market.
And who cares anyways? It’s a game that a lot of people play(ed) online with other people.
This time I’m with fellyn, CORPG is just a silly acronym that anet invented to justify the supposed impossibility to reply GW1 experience with GW2.
Why is GW1 a CORPG and Vindictus an MMORPG?
Bullkitten, corpg simply don’t exist.
If we have to take in consideration the definition of CORPG then even GW2 is a CORPG, we have instanced areas, the world is not fully open and we have overflows, how many people have to fight together in the same zone to be called MMORPG? No one knows, because no one setted such number.Agreed.
Anet’s top guy could choose to call his new kitten, “Puppy,” and it would still be a cat.
It has to do with the absence of a persistent world…at least that’s how most of the MMO sites define it, and it’s the definition I’ve been working with for a long time. A lobby game isn’t an MMORPG to many, many people. It’s a lobby game.
In order to really be a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER RPG it has to allow massive amounts of people to play together at the same time. Twelve isn’t that massive.
In order for something to define something else the first something itself must be defined. If the number of players defines (or is a defining aspect) of the genre then the number must be defined exactly. It is not and so that aspect does not define the genre.
When I played GW1 it allowed me to play with 1100% more people than I had ever played with in a PC game. It seemed pretty massive to me. I have played other games (COH for example) where I could not find more than one or two other people in game. I don’t think that it stopped being an MMORPG just because multiplayer options were limited. Interesting thought. Would some servers of an MMORPG stop being MMORPGs while others retained that label due to population levels and the inability of some servers, or even certain time periods, to provide massive multiplayer experiences ? Can a game be both an MMORPG and not an MMORPG at the same time ?
fellyn.5083:So sorry. We’ll use Anets definition.
GW1 was one of if not the first b2p CORPG games in the NA market.
And who cares anyways? It’s a game that a lot of people play(ed) online with other people.
This time I’m with fellyn, CORPG is just a silly acronym that anet invented to justify the supposed impossibility to reply GW1 experience with GW2.
Why is GW1 a CORPG and Vindictus an MMORPG?
Bullkitten, corpg simply don’t exist.
If we have to take in consideration the definition of CORPG then even GW2 is a CORPG, we have instanced areas, the world is not fully open and we have overflows, how many people have to fight together in the same zone to be called MMORPG? No one knows, because no one setted such number.
Agreed.
Anet’s top guy could choose to call his new kitten, “Puppy,” and it would still be a cat.
None of that says ‘we are not going to add a new tier of weapons and armor to the game ever, end of story’. You assumed that’s what they meant but that is no ones fault but your own for misinterpreting what they said.
Its not an assumption nor a misinterpretation. If Anet said that by 80 we would have max stat gear then any higher tier of gear introduced would need to be given to all level 80 characters as soon as the tier is introduced for the statement to remain true. Otherwise you would have level 80 characters without max stat gear, which contradicts the statement.
Level up a character right now and tell me that they have max stat gear by level 80.
As to whether or not one can get ascended gear just by playing the game…not completely accurate unless you project the time required out, potentially, into the realm of multiple years.
Crafting is not play for me (and others) this means that the only option for me (and others) to get an ascended weapon is to hope for a drop. Then hope that the drop fits our character/build. If ascended weapons could be traded I might agree with you, but as is it could take years to upgrade my weapon sets on one character.
I think that the OP is both correct and incorrect.
His point about people wanting rewards for everything they do seems to have a good deal of validity to me but the blame seems misplaced. This phenomenon is not unique to post WoW MMOs nor to MMOs in general. It does not even find its origin in MMOs. This is present throughout modern society and has been evolving since before Warcraft let alone the MMO bearing that game’s name.
Because every person has a duty to be understanding to every other person. I was taught this since I was born, and am told it used to be common knowledge. People need help, you help them, because you are their equal and partner and they are yours, when you help anyone the world improves and you have helped everyone, including yourself. If you refuse that, it is because you set yourself above those who need help. Why that idea seems to be not only alien these days, but maligned with extreme prejudice is beyond me.
Choosing to play with person B rather than person A is not a lack of being understanding. Belittling someone for choosing to play with others with similar interests does not really demonstrate the ideal you seem to hold so dear.
If you were entering a tennis doubles tournament would it be wrong to prefer to have someone who has played tennis competitively, or at all, as your partner?
Whoever told you that understanding was more common in the past was remembering a world that did not exist. Modern society is more inclusive than has ever been the case in the past.
One cannot always be helping others. This does not mean that you are setting yourself above those you have not helped with any particular portion of your time. Please note that there are people that you did not help during the time you have spent posting in this thread. This does not mean that you put yourself above them.
