Guild Wars 2

A couple people in this thread had mentioned it would be nice to set a flag for RP for server placement priority. That was my first thought too, just was not sure if it is possible in the current state. But the more I think, why not? We already have server priority placement in place, so the cost of development may not be as much.

Suggestion: Mega Server Preference Choice

Concept: A way for any player to play “the way he/she likes” via a new menu of choices by setting a flag the player will be placed on a type of server choice.

Potential menu of Mega-Server types:

General PvE
Light RP
Lore RP
WvW Home Front (where players may travel in PvE while waiting to enter WvW may be with people sharing WvW interest)
Black Trading Post Traders Route (where players may wish to meet others to discuss economy)

I like visiting the forums because there is vast knowledge here, but in game is fun too. Just wondering if something like this can replace our current “server placement priority” process. Sometimes I wish I can just play my normal wandering in PvE while listening to chats on the map. There are so many dedicated players in each of the GW2 major play styles. I can see myself learning a lot this way.

“General PvE” in the menu will still provide the opportunity for us to all be in every category.

Anyway, I’m hoping to learn… hopefully a lot of us Frodos out there can venture into some of these special servers and learn as we play.

In the future server names may be a thing of the past. To me it’s time we think about play styles when it comes to play style preference choice.

For example, In the server vs. server-based WvW, there have been time-zone problems, server population advantage problems. The future of WvW may be better served if instead of the problematic server vs. server, we have race wars. :p Imagine 5 races having fun a new WvW land playing castle seige. Cat army vs. human, vs Sylvani vs. Asura.

Players may want to make the same class for 5 races just to have fun helping one race or another. This can increase revenue for GW2 also in terms of character slot sales.

Anyway, the future is wide open. Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but I know some of the best PvP players are RPers too, so I figure I may as well bring the idea here for preliminary discussion, if any. I can see how, with this set up, all the different major play interests can mix and mingle. So players will have a very exciting menu of choices.

Imagine a large organized RP event where everyone is in WvW fighting over a cause.

naiasonod.9265:

A game dev with whom I’ve long been friends (no connection to Anet) once told me that as much as the studios he’d worked for generally appreciated the RP communities in their games, they couldn’t quantify their value and had a difficult time making strong cases for what features and QoL changes should be made when it came time to decide on things like throwing labor hours at making three types of interactive chair.

There were always more quantifiably compelling things to throw always-limited resources at, and at the end of it all, RPers were also often the least likely to drop sub/leave if neglected.

In short and sum, they tend to know what we RP-lovers want, but its hard to quantify the value of giving it to us when most of us are basically never going to leave even if we’re neglected anyway.

You can always count on RPers to be some of the most foolishly loyal and heavily invested-in-their-community-environments sorts in any of these games.

They appreciate our money and our loyalty, but sadly, its money in the bank irrespective, and they’ll always have squeakier wheels to grease.

Naiasonod, thank you for an enlightening post. I re-read it a couple times. Learned a lot from it.

OP, I will always remember your quaggan world news. Even that brief time I saw you I sensed it was an exceptional RP player. One reason I rp by myself is that I can’t even think of what to say when faced with some good players. Haha. I remember vaguely that night struggling to try to say something to you, but couldn’t think of what to say.

In my times of playing mmorpgs I had seen some very powerful RPers that just put me in a stun-state. As in, speechless.

I almost feel like there should be a town perhaps in each of the racial zone so that RPers can run it, and I would love to visit those towns. I’ll just be sitting there in a tavern like a regular traveler. Mm, kind of like Frodo.

In a way our racial home cities seemed to be built for it. On the other hand, I quite often sit the Grove and see some good, and some bad RP. And usually I’m busy running my own tasks as I log into a city. So even the idea of a home city may not work out well for RPers of different interests.

I hope GW2 dev team will have/provide a bit more incentive for RPers, such as having RP contests so what many of us RP learners get to watch and vote. Haha, I think it may prove to be very popular. Gee I’d pay to watch some of the players.

It’ll be almost like an instance theater. I don’t know, just fantasizing. :P

Imagine if a group of RPers got a good story plot line and characters going, and a popular show, they may even earn gems, or real life money like SPvP do.

Anyway, some brainstorming may make the future mmorpgs have star players that can draw millions to the broadcast show on Twitch TV. Ok I can dream from a fan’s seat, right?

Take care, wherever we may meet or not meet again. Stars are everywhere ye know. :p

I think there is a huge spectrum of RP players. I myself did not participate in the big mega server uproar at all because I’m pretty much on the fringe, and nearly a “non-RP” player to a casual observer’s eye. I don’t need a guild. I have my own RP guild where I rp all 80 or so characters across multiple accounts. Reason is: there is only fun “drama”. No bad drama.

