Let’s jot down some examples of a guildwars 2 equivalent of what it could have with the development effort of blizzard.
Bottom line: It really sounds like you would rather be playing WoW right now. No one is stopping you from doing that. This game is not WoW, and that’s why many of us play it. Thankfully a couple of months from now when you’ve fully upgraded your garrison and you get tired for running the gear treadmill on yet another raid GW2 will still be here for you at no additional charge. See you then.
you realize you just took an arbitrary example out of context?
Which one? I quoted about 90% of your original post and you quoted 100% of mine. I was pretty sure that all your examples were in the context of “imagine what we could have if ArenaNet charged a subscription fee” followed by a detailed description of WoW.
Simpler compared to games let’s say 10 years ago.
Compare GW1 to GW2.
In GW1 there were a million ways in which you could fail and get punished for it. From dying and getting kicked out of instances to simply being unable to build a proper character.
If you were bad and didn’t put in the time to get good the game punished you. You couldn’t perform.
In GW1 you were in an instance, and when things died they stayed dead. Aggro bubbles were clearly visible on the mini-map, as were enemies. Avoiding a group was trivial. In GW1 there were so many synergies that ArenaNet couldn’t hope to balance them all. Theorycrafters like me learned to keep our OP builds to ourselves since they were immediately nerfed as soon as they were publicized. As a result, every class had one form of easy mode or another. In GW1 we could equip and configure our heroes and henchmen in ways that made soloing most content quite trivial. I pretty much quit the game at around the time that my only remaining achievements consisted of:
- Remaining perpetually drunk for an ungodly amount of time
- AFKing in the luck circles during festivals
- Repeatedly sending my henchmen out to complete a quest that gave me more faction at a rate that was unattainable through natural means
I wouldn’t hold GW1 up as the standard by which difficulty is measured.
I’m only PvE player as well as most of my guild. I think this game is no longer interesting for me and my guildmates. We just move to other mmo’s that are better for ppl who need challange for 18+.
I don’t know if you’ve read this yet, but as someone in their mid-fourties, I urge you to do so:
Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
~C.S. Lewis
2 years ago I remember this game to be challenging, unique and breathtaking, but many of the old devs are no longer working in ANet, their ideas and spirit they’ve put into the game are gone long ago – I’m talking about those ideas which made me buy and support this game. For me it was solid gameplay with dark, fascinating and mature story.
And what changed is that you’ve been doing the same thing for two years now. Of course it’s not going to be as challenging and breathtaking to you as before. This has nothing to do with age.
ANet was from the very begining of GW2 with you, and after all this time you need to show me when to use my heal skill? WTF? That’s annoying, really. Don’t treat me like 12 year old kid, I want to figure out things for myself, and this game is too much “kid freindly” to do it now.
What does this have to do with 12 year old kids? They improved the user interface to add another indicator that you’re about to die, as opposed to just the health sphere. In real life you would experience a great deal of pain and weakness, but since this level of realism isn’t yet available in computer games the developers have to make do with the available technologies. Have you checked your interface options to see if you could turn this off? If you’re such a pro, how are you even getting to the point where these indicators kick on?
We waited for Guild Halls, we waited for GvG mode, we wanted duels, we wanted challenges, we waited for new expansions that we could buy. Dynamic events on maps, yes, that was cool at the beginig, but in endgame whey are just something that you pass on the map if you aren’t afk in LA.
What do those have to do with age? Granted, much of this has been on the back burner for a while, but it hasn’t been ruled out. As for expansions, I’m pretty sure that ArenaNet has always stated that while expansions haven’t been ruled out, they had never planned to do them. Instead we get Living Story.
Living story – I never was fan of it, I knew that small parts of content won’t keep me online in game for long – just like those dynamic events. It’s like too thinly spread butter on a slice of bread. If you are hungry you will eat it, but after so much time with those slices you got sick of them.
What are you expecting out of an expansion that you aren’t getting out of the Living Story?
Our guild, like many other old ones, needs something big, and I mean like really big! Also make sure that new content is tested, we don’t like to be free beta-testers after final launch of the game.
This is kind of ambiguous, but I hope ArenaNet gets something big out for you soon.
Please ANet, treat old players with respect – they
arewere your main supporters!
I’m an old player (in terms of real life age), and I feel respected. I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
Hey really I think it could be worse. I don’t particularly like everything about the current trait system but it isn’t a gamebreaker.
It’s not a gamebreaker for players who were grandfathered into the old system because they already have an established main character that is capable of running dungeons, max crafting, and a full complement of traits.
For players like me (i.e. players who started post-patch), on the other hand the system is prohibitively expensive. After seven months and 4 level 80 characters I am sitting on 35 gold and have yet to max a single crafting skill. I have one traited character who runs dungeons when my guild is inclined to bring me along or on the rare occasions when I luck into a PUG that is willing to take an inexperienced ranger with limited traits on their run.
Unlocking Adept traits is completely broken. Looking at a single trait line, the more ridiculous choices include:
- Capture Inferno’s Needle or pay 10 silver and 2 skill points
- Earn 100% completion in Gendarran Fields or pay 10 silver and 2 skill points
- Earn 100% completion in Blazeridge Steppes or pay 10 silver and 2 skill points
At level 80, the silver is trivial to come by, but at level 30 I probably won’t have it. Furthermore, as a PvE player there’s no way I’m capturing Inferno’s Needle anytime soon. On top of that, Gendarran Fields is level 35 on the high end, and Blazeridge Steppes is level 50 (!!!!) on the high end, so a new player is going to have time unlocking those traits naturally by level 30 without help.
And these are just the Adept traits. For Master traits we have things like:
- Befriend the ogre camp so they will join you as allies or pay 50 silver and 5 skill points.
- Complete the Citadel of Flame in story mode or pay 50 silver and 5 skill points.
- Defeat the Terror Seven Krewe Leader or pay 50 silver and 5 skill points.
Even at level 80 I’m hard pressed to befriend the ogre camp. I basically have to join an EB zerg for a few hours and hope that they do well enough to befriend the ogres for fun. Maybe if I was in a WvW guild this would be easier. As for the others, CoF is a level 75 dungeon and the krewe leader is a level 68 event. How am I supposed to do these at level 60???
Now let’s look at some Grandmaster traits. We have:
- Discover Death’s Anthem or pay 1 gold, 50 silver, and 10 skill points.
Seriously? For Adept traits we have 100% area completion but for GM traits we have a single POI? What kind of sense does that make? The other two GM traits I see involve completion of world events, which is also relatively easy.
TL;DR – Why is it that GM traits are locked behind reasonable (if not trivial) requirements, but for pre-GM you’re forced to go to extremes? Who reviewed that system and decided that it made any kind of sense?