I’m not twisting what Colin said, because we talked about the manifesto. Looking at Anet’s web page for Guild Wars 2, grind and vertical progression was barely mentioned at all. They talked about dynamic events, personal stories, and a living breathing world. That’s the main thing the game was marketed on.
If you can find 3 quotes over five years that say vertical progression….okay, you’ve found three quotes. So what? It’s three quotes over five years.
There were literally hundreds of hours talking about everything else. It’s people’s focus that make this the depth of the promise it was, not what was actually said.
By percentage, Anet talked about vertical progression very little.
No you are just making excuses, and stretching the truth to justify that excuse. As I said before, changing small things and backing out here and there is fine. But not when it goes against the core design philosophies you preached. It is if a game like WoW talked about Raiding and how important raiding is in their game and removed it a year after launch. Even if it didn’t take a lot of “percentage” of their time talking about it, it still is a major change for your core philosophy.
Regardless, it is idiotic to think importance is based on how long they talk about it. Talk about going the extra mile to defend this change.
I’m not going an extra mile to defend a change. I’m taking on people who say this is what the game was sold on. No. This may be what sold YOU on the game, but this was not what Anet PUSHED.
Again, I have a background in retail. I know what I push and what I don’t push. I know what Anet pushed. Lack of vertical progression wasn’kitten They pushed personal story. They pushed dynamic events. Those were what would have sold the game to most people.
There are a minority of people who even know what vertical progression is. Those are more likely to be people here on the forums. But the bulk of the population just sees something they think looks cool and buys it.
I’m not defending Anet adding vertical progression to the game. I’m calling out people who say this is the major thing Anet sold the game on.
It only takes one advertisement about a certain aspect of a product for the product to have been marketed in that way. It does not need to be repeated ad nauseum.
You frequently make reference to statements made subsequent to the Manifesto that were supposed to clarify, define, or even redefine what was meant. The fact of the matter is, and you should know this as you worked in retail management, that an advertisement for your product is not definable by alternate contemporary advertisements. Your first commercial’s statements cannot be modified by a subsequent commercial unless the first is removed.
If you state that your product provides X in one commercial you cannot explain that by X you meant Y (where Y differs from, or is a more limited version of, X) in another commercial unless you remove the first commercial. Anet continued to display the manifesto long after the subsequent statements you often quote were made, without altering the original advertisement (the manifesto) to include the supposed alterations to its meaning.
As to whether or not vertical progression is a major thing ANet sold GW2 on…they made a point of telling potential customers that it would not exist. They paid to distribute that information. They paid someone to tell people that there would not be gear progression beyond what was attained by level 80.
If a company pays to send a specific message about its product I would call that message a selling point of the product.
So an individual, as quoted by the OP, has decided to create a guild around certain elitist (not using the term in a pejorative fashion here) requirements…
Is people setting minimum gear/level/AP requirements for others to play with them somehow new ?
makes this one of the best free content additions to the game.
I agree with the OP except for this part. This is not an addition to the game. The devs altered a more casual encounter to be more difficult. This removes content for some players while adding content for others. Its a zero sum patch (depending on whether or not more people gain than lose).
One can have more than 15 minutes to organize for Teq…
Show up early. People already seem to be doing so.
Despite how angry you seem to be at me, I think we’re closer to being on the same page than you realize. I personally just think we should give these fights more time and let it die down a bit before going crazy and asking for a nerf.
I like a challenge, that’s all I’m trying to say here.
I share your position, as stated here, completely. Calling for nerfs on day one of a new encounter, even as a server is pushing to beat it (grats to BG), seems odd to me. An encounter that is meant to have an massive epic feel should not be easy IMO…and should certainly not be something that you can toggle <1> and AFK !
When I see what could only be considered an off-topic personal attack I tend, at times, to respond in kind. My apologies.
I do read well enough to know that you don’t put a space in between your sentence and your question mark at the end.
Actually yes I do.
Either way, let’s stick to the original post please. I along with the majority like the changes being made. Unfortunately it’s just casuals who are most vocal at times.
The original post had no comment about laziness or unwillingness to face difficult encounters. The OP requested that ANet work on new encounters rather than expend resources on existing bosses. Your reply had little to do with the OP’s point.
Also, what percentage of the player base likes the changes ? If you are declaring it to be a majority you must have the numbers…right ?
For what it is worth I think that increasing the difficulty of world bosses is a wonderful idea. The fights felt very bland before.
I like that they are making the dragons actually formidable like they really should have been from the start. Can’t wait for the others to be updated!
^^^What he said.
OP, games of this sort are always in a state of evolution. Encounters will change as the devs continuously react to players.
