Guild Wars 2

Rauderi.8706:

A few reasons:

“This isn’t WoW.”
“Waypoints are good enough.”
“This is the n+15th thread on mounts, make it stop.”
“Mounts aren’t lore-appropriate.”
“Mounts would unbalance the game, especially WvW.”
“Frameratezerg omg mounts everywhere all the time annoying.”
“Mounts will be Gem Store and Pay-to-Win.” (It’s not pay to win. If you’re going to use that term, use it properly. -_-)

I don’t mind the idea of mounts, but they aren’t necessary.

Would they be a fantastic gold sink? If done properly, yes.
Would they be useful in areas with frequently locked waypoints? Yes.
Would (some) people enjoy them? Sure!

Is it worth production cost to include them? ….eeeeh, maybe not.
Considering they can’t even get traits or Legendary crafting or Ascended crafting right, could we even trust them to get a mount system right?
No.
grumpycat.jpg

I am not sure that, "this isn’t WoW is a solid example of why something should not be implemented in this game. WoW did not introduce the idea of domestication of animals for purpose of transportation. WoW has swords, axes, bows, daggers, staves, spellcasters, etc, etc…should GW2 not have them ?

Waypoints are good enough ? Not for everyone apparently. If they were no one would be asking for mounts.

The GW universe has included riders for years so lore complaints seems somewhat odd to me.

I agree that any game mechanic addition should be implemented carefully to avoid increasing game imbalance.

I personally would not be inclined to use mounts but if they could generate additional reveneue, above and beyond the cost of implementing them, then I could see them as a positive addition to the game so long as balance and optimization issues were addressed.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

Any good expansion is at least half of the original title

For example ? Honestly curious here. I know that WoW didn’t match your claim, what games do ?

Aline Castro.9820:

…“Hearts are for people who need boring quests to help them find a goal.” That’s what you said, pretty different as what you claimed to have written. Granted that Grimm was blunt, but the message remains the same.

I was under the impression that Anet had actually stated that they added Hearts late in the development cycle specifically because they perceived a need, perhaps based on play testing, for something to guide (help) players find a goal (DEs, the intended real content focus of the game at that time).

I have seen a few players make this claim. Perhaps one of them (Vayne, I know you have made the point) can provide a link or something ? I tend to believe him (Vayne)/them on this. It seems like a reasonable assumption to me.

If Anet believed that they needed to introduce Hearts to help people, then I don’t believe that it is an insult to agree with them.

Chase.8415:

They make roughly 4 dollars a month per player in the gemstore.

That’s more profit per year than a single expansion pack.

Did you mean revenue when you said profit ?

Azreell.1568:

The majority of the mmorpg market share still belongs to Wow – a sub based game.

Unless you have data that contradicts its claim that WoW has a 36% market share. It misses a majority by 15%.

Azreell.1568:

So one could make the assumption the majority of mmorpg players find better value in sub based games then cash shop games.

Of course one could make that assumption, but one would be completely wrong (if the data presented in the linked chart is to be believed). According to the chart 64% of the market, the vast majority, plays something other than WoW.

Azreell.1568:

I really don’t think you understand what you post.

WoW, according to that chart, has the largest minority market share, but still represents a minority market share. 36% < 51%.

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

BlueZone.4236:

Vayne.8563:

darkace.8925:

Vayne.8563:

See the Living World wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad on paper. It wasn’t bad in it’s execution though it was uneven. Toward the end of the first season the Living World picked up some converts that hated it in the beginning. The Marionette fight was very popular. Escape from Lion’s Arch was very popular too. So calling it bad, just because you say so is problematical.

You’re very conveniently ignoring the bug-ridden fiasco that was the Season 1 finale.

Edit: And again, I’ve got to point out your double standard. You closed your paragraph with “so calling it bad, just because you say so is problematical”. You opened that very paragraph with “see the Living World wasn’t bad”. Since what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander, I’m going to say to you “calling it good, just because you say so is problematical.”

How many times do we have to dance this dance. I’m RESPONDING to a statement. I’ve never come into a thread and said, the living word is awesome or good or great. I respond to people who empirically state it’s bad. I’m RESPONDING.

Why aren’t you picking on the person who made the wrong statement in the first place? Oh right, because you agree with him.

As a respondant, I always fight fire with fire intentionally. There’s no good or bad, it’s all just opinion. My opinion is stated in a way to head of his opinion.

Edit: And I didn’t ignore the finale. That’s why I said the quality was uneven. I didn’t say it was all great. I pointed to things that many people thought were great. The finale wasn’t as dismal a failure as some make it out to be. I also didn’t bring out the Nightmare Tower which a lot of people liked.

