As players, we don’t have enough information to determine whether it’s a timer or a counter. It’s not inconceivable that ANet are prepared to let the tower remain past the four weeks that is implied by current progress, as the holiday season may bring in extra players that may wish to complete this content.
Capping dailies will create a cap on AP rewards. Granted this cap will slowly rise as new achievements are added to the game, but you will be limiting the options for earning AP rewards for players at the cap.
Thing is, they have reset AP and achievements in the past. Not a complete reset, but it still makes the analogy a poor one.
The OP is also complaining about online games changing after purchase and becoming quite different to the original product. Sorry OP, but this is the nature of MMOs, personally I feel that this change has been for the better in the case of GW2.
@Vol: I agree that ANet wouldn’t completely ignore the revenue stream from gem → gold buyers, but even that revenue stream is affected by the desirability of the gem store’s offerings as your example shows. The introduction of new desirable items pushes up the gold → gem rate, and that encourages more people to buy gems with cash to convert to gold.
I honestly can’t find too much reason to convert gem to gold. Since I can’t find any use of gold. That is probably one of the problem because people simply arn’t converting gem to gold.
So that keep the gem price high. So Anet probably loss out on making money from people converting gem to gold. On the other hand, if gem price is high. More people will be inclined to spend real cash instead of farming gold for cashshop item.
Keep in mind that, from a revenue perspective, ANet doesn’t care why a player is buying gems as they receive the money either way. While the gem → gold exchange provides ANet with another reason to encourage gem buying and also serves as an gold sink for the economy, for ANet to actually profit there needs to be desirable goods and services in the gem store so that people will buy gems with either RL or in-game currency .
I almost suspect that they deliberately chose to make the video footage not match with the soundtrack to avoid influencing the contest entries. (Or alternatively, to avoid comparison between their work and the contest entries).
If the reverse were true (krait did not count towards hearts), then I suspect more people would be inconvenienced than is the case with the current situation. That is, players currently trying to complete hearts having more difficulty doing so because of the impact of the LS content on the territory of the “normal” heart mobs.
Mark’s comment pretty much confirms to me:
“There’s nothing else but Mad King’s return on the 31st planned for Halloween this year.”
The dungeon, Ascent to Madness, was part of last year’s story – the metas and scavenger hunt didn’t return, I doubt the dungeon will. Don’t look up for it, it’ll only be a disappointment.
While I largely agree with this, there’s a nagging part of my brain that wonders why Mark’s response was worded the way it was. If nothing other than the appearance of the Mad King is planned to occur, then surely it would help manage the player base’s expectations by stating this.
Again, I think it’s best to expect that the appearance of MKT is the only Halloween content yet to be released, but there’s just that little element of doubt /hope.
icons are unique, easily identifiable at first glance.
roman numerals, are just roman numerals.
i see them as I, II, III, IV, V … nothing more.
they do not tell me anything more.icons tell me straight away what that trait does.
8 professions x 5 trait lines x 12 traits = 480 icons. Somehow I don’t think that all 480 would tell you straight away what the associated trait does.
That’s also a lot of development work for very little benefit…
It’s one thing to read them, but I wonder how many people have to take a beat to process them. I never remember off-hand what numbers my traits are; if I want to change them, I always have to mouseover the other ones to find the one I’m looking for.
It’s like having an analog clock with no numbers on it. You can easily read it, but would it be faster to read it with numbers? Or if it were a digital clock? Not if you read it a lot, of course, and get used to it, but I’m not sure how many people change their traits frequently enough to memorize all the Roman numerals, especially if they play multiple classes.
Some very good points, but I guess the question is how many people would benefit from numbers vs Roman numerals. Personally, it wouldn’t make a difference as I would still have to mouseover the traits regardless of which option was used as I can never remember them anyway.
with roman numerals, the traits page feels like in alpha stage, not representing polished final retail product.
so you are saying we are fine with this?
While it may feel unpolished and alpha to you, it doesn’t feel unpolished to me.
Roman numerals are preferable (for me) over icons, as my aging brain is unlikely to remember icons I don’t see very often and it does make it easier to write up a build.
Standard numbers would also work, but I’ve been able to read Roman numerals since learning them in school at around the age of 7.
I hated the wvwvw even more when I need to do it for ap. Great work Anet.
I will do it .. but I am not impressed.
If you don’t enjoy WvW, then don’t do it just because it rewards AP.
The WvW season has been added to improve that part of the game. While I’m sure the AP rewards might induce more players into WvW, there’s enough PVE content in this patch that complaining about this is somewhat churlish.