Anyway, you never know who’s out there. One day I saw someone else on the map chat saying he’s in a big guild where every member was himself. He said, “Nice, and the way I liked it!” I almost wanted to ask him in tell, “Are you me?” Then I decided it was just too weird.

For me and every one of my alts I have the most fun listening to map chat from people like the OP. The one thing that I feel bored in now is:

Now I’m really roleplaying all by myself. Sigh. No more other crazy people to hear.

My favorite old RP chat hangout was Queensdale, Lion’s Arch. Remember when LA nice people gave free prizes for guessing their riddles? I thought it was a fun community there. If I needed to do a puzzle, there was a kind mezzer at LA that would always help. Now.. no idea where he is. Haven’t seen him either lately on my contact list.

Without this community, I won’t be making alts anymore. I’ll just stick to one main, and probably play less often, buy less gems, etc. In the long run GW2 may not even recognize how much revenue they are missing from people like me. It won’t bother me of course. I’ll find other creative fun to do.

It’s why this discussion I’m actually trying to look out for GW2. To me sometimes the lack of support for the big spectrum of RP players may cause a game to lose revenue insidiously.

It’s why I think about how older zones will be when all the dynamic event scripts are stale. How will it impact this game.. etc. Well, maybe it’s already all handled.

[Edit add: The question in my head is, if developing RP map channel carries X cost, what can NCSoft really gauge in terms of revenue lost by not supporting RP map chat?

What’s the cost to hire free-roaming RP gamemasters? Vs. loss in losing the open-community rp players, including the OP, who support a potentially huge, unseen RP community.]

The smartest devs—and imho ANet is in that league when it came up with dynamic events—know how to utilize the player population as part of its resource. Players began cooperation and entertain each other.

In the “RP player support” issue, I hope ANet will recognize that no matter how they spend funds developing dynamic events, the scripted events will always grow stale.

The RP players who do map chat are resource behind another tier of “dynamic events”. They not only contribute to GW2 revenue. By their creativity they are free, volunteer, gamemasters that create immersion for many other players.

To give up such a free resource is not really going to help GW2 in the long run.

To ANet:

we in the RP community tried our hardest…with taxis to populated instances and focused guilds….but…it just took so much effort….folks drifted away….the element of surprise wasn’t there anymore…

Please note the RP community did try. But the “element of surprise wasn’t there anymore”.

I just realized RP map chat is the dynamic event of RP community. Players can instantly join and split up.

Light humor makes a fun gaming night. Also, even if we are in guilds, it still will cut us off from the thousands of rp’ers. This is like hearing a bard singing in a wilderness. Just wandering in any zone..

People like OP were a contribution to the RP global community. Not just a guild. Please consider supporting RP map-chat channel.

Thank you.

OP, I think I had heard you on map chat before. In fact, people like you were what I enjoyed most. To me it was a world where I could wander anywhere, and there would be a little quaggan saving CoOOoOristmas. Now you folks are definitely vanishing.

I hope ANet can consider an RP Map-chat channel for global RPers who enjoy wandering around any zone and hear spontaneous humor from their RP Map-chat in the spirit of fun.

It can bring back the old Queensdale map chat back into hopefully more zones. If that happens, it’ll make my night to hear you on the RP map chat again.

Wow, never thought of it. Thank you!

Tom Gore.4035:

BlueOcean.5380:

An expansion would not be called a new framework.

It would if it was distributed and/or launched in an unconventional way, such as being purchased with Gems (or Gold-to-Gems if you prefer) or even released free of charge and monetized through other Gem paid unlocks, such as new class/race (and the character slot unlocks they undoubtedly generate).

Other mmorpgs had sold expansions via in-game stores though. EQ, LoTRO come to mind.

Sure it could be just an iPad card game like Hearthstone, but by reserving 90 minutes on the main stage for just that would cause a kittenstorm of epic proportions. Hopefully Anet is smarter than that.

I don’t think this is going to be an IPad card game. More likely it will be with animation and real movement. GW2 has been designed to only have 10 skill buttons. It can easily translate to an IPad action game.

ANet can offer the same content via gems in the PC version. This will take care of an uproar where people without tablets are locked out of these new packages.

Mini expansions sold at 200 gems per episode via both PC and tablet platform.

This may tie into why the new daily is requiring us to go to one zone for events… instead of all the available zones. Who knows?.. just random thoughts.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Am I the only one feeling that Heart of Thorns sounds very similar to Hearthstone?

Me too. Just looked up PAX info: (bold highlight mine)

“Guild Wars 2: Beyond the Point of No Return
Join ArenaNet president and co-founder Mike O’Brien and Guild Wars 2 game director Colin Johanson for an exclusive sneak peek at what’s next in Guild Wars 2 and be among the first to hear how we’re setting up a new framework for how an MMO can grow its universe. The Living World was just the beginning.”