Let’s jot down some examples of a guildwars 2 equivalent of what it could have with the development effort of blizzard.
- Imagine if your personal story instance was actually an empty plot of land that you could customize and build to your liking, turning it into a war base with your own followers. As you progress through the game, dungeons, personal story, achievement through living world, new features and different types of npcs can unlock that provide their own additional benefits like a farm plot, npcs that mine, crafters that slowly craft the materials you need to make gear while you go and do an explorable dungeon or work on your achievements in the living world.
This doesn’t require that many resources. Half the system was stolen from SWTOR, which is now a free-to-play game. The other half comes from Harvest Moon, which is a buy-once-play-as-much-as-you-want game.
- Imagine if said explorable dungeons have varying levels of adjusted difficulty for different skill groups, with higher difficulty, cosmetic prestige that showcase your triumphs through harder levels of difficulty representative of each dungeon
These are called fractals. Adding level-specific skins won’t require a huge investment of resources. I don’t see how a sub would expedite this type of system. Even if it did, I don’t really think that adding another ego booster to the game would enhance it.
- Imagine that we got new sPvE explorable dungeon content
I’m sure that’s coming. We’re getting map zones all the time. New dungeons aren’t harder to make. I suspect that the demand for dungeons isn’t as high in the general population as you think it is.
Imagine if armor transmutation and changing your hair wasn’t locked behind the gemstore but rather normal NPC services available in towns for small bits of cash.
Let me get this straight. You think that being forced to pay a monthly fee for services that you may or may not use is better for players than a pay-as-you-use-it system?
Bottom line: It really sounds like you would rather be playing WoW right now. No one is stopping you from doing that. This game is not WoW, and that’s why many of us play it. Thankfully a couple of months from now when you’ve fully upgraded your garrison and you get tired for running the gear treadmill on yet another raid GW2 will still be here for you at no additional charge. See you then.
(edited by Bernie.8674)
Here is idea so that everyone gets what they want:
Keep the new system. Anet gets a money sink, players who enjoy unlocking can keep unlocking.
Have an option to turn off new system. Grants all traits to the toon – done!
How would Anet keep their money sink with this system? The type of player who would spend money to unlock the skill is the same player who will shut it off! The irony here is that the system was presumably put into place to reduce the rate of progression and placate the players complaining about the lack of progression. Unfortunately those players lacking progression are the very ones who were grandfathered out of the current system! Progression wasn’t broken for new players; it was broken for old ones. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how the current system came to be. Most other aspects of the game work in the exact opposite manner:
- There is no single task that fills those quest hearts; players are presented with a set of choices and can perform one or all of the given tasks
- There is no single way to gain XP; players get it by completing tasks, doing dailies, PvP, or participating in WvW.
- There are many ways to farm for holiday tokens: instances, quests, gathering, or just by killing mobs.
- Dungeons have multiple completion paths. ArenaNet could have stopped at just one and left it at that.
All of these design choices tell me that the team is well aware that players enjoy choice and variety in their playstyles. That’s why I’m so puzzled at how this system could have been foisted on the game. Worse, it’s been in place for eight months now with no indication that it will ever go away!
I see, thanks! So all the posts about the new classes are just rumors for now?
Where did you see these posts?
So here they are:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dervish-the-Next-Class
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-Class-for-Season-3
That’s wishful thinking and speculation posted by other players. It’s as valid as if you were to announce a new class. We haven’t heard anything from ArenaNet about new classes being added.
The thread is 8 months old? Do you know many traits could’ve been unlocked in the time it’s taken to write all these posts? :P :P
You can’t call minimal grind gamebreaking. Is this your all’s first MMO? It’s so easy and fast to level characters.
You’re missing the point that this is a serious impediment to the new player experience. Just because I started MUDding over 20 years ago and am inclined to level to 80 regardless of what traits I have doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to be the same. The goal of the trait system was ostensibly to make the new player experience more engaging, and it has done the exact opposite. You’re also ignoring the fact that some of these trait unlock requirements are insane. I don’t care how long you’ve been playing MMOs, you’re not going to capture WvW towers by yourself. Sure, you can buy them, but the costs are prohibitive for new players. The discrepancy between dungeon rewards and everything else in the game is ten-fold, in my experience. Without traits you have trouble in dungeons and without dungeons you have trouble acquiring traits.
For reference, I started GW2 in May (but I played GW1 extensively). My main character has the “Been there. Done that.” achievement, but he still has a signficiant portion of his traits locked. I can’t imagine traiting my other characters. Even in GW1, skills that were unlocked on one character unlocked account-wide. It’s just puzzling to me that a company would take something that worked perfectly well and reimplement it in such an ill-conceived manner. The fact that this is being pointed out by veteran MMO players is scant comfort for the new players that are even less equipped to deal with this.
(edited by Bernie.8674)
I am inclined to agree. It has been far too reliably observable by too many players to not warrant suspicion.
Seriously, again, this isn’t a thing.
In the same way that DR isn’t really a thing?
I stopped playing for a week because I went out of town for Thanksgiving, and the first night I logged back in I got Zojja’s Weapon Chest during guild missions. Obviously the RNG is broken. Or is it?
You are rescuing a village that will then stay rescued
I think the denizens of Silverwastes would take exception to that declaration. If only…
If only it worked like that! Then we could play new content for exactly 5 minutes after its release, followed by months of living the peaceful life of an adventurer without adventures (or a day job), feeding cows in Queensdale hoping that the farmer will invite us in for a slice of home-made cake, lest we starve.
First, let me say that I’m impressed by your ability to burn through new content in just five minutes.
Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of spending 5 minutes to fend off an attack on a fort so that I could chest farm in peace, only to have it come under attack again 4 minutes later. Repeating this ad nauseum until breach time isn’t particularly fun, either. Most of my guild mates spent the last two weeks server ferrying each other to breached instances just so they could farm nightmare pods. I guess some players enjoy that style of play, but I prefer something like the WoW phasing system, which works just like the video described: players progress through the storyline and permanently change the landscape for better or worse.
In terms of the Silverwastes this means that you repeat the cycle of defending and repairing for about a half hour and then progress to a new phase where you can battle a variety of challenging Mordrem bosses in a post-breach-style setting without having to trudge through the repetitive defense/repair cycle over and over again. Imagine if dungeons worked like Silverwastes, starting you at a waypoint on the other side of the zone and making you battle your way to the instance every time.
To each their own, I guess.
I’m curious what other MMO you’ve played that has major bugs for so long.