Fun? I’ve been having fun doing story stuff, labyrinth, and door events.
While I sympathize with the OP, a little thinking about the upcoming patch dates should have given most people pause to think that the pattern might change for Halloween. If the pattern continued unchanged, the Halloween patch would end after 2 weeks on the 29th of October.
Obviously, the change should have been more clearly communicated, but assumptions will always trip people up.
It’s unlikely that ANet are looking solely at concurrency as their only metric of success/failure of new content. If concurrency figures for a release give a “false positive” with respect to how popular the new content is, then those numbers will drop shortly after it’s released.
Personally, I feel that the living world releases are enjoyable, but they are really missing the story. Earlier chapters had a decent amount, but the later releases are feeling like very little effort has been made at telling the story.
I’m trying not to be too critical here, after all most mmos tell stories in large chunks through raid/content patches or expansions. ANet are trying to deliver a story through fortnightly episodic updates, which is a lot harder. I just want them to get a lot better at doing it.
No player-to-player trading is by design. I don’t mind it being absent, as the TP fulfills all my buying and selling needs
If anything happens to the salvage rate for ectos then the players who salvage hundreds of rares will notice the change. The sole time a thread like this was correct, it was started by one of these bulk salvagers.
People thought they were buying what it was advertised as, it’s only natural they voice their displeasure.
Even accepting that some people may have been convinced by the marketing that this game was going to be their style of game when the reality is different, ANet has been very generous with granting refunds.
Voicing displeasure over a bad purchase is one thing, but a lot of the negativity on the forums is more than simple buyer’s remorse/anger.
Strongly disagree. Putting Tequatl in an instanced raid would deny a lot of people the opportunity to attempt the fight.
There are some disadvantages for making the fight available to “all comers” (e.g. turret griefing, afkers, etc.), but personally I prefer that to making the fight only available to large guilds and shutting out a large portion of the playerbase.
Between guild missions, dungeons, world bosses and dailies I just can’t fit open world in to the schedule.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to roll a necro and play through the world again. But I have hardly the time or resources to keep up with power curve, let alone roll another alt.
Sorry but I don’t understand. A lot of the things you listed can be done with an alt, so I can’t really see why that list would stop you trying a different profession.
And (IMO) if you’re spending all your playing time “trying to keep up with the power curve”, then you might want to reevaluate why you’re playing the game in the first place. (Not meant in a snarky way, just that I found myself enjoying this game a lot more once I decided to not worry about whether I complete dailies every day or how many more whatevers I need to complete various achievements).
Everyone’s experience is different of course but I haven’t personally seen the same level of toxicity that a lot of you are describing. While I think elements of the way the invasion events are designed enable this sort of behaviour (by providing more rewards for farming them than completing them), we can’t just blame the devs for how the community chooses to act towards each other.
I do believe that ANet are learning from each iteration of the living story (and other associated updates), but it’s always going to be hard for them to predict how people will choose to interact with what they have designed.
This idea has great potential.
If they are able to deliver the content via a browser (while retaining the look of a printed page), it would be a perfect platform to deliver a lot of the lore behind.the story.
It might take a while to build such a system (and the dedicated content team) but the basic tech is already in the game as shown by the TP.
In addition to the 4 living story teams, there are teams working on larger projects whose work will be released alongside the living world updates. I’m given to understand that some of these teams are working on content (i.e. not just systems like an lfg tool or on WvW)
I’ve only played about 3-4 hours since the patch arrived, but 2 invasions I’ve completed so far have given me 9 of the 17 achievements I need for the meta. The first invasion actually completed 4 of the requirements for the daily that day, plus gave me enough aetherblade kills to complete my QJ meta, which finished off my monthly at the same time.
And this is why I think the OP may be off-track with his math, as overlapping achievements reduce the time requirements.
I’ve been doing the QJ activities on a low-level character and have found it enjoyable due to upscaling and rewarding in terms of XP (lots of level appropriate greens were dropping for me in the crown pavilion and even the occasional rare, but I didn’t really expect a lot of loot when I’m on a low-level character).
Yes please!
I’m okay with my current (personal) guild’s name for now, but I would definitely like to have the option to change it if I want to.
Queen’s Jubilee will be around for 4 weeks. The next content update will coincide with the last 2 weeks of QJ (and only run for those 2 weeks).
Try the Black Lion Weapon Specialists (I can’t recall their exact name). I was able to trade my leftover scraps to them.