An expansion would not be called a new framework.

I wonder if “a new framework to grow an MMO universe” means we’ll be getting a tablet app expansion, and potentially be able to grow our characters via adventures in the app. Data will be transferred back and forth between platforms.

Not sure if this is part of NPE but I really like the new log-off-box graphic, which appeared shortly after NPE.

To me the rocky texture and charcoal color remind me of a fantasy world of danger in that the color can easily be that of a tome stone. It also reminds me of dignity needed to conquer evil foes, etc. etc. Just the perfect mood-setting piece to get me to want to log back in to experience the world of GW2 again.

I can not say the same about the NPE leveling reward window. To me its flashy colors are somewhat cheap-looking, and remind me of one of those lesser FTP games wanting to “reward” me first so they can sell me junk later. The quality of their presentation of the “reward” is, to me, an indication of the lack of quality to come in the rest of the game.

Suggestion: It may mean more if the newbie reward window leads us into the immersive world that is GW2’s strength.

For example, the humans can get an ivory-stationery letter from the queen along with some rewards encouraging them to keep helping the Divinity endeavors, Chars could get a authoritative letter from their commander, Asuras from their lab research leaders…

Of all MMORPGs atm I’m only playing GW2. For me, GW2 is a cut above the rest of the MMORPGs because it has the best immersion.

That immersion feeling has been diminishing with NPE. The arrow which I turned off quickly. The newbie reward flashy window which I wince at each time. lol I guess I’m silly.

But the “New Dailies”, another hot button with many players, is the players don’t want to be told where to go.

Back in the days of Scarlet invasions, we players happily raced over to Scarlet invaded zones. Hey, no one complained back then about being told where to go.

Reason, difference in immersion. Scarlet events felt like there was a world with events going on. Not just a list like a teacher just gave us homework assignments.

Immersion is GW2’s best strength. It puts GW2 above all other mmorpgs on the market. I haven’t looked at all the other games yet. But lately I’m starting to think maybe I should. Sad to think this way, because I really love GW2 and hope it becomes a great chapter in MMORPG history.

Unfortunately in a gist perhaps to compete with other MMORPGS, I feel some of the best features of GW2 are being changed for “marketing”, for “new player retention in minutes of stay”, etc. This is going by spreadsheet, but ignoring the soul and the real quality of the game. I sincerely hope this will not cause GW2 to fail over time. Thank you.

Just want to report a tidbit re:NPE on a new player’s comment on map channel that I happen to see. He said he’s a new player, and lamented something like: “How do I get rid of this arrow? It’s the most awful xxxx telling me where to go every second.”

People asked him: “What arrow?” I was wondering too.

Then one smart vet player gave him instruction on how to turn it off. Then I realized heh, I had turned that feature off as the first thing when NPE came about, and have long forgotten about it.

I had no complaints but I thought the arrow would be newbie friendly. It was a surprise to me that a new player actually hated it.

But this new player’s comment reminded me on what prompted me to cancel WoW. Man the WoW map with a kindergarten-paint-by-number like interface telling me #1 thru #9 quests in an area for me to finish was exactly the final straw that got me to cancel WoW. I’m an adventurer thrilling in discovery. Not be pointed by numbers.

Now I wonder if it’s NCSoft’s ambition to grab WoW market, and decided NPE should contain an arrow guide that makes it simple to follow… “Just like WoW”.

If I wanted to play WoW I’d be in WoW.

lol sorry… Just want to inform people of one new player’s comment. If I had been a new player, I probably would have just dumped the game without even asking how to turn the arrow off.

I’m dumb. lol maybe I could have turned the WoW paint-by-number quest map off? Um.

Fredjesus.7085:

This change just kill the game
with just 3 gold you can get all your traits and be able to make countless builds, now you want 50+ gold and 130+ skill points, it really not fun. Run away through the map to do a event only for a trai, it only do the character uniformize, all character of X class only use X>X>X> build.
About some week, 2 IRL friends start play GW2 and both leave the game, i can’t understand what happened with they, but i decided leveling my 9° character, and when i reach lvl36 (before you star build in lvl10) “surprise” i cant have any one trat to distribu.
The game is death and this system never attract new players because it’s just not fun.

I hear ya. Old friend of mine recently came back and disappeared after a few attempts at making new toons. He did not like the new trait system. On top of that, last thing he told me was: “What happened to the pet control?” on his new lvl 2 ranger. Now everyday I look for him and only see lvl 2 ranger as his last log in.

So, things like NPE, trait change,.. everything lately seems to chop down the game some more. I’m baffled by why so much effort is spent in destroying a fine game.

