Guild Wars 2

StriderShinryu.6923:

I can’t say I’m surprised at all. SAB World 2 was the one piece of content that really was created somewhat collaboratively with the players. It was the one thing that’s been developed where the lead developer actually enjoyed discussing the content with players and made appropriate changes based directly on feedback. ANet doesn’t so that anymore so it’s pretty easy to see why they don’t consider SAB fitting in any more.

Yeah, I LOVED the interaction over SAB world 2. Its probably the best PR I’ve ever seen from ANet since starting, and it encouraged me to buy gems.

To my knowledge the guy who did it got in trouble for it

Yeah this whole “you’d be bored with it” thing makes no sense. How exactly is increasing game variety going to make boredom more of a problem? Most of us would play it occasionally if it was permanent, just like the rest of the content. Apart from the hardcore few who get all the trib mode skins in the first few weeks, there would basically always be a reason to go back for a couple of runs.

Heck, if they’d actually taken it seriously and added a time trial mode and a weekly/monthly/permanent leaderboard people would be playing it long term.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Besides, unless the coin was NEVER used (I kind of doubt that), you already got you money out of it. Trying to throw a collective tantrum to get some content returned is not likely to change their plans.

How exactly is “more than never” the equivalent of getting money out of an “infinite” continue coin? It isn’t a tantrum. When the coin was on sale, we were told that worlds three and four would come. At the very least, it was reasonable to expect we’d be able to play worlds one and two regularly (six months seemed reasonable based on the window between one and two, a year given the back to school theme).

I agree that these should be refunded if SAB is never coming back. They really should just turn worlds one and two on permanently though.

Vol.7601:

So much love for SAB here, but from what I recall world 2 was universally hated.

World 2 was criticised because the worlds were needlessly long and frustrating. This was made worse because they introduced the infinite continue coin in the gem store, which made it look intentional. It wasn’t universally hated though, hence everyone asking for both worlds back, rather than just one.

It is ridiculous that they won’t even turn it back on. They know a lot of people love it and are disappointed with it, but they won’t even hit the switch to have worlds one and two running?

It will be interesting to see how many people ask for refunds on their “infinite” continue coins.

There are a few that spring to mind:

Tybalt. It’s a shame he doesn’t have more room to develop, but he has the most complete story of the characters that lots of people are attached to.

Taimi, potentially. She could go either way. She’s really well liked, but she might become a bit too much of a sympathetic punching bag. The last LS episode dividing players into those who were angry that their player character didn’t side with her (breaking immersion), and those who didn’t actually side with her. Kind of a no-win scenario there that it is unclear if they’ll be able to write back from. They can’t just give her a win later without potentially alienating the people who think she’s a brat, and even then that doesn’t do anything for the players who wanted to side with her.

Heal-o-Tron, again potentially. He’s comic relief, but even done comically, Hero-Tron would be epic in a couple of years. As long as he isn’t centre stage, and just does something awesome in the background now and again, he’s about as close to a cult character as we have. Of course, the joke will wear thin if overplayed.

Another vote for SAB. Don’t need World 3, just exactly as it was, and ideally permanent. (obviously world 3 and 4 and the red and purple SAB skins would be awesome though).

As for the people who are asking for it not to be turned on, or for no rewards… why? It’s already made. Why would you want to deny people fun just because you don’t enjoy something?

While I agree that this decision is two sided, that fact alone shows that many players would side with Taimi. I was among them, and this entirely took me out of the immersion at that point in the story. It is good that our characters are more than silent protagonists tagging along and hitting things, but writing such a controversial decision with no options detracted from an otherwise excellent episode from me.

Giving dialogue options that ultimately end with the same result would have been fine. If I’d have been able to argue Taimi’s side, but she ultimately gave it up herself, then okay. But this was a big way to ruin our attachment to our characters and the story, which is a shame because the writing is clearly good enough for me to care if Taimi got screwed or not.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

They aren’t going to tell us about anything they are working on until its basically ready to implemented.