(edited by Ashen.2907)
YOU’RE too lazy to learn to play the game. Try double tapping a movement key. It let’s you dodge attacks. Then if you’re not exhausted by then, you can even press the “6” button on your keyboard to get some of your health back!
Seriously, some of the fights (Maw) are still super easy. If you want it easier, maybe you need to go play something else.
You don’t read very well do you ?
transmutation stones FTW
Understood. Still it does seem a bit off to have to spend money to be able to effectively use a rare drop.
That refers to marketing tricks. One of those marketing tricks is creating a sense of urgency. You can do that with limited items available or limited time available.
Even so no one is being tricked into buying gems as has been claimed here.
New (or revised) content in general has a tendency in an MMO to cause population drop in old content.
I keep seeing people refer to being tricked into buying gems. What trick ? Did Anet download a patch that causes your account to purchase gems whenever you activate your self heal ? Did they tell you that the gems were actually free and that you would receive a refund of the purchase price as soon as you sent some money to a Nigerian prince ?
Or do they allow you to buy gems if you want, potentially without spending a single dime of real world money, something offered in the gem store ?
Yeah, that is a one heck of a nasty trick….letting you spend your money on something you want and even allowing you to get what you want without spending any money at all.
Exactly. I think those people from blackgate coming on here saying how it’s going well on their server seem to forget that they are probably on the ONE server in GW2 with the biggest concentration of PvE freaks.
…It’s not an insult. .
For what its worth “freak” is often, perhaps even usually, a pejorative term.
In general I prefer a “soft” timer rather than a “hard” timer:
Soft Timer: Completion rewards scale up the more quickly you complete the event but there is no set limit.
Hard Timer: You must complete the event before the timer runs out or it will fail.
No, they are saying that something changed between the time they made the initial statements and the ones they are making now.
What they said then (paraphrased):
“We intend X”
What they are saying now (paraphrased):
“We did not intend X”
This is not equivalent to:
“We originally intended X but, due to changing circumstances, must now revise our intention to Y.”
Okay that’s another story. I believe when those statements were made, that was the intention. People are complaining about what Anet is saying NOW, about what Anet was saying then. These are two completely different issues.
Do you have any evidence that when Anet said that stuff they didn’t mean it?
Anet is saying now that they didn’t mean it when they made those statements back then. I think that a straight up admission on the part of the accused qualifies as evidence.
Very interesting. Thank you for the heads up.
Have gw1 fans forgotten the name of the fancy versions of armor you got on prophecies? does ‘ascended’ armor ring a bell?
exotic was designed to do a job – make top tier something that required effort so that people can actually appreciate what they have. it failed. so they had to bring in ascended to do that job. (would you salvage an ascended weapon? in comparison, would you salvage an exotic? and why?)
edit: and have we forgotten the point of why skill point scrolls exist? are we going to cry and whine when they introduce new skills into the game that seem better than the current meta? of course we will.
I wish people would stop spreading disinformation about GW1 already. 15k GW1 armor had the SAME stats as 1,5k and the SAME as obsidian or any other max armor.
Legendary had the SAME stats as exotic. Ascended was not needed in any way and goes against everything explained in numerous blog posts and interviews over the course of several years.
And no i wouldnt salvage my exotic weapon if it was max stat. Exotics required enough effort for most people. Especially if you wanted to have a fully geared character or god forbid alts.Ascended was not brought in to do “a job”. It was brought in to please a subset of players that were complaining or leaving in droves – the same people that wanted GW2 to be more like WoW.
Unfortunately these same players can not be pleased. Ever. Once they have their chars geared out in ascended they will either demand new shinies again or leave.
ANET is doing the same 2 stupid things most companies in the last decade tried to do: trying to cater to everyone and trying to do what WoW does best.
I wish Guild Wars 1 players would stop spreading misinformation, like that there was no grind in Guild Wars that affected your character’s power. That’s just wrong. It wasn’t gear, sure, but then, there were plenty of skills that you had to level through rep, that were needed for some builds, like imbagon. Or do you not remember people in Guild Wars 1 looking for groups of r8 ursan?
You really are good at that strawman thing. Where in the post you quoted does he make any claim that there was no grind in GW1 ?
Colin Johnson timeline:
- The now infamous quote about expecting people to have best-in-slot gear upon reaching level 80.
- The now infamous quote about how he didn’t expect people to get to exotics so fast, so Ascended gear must be added.
- Don’t expect another tier for a long while.
Do you really trust him at this point?
Sure I trust him. Just like anyone else who said something years ago, and then the situation changed. In your life, you’ve never said something and two years later had to change it?
