Guild Wars 2

We’re just complaining about it until the developers decide to balance it, remove it or another MMO is released without it.

There’s a sharp decline in demand for food buffs. It appears there’s a lot less people playing WvW these days.

Spiral Architect.6540:

Lately I’ve been wondering if there’s a “planned obsolescence” in the game design.

There are bugs and broken mechanics still in place that have been there since launch — some of which have been acknowledged by ANet staff. Yet they continually remain unaddressed. Add to that a constant stream of new, shiny, temporary content that, while it has its bright spots for some, is really pretty shallow.

What does this pattern do for the game? The new shiny stuff makes for great advertising copy. They can publish screen shots of characters with the newest (mostly unattainable) weapon skins, fighting cool new monsters and engaging in fresh new encounters. This draws in new players, which means more box sales and potential new gem shop customers.

Meanwhile, veteran players get frustrated and fed up with the same old broken content. It’s almost like ANet is saying to veteran players, “You’ve played the game already. Move along.”

Is does appear that their gem store business model is based on an ignorant consumer who blindly throws their money away at a slot machine for a chance to get what they want.

Vayne.8563:

Calae.1738:

I’m not entirely certain if Arenanet even cares that we regularly log in anymore. I know they want us to log in at least once every 2 to 4 weeks to buy gems. These mini games are fun for how long? 10 minutes?

See that’s the question. I can’t tell you how many hours I played crab toss for, and I like dragon ball even more. So the question is how long is dragon ball entertaining to each person. Some people really do like it.

If you don’t like it, you don’t have to participate. But if you haven’t noticed there are threads on this forum asking for MORE mini games.

Why?

It’s like buying a racing game; instead of making more complex tracks and building new cars with new physics; the drivers can instead park their cars on the side of the road and play Tetris on their smart phones.

This is why I take Guild Wars less seriously with every patch that is released. This whole game is like an amusement park for children. It angers me that I wasted real money buying gems to support this non sense.

I’m not entirely certain if Arenanet even cares that we regularly log in anymore. I know they want us to log in at least once every 2 to 4 weeks to buy gems. These mini games are fun for how long? 10 minutes?

Thief burst is high due to downed state.

This poorly designed down state mechanic is tied to almost everything. Balancing decisions are based on the idea that you can still fight back and rally while downed.

Anything “hate” is a slippery slope in terms of development time and resources. Just ask Blizzard how much they regret all the time they wasted balancing the game that way.

I’m not saying that creating counter-play is bad design. But when you have an MMO with literally hundreds of abilities, utilities, conditions and traits and you will end up realizing that your efforts are futile. No matter what tweak you make to counter an ability or playstyle; the problem that you solved created several other problems.

The process will continue to infinity.

skullcrusher.7849:

Shouldn’t the better players get a slightly better reward for being , well, better?
I’m sure in sports better players get rewarded better?

I don’t think it’s their intent to make easier content more rewarding that harder content. Arenanet have shown us how well they solve problems by incorporating knee jerk reaction techniques.

Just recently they implemented the ability to salvage 1 item into another item in order to solve 2 economic problems. While I can agree that the solution is simple yet elegant; I can’t help but think of how restricted they must be in terms of resources. No new gameplay element or mechanic was added. They just flipped a switch somewhere and added a few lines of code that allowed a player to convert 1 item into another.

Hire a team of people that is tasked to bring in revenue by creating convenience and cosmetic features.

-Weapons and special effects
-Armors and special effects
-Mounts and transportion systems
-Player owned real-estate, public instance with mini games
-Animations (dance, jump, dodge, attack)

There are so many ways they can make money. They just don’t care enough about this game anymore. That’s what I think.

zenleto.6179:

Calae.1738:

This game is a haven for casual players. Maybe that’s a good thing. When a AAA hardcore MMO is released that requires actual skill and minimal brain activity; the casual players can stay right here.

I’m more than happy to let those with minimal brain activity get their jollies elsewhere.

The implication was that Guild Wars 2 requires no brain functions what so ever to succeed. But I see what you did there. Well played sir.

Araziel.7201:

You know I had read a rumor the other day that Anet was working on something else.