Why?

Go browse some of the old threads screaming about how we’ve been “lied” to, “mislead,” or how anet doesn’t “keep their promises.”

They don’t talk to us, because we players make it not safe to do so.

I’ve seen this said a few times and it simply doesn’t hold up. It isn’t “we players” it’s " a minority of forum users".

There is a long, and ridiculous, leap from “some of our players have conducted themselves poorly” to “let’s treat all of our customers with a lack of respect”.

Yeah, I like exclusivity, but I think this was a little too far. Something like a legendary or other high valued skin that is obtainable in other ways would have been cool, or simply gems.

I think the Liadri mini/title and the SAB tribulation skins were a good balance between exclusivity and fairness. The SAB skins especially in the way they were easily accessible in the default skins, and then had different colours for harder difficulty. It’s just a shame that these aren’t available all year round, as they’re so well implemented otherwise.

I can’t think of any obvious words to use, but if they want to introduce a little bit of personalisation they could give different names for ferocity/charm/dignity. Those are supposed to affect how others see you, so it makes sense for them to refer to you differently based on your highest rated option (and the mechanic is already there). It’s only three options as well, so not too much dialogue to record.

Farzo.8410:

It’s to keep it fresh and interesting. The moment something becomes permanent it becomes valued less.

Releasing new worlds would keep it fresh and interesting. People would not appreciate Mario more if Nintendo banned everyone from playing it eleven months of the year, they’d just get annoyed at Nintendo for imposing weird restrictions on things people have spent money on.

Brother Grimm.5176:

^^ THIS ^^
The old adage, “give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile”, comes to mind with this request. Again, the economic model of this game REQUIRES Anet to sell gems to keep the servers running…. If you need more perma-tools, buy them.

But it isn’t a question of “giving” anything. It’s a situation of “Offer to sell them an inch, and some will pay. Offer to sell them a mile, and lots will pay.”

I like supporting the game, but right now I would get little to no benefit from an infinite gathering tool because I would wind up transferring it between characters via the bank more often than I currently go to a vendor. And vendors are more common.

A convenience item needs to be convenient in order to be worth the investment. If the tools are meant to be there for the skins, then making them account wide gives them the same usage as every other gem store skin. Many people who currently wouldn’t buy any infinite tools because they aren’t account wide would wind up buying lots because they can put different skins on all their characters.

No one is asking for charity here. They’re telling ANet that this is the kind of product they will spend money on.

Gets my vote. Makes far more sense that the current system. Involves a not-small but not unreasonable investment. Requires collecting resources from a variety of places. Makes ascended weapons less of a detour. Eliminates the RNG to a large extent…

Might make the price of T6 mats skyrocket though… Would need careful planning.

At the very least, please just turn the stuff we’ve already had back on. Not letting us play a part of the game is just… weird.

chemiclord.3978:

I think because this person likes the idea of it being something fresh and new every time it appears. Permanent content gets boring quickly and abandoned by the player base.

The same would be true with SAB. Right now, it’s big news BECAUSE it’s not always around. Make it permanent and it just becomes another zone that people grew tired of.

I realise you weren’t actually forwarding this as your own view, but I simply don’t agree. SAB isn’t big news because it’s temporary, it’s big news because it’s fun. It’s like the first world of Super Mario Bros. That’s still fun now, and it’s been permanently available for decades. Moreover, imagine if every time you completed it you were working towards unlocking a shiny Guild Wars 2 skin.

I view SAB more like I view PvP than say, the Crown Pavillion. It’s an alternative game mode, with alternative skills, and an alternative focus (not least, as actually challenging and rewarding solo content). I don’t want to play SAB every day, but I want the option to play SAB every day. I estimate that I would play it probably once a week if it was available (Available every day that is, none of this rotation stuff, that puts me off playing activities even when I want to.)