But I did say the Living Story season was was uneven in quality in many places. So far, however, the Living Story Season 2 has surpassed Season 1 in many ways FOR ME.

Nothing wrong with what I said.

You even say “The logic is, if the numbers aren’t supporting what they were doing they’d change it.”
Here’s a change because the numbers didn’t support it. If it was a good thing, they wouldn’t need to change it.

In any case, I don’t bother with arguing semantics anymore.

This isn’t a semantic argument. The argument you’re giving that they changed something has nothing to do with the quality of the living story in an meaningful way. It has to do with it’s temporary nature. Now if the living story stuff sucked so badly why would people want it in the game permanently. The answer is they wouldn’t.

And this thread is about Season 2 anyway, which is permanent. You’re the one playing semantics so let me rephrase.

If the player base weren’t playing the living story in Season 1 in numbers large enough to justify them investing the manpower and expense to create seaseon 2, Anet would have scrapped season 2 and went with a more traditional approach.

Looky, looky here. Who’s nitpicking on how to determine “the quality of the living story in an meaningful way”?
The temporary nature is (was) part of the “living” world. Trying to discount it is silly.

Anyway, it was bad enough to restructure their development process.

We’ve made a lot of changes for Season 2. We’re continually improving our processes with each new release. The most notable being that we no longer have 4 Living World teams, each making their own content; we have 1. This has allowed us to create much more cohesive releases, and I think you’ll find that our story hangs together quite well in Season 2.

By the way, I consider “cohesion” being related to quality, and that’s just part of what was bad (“bad”, haha).

Last year the store I manage saw overall sales increases of more than 3%. EBITDA increases were in the +8% range. I restructured and reorganized aspects of the business not because it was bad but because there is always room for improvement. EBITDA is now up 5% over last year’s already great numbers.

Vayne.8563:

I didn’t even imply the zones were all buzzing.

And I didn’t claim that you did.

darkace.8925:

Vayne.8563:

See the Living World wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad on paper. It wasn’t bad in it’s execution though it was uneven. Toward the end of the first season the Living World picked up some converts that hated it in the beginning. The Marionette fight was very popular. Escape from Lion’s Arch was very popular too. So calling it bad, just because you say so is problematical.

You’re very conveniently ignoring the bug-ridden fiasco that was the Season 1 finale.

Edit: And again, I’ve got to point out your double standard. You closed your paragraph with “so calling it bad, just because you say so is problematical”. You opened that very paragraph with “see the Living World wasn’t bad”. Since what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander, I’m going to say to you “calling it good, just because you say so is problematical.”

He phrased his post as he did as a parallel to the individual he was quoting. This is a means of demonstrating a weakness in the referenced quote by showing that the exact opposite claim can be made. It is a viable and venerable debate tactic. If one makes a claim where the exact opposite can be readily claimed it debunks the first claim as a thing cannot be X and the opposite of X at the same time.

Vayne.8563:

Saying I said all the zones were buzzing is a demonstrable falsehood.

Then demonstrate it ? (a joke because we both, hopefully, know that you cannot demonstrate such)

For what it is worth I was paraphrasing. I chose to not put that turn of phrase in quotation marks for exactly that reason. I am not claiming that you used that exact word.

Vayne.8563:

You’re asking a company to put time and resources into doing something that might very well hurt players on both sides of the divide. It’s a bad risk.

Kind of like implementing Megaservers in the first place ? Expending time and resources on something that did hurt many players (I am not claiming a majority here).

Vayne.8563:

How about this then. Anet has said in the past that they make a lot of their decisions based on metrics. Is that a better indication that they’re using they data they have?

I have stated that I believe that you were likely correct, multiple times now, in your supposition. I do, however, tend to take anything that Anet says with a grain of salt.

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

it’s circumstantial evidence

No it is not. It is a theory. I think that the theory has merit but that doesn’t mean that it is anything more than supposition.

The longer you’re involved with business and doing business, the more you know how businesses work. It’s hard for me to conceive of a public company doing something that they specifically know is not working, and then putting more and more resources into doing it more. It doesn’t happen that often.

My theory is based on experience in business. That makes it at very least an educated guess, but again. What reason would Anet have for putting this much time and effort into something that wasn’t working for them?

“Anet,” doesn’t make these decisions. A person does. People make bad decisions, and stick with them, all of the time. I tend to think that your supposition is probably on target, however don’t forget that even very smart people do stupid things. Ego, a bad day, one’s hemorrhoids acting up putting one in a testy mood leading to biting Field Marshal Davout’s head off rather than accepting his suggestion prior to the battle of Borodino, etc.

Actually sometimes a person makes decisions but from what we know about Anet it tends to be more of a group decision. Not one person but people bouncing ideas off each other.