Then take a gander at this: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/1012660/
How about we beat this dead mount over here instead: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/List-of-Common-Controversial-Forum-Topics/first#mounts
You are rescuing a village that will then stay rescued
I think the denizens of Silverwastes would take exception to that declaration. If only…
I never got where the whole gamers sense of entitlement came from in the last few years. It went from every game having a sub, to people expecting their games to be free while also giving continuous updates for years (not to mention server hosting, support, advertising, ect.), and going up in arms if they companies try to charge them anything at all.
Entitlement is a two-way street. Companies aren’t entitled to business. They put out a product and hope that customers are willling to pay for it. That’s the way it’s always been. This isn’t some concept that sprang out of nowhere over the past two years. Historically most games out there were one-time purchases. I bought Zelda Ocarina of Time back in 2000, and I can still play it whenever I want. ArenaNet advertised this game as a buy-once-play-indefinitely deal, and that’s what many bought into. Granted, if you read their user agreement they can change this up at any time, but I think that doing so would erase a great deal of good will and breach quite a bit of trust. This “sense of entitlement” regarding subscriptions is all in your mind.
(edited by Bernie.8674)
When people spend 2-3 hours a night completing a mission, and get rewarded with nothing, not only is frustrating but its disappointing as well, and sends people looking for fun elsewhere, and it has only seemingly gotten worse since I started my new thief several months ago, which was rewarded with a level 18 green pact weapon at the end of the zhaitan mission when my character was level 80.
Zhaitan is the only mission in the game like that. You’re touting WoW as a standard, but their end game last expansion was entirely composed of raiding. Every single raid took 2-3 hours to complete, and by the time you were 2-3 weeks into the raid you were effectively coming out of those raids with nothing to show for them about 75% of the time. I don’t understand how you can complain about a one-time event in Guild Wars while trying to hold up a game that is rife with the situation that you just complained about as a standard of excellence.
Then, my wife and I got to level 90 from 85 in like….half a day 2-manning the five man dungeons which took us between 20 mins to 30 mins to do each dungeon or something stupid. We were still in our shoddy gear from days of old. After wondering if people still died in pve, I popped onto the forum and found lots of people either complaining that the class changes to CC or whatever had made the game too hard, or that people were raving about the changes saying it brought back the old challenge. We sat thinking “that was challenging?” and left a little disappointed.
Well, that’s because the scaling in WoW is always broken with every expansion. When MoP was released level 80 paladins were able to solo current raid bosses because Blizzard likes to change how gear stats apply from level to level. For that reason I’m not surprised to hear that you guys were able to 2-man five mans before hitting 90. The trend is always that you’re overpowered until you hit max level. At that point you’re weaker than ever until you acquire some raid gear, at which point you become overpowered again.
I don’t think I’ve seen any more bugs than what I’ve seen in WoW.
And that’s the bottom line. This game, with all its flaws, has a far higher value-to-cost ratio than any other MMO out there.
If WoW had released their expansions in pieces for free, would people have been unsatisfied?
WoW releases tons of content between expansions. To be fair it isn’t for free since the motive is clearly to retain subscriptions. Even so, I like the fact that I can stop playing for six months and come back to a character that is still capable of the same level of play that they were prior to my hiatus. It’s extremely frustrating to grind to the high end of the gear scale only to have it reset every three months. If you want to pay a premium for a never ending gear grind then by all means go play a game that offers that. Guild Wars has never offered that, and many of us like it that way.
I just hit 80 with my character I made pre-patch and the game just suddenly got SO much more fun. Like 200% more fun, not even kidding. Because now I finally actually feel like I have a real character because I have enough trait points and access to all the traits so I can actually build something with traits that work together. Someone making a character post-patch isn’t going to have all the traits to experiment with. They won’t get to experience the joy of trying all the different traits out unless they go out of their way to unlock all of them, which they may or may not enjoy.
I just hit level 80 with a post-patch character and I have a total of 5 traits scattered across various trait lines, one of which I purchased for 50 silver. I have a random grandmaster skill that I didn’t even really want but managed to get through sheer luck by being in the vicinity of a world event. At this point I feel like I really have no idea how this character was intended to be played. I’ll eventually find a guide that directs me to the skills I want and pick and choose for them. That is, if I can muster up the enthusiasm to even play that character anymore.
well, one thing is true right now, even WoW doesn’t force you this amount of grind just for traits……and i despise WoW grind…..
The irony is that WoW practically eliminated skill acquisition altogether. They recognized that being forced to endure a grind just to play your character as it was intended made no sense. The only barrier to skill acquisition in WoW these days is character level. I don’t think that ArenaNet needs to go that far, but it would be nice if the requirements weren’t absolutely insane (100% area completion for an area that may or may not be in my story line just to get a basic trait — seriously?) and/or if they were restricted to grandmaster skills. I don’t have a problem skill hunting at max level. On the other hand, it’s pretty crazy to hit level 75 with only 3 skills to my name, one of which was purchased for half a gold and another of which isn’t even available because it was a grandmaster skill that was unlocked through partiticipation in a world event.
I know I’ve said this before, but Guild Wars 1 really had this down pat. Most skills were trivial to acquire, but elite skills had to be captured or unlocked through PvP. There really are no interesting choices here. Most traits require us to either perform some insanely tedious/improbable task or purchase the traits at prohibitively expensive prices.
In lack of a better option I asked in the map chat if someone would take a casual noob into their guild. The only replies I got were from a couple of people who advised me to not join guilds, one of them even used the phrase “guilds will just abuse you”. O.o The following day I did the same, and got the same result. So, what’s up with the warnings about joining guilds – is it some sort of common knowledge around here that you should go solo and not in a guild? Or have I just had the bad luck to bump into a couple of individuals with a bad experience?
Misery loves company. Some player probably felt that their guild owed them something for contributing influence and/or helping to earn merits for the guild. Since this perceived reward was withheld, they were “abused.” My advice is to just go out and level, keeping an eye on the chat. I see guilds advertising for players like you all the time. When you see an ad that catches your eye, send a PM. As long as you don’t make unreasonable demands like 24/7 guild buffs across the board and full guild vault access for everyone I think you’ll be OK.