Soinetwa.5193:

and im AGAINST permanent sab

Howcome? If you don’t want to play it, then don’t play it. Why would you want others not to be able to?

I don’t understand why SAB isn’t permanent. The community is desperate for permanent content, and it’s literally just sitting there, turned off.

The whole “polarising” thing, while true, makes no sense either. If you don’t like it, don’t play it. They are going to keep developing on new worlds either way, so turning off the ones already made takes up no developing resources.

The other argument “people get bored if it’s always there” also makes no sense. The “bored” people will come back when a new world is released (or a new meta achievement), exactly as they will when it gets turned off.

Please, please turn it back on for those of us who would enjoy playing it more than one month a year (if that’s even the plan).

This is to say nothing of the “infinite” continue coins that people spent real world money on, and have sat entirely useless for nine months.

Xenon.4537:

I’m not totally with you on the coffee shop analogy because I don’t go to starbucks lol. But I think I follow you. I would say the actual Anet version of that is to silently sit behind the counter listening, possibly jotting notes down. They somehow have the fortitude to sit there and endure the cacophony of all the belligerent customers screaming at each other across the counter, and not make a peep. The notion that Anet doesn’t listen is absurd. How many months did people ask for a wardrobe, and magically we now have a wardrobe? Mouths are for talking. Ears are for listening. You don’t need both to do one or the other. Anet is perfectly capable of listening without talking.

Oh and I love this refrain: “it’s a serious problem”

Can we just admit the truth that we are bored and have nothing better to do than beg for insider info? What good would it do anyway? What’s your end goal here? You guys are like a dog chasing a car. What would the dog actually do with the car if he could actually catch it? At best the dog will sniff the car and immediately lose interest. At worst the dog will scratch the paint with his claws and pee all over the tires. Maybe leave a steaming pile of something on the hood. I doubt Anet likes the sound of that.

Except there isn’t a cacophony of belligerent customers. There are some belligerent customers, and some customers who have been patiently asking whether or not they are going to get any coffee for many months. I’m not sure how having the baristas behind the counter not speaking to the customers and silently taking notes on them is supposed to be good though :S

Personally, I’d use information on whether more changes to the trait system are coming to decide if I’m going to buy a new character slot, and whether or not it’s worth going around collecting the traits. At thirty pages so far of almost exclusively criticism, and it being impossible to deduce how the new system accomplishes goals it was supposed to without any explanation from ANet, it seems that hoping for change is reasonable.

I might also bother making an engineer look, if I had word that hobosacks were going or not (an even longer thread).

Other people have bigger concerns. Do RPers simply have to leave for another game now? Should people blow all their gold on a legendary they kind of want, or are new ones coming soon? (Of course, after this amount of silence on that one, announcing anything now would be a shock to the economy, which could have been avoided)

SkiTz.4590:

Xenon.4537:

Sir K E V.1027:

I don’t believe the forum community would bite their heads off…

Oh yes they absolutely would. It’s very risky practice to directly respond to everything. Most things people post about are either controversial or involve features still in development. You want an example of how bad things can get when a company opens it’s mouth too much, check out Ubisoft over the last month.

Ubisoft’s executives are clueless , but thats a completely different problem than what we are seeing here in gw2. We aren’t asking from NCsoft higher ups to come here and post something. Just interactions from anet’s devs about glaring issues/bugs

Yeah, Ubisoft aren’t in trouble for speaking, they’re in trouble for doing stupid things.

The attitude that “some customers are unreasonable and rude, therefore we shall treat every customer as if they were unreasonable and rude” is the antithesis of how a company should react.

I remember last time I was in Starbucks and a customer shouted at the barista because they wouldn’t let her jump the queue. The barista calmly acknowledged her and explained the situation, and then another customer had a go at the queue jumper for being rude instead. The barista came out looking great, and the customers all took his side.

The ANet version of that is for the barista to decide that everyone in the coffee shop needs to be completely ignored, and to just walk away from the counter while everyone questions if and when they might get some coffee.