They have to be working on something else. With the kind of content that they’re releasing in GW2 they must have a very small team maintaining it. The cost of maintaining GW2 are probably higher and revenues lower than anticipated.

This game is a haven for casual players. Maybe that’s a good thing. When a AAA hardcore MMO is released that requires actual skill and minimal brain activity; the casual players can stay right here.

I don’t find anything in Dragon Bash to be particularly exciting. Then again with these match ups I think anything is more exciting.

With all this money wasted on gambling for skins we could have pooled our money together and started our own game through a kickstarter project.

The content isn’t difficult enough for this to be a problem. Seriously when the last time you failed at anything in GW2?

Keep buying the chests and they’ll keep making more.

You’d think you’d learn your lesson by now; apparently not.

With all these gambling mini games in GW2 I’m starting to think you guys have a casino manager running your crew.

So when are we having a poker night in Lion’s Arch? 100 gold buy in.

Wow dust crashed to 15s a pop.

Test 3.

Used 50 charges of Basic Salvage kit on 50 Globs and returned 79 dusts.

Conclusion: Don’t use Basic Salvage kits.

Test 2.

Used 50 charges of Master Salvage kit on 50 Globs and returned 102 dusts.

Conclusion: Don’t use your Black Lion kits.

I used 2 Black Lion Salvage kits on 50 Globs of Ectoplasm’s to convert to Piles of Crytsaline Dusts. I have received 104 dusts. You get a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5.

How about you?

Chiara.9827:

They said the patch coming late june with be balance heavy if I’m not mistaken

We shouldn’t let it be “expectation heavy” and we won’t be disappointed.

If you don’t know what this is or have never seen it in action before; we’re about to see one with this new match up system.

I’m on a full server and have the unmanned buff in Eternal Battlegrounds on a Sunday night. That’s the newest change I’ve seen so far.

A lot of people I know who come out and play in tier 2 now don’t because of this match up.

They ruin their own game in PVE and now PVP. I’m amazed at how well this company is chasing away their customers.

tolunart.2095:

Calae.1738:

In the absence of farming; you have to wonder what is there to do exactly? Do these developers think this game is fun or something?

They should make a game where all you ever do is farm. That would be fun.

The NPCs should have very big swords. If you don’t dodge their swings they cut your head off and steal everything in your inventory.

In the absence of farming; you have to wonder what is there to do exactly? Do these developers think this game is fun or something?

Challenging content is unrewarding and not worth doing in this game. They made it pretty clear.

squashedsquirrel.5408:

I immediately logged out and played something fun instead.

You give up so fast. You didn’t even try a new strategy. You just threw in the towel and gave up after the first encounter.

Darthaemos.6370:

Calae.1738:

Citadel of Flame path 1 is much easier, faster and more rewarding than level 40+ fractals. Jumping into a world boss and being rewarded with rares is risk free. Literally risk free. I haven’t seen any of these events fail. Not once.

Why is this? I don’t understand the design philosophy. Could someone kindly explain this to me? It’s giving me a headache.

To appease the unskilled and unwashed masses. Simple as that.

Considering that very few people are capable of doing 30+ Fractals, they complained that it wasn’t fair that all of us Fractal enthusiasts were getting all the good loot. Remember many patches ago when we’d get about 6-8 rares AND 2-3 exotics for every 30+ run? Yeah, gone are those days. Now, only the easy content gets easier and more rewarding as ANET ninja nerfs all the hard content.

Maybe they want us to quit the game. Hopefully Wildstar and TESO can deliver.

Seeing this company chase away their own customer’s is quite funny to watch actually.

I hope they keep doing this.

But that’s not the game we’re playing. The game we’re playing is designed to social promote a player to 80 even if they never figured out how to play better than the WoW 1-20 game requires.

Come on man; Guild Wars 2 can do better than multi-player note pad. Seriously. Challenge your brain a little.

It’s true; Magic find boost last 1 hour and the DR kicks in at around 45 minutes.

LOL

Citadel of Flame path 1 is much easier, faster and more rewarding than level 40+ fractals. Jumping into a world boss and being rewarded with rares is risk free. Literally risk free. I haven’t seen any of these events fail. Not once.