Suggestion:

• Three PvE dailies, but make events at most racial-theme-specific. Keep most, if not all old dailies on the random roster to generate 3 required PvE dailies per day.

Benefit:

• Players can exercise their game geography muscle and participate in a game of match designed by themselves. They will not feel being told to perform a menial task, but the task becomes a challenge that they can elect to solve on their own knowledge.

• When zone restriction is racial-zone based, it focus player population, but not to an extreme.

I’m still playing GW2 despite playing Fishdom too. :p lol. Just want to say I really love this game and would like to side with the people who want the old dailies back.

Reason:
Old dailes were akin to match-3 games’s ding and flashing. It really keep the PvE players going. It made players try to remember where the mobs that cast condition are, where the underwater regions are, etc. It brought GW2 zones into players life as part of their history in the game world.

This is how players attach to a game. Each day they are reminded of their own knowledge, and become more attached.

I do feel the daily event being 3 is nice and shorter than the old 5. Appreciate the “3” for people with busy schedules. But losing those events may be detrimental to long-term revenue to this game.

Imagine if all of a sudden match-3 games no longer matched much.

I suspect the pleasure for many PvE player is actually (whether we are aware or not) in the thoughts we develop knowledge and can plan how to achieve a random set of 3 achievements in one zone. Those of us who take pride in our PvE world knowledge grin to ourselves.. meanwhile we are hooked to this game like addicts. :p

I feel many of the old daily events have merit, sort of like the “ding” sound or sparkles in match-3 games. lol I am back to playing Fishdom 3 the last few days. And I realize now that as a PvE player, I enjoyed dinging my condition removal, exploring under water, and the game rewarding me with a “ding” as I watch my daily event completion in the old days. Now there is no “ding”, so I’m having more fun playing Fishdom.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

you don’t want me playing the way i want to play, message received, ill just stop playing!

I did feel, as I ventured on off-daily zones, how empty it was, and it did occur to me that if this continues, we will have a player base decline. Once that tide has turned, it may be difficult to recapture many players who have moved on. I did not relish the thought of hitting that stage.

Imho, the solution is simple. Just change the daily event back to Maguna, Ascalon, et. It will be an intermediate measure that allows players to make their own decisions. Also add back anything that can help the player participate in building a living, vibrant world. Chief of which may be the daily rez. The world atmosphere takes both the zone design and players to build. Without players in a zone, any beautiful zones may appear dead.

The feeling most people seek for in a mmorpg is a living fantasy world. Rezzing, as minor as it is, does provide a feeling that this is a world where strangers help each other. People who play feel soothed by it, and happy in doing it to develop a connection even in a brief few seconds with another player. You want to make a world where people visit to be happy, to enjoy life, and relish in others help, to be helpful, in the PvE section of the world. Thanks for the read.

In short, plan the daily to facilitate player participation in that fantasy world. Not just manipulate their movements without considering the human side of emotions needed in fantasy world. In WvW and PvP we have fun in competition. In PvE the fun is in cooperation. Give players credit for participating in that cooperation. Rezzing is part of that. As a gamemaster/world builder, this is of course an effective way in even utilizing the player population itself to help you build a world.

Once player base has left, it will be hard to draw them back. Witness what happened to Aion. (Speaking to myself… and just sharing my thoughts in hope to remind devs of what is at stake. I’m sure they already know this.)

I had tried adventuring on my own due to the new limitation of one specific-zone for events—and observed an effect.

Whereas in the past I come in the game and felt I was in a living, vibrant world where people would be helping in dynamic events, rezzing NPCs, giving a feeling of a true fantasy world, which I enjoyed as a game. Now I’m traveling in many zones with very few people there. Even the few people there run right past dynamic events. No one is rezzing.

It dawned on me that by choosing one specific zone for the daily events, the game has effectively killed maybe 97% of its zones.

I love the GW2 zones. It used to be fun wandering around all kinds of zones. Now? Even though I myself chose to ignore the daily, the world is no longer the same. As I attempt to solo in these zones, it felt like the game died. The first thought that occurred to me was: ANet had spent a lot of money developing beautiful zones. What a stroke of move to send all that money to waste. The move to specific zones just killed all the resource ANet put into to develop all the wonderful zones.

I’m guessing Anet is attempting to focus player population in plans for future expansions, but the measure has gone too far. We have crowded zones where younger characters can not get in a hit before all the level 80s shot and killed the mobs. We have wasteland-like feeling when off-the-track, where the game appears to be dying.

Suggestion: Go back to the old racial area designation for the daily events. Make it Maguna, Ascalon, etc.

I don’t feel a loss in not doing the daily. It’s another reason why I did not log in my lvl 80 for those daily events. The only reason my lvl 17 was sad was he was all alone. More a community-building issue due to alts not being informed on where the crowd may be at.