I love GW2, and I love many aspects of ANet (even their customer service, when dealing with tickets, is fantastic), but the lack of open communication is a serious problem.

I don’t really agree with the logic that the devs aren’t posting because people take their word as gospel. It carries several problems:

1) Just because some players take the devs words as gospel, that does not give good reason to end customer contact with the rest of the players.

2) Responding to the players who do take the devs word as gospel with silence is nonsensical from a PR point of view. “I don’t understand it, I told them we were thinking of inputting a highly sought game feature 18 months ago, and then when I didn’t do it I ignored them for 12 months and they’re STILL angry about it.” If a previous target was provisional, and problems have occurred, just explain it. Some might remain angry, but treating the whole playerbase as if they are incapable of reason is flat out disrespectful.

3) Not having a clear idea of where the game is going is hurting their profits. The traits thread, so far on 29 completely ignored pages, is littered with people who have stopped buying gems, playing or recommending the game. This is not a unique example.

4) Dev feedback has gone a long way to fixing problems in the past. Remember when SAB World 2 came out along with the infinite continue coin? A much more difficult world and a gem store item that was semi-required to do it in trib mode? Now no word whatsoever on world 3 and that gem store item sat useless for ten months. If the dev hadn’t been around to explain his reasoning and discuss and react to feedback, that would have been a huge issue.

Yeah, this has been suggested a lot, and is a good way to get in capes without the Charr clipping issue. My suggestion has always been to have five different backpieces that can all display a guild logo:

Human: Capes.
Sylvari: Leaf cape.
Asura: Glowing hologram.
Charr: Back armour.
Norn: Fur cloak.

Bellizare.5816:

Well, my altaholism is cured. Now that I just play my 80’s, I am accumulating hordes of gold that I don’t need to spend. I definitely don’t need to buy any jewels.

So how does this help them make a profit exactly?

This. Though less with making gold and more doing PvP and world completion. I wanted to buy a new character slot to make a guardian, but every time I think about doing it I get put off by the trait system.

Alternatively (I know this doesn’t help thieves), they could make a second greatsword that’s the same style but shorter. Heck, use the same model for a one-hander as well.

No response at all, and no update or changes in this patch is quite disrespectful in my opinion. How much effort would it take to make one forum post to address this many serious customer concerns?

They could add them for dungeons too (as long as the dungeon doesn’t have a bit where you need to go to separate spots like CoF). Then they could sell mercenary slots in the gem store that let you bring your alts It will always be less efficient than going as a team, but it would be cool to be able to fill spots with NPCs.

Alternatively, as I’ve suggested before, give everyone an elite skill that is on par with racials but on a longer cooldown that summons one or two random mercenaries from a pool for a short time. That way you could unlock mercenaries like Destiny’s Edge by completing story mode, and have your Alts turn up as an elite.

Either way, love the idea.

What confuses me, given that these are gem store items, is why there isn’t a bindable toggle yet. Outfits would be awesome if you could switch them on and off without going into the menus.

Same with minis, but that requires slightly more work.

Lostyus.4250:

With the trait patch when they said it would increase experimentation, they were either blatantly lying (way to treat your customers Anet) or it shows how little they understand their game and how this trait patch would decrease experimentation.

Either one would be very worrying.

Indeed, and the lack of communication isn’t helping. At this stage, even if tomorrow they came out and undid the whole thing, it would still be a case of “Thanks, but would it really have hurt to say SOMETHING in the last two and a half months?”

I love the game, but despite pouring huge amounts of money into free content (which I also love), ANet are still managing to make me feel like I’m not valued as a customer. Literally paying one person to spend a couple of hours on the forum and giving some insight would fix this.

Of course the usual response is that “People will always find a reason to complain.” Well, yes they will, but that isn’t a justification to give them legitimate reason to do so.

I like Gummy’s idea.