This isn’t a dictatorship, it’s a creative enterprise. You can tell by the “iterative style”. You don’t iterate all that much in a dicatorship. There are plenty of stories of people who came up with ideas and were allowed to run with them.

There are companies where you have Rupert Murdocks who pretty much control everything, and then you have creative collectives. This company seems to function more like the latter.

Which explains a lot of what’s going on if you look at everything that’s happened.

Sometimes having one person with a specific vision is actually better. But it’s also more subject to someone getting it wrong as you’ve stated above.

In the end, after all of the bouncing ideas and the like, someone has to make the call on how to spend the company’s resources. Someone has to listen to Riker, Deanna, Wesley, Geordi, Worf, and Data hash out an action plan and then say, “make it so.”

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

it’s circumstantial evidence

No it is not. It is a theory. I think that the theory has merit but that doesn’t mean that it is anything more than supposition.

The longer you’re involved with business and doing business, the more you know how businesses work. It’s hard for me to conceive of a public company doing something that they specifically know is not working, and then putting more and more resources into doing it more. It doesn’t happen that often.

My theory is based on experience in business. That makes it at very least an educated guess, but again. What reason would Anet have for putting this much time and effort into something that wasn’t working for them?

“Anet,” doesn’t make these decisions. A person does. People make bad decisions, and stick with them, all of the time. I tend to think that your supposition is probably on target, however don’t forget that even very smart people do stupid things. Ego, a bad day, one’s hemorrhoids acting up putting one in a testy mood leading to biting Field Marshal Davout’s head off rather than accepting his suggestion prior to the battle of Borodino, etc.

Embrace The Bold.7619:

Then I have no clue how I have been able to hit so many things with Dagger auto on me ele.

Do you have a damage proc sigil on your weapon that might be causing the extra numbers you are seeing on screen ?

Vayne.8563:

it’s circumstantial evidence

No it is not. It is a theory. I think that the theory has merit but that doesn’t mean that it is anything more than supposition.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Ashen.2907:

I dislike crafting. I am willing to give my gold to those who enjoy crafting if a given desirable crafted item is tradable.

My gold is a return on time/effort invested in the game.

These weapon skins define success in the game ? Interesting take.

People who dislike crafting always make me smile.

Since I’ve leveled crafting to 500, I’ve been receiving ~2g for 1 minute of work each day. I’ve broken even in about 2 months and get an extra free dungeon run each day from that moment.

That is awesome for you. I am glad to pay someone to produce something that I do not want to produce myself. Win/Win as far as I am concerned. I end up with something to spend my farmed gold on, you end up with extra gold…as long as you are allowed to sell your goods.

Vayne.8563:

Right because in Guild Wars 1 everyone used quick shot.

You mean because they could choose what attack skills to load on their bar ? Part of diversity is having options to not take the same skills that everyone else does. I have used Quickshot and have hundreds of builds for my main character in GW1.

nexxe.7081:

Vayne.8563:

nexxe.7081:

Poplolita.2638:

I’d rather have FREE content every 2 weeks, than to pay for an expansion.

It’s basically free vs pay. In my case, free win, not even up to discussion.

Yes, free updates, but look deeper into them, and start to compare and contrast, to the more traditional MMOs, and you’ll find out that other MMOs put out more meaningful content for your characters and gameplay.

I’m here because I compared this to other MMOs and found the content here to be meaningful, far far more meaningful than the content in other MMOs.

The problem with using words like meaningful is that they’re just matters of taste and opinion. What’s meaningful to a dungeon runner is not meaningful to a PvPer who never runs dungeons. Some people would think putting ten new dungeons in this game would be meaningful content. But I bet more than half the player base wouldn’t be in that category. Most people don’t consider themselves dungeon runners in most games, and I believe that’s the case in this game as well.

You talk to PvPers they have different meaningful content than WvWer’s who have different meaningful content than me.

Most MMOs don’t offer what I consider to be meaningful content. That’s why I play Guild Wars 2.

I should’ve clarified when i said, “meaningful”. I meant in terms of gameplay and progression, besides the story.

And no, it’s not subjective. The purpose of an RPG, whether it’s an MMO, or a singleplayer game, is to interact and engage in the story, hence the roleplaying aspect, but story isn’t the only facet of an MMORPG. There are also items, stats, combat, dungeons, pvp, etc., to enhance the story, otherwise the game itself becomes stale without progression to it’s other aspects, which is happening to GW2.

To Anet’s credit though, they have tweaked stats, and introduced new traits in the past, but lately, there doesn’t seem to be anything new on the horizon, except the Living Story.