Did anyone else see the OP and think this:
Drytop farm
A zerger’s fantasy-y-y-y
Timed events
Make farmers squeal with glee-e-e-e
Killing Skritt and Inquest
Clearing Mordrem from ley-lines
Alleviating tedium
Is the answer to a never ending gri-i-ind
(Aah, aah, aah)Silverwastes
Bandit chests abou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ound
Protect the forts
Until we get a bre-e-e-e-e-eachNightmare Pods full of loot
Make the labyrinth a treat
But filling them with bandit crests
Is the answer to a never ending gri-i-ind
(Aah, aah, aah)
Gri-i-ind
(Aah, aah, aah)Stun Lurchers
Maintain your Cold Light bu-u-u-u-u-uff
Radiate
‘Cause they’re just too darn tou-ou-ou-ou-ou-oughSneak into the center
Find a Greater Nightmare Pod
Filling it with tons of bandit crests
Is the answer to a never ending gri-i-ind
(Aah, aah, aah)
Gri-i-ind
(Aah, aah, aah)Never ending gri-i-ind
(Aah, aah, aah)
Never ending gri-i-ind
(Aah, aah, aah)Never ending gri-i-ind
(Aah, aah, aah)
Never ending gri-i-ind
(Aah, aah, aah)
Or was it just me?
For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vf2sDgeu7k
(edited by Bernie.8674)
Hello forum my old friend
It’s good to see you bug again
People citing things that no one said
People writing words that won’t be read
And a dev team biding with cotton balls in their ears
Disappears
Within the the sound of forums
Nice! But you forgot to finish it, so here goes:
In rage-filled posts I carefully read
With a persistent sense of dread
’Midst accusations of white knighting thrown
The best idea is always our own
Sometimes our cries were stilled by a post from ArenaNet
That conveyed regret
And touched the sound of forums
And in the angry huffs I sensed
Rumbles of belligerence
Posters writing without thinking
Posters responding without reading
Posters accusing devs of never having cared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of forums
“Fools,” wrote I, “you’re not alone
Our pleas are one collective groan
Present ideas that the devs can use
Be constructive; please do not accuse”
But my posts were consigned to rot in hell
And echoed in the wells of forums
And posters still ranted and raved
Convinced this game could not be saved
And reassurances are forthcoming
In promises of updates incoming
CC Danicia wrote “feedback, issues, or questions, please use this thread
Based on this post”
And whispered in the sound of forums
I like the idea of unlocking traits BUT the unlock requirements need to be more broad or generic so people can unlock them without playing parts of the game they don’t want to play.
IDEA: Traits are made to enhance your skillset. Why not unlock traits similar to the way you used to unlock weapon skills? The more you do a certain type of thing, the closer you get to unlocking a trait.
Example: Necro: Unlock “Training of the Master” trait (which boosts minion damage) after slaying 150 foes with summoned minions.
This is probably the most constructive thing I’ve seen in this thread. I second this idea. I finally put my finger on what’s making traits so annoying, and it’s the fact that they fall into two categories:
- Perform some grindy, out-of-the-way, task that most players won’t ever accomplish through the course of normal levelling
- Do a dungeon with your guild because very few PUGs are going to take a player who isn’t level 80 and/or hasn’t even unlocked their traits yet
Mo Mo’s idea lets you unlock the traits that are most suited to your individual play style simply by playing the way you want to. If you consciously choose to unlock a trait it forces you to practice that play style without the trait so that when you do unlock it you can fully appreciate its benefit. This is far superior to anything that’s currently in the game.
As an aside, I recently got my baby engineer into the ‘70s. He has three traits unlocked, and one of those was purchased from a trainer for 50 silver and 5 skill points. I even unlocked a grand master trait through a Straits of Devestation event, and I don’t even have the ability to increase my traits enough to access grand master traits yet! It’s ridiculous for me to be in my 70s with only two basic traits equipped because everything else is gated behind crazy requirements. What new players would ever run dungeons while levelling? Even if they knew about the LFG system, 80% of the groups want 80+ players, 50% want experienced players only, and most of are looking to do explorable. If this were like GW1 where you could H&H most normal mode missions I would be more tolerant of unlocking skills through that type of content. Sorry… I know this has all been said before, but I had to vent a little.
Reducing player base = Reducing customer base
Why the kitten would they “want” to do that?
They wouldn’t. The OP is just self-absorbed. ArenaNet nerfed features that they liked. Since they are about to rage quit ArenaNet is reducing the player base. The implication there is that the OP represents the player base. I know it makes no sense, but some people (myself included, when I was younger) have trouble understanding that the majority might not see things their way.
I’ve never seen someone kicked from LFR, it’s not a very common thing at all. It is literally content tuned for people that aren’t good at the game.
You must have totally missed out on the Siege of Orgrimmar LFR. For the first few months 90% of the Nazgrim attempts were wipes, and after each one the recount meters were spammed. Anyone doing less than 70K DPS (tanks included) was kicked. The sheer amount of rage in the game combined with the ever-growing toxic atmosphere to drive me from that game and back to Guild Wars.
The same thing holds true in most mmos, including WoW. You don’t need top tier gear to do anything in the game except high difficulty raids. You can still experience the content of these raids too, in the form of LFR.
Except it wasn’t quite the same. If you stopped at LFR then maybe you were content to do half the DPS of a heoroic raider utilizing your exact build and rotation. Maybe you didn’t mind zerging your way through watered down bosses and calling it “experiencing the content.” If you ever did normal or heroic raiding you would know that LFR was notwhere near “experiencing the content.”
You can play the entire game(except the high level raids, which are just higher tuned LFR…raids, so you still can experience the content) without top tier gear. The entire game outside high level raids are tuned for quest, dungeon and crafted gear.
Even LFR had item level requirements that required considerable effort at the beginning. Every time Blizzard released a patch they expedited the gear acquisition process so it became less of a grind, but the grind was still there. I kind of prefer the ArenaNet philosophy of letting your end game gear remain your end game gear. Having to climb back on the gearing treadmill every few months got tiring pretty quickly and provided even more motivation for leaving WoW.
you just want legendaries/ascended…which are not really necessary, for nothing???
You act like this is unheard of, but GW1 worked pretty much like that. You did a mission and were instantly ascended. The best gear in the game was already available from a town that was only about 80% of the way through the game. From there it was just a matter of applying the upgrades you wanted, and even those were trivial to come by within a couple of years of the game’s release.
Like no work required at all? You just want everything handed to you?
I work for a living. I play for fun. Having goals to play towards is fun, but as soon as they become so onerous as to be confused with work, then they’ve exceeded the bounds of healthy gaming.
and Fyi if you need to spend RL money on them, your doing it all wrong, I’ve crafted multiples of both and never spent one penny aside from buying the game ofc.
I would contend that I’m doing it right because instead of investing my time into crafting multiple legendaries I’ve put my efforts into a job that provides me with the RL money to purchase gems. It has the added benefit of also being usable for important things like my kids’ college tuition and my mortgage. So congratulations on your multiple legendaries. I paid off my mortgage, both vehicles, and met my savings goals for my kids’ college tuition this year. The rest from here on out is saving for retirement. I have no regrets regarding my time investment, and I’m happy to spend $10 a month on gems. It’s still cheaper than a WoW sub.