I had hoped to level up the alt. But I don’t look forward to being lonely till he can do daily crowd fun, which won’t be till near 80. So I’m giving up on him. 63 levels of loneliness heh. no way.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know. That’s the point. The daily never enters my characters life or mind. Only my mind. When I’m playing one character, my other character is doing whatever it is he’s doing. But he’s not aware the daily. And I don’t really see how he could be, since nothing in game tells him he needs to be doing stuff.

To Vayne on your RP question: (other stuff follow) We do direct our characters. :p It’s our mind that reads the event on the upper right hand corner of the screen, under daily. The text says daily, so we go through an instantaneous transformation on what it means to our characters.

I’m in no way feeling your rp is different from mine. I said we do it the same way. We just project differently. Ultimately that’s what makes rp fun, and why we enjoy rp. It’s a combo of imagination, and roleplay-driven story telling.

As rp’ers we are part writers. We let the story unfold, with the aid of in-game mechanics. It’s fun. For me, tonight I logged off my young toon without ever returning to do the daily with my level 80. For me, the level 80 has no place in the youngster’s frustration. My young ranger only feels lonely and frustrated that he heard other people went to fight a big boss, but he was not told where the boss was. Instead, while people his age all ran to the fight, they called for a big guardian to show up instead of him. He felt unwanted.

If I tried to log in my guardian to do the daily, it will be for my own sake as a player who wants to have the achievement credit for my account. But my guardian would only hear a call of duty from his squad. This is why I said you and I do the same thing.

:p Well, before we go too off topic, I’m going to end this discussion about RP.

Changes may be setting up for an expansion

Been thinking of this game. I keep feeling there is an expansion coming, and wonder how it will really turn out.

Some of the things I’m guessing:

—Mega-server is one way to reduce servers need to host old zones via combining player population from multiple servers into one.

—NPE is setting up for new player influx for an expansion next year.

— Many in-game expenses are introduced to drain the economy to save it from further inflation. The need to waypoint for just daily gathering may be one such measure, albeit very small in amount. We see even new toon instance drained of loot in the past, so apparently every bit helps.

— New dailies may be aimed at focusing player population in zones, in anticipation of long term expansions.

I see many indications, but with some of the holes in the new system, I am not getting the feeling there is well-coordinated task forces, or perhaps NCSoft has its vision, which it may be forcing on ANet. I’m not sure if some of the measures are well-planned. As someone pointed out, some things seems to work on paper, but not in reality.

I do love GW2. It’s my last hope atm for a fun mmorpg.

Time will tell. Atm I’m of the mind to wait and see. Thanks for your intelligent input on this forum. Read lots of your posts before.

Vayne.8563:

I still have the same question. How does your character even know there is a daily. Only you know there’s a daily.

I don’t see how you can have it both ways. Either your character is a single individual in a game world, where dailies don’t actually exist (not in game) or your character is just an extension of you, in which case you can do what you want.

I think it’s a valid question. How do you justify, in game, that character knows what a daily is.

I really am curious.

The justification is the same as when you log in another character to play the daily. How do you know the other character does not have a daily?

As part of my alt’s adventure, he would like to meet other adventurers, be part of the gang that beat the local boss everyone else is trying to kill. Taking him out of the game so I as a player can log in another toon just to get some reward for my account is very ooc to me. :p I’m seeking to stay IC.

Of course, not everyone is a rp’er in this game. My other concern is how to facilitate a community in an mmorpgs. Community building is one of the utmost important goals . When an alt of mine can not be in the same community of newbies running daily events to slay an attacker in town, there is a problem. At it stands he does not even have an event listed for him that new account characters do at his level.

Vayne.8563:

My characters are separate individuals. It’s not a big brother. They don’t really all exist at the same time. We don’t all get to kill Zhaitan.

:-) Funny I was thinking of telling you the same thing: My characters are separate individuals. Precisely why they each wants to do their own daily.

My example about big brother getting in the way was trying to illustrate how each person is an individual. They each has the right to do their own daily, drink their own coke, without having another character do it for them.

One more thought on why alts should be allowed to participate in daily events of their own level:

It facilitates a way for new players to hunt with veteran players.

As it stand right now, veteran accounts’ newbie alts don’t even see what zones other newbies are in. When I was in a zone today with my alt, the whole zone seemed empty.

Just before this change went into place, I had coached a newbie with my new alt, mailed a gift to the newbie. He was thrilled at the welcome by a veteran player.

Now I don’t even know where the real new players are. They are probably in a zone with other new account mains. My alt is isolated from them. Part of my frustration is feeling a segregation.