When compared to other MMO content additions, GW2 lacks additional content, especially after 2 years.
FFXIV, WoW, Rift, Tera, and even GW1, etc. All of these introduce more meaningful content, for everyone, whether it’s for pvp, dungeons, story, classes, skills, talents, gear, and so on. This is why WoW is very popular, because they offer alternative gameplay additions, such as, skills & talents, new classes and races, dungeons-scenarios-raids, pvp maps & game-modes that is meaningful, to everyone, and they don’t just focus on story.

Meaningful, in this context, is subjective. I can guarantee, 100% certainty, that FFXIV, WoW, Rift, Tera, GW1, etc did not release content that was meaningful, in a positive way, to, “everyone.”

Mesket.5728:

Crossaber.8934:

ROLE playing game =/= healer, tank, dps roles. No matter the PvE meta now is all doing damage and provide support, it is still role playing. GW2 is an RPG, accept it.

This is not where I’m aiming. I agree that RPGs come in many types and I also like the fact this game is action oriented… but when it come to roles, its plainly cosmetic. A Warrior, a guardian, a Mesmer, etc… will do the very same things with different colours. Some classes has a couple of unique skills, rarely used except for banners or timewarp but you get the point… we all do the same. Roles are cosmetic. One speciliziation (and only one) completes everything and in the most efficient way. I can’t call that a role playing game. Its merely an action platform game with some customization, but veeeery shallow to be called an RPG.

The role in role-playing game is not, originally at least, a reference to combat role. It is a reference to taking on the role of your character in a given scenario. Shallow game play started the genre.

Purple Miku.7032:

tl;dr of all the people whining about them not being tradeable:

“I don’t want to invest effort and/or time into playing the game for rewards and want the option of buying my success ingame.”

I dislike crafting. I am willing to give my gold to those who enjoy crafting if a given desirable crafted item is tradable.

My gold is a return on time/effort invested in the game.

These weapon skins define success in the game ? Interesting take.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

I think this guy (Gaix2) explained one way of looking at it fairly well, good vs bad rng.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1579a2/good_rng_vs_bad_rng/

Excellent read, thank you for linking.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

So the answer is no, then? If we’re discussing the practicality of the Arah heavy armor on a human female, it’s appearance is intimidating and also sexy, but not practical because it’s purpose is to be functional, so it is only filling a secondary desire.

How does it not serve its intended function ? Are its stats lower ?

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

And since we’re also talking about allowing males and females to wear both variations of the armors (male with the option to wear female, female with the option to wear male) I think that means you’re missing the point and only trying to disprove something I’ve said by ignoring the subject that’s actually at hand.
Regardless, you are right and I agree. But I was using it more or less as an example that women in the real world, and not in the game, wear clothing that is extremely revealing and thus it confuses me sometimes why when it’s in a video game it’s suddenly offensive?

I’ve commented, made a suggestion in fact, on the subject at hand. The reality is that it does not seem likely to be cost effective to add more skin choices to existing armor sets. Similarly, doing so would increase production costs of future armor sets. In order to maintain similar levels of ROI this would require higher price points on future armor sets. I am not convinced that raising prices is what GW2 needs to do with its gemstore armor sets. What seems like a better option, in my opinion, is to design different general styles for different skins for future releases. Don’t like how the newest set looks for one’s character ? Then wait for the next. Not every set is meant to be appealing to every player or a good fit for every character.

Nibelung.1407:

My take on this issue is very simple: Armor theme should be consistent between all races and gender.

If a set of armor is supposed to be a bulk body-covering armor, it should be a bulk body-covering armor for male and female. Good example: Heavy Plate Armor

If a set is supposed to look skimpy, it should be skimpy for male and female. Good example: Tribal Armor

The only way to go wrong is if an armor set have a theme under one situation, and another theme under a different situation (being the most common case: Male bulky, Female skimpy). The Norn Wolf Armor is a good example of lack of theme. While the female armor is showing a lot of skin, the male armor is literally covered from head to toe.

It can even work with the mix-and-match armor style we have. If an armor set have a big oversized shoulder pad, it should maintain that big oversized shoulder pad in both genders and in all five races. So that way if we are skimming through the gem store or the TP, looking for skins in a character, we shouldn’t be surprised when that same skin is vastly different when we switch to another character.

Good point.

Word of advice.

The odds always favor the house. Don’t bet against the house unless you expect to be entertained by losing.

Vayne.8563:

But, in the old days I used to run around the world and in some zones there were just not enough people. I’d do events by myself. I love playing in the open world, and I felt like I was alone.

And yet, “in the old days,” when other people would come to the forums and complain that game zones felt dead, that there were not enough people, etc you countered their perception with a claim that you did not see it the same way. You would claim that it must be the individual because the world felt alive and buzzing with players to you.