I’d also be very happy with 3-4 on screen slots that we can put food/tonics/minipets/toys/instruments etc. in. Ideally with the option to keybind them.

I don’t quite understand why this isn’t higher priority for ANet, given that it would increase the popularity and use of minis and instruments etc. which are gem store items. I thought the water fight thing looked really cool, but I also know that it would wind up forgotten in a bag somewhere if I bought it, just like minis.

Yeah, I’ve been disappointed that there has been no response to many extended forum threads such as the Traits issues, but on one to one customer support I’ve found the service excellent. Very fast, very helpful, and they took all the time that was needed to solve the problem.

Avascar.9237:

This. I don’t really understand, it’s just a couple gold to buy a trait. Just buy the ones you want, is that so freaking hard?

Actually this highlights another of the problems. Even if you do buy, or hunt, the ones you want, that’s your build locked in until you buy more. New players can’t experiment with builds, they have to either guess at what traits they want, use ones they stumble across randomly (which are rare), or look up a meta-build.

That’s even assuming new players have the gold and skill points in the first place.

Old players might want to experiment even more. They want to try out multiple builds for different purposes (WvW, Fracs, Dungeons etc.).

Randulf.7614:

It’s not a small and easy fix – they already stated a year ago retrospective titling can’t be done

Not sure that’s still true. If they can make a meta achievement that recognises the individual ones, then they just award the title for getting that.

Though if they new this years ago, why didn’t they just introduce the titles then???

Teyrul.7804:

You should also get a title when you finish all slayer achievements, weapon master achievement, etc.

Yeah, this seems a really obvious way to introduce permanent achievements, titles and long term goals. I’m surprised they aren’t there already.

Obsidian.1328:

It’s fairly obvious this new system was implemented to feed the new Asian demographic. It’s no secret that demographic prefers grinding(work+time) for their skills/traits/etc in MMO’s. Simple marketing tool is all.

If this system is popular in Asia, then hopefully they can just leave it the way it is in Asia. It isn’t something that requires huge resources to run or make (they already had a perfectly good system before the change) and the two regions are separate.

In the meantime, I’m disappointed that they’ve continued to ignore this thread for so long.

mtpelion.4562:

I think part of the reason they won’t be inclined to oblige your request is that an account bag would reduce demand for multiple copies of the unlimited use tools.

The introduction of such a bag would require an increase in the tool price to offset the decreased demand.

I think the opposite is true, and I think ANet realise this. Infinite tools used to be soulbound, and people argued that being account bound would make them less in demand. On the contrary, people just didn’t buy the soulbound versions because they weren’t worth it. Account bound tools are better, but still people hold off because they are too much hassle.

ANet have more data on this, so I am only speculating. The question is, do the people who buy multiple copies of tools buy enough to counter the number of people who would buy one copy that all their characters can use.

The additional question is whether making customers feel like they’re being valued and given a good deal, and the positive word of mouth that encourages, is worth any slight loss in sales of that specific item.

To me, an account wide bag (I think 4-6 slots is fair) for a reasonable amount of gems or even free, with additional account wide slots available in the gem store would bring in a HUGE amount of money, and would lead to the sale of more things like gathering tools, instruments and minis etc. that people would put in those slots.

StinVec.3621:

This topic always brings these images to my mind.
Using charr as an excuse is just that, an excuse, not sound reasoning to justify their non-implementation.

Charr should not have capes then, in the traditional sense.
It is not one size fits all (or one style for all). Give the other species capes or variations of capes (like the pics) and give charr something that functions appropriately for their body type and animations.

Nowhere is it said that all things must be identical across all species in the game. There are plenty of examples where things are intentionally different across the various species. Capes (or whatnot) should be no different.

Exactly. I’ve always thought a cultural backpiece that could display your guild logo made sense:

Humans – Capes.
Asura – Glowing Hologram.
Sylvari – Giant leaf .
Norn – Fur cloak.
Charr – Armoured shell.