People are disingenuous. Oh, he’s a dev. He needs to be proficient in crystal ball to know what will happen.
That’s not the way the world works.
The problem is that Colin is claiming that things did not change. He is claiming that the original stated intent never existed.
“We have changed our minds and so our past claims and statements are no longer valid,” is very different from, “our past statements and claims were never valid as we never meant them.”
No company comes out and says we’re going to make this change, no matter what you think.
I would respect them more for that than what they are saying. “We are doing X because it is our game and we think that doing X will be best for the game, and for our business and there just really isn’t anything you can say to change our mind” is much better than claiming one thing to get my money and then denying the original claim at a later date.
For whakittens worth:
I am not yelling.
Not screaming.
I am disappointed.
I am not spending money.
I am not encouraging friends to buy the game.
I am discouraging friends from buying the game.
(edited by Ashen.2907)
I think you missed the point.
“People simply aren’t forgiving.”
And Vayne is completely right. Professionals follow through with their bosses commands. No one ever looks at Colin’s perspective, they just spend hours calling him a liar. Did Colin decide that GW2 wasn’t making enough possible money and it needed to be changed? We don’t know, nor will we ever know who decided that, but people still decide to personally attack him and expect he’d be a rubber band and come back every day for abuse? That goes for all GW2 staff, the forum is toxic from people who are stonewalled into believing their own opinions and attack even fellow players for straying from THEIR path.
A professional stands strong publicly no matter the possible duress and the staff has done that in amazing fashion. You can believe what you like, but you’re painting a very detailed picture of why GW2 player base needs to rethink attacking one man is going to solve not only a game issue, but a community issue.
I would be more forgiving of the company deciding that it needed to change its product, for whatever reason, if it was not attempting to spin the change by claiming that the original design intent used to help sell the product never existed.
No, it’s not misleading. “World of Warcraft” doesn’t have a war in it, does it?
Except that World of Warcraft does have warcraft in it.
Note that it is not World of War Craft. It is World of Warcraft.
In the end, you can say he’s lying if you want, but I think he probably had many conversations with many people over what should and shouldn’t happen and at the end of the day, he doesn’t remember the change, because there was other conversations going on at the time in house that we’re not privy to.
I am not saying that he was lying. I am sure that he meant it when he originally said that characters would have best stat gear by level 80.
He sold the game based, at least partially, on that statement. He convinced people to spend their money on his product with that claim. We are not talking about some minor detail of game design here. Gear progression, itemization in general, is a significant part of MMO design and its implementation, or lack thereof, in GW2 was a significant point prior to GW2’s release. It would not speak highly of his professionalism if Colin “forgot” one of the core design philosophies of the game.
Yes, that’s a big difference. As big as adding meat to a vegetarian restaurant.
Anet saw the uptake of legendaries wasn’t working. They saw what people were saying. Believe it or not, they have many ways to judge who is doing what. My son, as I’ve said before, got his legendary and stopped playing. Now that ascended is back so is he, working on his ascended. For every guy like me, there’s a guy like him.
Anet made a decision before the game launched, saw that decision wasn’t quite working as they intended and changed the way they did business, kitten ing off the people who bought the game thinking it would be one way in the process. Anet did the same thing as adding meat to a vegetarian restaurant. There’s no real difference here.
What Anet tried to do was compromise. Not everyone is happy with the compromise and some people can’t live with it, but I’m wagering the bulk of players can….certainly the bulk of players that are playing now.
Which leaves a small, vocal disenfranchised group who aren’t going to stop complaining until the game loses money. There’s a whole lot of people playing the game right now. I’m not sure that would be true if ascended gear hadn’t been introduced.
The difference to me is the more recent claim that they never intended what we were told was the intention back then. I expect companies to adapt to evolving circumstances and difficulties. I can respect it even if the evolution does not play to my own interests. I do not respect a decision to treakittens customers as if they were idiots by expecting us to buy the claim that they never intended X when they told us that X was the intention when they were trying to sell us on the game.
The decision to abandon the original declared intent in this case would be much more palatable, to me at least, if Anet would man up and just admit that they were doing so rather than trying to claim that the original intent never existed.
I do want to clarify that I am not in any way attempting an attack against you for your stance on this matter. I respect your right to have and express your opinion.
My number one reason is…
Because after all the crap your character/Humans go through in GW1, how could I ever be happy playing as something that single-handedly decimated the Human race? Plus I had ( and still have ) an odd fascination with killing them over and over and over again. Even here in GW2.
Ask Jaw Smokeskin, Blaze Bloodbane, Ghast Ashy-poo, and ole’ Red Eye. They hated me, and I them.