Lukyromero.6780:

I’m just laughing so hard about all the Q , Q going on in this forum, absolutely hilarious! LOL!

So am I, laughing hard. ROFL!

Vayne.8563:

The thing is you can still level your alt after you quickly do one thing on your 80 (which is what I do). Because the experience you get from that is trasferable. It’s in the form of a consumable.

However, if you don’t care about achievement points, you still get the rewards like you used to from just logging in. It’s more freedom, not less. Unless you absolutely must have achievement points.

The old daily was replaced by the log in rewards, not by the new daily. The achievement points come anyway, you get them slower or faster. Eventually you’ll hit your cap, one way or another.

Why think about them at all? What makes you think you have to do a daily at all, now?

It’s not about reward, but the adventure. Imagine if every time you went out to anywhere you need your big brother to come out to do what other youngsters around you are allowed to do. But the bartender says, “Hey joo! You get your bro out here to drink this coke. Not for joo, kiddo, cuz u got a big brother. You need your big bro to hand a coke to you.”

Will I want to live if I were that kid? Yep but I won’t visit that bar. lol.

Just tried to play my level 17 alt and ended up in a bad mood because there is no way for me to complete the daily events without bringing on my level 80.

I had bought 12 alt slots a few months ago envisioning all sorts of adventure and fun raising them. Now I am experiencing the difference in game quality between my alt and a new account’s lowbie toon, who may be standing right next to me. He’ll get a normal life leveling up, while I get to wish my level 80 can help me do the daily.

The thought haunts me to the point I can’t stand playing my current alt now. Let alone level up the other alts waiting in the wings.

What’s astounding to me is the lack of consideration for revenue in this new daily plan. Does GW2 not want to sell extra character slots? Is it Anet’s intention to make players regret having invested in 12 alt slots? And I truly regret having invested in 12 alt slots.

What about gem purchase I may make for my alts?

To me it indicated a lack in QA, potentially caused by ignorance of both the producer and developer. These kind of things will hit revenue, yet the change went ahead with it, as if the company is oblivious to potential hits on revenue.

I had seen how NCSoft mismanaged Aion. I’m venting here… :p I thought Anet was a shiny beam of innovation. What happened? Any MMORPG should support alt fun.

For a long time I thought I found a home in GW2. Ever since its launch I was happy. Putting away bad memories of other mmorpgs. Think I’m going to take a wait and watch stance now.

I’m jaded. A part of me still love the game, but I’m on high alert. More things like this… may spell downfall ahead.

Ashen.2907:

BlueOcean.5380:

Ashen.2907:

BlueOcean.5380:

To me, GW2 was a fantasy world I could journey each day and select my own adventure, and be rewarded for it.

And this is still the case.

Allow me to clarify: For me the reward for playing a game is fun. The problem atm is many zones are dying as a result of people totally ignoring dynamic events. (Not on the list of daily.)

I don’t care about AP, laurel, etc. as much as fun. If the fun is not there, no amount of AP, laurel is worth it. People, other players, are the fun.

I see.

I wasn’t seeing events getting all that much attention, certainly not any more than is now the case, before the change. With certain, farmable, exceptions of course.

The joy of the new dailies for me is that I can complete whatever is required in order to get the reward faster than has ever been the case (for me) and so get on with what I want to do in game. I have limited play time and so being able to get my laurels immediately and my APs within as little as 4 minutes means that more of my play time can be spent doing whatever suits my fancy that day.

Actually I share your joy. I was initially very happy (being I’m busy) to just log in and get laurel. I did not miss AP one bit. But then I realized I enjoy hanging out with people in a more conversational way then zergs allow. :P Went to lowbie zone and had fun hanging out with a newbie. But when played my mid-level toon (around 54) it seems the zone was dead. People just ran by. None stopped for dynamic events. It felt empty (both in zone and in heart.) What? NPC needs help and everyone just ran away. Nobody rezzed either. Haha.. The fantasy world of heroes seems shallow and untrue now. :p

I came to realize my initial euphoria about log-in reward was not working out for me at all. Yikes…

Ashen.2907:

BlueOcean.5380:

To me, GW2 was a fantasy world I could journey each day and select my own adventure, and be rewarded for it.

And this is still the case.

Allow me to clarify: For me the reward for playing a game is fun. The problem atm is many zones are dying as a result of people totally ignoring dynamic events. (Not on the list of daily.)

I don’t care about AP, laurel, etc. as much as fun. If the fun is not there, no amount of AP, laurel is worth it. People, other players, are the fun.

To me, GW2 was a fantasy world I could journey each day and select my own adventure, and be rewarded for it. At the end of each day, I had sometimes hours of fun because I got to wander wherever I wanted. And sometime during my wandering I’d have slayed 50 foes, performed 4 good deeds helping NPC in events, … and somehow I came out a hero for the day.