So, pre mega-server, the world had plenty of people to feel occupied to you and people complaining that Anet needed to do something and that the world felt dead were wrong.

Now, post mega-server, the pre-megaserver world seemed all but dead to you and Anet’s efforts to do something about it were the best change ever.

Shadowflare.2759:

Xenon.4537:

Implementing what the OP suggests would take a lot more work than most of you realize. It isn’t like a switch or button they can press. The armors in any video game are tailored carefully to fit the specific body for which they were originally designed. The male and female are shaped a little differently and they both move a little differently. They have different animations.

Here’s a list off the top of my head of complications which prevent devs from going back and re purposing one armor to work on another body:

- Artist would have to resize most of the armor pieces. This would create texture warping. Imagine someone getting a tattoo when they are 20, then imagine how the tattoo will look when they are 50 and their skin is all saggy. The artist would need to redo the UVs to fix that.
- Might need to create whole new armor pieces, such as a pauldron or belt buckle in order to cover seams or graphical anomalies.
- Will have to redo the skin weights on all the vertices so that the armor moves properly with the animation of the different body.

All in all it’s just bad practice to go back and make sweeping changes to an existing asset like that. It would actually be just as easy, if not easier for them to make a whole new set of armor from scratch. The best solution would be to create a whole new set of armor from scratch for female which is visually closer to the male version.

Now consider how many armor sets they have added since launch, and where they added them to? Gem store. Reason being: it’s expensive for an artist to spend all that time making new armors, even if they are visually similar. Its like asking someone to make a corvette with a slightly different shaped body. They still have to build the whole new car from scratch. However unlike a car, it’s destructive and clunky to try to make alterations to the existing one.

Thank you for making this post, as this was exactly what’s in my mind the entire time I was reading through the thread. Ignoring the skimpy vs not skimpy arguments, the real problem with implementing the OP’s suggestion is just how much work it most likely be. There is no magical button to just let females have the option to have male armor, since there are so many factors (as you described) in play.

Sell them separately then ?

By this I mean have the male and female, “skimpy,” version be one item and the male and female, “non-skimpy,” version be another. Let each version generate its own revenue to justify development resource expenditure. Some people will buy the skimpy version, some the non skimpy. Some people will buy both. If one category (skimpy or non) is consistently a poor seller, in the sense that it does not generate a profit, then it gets scaled back.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

It doesn’t matter if it’s armor or not. When it’s revealing to such a degree that it’s difficult to discern underwear from pants is when it becomes impractical.

You are mistaken. The only thing that determines whether or not something is practical is whether or not it fulfills its purpose. Being revealing has nothing inherently to do with practicality. Does the armor piece provide the necessary level of protection for its type (Light, Medium, Heavy) ? If the answer is yes then it is practical regardless of its appearance.

Olba.5376:

Well the thing I have been trying to push here is that most times you see people asking for GvG, they specifically state that 5v5 is not large enough. And I don’t see how adding a few (e.g. less than doubling the amount) would be any different, particularly when you consider that it would still amount to worst case scenario of covering 2% of your guild membership.

This thread did not seem to be about team size from what I could see. The OP did not mention team size in either his title nor his post. Did someone else, other than you of course, bring it up ?

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Anet launched the game saying there would be no GvG in the game. I think they’re probably looking at it now, but it was well known before launch that would not be part of the game.

I can’t say why that is, but we can theorize that in Guild Wars 1, though there was a hard core population of people into it, most players weren’t. They didn’t want to spend resources designing something up front that most people wouldn’t use, even though some were passionate about it. As I said, that’s just a guess though.

All of which is odd as they also indicated that they wanted GW2 to be an e-sport, something that is poorly supported by the current implementation.

Well, maybe they thought the current implementation would work better, and they’re invested in it so heavily they can’t just walk away. Like everything else it’s a business decision. You think GvG would make it a better esport. It might, it might not. It’s not your money that’s riding on the result, so it’s easy to say they should do it.

But in reality I’m sure they have people working for them who think it’s a good idea and people working for them who don’t. In any event, they did say straight out it wouldn’t be in the game. That’s my point.

But now, of course, that anything is on the table, it could be changing.

I am not saying that they should do it. I believe that the e-sport ship has sailed at this point.

I do think that GvG would have made a better e-sport.

Vayne.8563:

Anet launched the game saying there would be no GvG in the game. I think they’re probably looking at it now, but it was well known before launch that would not be part of the game.

I can’t say why that is, but we can theorize that in Guild Wars 1, though there was a hard core population of people into it, most players weren’t. They didn’t want to spend resources designing something up front that most people wouldn’t use, even though some were passionate about it. As I said, that’s just a guess though.