Disagree. Showing voting results can skew the results if one side appears to have a massive lead while people have yet to cast their votes.
Just politely refuse them. If they ask you to stuff, just reply "Sorry I can’t right now. Good luck " perhaps offering a reason if you feel inclined to do so. If they just want to engage in conversation, then the same principle applies. “Sorry, I’m kinda busy atm, can’t chat” should work in most cases.
Remember, this is a social game and I believe that the game’s community is benefited and enriched by this feature.
I see all the usual “sages” are out in force issuing proclamations of “lazy design”and “forcing people to log in” but I seriously doubt that’s the intention given the pace of updates recently.
While time-gated rewards can be frustrating for those who can usually spend time or other resources (such as gold) towards obtaining things they desire,, it does serve a useful purpose by helping those without the ability to spend a lot of time or gold feel they can make progress towards obtaining these rewards with only a small investment of time.
To give you a personal example, my play time has been severely cut down for the past month or so, so I’ve been having to focus my time in-game a lot more than normal on “getting stuff done”, and in that context, spending a few minutes to get a charged crystal means I can make progress towards obtaining celestial armor each day without having to defer some of my other goals.
@Astralporing: look at those “promises” in full context before flinging around the accusation of broken promises.
The not grinding for stats quote was in relation to an absurd amount of hours, and really none of the ascended gear has required a lot of time so far (possible exception of pieces only available via fractals). In fact, you can earn pieces just by playing normally and doing other content that you (hopefully) enjoy.
The “preparing to have fun” quote was aimed more at the distinction most games have between end-game and the game you experience while levelling. Even if you want to apply it to gear grinding, then the fact that the gear isn’t actually needed to complete most content (except ofc high level fractals) completely undermines your argument.
I was in a race group earlier that was doing something similar and seeing this sort of thing makes me realise how good the community in this game can be.
As an aside, despite being an oceanic player I did manage to get my first place achievement legitimately, well mostly legitimately, there were only 2 of us running the race.
@Arganthium: I’m posting from my phone, so I can’t really go into a long response, but I think the key thing you’re forgetting is that buy orders don’t equal demand (despite the fact that we often use them as a proxy measure of demand).
My argument is essentially that the increase in demand for white dye shades was not reflected in the buy orders due to the smaller number of traders working dyes, and the likelihood that most people who didn’t plan ahead to obtain a dye before receiving the radiant brackets are also unlikely to place buy orders when they decide to obtain one.
(edited by Astraea.6075)
It’s a completely legitimate explanation. If you’re an experienced flipper, you may have seen similar patterns with other markets (just not to the same degree). I’d guess that the main reason why buy orders didn’t shifts upwards as much as you might expect with other markets is that I suspect most flippers avoid the dye markets due to a lower volume of transactions.
That is, there’s a run on white dyes as everyone receives their first radiant skin, but due to a lower number of traders flipping dyes (in comparison to other markets), there isn’t a corresponding rush of traders bidding up the buy price in an attempt to capitalize on the changing market. I’m not 100% sure that this is what happened, but it’s a plausible explanation.
I actually think we’re seeing ANet experiment with other forms of vertical progression rather than just adding gear with more stats. If you look at WvW skill ranks, it seems to me that they are trying to create a progression system that doesn’t confer a direct advantage in strict player-vs-player terms, but does give players something to work towards. Additionally, the account-wide bonuses (and skins) unlocked via achievement points could also be viewed as another alternative progression system that has been introduced to the game.
So while to some people ascended gear may represent ANet going back to the old standard form of vertical gear progression, I see other systems that have been introduced as a sign that ANet is still trying different things to help give players a sense of progression once they’ve “been everywhere and done everything”.
[THERE IS NO MONOPOLY: Read On]
All the White dyes suddenly just spiked in price. (Celestial is sitting at 24g currently, White at 17g and Icing at 2.8g currently.)
Before the Celestial Gloves were released, the prices of these dyes were: 16g, 8g, and 1g.
Suddenly everyone who did not have Celestial, White or Icing dyes before the 3,000 AP Reward Chest, realized they needed a color to match their new gloves and panicked.
Thus, the price of the dye colors skyrocketed, and is now slowly crashing again.
That doesn’t make sense. An entire group of people don’t quadruple the price of sell listings with absolutely no effect on buy listings only to drag down the price just as quickly as it went up, unless, of course, every single one of those people was an irrational, pea-brained idiot.