Now, the fun is .. dictated. Mm, gamemaster says go to Frostgorge, but I feel like wandering a green Spring themed zone today and as my 4th level Asura. Gamemaster says, “No daily quest here for you.”

Ok. I don’t want the current daily reward. I’m willing to give it up, even though I had enjoyed building AP, feeling that score showing my long-term committed achievement as a hero in the GW2 world. Lol. Guess I’m no longer going to be a hero in Tyria.

Mmm, somehow not many people are around me. Even when there is a dynamic event, people seem to just run by. After all, there is no longer incentive for many of them to do it. They are just gathering, or running away.

Seems to me the game is dying in many zones.

My only guess in why ANet chose to go this route: An expansion is coming.

ANet is setting up for it so that there won’t be too many vacant zones once the game may run for 10 years and can end up with too many vacant zones. So it is setting up to focus all players in one zone, making sure all level 80 characters are there to support the level 80 zones, all newbies will get their own focus zone, without level 80s trampling them.

Mmm, nice purpose, but something is lacking in the implementation. It is indeed feeling too restrictive. If all I am going to get is a very strict gamemaster, I won’t be staying long in this world.

At a minimum, please have the daily quest match the level of the character that is logged in. It’d also help to have 5 racial zones for each 10 level-spread or something, selected daily so players can at least suit their mood of the day.

Player flow will still be continuous throughout levels. With mega-server helping, it should not be too hard to fill 5 instances. In the long run it is good for a game to keep all levels of zones populated to encourage interaction between long-time and new players. My new Asura toon had a blast helping new players in the last few weeks in starting zones when he was doing his daily. Now I’m supposed to play my level 80 to be a hero. What hero?

Hoping Colin may read this thread. Below are my 2 cents to the devs on what went wrong.

I. QA: Many threads have already called for better QA, test server. That’s your biggest problem it seems.

II. World Immersion:

1) All the locked skill boxes are an eye sore. They tell players they are missing some key skills they will need. When they had these skills before, seeing the locks innately causes an irritation in their mood.

2) The game used to present an instant immersion with beautiful game world with the golden icons for reward on the right edge that gave people a feeling they are in a fantasy world with an air of magical growth for their characters. Now the leveling reward is too in-in-face, with a square box that knocks player out of immersion. The box blocks the view of the world. It makes them feel they are playing a poor-grade game rather than the once sophisticated fantasy environment.

Suggestion: People play mmorpg for immersion. Keep a hard inspection on how you are presenting your beautiful world to the players, and how you may inadvertently destroy all the work that went into world building. This happened to LOTRO. Their splash screen store intrusion drove away much of their player base.

III: Lack of QA may have caused things such as Copper-Fed salvage tool no longer being able to be used on lower level characters. When you have a sale on the tool along with a sale on character slots, you need to be aware that you will have many customers buying both so that their new characters will have an easy time growing up. Then, in a week’s time, they find out Copper-Fed salvage tool have been nerfed to be only usable for level 15 and over. Great PR. :P

Dong things like this kills your player trust. The life blood of your revenue is the gem store. Don’t kill it.

Southern.8973:

While it doesn’t fix your problem with the CFSoM (and quite legitimate complaint, IMO), one workaround that might be available to you is WvW (or even EotM).. You can pop in either one of those and pick up salvage kits (and/or hit a merchant to sell stuff), then when you exit you’re right back where you were at the Jumping Puzzle. Buy 10 salvage kits at a time and you only have to go pick up new ones once a month or so.

Thanks for the kind tip!

To Anet management: One reason I buy gemstore items is to support ANet revenue…. GW2 has been my favorite Mmorpg, and I wanted to see it thrive. But this kind of business practice does not feel supportive to me, so I will indeed just stop purchasing things. I’m not looking for a refund. A refund only works once. I want to see what the company policy is. It can impact the future. This is why I am quite interested in this issue atm.

I do admire the gem refunds automatically offered to players who bought multiple commander tags. There is nothing said about how ANet may or may not offer refund for copper-fed. The problem could be just a data entry bug. Time will tell. I’m patiently waiting to see what will happen.

I actually bought several copper-fed for my alts that never will become over level 10. I planned to park them at certain jumping puzzles because I’m not good at jumping. For e.g., Dark Reverie. Just for the convenience of not needing to carry copper stuff when they will be gathering the occasional ore node. Now I find they are all useless. Lol.

This opens a precedence of an existing Gemstore item being nerfed. Based on this—my faith in the store has gone down, and chances are I will be leaving this game anyway. Not feeling like playing at all after all the nerfs that were unannounced prior to this Feature Pack. I had been very excited, now I’m totally disillusioned. Sigh… What do you say when a company advertizes a car with a certain engine then is able to change it to a lesser one, with no responsibility to the customers who purchased it based on their ad-stated ability.