I don’t know what the heck your talking about needing to spend rl cash to get legendaries and ascended.
That’s probably because you’re running dungeons every day. I never understood the outrageous prices on the TP until I chained 4 dungeons back to back with a couple of guildies and acquired more gold in 2 hours than I had acquired in the past two months. Dungeon rewards are outrageously inflated. Go a month without doing dungeons and let us know how much progress you’ve made towards your next legendary in that time.
Factions was a standalone game like Nightfall and Prophecies whereas EotN was an expansion. Hence there being less content in it that in Factions.
My wall of text wasn’t that clear. My point was that EotN marked the point at which ArenaNet realized that they weren’t going to be able to put out the quantity of content that merited a full-on $40+ investment. EotN was priced significantly cheaper than any of its three predecessors. The new business model relies on micro-transactions rather than pay-for-play content.
I know that you believe that you were “investing” in the game because by purchasing gems you were enabling ArenaNet to build a better game. I’m telling you that your impression is false.
Your assertion is false because you still don’t comprehend what I’m actually saying.
By all means, tell me what you’re saying.
What I’m saying has nothing to do with whether or not Anet views it as an investment or a purchase. It has to do with the fact that I spent my money in hopes that the game would grow and be good.
Isn’t that what I just said? What exactly am I failing to comprehend here?
It has nothing to do with whether I expect I’m owed anything or not or that they have to bow down to my demands. It has to do with the fact that I spent my money in hopes that the game would grow and get better, and those hopes were dashed when not only did it not get better, but they removed some of the good parts, making it worse.
Believe me, I sympathize, but I’m telling you that your hopes were misguided. Going forward, you now know better than to spend money on a MMO in hopes of improving it. When you buy gems you’re buying access to features that exist here and now. You’re not buying any future features. In fact, the agreement pretty much states that ArenaNet reserves the right to delete all your gems (as well as the content you bought with them) at any time.
I’ll just keep repasting these until you read them and understand the difference between the definition of the word “investment” that you’re asserting and the definition I’m actually using.
You’re going to be severely disappointed if you continue through life under the impression that reality conforms to your view of the world.
I know that you believe that you were “investing” in the game because by purchasing gems you were enabling ArenaNet to build a better game. I’m telling you that your impression is false. ArenaNet never sold gems to you for that purpose. In fact, they specifically stated why they were selling gems as well as what you could expect to receive in exchange for that purchase. Just because you intended for that purchase to act as an investment does not mean that it did. Cut and paste all you want, but at this point we’re not even having the same argument with each other any more. I don’t know what more you want me to say.
Let me put it this way: I agree that you purchased gems with the intent to invest. I’m telling you that, whatever your intentions were, gems are not an investment. ArenaNet told you so in their user agreement. Next time read agreements before accepting them.
Since I already went over this and you could have just read it on the same page, I’m not going to retype it. But I’ll be nice and copy paste it.
Your intent and impressions have nothing to do with this. You think of yourself as an investor because you bought gems under the false impression that ArenaNet would then be obligated to make improvements to their game to accommodate your future needs. The fact that you mistakenly thought of yourself as an investor does not make you one.
I urge you to re-read the user agreement. Pay particular attention to this:
Gems — You may obtain Gems from NCSOFT (or a third party authorized by NCSOFT) for use in connection with the Game. Gems are a virtual currency which you may, in NCSOFT’s sole and absolute discretion, exchange for Items, services or access to other specific forms of Content not otherwise available without Gems. The Items, services or access to other specific forms of Content offered by NCSOFT in exchange for Gems may be discontinued, modified or removed from the Account by NCSOFT at any time in its sole and absolute discretion.
and this:
You acknowledge that Gems are digital material with no cash value, that no interest is paid or earned with respect to Gems, that Gems are not personal property, that the quantity of Gems in Your Account may be increased or decreased by NCSOFT in its sole and absolute discretion for any reason or no reason whatsoever, that You have no right to a refund related to Gems, that there is no right to transfer or exchange Gems, and that NCSOFT may limit Your license to use Gems with respect to any Item, service, Content or time period related thereto. You further acknowledge that additional restrictions related to Gems, as determined in the sole and absolute discretion of NCSOFT, may be applicable if, and when, Gems are made available to You or thereafter.
What the heck kind of an investment is that? About 75% of that user agreement can be summed up in these two sentences: You are buying transient entertainment. In no way, shape, or form is your purchase to be considered an investment.
Legally, investors receive many protections that are not available to consumers. I’d like to see you go into court and argue that you are entitled to such protections.
In no logic are we their investors. I think you’re confusing terminology here. We’re their consumers. We don’t provide funding; we provide revenue. Without revenue investors are likely to withhold funding, so we can indirectly cause the company to fail.
I am not.
We are investing our money in their game with the expectation of returns in a manner that was worth the money invested. I didn’t say we expected money back. By definition, we are investing in the future of the game by paying them money to continue working on it. I don’t feel my investment is a good investment, therefore I have stopped providing my money.
You are not investing money. You are buying their product. ArenaNet is not giving you dividends. You can’t turn around and resell the goods you purchased from ArenaNet. In fact, the ToU expressly forbid you from doing so. An investment is expected to provide a return. A MMO is not an investment and never has been.
Why on earth would they need to add a subscription to start working on an expansion? They didn’t have to add a sub to GW1 to make Eye of the North. There are dozens of other games that have expansions without a subscription. The expansions have their own price tag. That price tag is what compensates the company for development.
The GW1 business model didn’t work out as anticipated. The original plan was to rapidly churn out content every three months or so and attach a price to it. Instead of paying $15 a month for subs, we would ideally have been paying $45 every three months for an expansion. There were several problems with this:
- Content wasn’t coming very quickly. After a few months went by they realized this and released Sorrow’s Furnace as it was free of charge. Factions came out 9 months after Prophecies. The expansion took three times longer than anticipated to create. As a result, only a third of the projected revenue was generated.
- The skill system made expansions extremely difficult to balance. The sheer quanitity of skills was only the tip of the iceberg. The fact that players could pick two classes at a time increased the complexity of balancing new skills exponentially.
- The meaning of “expansion” changed for MMOs, creating expectations that GW1 was simply not equipped to meet under their original business model: new playable races, for example. Consider that the addition of a new race requires two new versions of every skin and/or model that already exists in the game. This also dramatically increases the time it takes to add new skins and models. Content was already taking three times longer than anticipated to generate. How much longer does it take with multiple races???