Why is this? I don’t understand the design philosophy. Could someone kindly explain this to me? It’s giving me a headache.

Cooking materials is where it’s at. Very fast moving markets and making a ton of money. I don’t need to farm anymore.

LOL you guys are funny.

“check out what I got”

ROFL

Careful now… this game is targeting children.

garethh.3518:

Calae.1738:

These days game companies are owned by shareholders and shareholders only care about one thing; money.

It’s tragic… games have been just getting worse and worse in general lately… so new players jump in and say whats so bad, when its not even half as well made as a game that came out a decade ago…
It’s an upside down world…

They’ve been getting worse because games aren’t made by gamers anymore.

Vote with your wallet.

Back in the old days; developers released dedicated server code and opened thier game to the community for modding. Communities created games that were better and more fun than the developers themselves could do. This is how e-sports was born.
Games were designed by developers, modded by gamers for gamers.

These days game companies are owned by shareholders and shareholders only care about one thing; money.

Erasculio.2914:

Aeonblade.8709:

Also, getting something for farming hundreds of thousands of karma reliably instead of a .9% chance would be nice too.

You deserve as much for farming “hundreds of thousands of karma” as a Skinner’s rat deverses for reliably pressing its cute little lever one hundred times. When you do something that requires skill instead of mindless farming, please let us know.

Nothing will require skill in GW2. Because if it does then the reward would have to be better. When the rewards become better it becomes the new farm spot.

Clark Skinner.4902:

Can you imagine trying to find bounties without the map of their pathways, and without being told the strategy to beat them? How much time would be left to fight them?

Spoken like a true casual.

It turns out that you can comb the map quite effectively with minimal organisation and planning.

You’re happy that you won the lottery and you want to share that with other people. It’s understandable. I however find it sad that something so valuable is acquired in such a fashion. It removes all meaning and distorts the word legendary.

The heroic actions of this warrior questing for his legendary can be described in the same way as an old lady on a motorized cart buying lottery tickets at the convenient store. I don’t know whether to laugh hysterically or cry.

OmegaProject.9831:

I may as well add my results. Granted it’s hardly a large enough sample size, but it’s a tad bit more evidence. Yesterday I salvaged 5 ectos from 13 rares. I have had similar results from previous salvaging attempts within the past few days/week.

5 ecto for 13 rares is pretty lousy. I never salvage less than 30 rares at a time and I use to average about 0.9 to 1.0 ecto per rare. Now it’s somewhere between 0.4 and 0.5.

I need “double” the amount of rares to get the same amount of ecto before the last patch.

Vol? No way!

I thought you were a die hard GW2 fanboy forum warrior.

They will always alter the drop rates of anything to steer people to buy gems. They’ve been doing this for a long time. They even nerf the rewards of the hardest dungeons in the game.

In my opinion, their business strategy is keeping the game easy enough for everyone to be rewarded with tiny bread crumbs every day to keep you logging in. Challenging and rewarding content is a problem for them because it introduces farmers. Farmers removes revenue from Arena net by flooding the market with cheap materials.

In my opinion they are destroying their own game. Guild Wars 2 will become so unrewarding that their player base will leave them at the drop of a dime when the next AAA MMO is released.

My bet is on “Our testing and data analysis have shown no change in the salvage rates of Ectoplasms.”

Gasoline.2570:

That’s very cool, thanks for contributing nothing.

He’s right. The only thing we can do is vote with our wallet. Don’t give them money for being lazy and creating crappy products.

I can confirm the salvage rate using mystic and master kits. I’m getting the same results. I haven’t tested Black Lion kits; the cost of the kits greatly exceeds the return.

It may have something to do with player scaling. The more players there are the more NPC’s spawn and more frequent the events appear.

Fror.2163:

Calae.1738:

Yes I can.

I salvage hundreds of rares. I trust my own data. I’m not going to believe the arena net weather man to tell me it’s raining outside. I’m going to look out the window.

Yep, and who is the window manufacturer, seller and installer?

Doesn’t matter.

Salvaging is statistical data analysis. I can conduct experiments myself; accumulate data and deduce probability.