Your customers made decisions based on your ad.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Reminds me of EQ over again. How many times expansions were announced with all sorts of “exciting improvements”, then the nerf bat swings out from the left field. Whoa… I’m getting too old for this.

Fool me once, shame on me.

P.S. I changeed topic title to “Optional Reward Mode”. There are vet players who enjoy the rewards in the new process. But some of us do not wish for these rewards. We just need the old level of skills available. For me anyway, the reward in replaying a new alt is to feel I understand some of the combat skills now and can TRY to do better in raising an alt. When the ability to try is taken away, so ends the desire to make a new alt. For many players with level 80 toons, they do not need to play another low level toon for a level 14 piece of gear that they can’t even salvage, but are forced to destroy.

I would like to request an option for us to go back to the old way.

The limit of skill points is a major blow to folks like me, who want to experiment in terms our skills, not in terms of un-salvageable low level reward gear. For us, the real reward is in being able to instantly get the skill points and go have a ball experimenting. Thank you for your consideration.

Perhaps one way to handle this is to have 2 options in reward path upon creating a new toon: 1) gear, etc ala current implimentation. 2) skills ala the old way. Make it 2 paths, and even the same individual player can then have the option of choosing either path to experience, depending on the player’s choice of class. (Sometimes a player is just playing the same class, other times a new class he/she would like to experience. The same player may decide to use path 1 or 2, depending on his/her own need.

Can we please have an optional reward mode to start a character?

This should be good for both veteran players and newcomers of all styles, be they enjoy the new reward system or not. Yes I realize some veteran players enjoy the new system, but there may be players new to GW2 that will hate the new system too,

As for me, the new system has killed my desires to make any new alts.

I quit WoW when I was making an alt, and its map was, to me, too kindergarten-like with numbers indicating quests I could do. It got so I could not log in just looking at those numbers. (If this has changed in WoW, pardon me, because I have not been back to WoW for years, and never will again, now that I love GW2.)

One thing I like most about GW2 is the options available to players of many play styles. Nothing is mandatory in this game. I am terrible at jumping, won’t even touch WvW, PvP, yet I have enjoyed the PvE content that in general is friendly to me.

I recently bought many new character slots to start new alts because I had finally come to trust that GW2 will always offer options for players. It took me a long time (played since close Beta) to come to trust GW2 developers to lay down money for alt slots.

Little did I realize this is going to happen. The whole alt experience now means I get to step thru labor to obtain even basic skills that used to be available to me.

One of my favorite things to do when starting an alt is to meet challenges at a lower level than I used to need to accomplish certain goals in the game. I’m not a great player, but I was loving pet-pulling to attain what I consider to be a challenging goal at level 4. Now, I don’t even have access to pet management window at lvl 4. That took out what I looked forward most to with each new alt.

With the painfully kitten skills there is nothing I can do but try to grind through the steps, and by the time I get pet management it’s too late. I’m over level for that fight to be challenging at all to me.

The thrill of making alts is to go back to the old areas and see how much better I can do this round. Sadly now it’s just a chore. No challenge, just biding my time so I can even get the skills back. By then my forced leveling has taken out all the fun, and it’s just another grind.

An even more painful part is: This chore lasts 20 levels when I tried to use a birthday exp scroll.

Allow me to elaborate: It used to be if I wanted to have a quick level 20 alt, I can do so and upon clicking the scroll boom I get 20 skill points to fill out my skill and can go merrily along. I used to have fun assigning those skills to suit my play style. Now…. wow, I get to click through every single level, forced t select a prize at many levels, adding to my “play time” which seems more like “work time”, to be forced to drag the rewards out just to destroy them. None of the rewards fit me as a level 20.

My birthday scroll now means more torture in the “reward” process of clicking, dragging for .. being forced to choose lower level gear, then destroy those gear, because I don’t need them at level 20. Then at 20, I only have 8 skill points. I need to grind 12 more skill points just to get the 20 skill points I used to get, and then can’t equip some of those skills I work hard to grind for until I reach level 35, due to the new level requirement to equip skill slots. By then, guess what? I’ll be over-level to perform any challenges I would have enjoyed.

This means I will never buy another character slot,, nor wish to use my birthday scroll. I feel dumb to finally trust a game enough to buy alt slots. Been there, done that. Many MMORPGS dispappoint at the end. I still have hope GW2 will be different though. I have noticed ANet listening to players many times on the forum. It is my hope an option can be developed for players who do not wish for “guidance” in the form of torture to those of us who do not enjoy this new “reward” system.

Thank you for reading. Take care.