Very simple, allows for diversity (not everyone in a cape) and deals with clipping. Plus a glowing hologram of your guild emblem would be awesome on an Asura.

Dusty Moon.4382:

I know that but you can level by crafting. Also doing a Karma train. I guess the idea is to make sure people explore all that GW2 is. The same was for GW1 – the Elites were all over and some places were a pain to get to.

Which is a great idea in theory, but it breaks the “play how you want to play” notion when you make people hunt for a core aspect of their class.

I have to say, I’ve just hit 80 and I’m enjoying trait hunting. It’s fun, and it would have been a cool way to keep the feeling of progression going past 80.

However, this was not worth making the levelling process significantly less fun. It is also far too important a system to lock out, and it kills build diversity and experimentation.

If they introduced new traits/skills (or, at least, unlocked adept traits by default), then this is a great idea that adds depth to gameplay and character building. It also undoes some of the current focus on grinding up a character as fast as possible, then diving into the fastest gold train available (with CP and EotM these overlap). Making people more invested in their characters is a good thing, and hunting for skills/traits is a really cool GW1 idea.

The new system though just makes levelling so much worse. The higher tier unlocks, the lack of ability to build your character. It just makes the “rush to 80 to start the real content” and the “pick a meta build and do nothing else” mentality even worse.

Ozzy Toxin.3074:

just gona bump this so the devs are forced to see it…

1188 posts so far. They have seen it, but for some reason aren’t responding. I can only guess that there is some politics in the company that is preventing open communication. Same with SAB (we actually kind of saw that in action), and with several other topics.

So, to whomever it may concern. I am a customer who finds the lack of communication problematic to the extent of making me less inclined to buy gems, or recommend the game to others.

Ayakaru.6583:

my thought was; once level 80 you can opt somewhere to open Hard Mode. It does nothing for your surroundings, but rather gives you a debuff:
- Endurance halves recovery speed
- Crit chance is reduced by 33%
- Health and healing is reduced by 33%
- You are more susceptible to conditions
- You have an increased aggro (enemies from a greater distance will more likely target you)

pros:
- gold drop is increased by 5% up to 50copper per drop
- magic find is boosted by 25%
- Exp is increased by 10%

Yeah, I’ve suggested a similar system:

On achieving level 80, map completion, and dungeon master you unlock “hard mode”. This is an account wide toggle (bonus for alt players, and will get people out of EotM/crafting/CP levelling) that has the following effects:

1) Turns of all waypoints except those at map transitions. Player is returned to one of these on toggle.
2) Turns off armour rating (not stats).
3) Doubles duration of conditions on player.
4) Doubles XP from all sources.
5) Doubles Karma from all sources.
6) Adds a 100% boost to magic find.
7) Does not increase any bonuses at world bosses and other group events.

Additionally, all hearts, vistas, skill points, waypoints, and pois are reset (while toggled) to an account-wide “hard mode” completion. This mode includes achievements, and a new map completion reward and title.

Rough, but something like that?

Now that the Living Story is being changed to being always replayable, I think a good idea would be to introduce new monuments for each chapter. Then every time you complete a chapter you unlock a trophy (like Scarlet’s rifle, or something). There could also be monuments based on the log in trophies (legendary weapon/order membership/world completion/PvP rank), or even individual legendary weapon racks, wardrobe completion monuments, personal story monuments etc. etc.

There’s a lot of space there and we can already spawn our own instance whenever we want.

I couldn’t tell from what I’ve read. The table makes you and everyone else appear bobbleheaded to you. But do you look normal to everyone else?

pdavis.8031:

I don’t see how a “hard mode” could be implemented easily. You’d have to have a whole NEW mega server system with a new set of servers for each zone for hard mode. Basically double what they have now just to have a “hard mode”. GW1 was able to pull it off simply because it wasn’t an MMO and each of the maps was instanced to the player/party. However I do think a dungeon “hard mode” would be much easier to implement and be better than having open world PvE “hard mode”.