Consider that Eye of the North had significantly less content than Factions. There were no new classes, and many of the skills that we got were not class-specific. EotN had about half the skills that Factions had, and there were no new missions in EotN (although to be fair they introduced dungeons). I think that at this point they realized that in order to accomodate the most heavily requested features (namely, playable races) they were going to have to start from scratch. That’s how we got to where we are today.
However, the problems haven’t gone away completely. Consider how many skins and models they’re going to have to generate in order to add a Tengu race, for example. Consider how much future work that’s going to generate too. Adding a new race means that every new piece of armor is going to require two more models and/ or skins going forward. There are six armor slots, so adding another race means an additional 12 models and/or skins every time.
TL;DR – A MMO expansion carries certain expectations that still can’t be met under this game’s business model, including (but not limited to) new races, additional skills, new areas, and additional features. Creating an expansion is not as simple as waving hands and making declarations.
In all logic, we are their investors. Without the funding of the players, the game fails and the company fails.
In no logic are we their investors. I think you’re confusing terminology here. We’re their consumers. We don’t provide funding; we provide revenue. Without revenue investors are likely to withhold funding, so we can indirectly cause the company to fail.
Any good company quite clearly has reason to keep its investors happy, rather than ignoring them and just saying, “Well, if you don’t like our policies, go fund our competition.”
Again, you’re confusing investors and consumers. If the game and everything in the gem shop were to be given away for free, then the consumers would be ecstatic. However, this would undercut revenue and the investors would be mad.
That situation was purely hypothetical, but a similar dilemma applies here. Everything has a cost associated with it, including much of the content that the players (i.e. the consumers) are demanding. This cost detracts from profits, causing making the investors unhappy. To be successful ArenaNet has to find the right balance between giving the players what they want without cutting so far into profits that investors balk.
If they want people to continue spending, they have to show that the game is worth spending on. Without any knowledge of anything that’s being worked on, nobody knows if their money is going towards something good or just more ways to take their money.
I agree with that, but if the cost of creating goods exceeds the amount that players are willing to pay for those goods then that content will still be considered a failure, regardless of its merit. This is why features like new classes and new models are not coming as quickly as some players would like. There are only so many players who are willling to fork out 600 gems for a new skin.
This is, objectively, bad business. There is no spin on this that you can give that will make it look intelligent to ignore a vocal portion of the game and convince them to look elsewhere for better things to throw money at.
You stand corrected now. If a vocal portion of the game demands expensive content at unreasonable time schedules then ArenaNet can very well bankrupt itself by caving to each and every demand. Models and skins don’t come cheap.
And remember, even if it’s a vocal minority, it’s still a vocal part. And being vocal also means spreading the information to potential new customers that it’s not worth buying the game. Heck, I’ve already turned people away from the game.
And that’s not helping your cause any. In fact, it’s providing even less incentive for ArenaNet to generate new content.
(edited by Bernie.8674)
The difference why it feels like less grind is because I can sit down to night of gaming and get a piece of gear for my efforts. No it’s not the entire set but it’s an item. In GW2 you login and do a whole night of WvW and walk away with well not much. Next night I can get another piece towards my set. WvW I get well not a lot just a little closer to a piece and repeat. Yes you get more but your getting rewarded much more for the time you spend. It is by definition a much more rewarding game. Where as spend a evening getting a couple Exotic drops if you can even get them that often anymore I don’t know to turn around and get nothing from a Mystic Forge of nothingness. Not very rewarding.
You must have taken a long break from WoW, because last time I played it, the casual player could hope to run LFR and come away with a “raiding” set that was literally half as powerful as a full-on heroic raiding set. If they wanted to be a little more committed they could try to get in on “Flexible” raids which took several hours apiece to complete, could only be run once a week, and, on average, would only provide maybe one upgrade per week. Then there was the fully committed raider. In the typical raiding guild you would run “Normal” level raids that required everyone to bring their A-game for every single boss. If just one player spent one second distracted the entire group was guaranteed to wipe and the fight had to start from the very beginning. Provided you could get good enough to “farm” bosses, the intra-guild competition for loot would commence. Most guilds fell back on various systems for distributing the loot “fairly,” but rarely was a player ever happy. But that’s not even the highest level of raiding. Beyond that you had “heroic” raids. In those, not only did everyone have to bring their A-game; they also had to be fully decked out in full Normal gear sets. If one player failed to show up that night the rest of the guild could forget about making progress on the bosses. Do you really want to bring that “joy” to GW2???
In the other game you are getting gear from the new current content. In GW2 your grinding the same old stuff over and over and over and get reward very little spaced fairly far apart. Now this may not be an issue for some. But that’s why the game doesn’t have a chance of being a big MMO. And I do call BS on their “Fastest Selling ever MMO” when the other company sells 3.3 million expansions in the first 24 hours of release not including pre-sales.
Anyways it’s time for me to get back to enjoying Warlords. I think the points have been adequately made. Will check back in a few months to see if this game is still around and if they’ve made any progress at turning it around.
Right now you are in the WoW post-expansion honeymoon phase. The “limitless” gear you’re talking about comes from heroic dungeons and is destined to be an absolute joke three months from now. As soon as the raids start coming you’re going to be right back on that gearing treadmill, and then you can come back here to tell us all about the “lack of grind” in WoW. The description you gave for GW2, “grinding the same old stuff over and over and over and get reward very little spaced fairly far apart,” is an apt description for about 75% of the time I spent in WoW. I’ll take the current GW2 gearing system over that any day of the week.
It’s an interesting case study in community management since it basically demonstrates how long it takes a community to go from hopeful at a public response to disappointed. Maybe they’re waiting for it to get hostile so they can cite that as a reason to close the thread.
Or maybe they’ve said all that they can say at this point and are waiting for substantial news before disseminating further information. I don’t see what ArenaNet has to gain by hoping for a thread to go hostile just so they can close it. I understand that many of us are disappointed, but comments like these don’t promote constructive dialog and only serve as a distraction from the actual issue, which, as you might remember, is the overly complex and burdensome trait acquisition system. I think that we have pretty much said all that needs saying regarding its deficiencies. The general consensus appears to be that it blows, and most players liked the old system better with regard to ease of skill acquisition. Now the ball is in ArenaNet’s court, and we’ll just have to wait and see what they do with that information. I’m sure that when they finally decide what to do about it we’ll see an announcement. These theories about ArenaNet deliberately trolling players by withholding information and shutting down threads out of spite aren’t going to expedite the announcement.
I’m a grad student and my research is funded by grants. The organizations who offer my funding expect regular status reports on what I’m working on and what progress I’ve made. If I told the steering committee for those grants, “I’m definitely working on things, and they’re going to be good things, but I can’t tell you any specific information about what I’m working on now or in the future because my plans might change,” do you think my funding would be renewed? Hell to the no. Arenanet owes its sources of funding the same regular reports on its progress that any other organization offers to its backers.