All of which is odd as they also indicated that they wanted GW2 to be an e-sport, something that is poorly supported by the current implementation.

Too many assumptions either way about the 4 million sales mark.

Harper.4173:

Azhure.1857:

Are you seriously trying to say that the Ranger profession isn’t iconic and known to be “range based”. Just because it has the ability to use melee weapons, doesn’t mean that its a primary weapon type for the profession. …. That because of cheap combat/game mechanics the Ranger now has to melee and view its bows as equally cheap toys?
I’m not a Ranger main… but I feel the need to speak up for them in this.

The ranger class is based on the ranger archetype. What’s that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aragorn

This guy. He’s not a bowman or sniper – he’s a ranger.

Ranger comes from the verb “to range” which means : to roam at large or freely
or to move over an area so as to explore it

It has nothing to do with ranged combat.

Also there’s a distinct advantage for ranged players that has nothing to do with AI.

If you’re melee the time it takes for the boss to hit you when he’s preparing to is much lower than the time it would take the same boss to hit you 1200 units away rather than right on top of him.

It takes longer for the boss to reach you at a range distance so you have a time advantage on your dodges/ reflects/ blocks /etc.

In RPG’s the Ranger archetype is more closely associated with hunter/archer. This has been the case since the earliest RPG’s. Although DnD Rangers, for example, had options for melee, including dual sword wielding, they were the game’s primary physical ranged combatants.

Ranger originated as a term for game wardens. They ranged the king’s (or other lord’s) lands. Their primary armament was generally ranged.

There is definitely an advantage inherent to being at a distance from your foe. Then again melee damage is higher as a form of compensation.

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Olba.5376:

So I paid the box price and I should be willing to give up my access to the game unless I’m willing to fork over more? You do realize that this is one of the reasons the people who do not play subscription-based games are the way they are?

What if I am perfectly happy with the game even without an expansion? Should I be willing to give up a game I like unless I pay for something I never asked for in the first place?

One does not (in any MMO I’ve heard of) lose access to the existing game if one does not buy an expansion.

If you are perfectly happy with the existing content, and have no interest in an expansion, then you could continue to play the existing content.

I’m not sure that’s the point though. If you’re in a guild or you play with friends, it becomes an issue.

I had dungeons in DDO I couldn’t go to with my friends because they’d purchased that content and I didn’t. Same with Lotro. There were areas I didn’t have unlocked. My friends could go and I couldn’t.

With this system, everyone can go everywhere. You don’t divide the community into have and have nots.

I was responding to comments about access to the existing game. I ran into the same situation (in reverse) in LoTRO. Then again there are a few of my friends that didn’t buy GW2. Can’t play it with them as a result. I don’t think that it is reasonable to ask that a company not charge for their work out of concern that some people will not want/be able to buy it.

maha.7902:

Every class is melee based except engineer. I also would like examples of using the environment to bypass mechanics. The point is, the game pushes melee play with the limited boon range and higher damage, I don’t see why players chilling in the back line should be rewarded in any way when they’re at no risk.

1) As you said, melee already has higher damage so extending boon range would not deprive melee of having an advantage for being close to the mobs.

2) One is not at, “no risk,” when in the back line.

Olba.5376:

So I paid the box price and I should be willing to give up my access to the game unless I’m willing to fork over more? You do realize that this is one of the reasons the people who do not play subscription-based games are the way they are?

What if I am perfectly happy with the game even without an expansion? Should I be willing to give up a game I like unless I pay for something I never asked for in the first place?

One does not (in any MMO I’ve heard of) lose access to the existing game if one does not buy an expansion.

If you are perfectly happy with the existing content, and have no interest in an expansion, then you could continue to play the existing content.

Game play and content design usually determines what is most desirable in my experience.

Two or three so far (as I recall). Not per week, total.

Couldn’t use any of them.

Kolpo.2713:

This gives new player the impression of a thriving and successful game.

I really hope that Anet is not just trying to give, “the impression,” that the game is thriving.

Personally I find both positives and negatives in the Megaserver. Events that I could only rarely participate in previously due to an insufficiency of players are now readily doable.

But FX glare and lag are a pain and many of the events that are now doable are not necessarily all that enjoyable to do without even the basic ability to see what is going on.

Combine that with mobs that are instantly vaporized by the zerg and there is little sense of contribution or actual participation.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

For the same reason people equate “casual” to “bad.” It’s a stereotype. Unfortunately, like with most stereotypes, many people can’t be bothered with forming an actual opinion of their own.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the term “casual” tends to vary (sometimes drastically) from person to person.

By one definition, I’m a very casual player. By another, I’m a ‘hard core player.’ That’s part of the issue with trying to categorize and label things though. Rarely does something actually wholly fit into one category.