Yeah.

Maybe there are alternatives though. For example:

On achieving level 80, map completion, and dungeon master you unlock “hard mode”. This is an account wide toggle (bonus for alt players, and will get people out of EotM/crafting/CP levelling) that has the following effects:

1) Turns of all waypoints except those at map transitions. Player is returned to one of these on toggle.
2) Turns off armour rating (not stats).
3) Doubles duration of conditions on player.
4) Doubles XP from all sources.
5) Doubles Karma from all sources.
6) Adds a 100% boost to magic find.
7) Does not increase any bonuses at world bosses and other group events.

Additionally, all hearts, vistas, skill points, waypoints, and pois are reset (while toggled) to an account-wide “hard mode” completion. This mode includes achievements, and a new map completion reward and title.

Rough, but something like that?

Okay, here is a brief summary of my idea to take the basic setup of the Gauntlet, and turn it into a permanent gold sink:

1) Move it out of the Pavillion. Possibly to several locations across the world where there is a lot of space.

2) Have large, medium and small fighting arenas.

3) Charge gold for entry. My thinking is something like 10 silver per fight, and another 10 per gambit.

4) Introduce new bosses. These could be entirely new, but more practically, simply bring in champs and dungeon bosses. Don’t change the mechanics on these, soloing Lupi is already a thing, might as well make gold from people doing it.

5) On the note of soloing, it isn’t necessary. Allow parties into the bigger arenas, and divide the rewards and drop chances among the players.

Now, where this gets complicated is in the rewards. This shouldn’t be a farm that brings in people who aren’t actually doing it for fun. That’d get old quickly, and it’d need to be nerfed. So, my suggestion is to design the rewards like fractals:

1) Every fight, and every gambit, earns you some amount of tokens. Obviously the amount of tokens needs to be balanced for boss difficulty, and the tokens need to be limited as the fights would be over quickly. These tokens can be exchanged for similar rewards to Fractal tokens. If there is fear of farming, limit each specific boss to once a day.

2) Include a SMALL chance of getting an RNG weapon skin from a fight. These skins shouldn’t be exceptional, but like mistforged, SAB, and fractal skins, should be a kind of badge of honour. Possibly even include a different coloured version available for tokens.

3) Also include a small chance of getting account bound Ascended gear, as in Fractals.

4) Achievement based skins/minis would also of course be awesome, and reward the best players.

The exact numbers here I’m not sure of. But this would allow for permanent, rewarding, and difficult content to be introduced to the game with next to no new resources needed. New bosses could be added whenever, and there could even be tiers and leaderboards depending on where you wanted to take it. It also serves as a gold sink, and seems to fit in with the reward philosophy of other areas of the game.

There are probably huge issues with this, but I thought I’d put it out there as a starting point for people to tear apart and improve

Could we just have it so that the unlocks bought with gold/skill points are account wide? That way, if the level requirements get put back to normal, we can just buy our way back to having a fun leveling system?

Anyone who wants the new system can then just not use the vendor.

Corian.4068:

I will say for the last couple weeks it was available last time there were very few people in the hub world. Sometimes none, with just one or two guys zoning in and out as they go through the levels. I guess that’s not a thing anymore because megaserver but the usage of it definitely went way down on my server as it was open for longer.

Of course it goes down. Some people only play it when new content or achievements are available. No one expects, or wants, everyone to be in SAB 12 months of the year. But we want it to be available 12 months of the year for those who do actually want to play it.

Moreover, the peak periods seen in the current temporary releases would still exist, they’d happen every time a new world or meta came out.