Pretty much.
Yes, and now a big question:
what would you do about high concurrency/login number and low revenue from it?
An interesting hypothetical situation. The implication there is that plenty of people find the game worth playing, but little in the gem shop worth paying for. My own experience is not in the realm of online entertainment, but in a brick and mortar setting experiencing high traffic with low sales I would look into product selection and demographic analysis.
I suppose that could translate into better tuning the gem shop to meet the “needs” of the player base. This could take the form of expanding the gem shop’s selection. It could also take the form of introducing in game elements to make existing gem shop items more enticing. The latter is a dangerous option because it has the potential to drive existing players, and potential paying customers, away.
And now i encourage you to go through their PR since launch and count how many times concurrency/logins were used and how many times amount of money was used.
And those numbers are not really for you or players or potential players, they are for those who make decisions in NCSoft.
PR (public relations) is not for the decision makers of your own company (or its parent company). It is for the, hence the name, public. NCSoft’s decision makers have access to financial information that will not likely ever be included in a PR statement.
Even so both number of players and amount of money being spent are useful to Anet/NCSoft. The combination of the two allow them to make predictions about future revenue.
If you are just doing dailies you have absolutely zero reason to get an ascended weapon, ever.
Playing a character at max level with BiS gear is fun for me. It makes me want to financially support the company that produces the game. Even if all I was doing was dailies.
Having fun and wanting to financially support the company is greater than zero reasons.
On Boon removal (whenever you lose a boon, some cooldown of course)
On Condition loss (whenever you lose a condition)
I could go to ANY MMO, no exceptions, and find a dev quote that isn’t true a few months after it’s made.
Honest question:
Would those dev quotes you find include statements that essentially claim that the previous statement was never true ?
I don’t know. Simple enough answer.
Communication in language is always fraught with difficulty. You could say something directly that you understand 100% and think no one else could possibly misunderstand…and then find out people have misunderstood. The manifesto line about grind is by far the best example of this.
Grind has 2 different possible meanings. Traditionally in MMOs you grind for levels…everything you farmed. Gear grind is a relatively new term in MMO terms. Now in the paragraph where Colin said, “we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2”, a lot of people took that to mean grind for gear. Yet there’s nothing in that paragraph at all to support that. Colin is talking about combat. He’s talking about killing the same boss over and over again to level, like we had to do in Aion. I understand this because that’s how I’ve always used the word grind. At no time did I ever think that there wouldn’t be some grind in the game…just not a grind to level.
It’s like when Anet said you can “play your own way”. They meant everyone can get to max level doing different stuff. You can level most of the way in WvW, or through crafting or just doing dynamic events in Queensdale without ever doing anything else.
At the end of the day, I’m not sure that what people hear is what is being said. Certainly a number of statements that have been called lies, I’ve interpreted differently than those who have claimed Anet was lying.|
And things DO change in MMOs. Anet went through great time and effort to talk about their iterative style and how they iterate and sometimes they go back and change entire systems. Taken with everything else, that seems to me to say they’re trying stuff and changing stuff all the time.
So the stuff that are statements that people take as promises are just that. Statements of intent. Everything else is something to play around with.
Basically anyone who thinks anything about an MMO is written in stone is likely to be disappointed.
I am not speaking of vague or open to interpretation statements whose wording can be taken to mean different things.
characters are intended to have max stat gear by level 80
vs
characters were not intended to have max stat gear that quickly.
There is a huge difference between having to adapt to unexpected realities of a post launch game and claiming now that they never meant what they claimed back then.
I would not blame you for changing from a vegan restaurant to one that serves meat due to the needs of the business. But if you sold people a life time membership to your restaurant, which you advertised to them as vegan, for a one time fee and then changed your menu while claiming that you never intended it to be a vegan restaurant I would.
Hell at least in other mmos, those trophies can be useful. This more like spending 100 billion on the Mona Lisa. Sure it’s important and nice to look at. But it’s just ink and paper hanging on the wall in reality.
Question, since you mention other MMOs’ top end items being useful.
If you farmed for, and got, the top of the line, ultra cool, elite weapon in vanilla WoW, or any other MMO released years ago, how useful is it now ?
Here they are doing exactly what they said they were going to do, and you’re complaining that they kept their word.
Some would call that hypocritical.
He is not complaining that they kept their word, but rather that the promise they made was not one that should have been. That is not hypocrisy.
I agree with you otherwise though.
The game is not supposed to have a traditional MMO endgame. Technically they are adding something of the sort (grinding for an increased tier of gear is part of the endgame in other MMOs), but for the most part endgame here is supposed to be playing the way you want, doing what you want.