This analogy is valid until you consider that GW2 is not subscription-based. They don’t offer pre-orders on up and coming content. You buy the game as-is and then optionally purchase existing upgrades. Why do you feel that they owe you a report? When new content is released you’ll have the option to purchase new skins and additional storage. No one is demanding “funding” from you right now on speculative content, despite these implications you’re making.
The big question I would raise is if its possible for ArenaNet to develop a system that can accurately determine a player’s contribution? Another serious matter to address is what constitutes as event contribution? Outside of events that require you to find Objects ‘A’ and return them to NPC ‘B’ – There is really only one thing. Damage.
Damage.
Not rezzing downed or dead players.
Not staying alive.
Not supporting your allies.
Not control.
Well, this perception is the flip side of eliminating the trinity. Players think that DPS is all that matters because everyone can self-heal and/or mitigate incoming damage. The reality is that encounters, even in Guild Wars 2, go smoother with a combination of these, not just with damage. In a perfect group in which everyone knows the mechanics backwards and forwards, then going all out on damage will make encounters a little bit faster. In a typical group, however, taking two seconds to help your teammate get back while they’re still able to rally makes the encounter as a whole faster than it would have been if you just let them die and made them run back.
It is why many players favor Berserker, and similar stat combos, so heavily. Before the Zerkers in this thread snap at me — I agree that the stat combo is fine and that skilled players can and do use it effectively. But lets be honest here… There are a LOT of players out there that are not learning to do better. At present they don’t have to and apparently by threads such as this it is taboo to even consider that they should.
Guild Wars has always targeted the more casual player. This is nothing new. I, for one, am very happy with that system. After Eye of the North I switched over to WoW for a few years. I endured years of high end raiding where everyone had to gear up and perform to their utmost in order to simply get a shot at loot. I can’t say that I was particularly happy about being penalized because that really nice guy who reliably shows up to every raid just happens to be suffering from arthritis. Still, I would much rather bring him along than the really competent jerk who ragequits at the slightest provocation and constantly whines about gear distribution. The fact that I never have to deal with crap like that in this game more than compensates for having downed players “leeching” off everyone’s collective effort.
Mindlessly whacking my way through some Skritt community last night, I was struck by a sudden and overwhelming repugnance at the wanton fury inflicted on a race so lost and frail in the world.
You’re not the first to feel this way: http://thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=25
Ultimately, we either need to let you spend materials from your bank directly at vendors so you don’t need to keep them in your inventory (and then make geodes/crests materials) OR continue to make the wallet larger and larger. Or option #3 we haven’t considered yet you might think of in this suggestion forum!
WoW had this problem for many years also. The sweet spot (in my personal opinion) was when they boiled it down to two currencies: one used to purchase sub-optimal end-game gear and/or materials and one for the best end game gear. Eventually they decided that allowing players to have a deterministic path to acquiring the best gear in the game was too pleasant and chose to abandon currencies as a means of gearing altogether, but I digress. The point is that maybe instead of generating ever-larger wallets you guys could consider consolidating currencies. If you introduce a new currency with each new living world story and you continue to pump out another living story every six months the sheer number of currencies may be more trouble than it’s worth.
Why not just WP and run again?
The only waypoint in the entire zone is often more than one minute away. Access to the chest after many fights is limited-time only. I think that if we had easier access (i.e. close uncontested waypoints and/or fewer mobs to plow through on the way back to the fight), players would WP and run in a heartbeat.
In regard to Silverwastes, if the mobs there temporarily quit spawning during the boss fights, many of the downed would be more inclined to make the run back. As it is, they can either wait out the 45 more seconds that it’s going to take the fight to end or WP and run back, knowing that there is no way that they can make it back in 45 seconds or less.
TL;DR – If the penalty for WPing and running back weren’t so stiff, then players would be more inclined to take it. Right now there is no good incentive to do that.
the majority of the time i was inside the yellow (amber) fort doing the events while quite a lot of the farmers helped kill the majority of the mobs outside.
Your experience was quite different from mine. On my map the farmers scaled the event up massively, leading to a situation where two or three of us were doing the best we could to hold down the fort against Champions, Elites, and Veterans. In the meantime I was watching red chests pinging all over the place. The farmers were simply killing whatever was near the chest. Any mobs that headed for the fort were effectively ignored.
That having been said, I don’t blame the farmers all that much. If we had more than a minute between each event them players might feel less compelled to constantly farm. In this respect I thought that Drytop had a better cycle: thirty minutes of (more or less) free play and thirty minutes of timed events. How can a farmer not interfere with events when the events are going non-stop?
WE NEED RAIDS!
No, we don’t. The reason I’m playing this game is that I don’t have to worry about restarting the gear treadmill every six months when a new raid comes out. WoW is about to come out with yet another expansion. Why don’t you give that a try instead?
As someone who has only been playing Guild Wars 2 since May I don’t know how things used to be, but as they are, the system is very confusing.
First, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when/how the traits are unlocked. I notice that they become available at level 30, but more often than not I have not even unlocked a single one by then. I’ll browse through them (now that I know where to find them) to see if there are any that I want, but the ones in which I’m interested are often unlockable by completing areas that are about 10 levels above my character’s. The ones that are actually accessible are often in areas that are on the opposite side of the world from where my race/story line has taken me. When I see this the progress I’ve made on my story seems kind of pointless.
During my first encounter with the trait system I purchased a master trait from a vendor. The system happily let me do that, and I was even able to learn it right away. Imagine my surprise, however, upon discovering that the game wouldn’t actually let me use it. After spending 20 minutes poking around on the wiki I finally learned that the trait wouldn’t unlock until level 60. There was no obvious in-game indication that this was the case. Once I poked around on the trait panel I accidentally discovered that clicking on the little telescopes by the traits would point me to the place I needed to go to unlock them. If the goal of this system was to simplify trait acquisition for new players, I’d say this aspect of the system is a big failure.
The first Guild Wars, which I played extensively back in the day, was much more intuitive. I bought most of my skills from trainers for a nominal cost as I went, and if I wanted the elites I knew I had to capture them from bosses. I never experienced the frustration of seeing a pop-up congratulating me on gaining access to a new feature only to discover that I hadn’t actually unlocked it yet and would not likely do so for some time.
I am a huge fan of untradeable rewards that are unique to skilled play. I don’t think we have enough of them. I really don’t like that everything is purchasable with gold.
Then it sounds like collecting titles may be your thing.