I’m a bit confused, could someone explain if I get this right. Say I have:

50 x Strength Booster
50 x Speed Booster
50 x Armor Booster
50 x Rejuvenation Booster

If I use one powder, and one strength booster, I then have:

49 x Strength Booster
50 x Speed Booster
50 x Armor Booster
50 x Rejuvenation Booster
1 x Enchanted Combat Booster

Thus on using one of these I actually now take up five slots instead of four. Even after using 50 of these, I’d just be back to four slots again. So, do I really need to use 100 of these just to free up one slot (assuming that I get no extra boosters in BLCs), or am I misunderstanding how they work?

Belzebu.3912:

SAB won’t be permanent next time, that is for sure.

Devs stated some times that if SAB and other events was permanent, the players would lose interest soon enough and then it wouldn’t be as exciting as it is now, when open.

Hopefully SAB will never be permanent.

If this is true then it is bizarre. Platformers, especially old school platformers, are renowned for replay value. To prevent us from accessing one of the most different and unique parts of the game in order to stop us losing interest in doing the same thing over and over is just… weird.

SAB doesn’t need constant high numbers of players, so who cares if some people lose interest? They’ll get the interest back when a new world is released, which is when they’d get excited anyway. Its a platformer, the kind of game you pick up and play for a little bit every once in a while because its fun. Forcing us to rush through the content, with restricted time to explore or hunt for gems, is pretty much the exact opposite of what the gameplay type warrants.

That’s to say nothing of the “infinite” continue coin they sold for gems and we’ve had like four weeks to use in the last year. Telling us we can’t play something because otherwise we’ll lose interest feels like a kid being told they can’t have chocolate or they’ll make themself sick. It isn’t a festival, or a living story chapter, its an alternative game mode like Fractals (seriously how can the creators of fractals not get that people will happily play content they like over and over), PvP or WvW. Imagine if a regular retailer sold you Mario, but you were only “allowed” to play it when the store told you so, and this would only happen a few weeks of the year at undisclosed times.

I don’t like sounding unappreciative. SAB was free content, and I’ve had vastly more than value for money over the last two years from GW2. But this really annoys me and I hope that ANet will decide to give the SAB fans access to play how and when THEY want to play, not when they’re told they can.

I’m not sure a flat 500 to everyone would do much to appease people, just render the whole tournament pointless. They could, however, give everyone a bonus 100 on top of their earnings as an apology. That way everyone gets something nice, and the tournament isn’t rendered a waste of time.

Simplest solution:

1) Render the currently awarded tickets useless.
2) Send everyone with the meta 100 tickets.
3) Send everyone with the meta tickets based on their server position*.

*If this data is unavailable, send tickets based on current server, and accept that some lucky transfers will profit.

4*) Deal with unlucky transfers one by one by asking them to contact directly.

It isn’t what I expect, but what I’d like, in no particular order:

1) New permanent, and finished, zones. Ideally 3+
2) New race, ideally Tengu, with the new zones including the Dominion of Winds.
3) A complete, or near complete, reversal of the changes to traits.
4) NEW skills and traits that are earned through exploration.
5) New guild missions, including guild instanced activities like Sanctum Sprint (and general attention to guilds).
6) New class. Whatever here.
7) Just turn off hobosacks.
8) SAB turned on permanently.
9) Precurser crafting, and Jeweler and Chef to 500.
10) UI customisation, including in the character select screen.

Can we please get some info on this? This isn’t even a controversial topic. Almost everyone that levels characters and has contributed to the discussion hates this (not just dislikes, or sees problems with, but actively hates this).

Prior to patch, you hit level 40, had master tier unlocked, 30 points to spend, and 50 traits to choose from. Now you have three points to spend on adept traits, and if you’re lucky you might have one or two traits actually available (though almost certainly won’t have any useful ones).

This has completely destroyed the previous feeling of progression, removed any chance of build experimentation, removed the significance of levels, and made leveling new characters more confusing to make. Please, please undo this.

If it’s really important for some reason, leave master and grandmaster traits locked. But please return the old level requirements and unlock all adept traits. Ideally though, rollback the entire thing, and introduce new locked traits and skills at all tiers.