But that’s what people are like. I usually place buy orders for things I wish to purchase from the TP but I wanted a whitish coloured dye the other day to play around with a concept I had for my character. My play time was limited that evening, I’m reasonably solvent, and so I just bought from the lowest sell offer for the convenience.
Luckily, I bought my Icing dye two days before this spike happened, but the fact remains that people are largely irrational.
(edited by Astraea.6075)
Thinking over some of the points posters have made about the evolution of the game, I’m convinced I’ve been the victim of bait and switch tactics. I’ve received a better MMO than the one I thought I was buying.
Taste is always subjective, but I’ve already replaced my guardian’s Krytan hammer skin with the new Zenith skin, so I’m not displeased with the new skin (and it really works well with #2 skill). That said, more skin variety (including bigger hammers) is a good thing to help cover as many different tastes as possible.
I get that achievement points are how some people like to compete in what is otherwise a noncompetitive aspect of the game (PVE), but for most people it really shouldn’t matter as the rewards won’t go away and you can happily accumulate points at your own pace.
I like the change, but be careful… the person buying your siege blueprints could be from one of the servers you’re currently matched against. :P
@pricer It’s hilarious when devs do reply and it’s just blatant trolling. If they are listening, they’re not showing it in any shape or form. Get with the times, Arena.NET, and look at how far ahead other devs are in terms of communicating with players. How the f are we supposed to discuss a blog post? On Facebook?
Do you even know what trolling is? Because I doubt devs are actually intending to create negative reactions with their posts. As for not listening, read the section in Colin’s posts where he states that more permanent content is coming as part of living story due to feedback they have received.
More importantly, don’t think that yours is the only opinion that matters. Feedback is important, but demanding developer attention to your thread is somewhat egotistical.
The Explorer achievements (Orr Explorer, Krytan Explorer, etc.) are already account wide, it’s just the one that provides the title has to be completed on one character.
If it bugs you, you could try my strategy. I’ve yet to finish the 100% on my main because there are certain maps that I’m reserving for alts to explore first. Once I’ve cleared it for the first time with my alt, my main will go and complete the map and inch closer towards the 100% mark.
I have the distinct feeling that they are trying a lot of different things and seeing how people will respond. The different approaches to RNG chests and dungeons, for example.
I feel the same way. It definitely seems that they’re trying out different mini-game ideas as well as dungeon concepts (F&F dungeon and Sky Pirates were awesome btw.) I kind of wonder if all the living story story stuff is all just live testing for possible expansion content. That’s what it really feels like.
I do feel that they are starting to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t, so in that sense a lot of what we’ve seen so far is experimental (see also iterative design). Regardless of whether this is intended to test ideas for future expansions, the lessons ANet learn from developing and delivering living story content should help them with both polishing the core game and building future content.
Cleansing Orr permanently is a big step due to the effect that would have on the personal story system for those who haven’t completed it yet. I also think making a “phased” version would be a bad idea as you would dilute the number of players available to do events or help newer players out.
I logged in today, next to the fire that ‘once’ had an achievement. I was unable to log in for that weekend. Not for an hour, not for thirty seconds.
Every time I log in and see that fire, and the expanded content I could never gain. It reminds me why I will never play this game again. This was going to be my last MMO. ‘The’ MMO for me, but with this exclusivity content. I refuse to play into this kittened kitten of a decision.
I would rather pay 15$ for WoW and gain those 11 year old achievements, than spend another dollar( I’ve spent over 300$ on GW2 Gems, and only played for 3 months!) on Arena Nets poor choices.
You do know that WoW also have exclusive (one time) events as well, right?
And WoW has achievements that you can no longer earn, they just rename them as “Feats of Strength” and they no longer give points.
I don’t really get why missing some achievements ruins the game so utterly for some people. I’ve missed most of the current update due to RL getting in the way, but I’m not going to let that stop me from enjoying the upcoming bazaar of the four winds (assuming my other commitments don’t interfere).
Allowing points earned from completing dailies and monthlies to count towards these rewards also helps people feel that they are making progress towards a goal even if they can’t play for a significant chunk of time that some of the other achievements may require. IMO, this is a good reason for them to be counted.
Due to RL issues, I haven’t had any real time to log on and play since this part of the living story arc started, so while I’ve managed to squeeze in one successful run of the dungeon and would like to have more time to try for the achievements,I don’t really see why it should be kept around longer. I know that there a people who dislike the temporary nature of the content, but even though I’m not likely to finish the meta-achievement associated with this arc, I’m okay with the story moving on to the next chapter.