Anyway, I agree with the basic statement that just because a person is a casual player doesn’t necessarily mean they want superbly easy content. Conversely it also doesn’t mean that they want stressful, frustratingly hard content all the time either. But, I think that applies to most people. We need a mix of both, because sometimes we want ‘hard’ and sometimes we just want ‘goof off’ type stuff.

Pretty much this. Well said.

Always liked his armor.

Vayne.8563:

But they said, up front that any or all of this might change. Not hidden. Not fine print. I got that from reading that article.

Understood.

Still saying that X is true at one point in the article and then including post script that essentially says X is not true and was never intended to be taken as true is a bad idea. This is similar to those “health” supplement companies that make claims that their product will help with X,Y, and Z condition and then include a disclaimer at the end stating that their product has never been shown to actually do any of the above. The supplement companies are purposefully being misleading. I think that Anet merely made a mistake.

Personally I would love to hear what they are working on, what they would like to do, what they think would work well (and perhaps even why). I do not want them to make definitive statements about what will happen until it is sufficiently close to release as to be reliable.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Ashen.2907:

wwwes.1398:

They assumed last year that they had nothing to lose by announcing rough plans ahead of time, but they have learned that isn’t really the case. .

I get where you are coming from, but they did not announce rough plans. Rough plans are not generally described using phrases like, “X will be in the game by the end of the year.” (paraphrasing here of course).

When all you have is them saying “will be,” that’s your fault. Until you see a news article that previews the feature itself, all you have is a statement that as long as plans or circumstances do not change, these things should be in the game.

If they had said, “should be in the game,” this discussion would be moot. They did not. They said, “will be.”

Don’t you think it odd to claim that it is my fault that they said that the features will be in the game ? I can assure you that I did not write their commentary for them.

Again, my point is that it was an unfortunate choice of wording. They would have been better off saying, “we hope to implement, X should be in the game by X, or the like.” They chose something more definitive and are now seeing the consequences.

wwwes.1398:

They assumed last year that they had nothing to lose by announcing rough plans ahead of time, but they have learned that isn’t really the case. .

I get where you are coming from, but they did not announce rough plans. Rough plans are not generally described using phrases like, “X will be in the game by the end of the year.” (paraphrasing here of course).

Demented Sheep.1642:

mallas.9836:

Aries Of Ragnarok.1365:

Agreed. The whole “Grind” of it is just down right stupid. Bleh.

what grind? You are bored one day, hey gonna go snag one of those achievements. There is no pressure to do it within a 2 week period now.

Lets say its “take a break” fun. Or in my case, hatred. But thats for other reasons.

It forcing repetition. The fact that there is no “pressure” to do them isn’t the point. If you want to do them you have to deal with arbitrary restrictions which just make the process slower without adding challenge.

I think that there is a significant difference between offering an incentive to repeat the content and forcing one to repeat it.

Dalanor.5387:

Quells.2498:

I didn’t say anything about Defiance. In general, I am talking about how skills are useless in many encounters. I’m certain the designers at Anet are smart enough to understand that a player will expect their skills to work everywhere regardless of the content. Simply making things immune is a lazy way to balance encounters. I don’t want CC spam as a lot of people are suggesting. I really hope from this point on we will think out our responses more constructively. As I said in the original post, diminishing returns or internal cooldowns are fine but at some basic level all our skills should work in all content.

To address some of the comments, no I won’t mention specific encounters because it’s not relevant. I’m talking from a design perspective. A player hits a button and expects it to have a result with cascading information. I also already mentioned that stunning Tequatl would be ridiculous and the player will understand that but some enemies that aren’t even champions are immune and that’s poor mechanic communication.

Dalanor.5387:

One other thing OP. Name me the encounters where it bothers you.

Go into details with the problem and the solution.

Yes, it’s relevant since you never mentioned whats your exact problem with mechanics.
As i said previously, people tend to blame Defiance for no reason, but if it’s not the case now, what else? Are you frustrated about the Mai Trin fight or what?
Give examples whats not working and how should it work, refusing said things otherwise turn the thread into a “stuff not gud, fix it pl0x” thread again. Which isn’t good for anyone.

Let me show how you should do.
“I miss some consistency with certain mechanics in PvE, namely the recents changes with Malrona in Twilight arbor Up path. Previously it was possible to reflect both attacks, but now they aren’t altough it isn’t mentioned in the description of the boss. Also it happened with some other spider mobs in said dungeon.
Same applies to Mai Trin, because she has both a unblockable and a undodgable attack. Later one heavily discriminates certain classes, namely Necromancers, due to their lack of other damage mitigation options outside of death shroud.
Can we get more consistency how certain things works (projectiles -> reflectable or at least blockable) or unique mechanics mentioned somehow in boss descriptions?”