Do not waste a yellow (Master Salvage kit) on those blues and greens. Especially the lvl 80 ones. It will not give you more silk, it may give you more gossamer. A basic salvage kit works just fine..
I actually use the Mystic Forge to create 250-charge Mystic Salvage kits (Master Salvage Kit + Journeyman’s Salvage Kit + Fine Salvage Kit + 3 Mystic Forge Stones), and I use those on everything blue and above. I may change my stance on that when (if) I ever max my luck out, but I like getting those essences. I don’t have any crafting skills capable of making damask yet, but I’m sitting on 3 full stacks of silk scraps and counting.
I get and respect that some gamers like challenge for the sake of challenge, but they are in the wrong game quite frankly. And beyond that, too many of them wind up being the other kind of challenge seekers. The ones that don’t want actual challenge. They say they do, but what they really want is challenge that’s just hard enough that they can beat it, but no one else can. They want to stroke their egos, nothing more. They want to feel part of some elite and will gladly trample over everyone else’s fun to get there.
Well said. One of the main reasons I left WoW to come back to Guild Wars was that many of the players clamoring for a greater challenge were also the first to impose gear and build requirements on their group. The fact that playing with less experienced and/or undergeared players is a challenge unto itself seemed to escape them. Sadly Blizzard listened to those people and created an easy mode and a hard mode. The hard mode distributes gear that makes the (already) better players even better than before while keeping the less skilled in inferior gear. This is where the line of thought expressed in this thread will lead, and I think it’s absolutely terrible.
One thing I miss about the original Guild Wars is the hero and henchmen system. I used to get a challenge out of attempting everything with just them. Then when I played with actual players everything seemed like an absolute cakewalk, even if the players weren’t that good. I also liked how we could cut down on the number of party members to increase the challenge as well as the loot rate. I’m sorry if it seems like I’m digressing, but my point is that there are many ways to create challenges without having to rely on bigger numbers and mechanics that exclude players with slow connections and/or inferior hardware.
It would be nice to have something like Recount so i can see who isn’t pulling their weight. Can’t stand leechers who get loot and gold off of others hard work and abilities.
This is attitude is precisely why they don’t have recount, and I, for one, am happy with their decision. There are several reasons why:
- There is more to this game than flat out DPS. Just because someone chooses to focus on condition removal, CC, and/or healing doesn’t make them lazy “leechers.”
- This is a game. There is no “hard work” involved. It’s all play. If you want to participate in a system where your hard work and abilities are recognized then get a job and excel at it.
- If you’re forming a random group it should be just that: random. You’re not entitled to play with only the best of the best players when you choose the random route. If you only want experienced players who conform to your specific glass cannon style of play then form a guild that focuses on that, and do things with them. Otherwise try to be a good in-game citizen and quit worrying about how everyone else does or doesn’t play.
- There are too many trolls out there who will deliberately do nothing whatsoever knowing that recount will expose them and incite fits of rage in players with attitudes like yours. You’re thinking that recount will improve the player base’s quality, but as a long-time WoW player I can attest that it often does the opposite.
1. If I wanted to play with other DPS-minded people, I should be able to.
2. Not a great analogy. Lets keep the comparison within the game.
3. The LFG tool is not really random. The description is there so one can personalize their party.
4. DPS may be an extreme measure. We just need a filter to better control who joins the party.
- You are able to form a guild and run exclusively with them. No one is stopping you from doing that.
- My point exactly. I’m not the one who first made the comparison. The OP is the one who referred to performance in dungeons as “hard work.”
- To clarify, the LFG tool may enable you to improve your odds of getting a certain type of player, but it doesn’t entitle you to exclusively play with the “best of the best”
- This is now straying off topic. The title of this post is that “Recount would be great.” I’m assuming that this is a reference to the WoW addon that tracks DPS, heals, and damage taken. What other criteria would you propose then?
(edited by Bernie.8674)
Argh, you missed my point entirely. Firstly, I didn’t bring up the sales figures for comparison reasons, just to show that a hard game most certainly can be mainstream while also challenging the player.
Comparing single player games to MMOs is apples to oranges. If I can learn mechanics on my own time and at my own pace my tolerance for difficulty increases. Having to wait for 4-25 other players to keep pace with me and/or having to keep pace with them is extremely frustrating.
There was a very vocal portion of the MMO community that lamented the good old days of difficult 40 man raids and insisted that if someone built them then players would come. Wildstar bought into that and attempted to service that niche portion of the community. The results are documented in this Wildstar report:
In the true sense of their motto; “The Devs are Listening” Frost discussed how Carbine is regularly looking at and analyzing gameplay analytics. These analytics are focused on playtime, content and reward loop feedback, all of which have shifted their focus from high end content to solo gameplay. Statistics are showing the majority of Wildstar players enjoy solo play instead of larger raids which really caught Carbine developers off guard.
If you want difficult content you might want to check out WoW. They don’t seem to have any qualms about shutting 90% of their playerbase out of their ultimate end game. As for Guild Wars 2, many of us (most of us?) are pretty happy with where it is.
ArenaNet has never allowed addons because it’s too easy for malignant developers to create addons that will compromise account security. They’ve held this position since at least 2004, which is when Guild Wars was first released. That having been said, I agree that the UI is far too inflexible right now. The first Guild Wars was far better in this regard, and I’m a little confused as to how the game could have been out for so long now with this egregious regression still in place. My target portrait is always overlaid on top of whatever mob I’m facing, and since tab targetting doesn’t default to the nearest target on the first press like it used to, the portrait prevents me from clicking on my desired target about 90% of the time. It’s extremely annoying.
It would be nice to have something like Recount so i can see who isn’t pulling their weight. Can’t stand leechers who get loot and gold off of others hard work and abilities.
This is attitude is precisely why they don’t have recount, and I, for one, am happy with their decision. There are several reasons why:
- There is more to this game than flat out DPS. Just because someone chooses to focus on condition removal, CC, and/or healing doesn’t make them lazy “leechers.”
- This is a game. There is no “hard work” involved. It’s all play. If you want to participate in a system where your hard work and abilities are recognized then get a job and excel at it.
- If you’re forming a random group it should be just that: random. You’re not entitled to play with only the best of the best players when you choose the random route. If you only want experienced players who conform to your specific glass cannon style of play then form a guild that focuses on that, and do things with them. Otherwise try to be a good in-game citizen and quit worrying about how everyone else does or doesn’t play.
- There are too many trolls out there who will deliberately do nothing whatsoever knowing that recount will expose them and incite fits of rage in players with attitudes like yours. You’re thinking that recount will improve the player base’s quality, but as a long-time WoW player I can attest that it often does the opposite.