See? It wasn’t hard at all.

ps: These are actual issues and if thats what OP meant in the original post, i’m agree with him.

In the post you quote he provides more than enough information to get his point and his concern across.

Nerelith.7360:

Body of Intent says " X is true.*"

The fine print magic Blurb says " What “X is true” means is.." taken in the context of an mmo.. in the best of all possible worlds we would love to deliver x… and although we were categorical that " x" would be in the game what that really means is, barring any unforseen changes, Board meetings.. memos from NCSoft, vists from the executive junior vice-president in charge of public relations, bad quarter earnings…or any myriad of reasons we cannot go into detail about….. X is true, unless it might be false."

Edit:

When I read a developer Blog, I no longer get excited. I used to, until I learned the maxim of computer gaming. " Until it’s in your hands…it’s vaporware."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware

Understood, but as long as they continue to say one thing while meaning something else, with disclaimers that contradict what they say, they will run into the issue we see here.

Of course there are people who will interpret, “we hope to introduce X by the end of the year,” as a promise. It is much easier to counter a claim of promise in that sort of situation.

I mentioned that Anet’s phrasing was a bad idea because that sort of misdirection is not part of a good reciprocal communication. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Anet used that form of phrasing because it is so very common in marketing and the like. Still, I am not sure that anyone who wishes to be seen as an honest communicator should be copying, “This supplement will enhance your…<fine print> this supplement has never been demonstrated to enhance X.”

I don’t think that claiming that most of the game doesn’t count when discussing the relative lack of value of CC in GW2 is a valid point.

Obviously, I hope, the goal would not be to turn big bosses into helpless punching bags. The goal would be for them to be more involved, interactive fights. Something where many of your weapon skills do not end up being wasted space on your skill bar.

Vayne.8563:

Sithaco.4673:

I understand that development changes, plans change, due dates change, but it’s because of such a lack of communication that this is a problem. They make a big blog post that lots of MMO websites link to detailing what will be coming in 2013, everyone hears about it and it gets really hyped up, and then some of it doesn’t happen. Sure, this is okay, plans and development change, but the way they communicated this with us was terrible, not everyone is going to see a reply from Arenanet in a single forum post saying that it probably won’t be coming in 2013, thus causing the problem of communication. If they are going to hype something up really big and make everyone hear about it, when plans change they need to make that information just as visible.

Except that a roadmap isn’t hype. They laid out plans and said plans might change. That’s not hype. That’s not even close to hype. If you took what was said at face value, they said they had plans that may change. If you can get hyped about that, more power to you.

They gave us, as I’ve said, other stuff which was just as important. Sure it’s not the same stuff. They specifically said in a post (I don’t have a quote handy) that the stuff they had been planning with the precusors wouldn’t have worked with other changes they made to the game. It’s back to the drawing board.

A statement of definite, “will be,” as opposed to, “might be,” or, “intend to be,” or, “hope to be,” is not a plan. It is not an intention.

A statement that X is true with a disclaimer at the end of the statement that X is not nor was ever intended to be true is a bad idea. Anet never intended the stated items to be definite, but they said they were. A poor choice of wording. Again.

Anet altered the ground circles for ease of distinguishing once before. I am colorblind and have a much easier time now than at launch.

TheBandit.7031:

I wouldn’t use the word “ruin” but definitely screwed them up pretty badly.

For the most part I agree.

Not being able to see an event boss through the glare of a hundred strobing effects really messes up the concept of active play in my opinion.

Vayne.8563:

In any event, you’d have to hire a voice actor to read every single title and then sub it in. So what happens when they have more titles added to the game. Get the voice actor to read more of them? It’s unnecessarily complicated and probably costly.

Pretty Much this ^^^.

Vayne.8563:

Boss is how she would talk though. What lore reason would she have for calling you the blazing light. Boss is more casual, more what she would say.

I don’t think that this is an appropriate reason though.

lordkrall.7241:

Djinn.9245:

The big difference between a normal MMO expansion and the LS is that a normal MMO expansion continues to exist in the world. It becomes part of the overall MMO world where the LS content mostly is just gone as the story progresses. Don’t get me wrong – I am not one of the people who go through content so fast that I’m waiting around between LS updates. But I recognize that there are people like that.

But is that really a valid argument now, when LS2 will be permanent? Sure it could have worked with LS1, but nowadays when stuff will be permanent it doesn’t really work.

To be fair, when Anet says, “will be,” they mean, “might be.”

I hope it is all permanent. Tghis would address one of my main concerns with the game. I think that the LS concept has great potential if used to permanently expand the world.