Guild Wars 2

A few things:

1) THANK YOU for finally confirming this is changing. Much, much appreciated.

2) I’ll have to chime in with others who feel that, while its great that this is being changed, the 9+ months of wait (and still no actual time frame) is a big, big issue. This has actively stopped people playing the game, and stopped a lot of recommendations.

3) Could we please have a time frame and, if this is coming with HoT, is that at all flexible?

4) If this is going to be a long wait, could you confirm that all characters will be transferred to the new system? I would love to make a new character, but I haven’t bought new slots because I am concerned that characters made between last April and the future change will be left with the current system.

Thanks again

I think the “no grind philosophy” is reasonably upheld. But a big deal was made over Mastery being account unlocked. I’m hoping that this suggests they understand that the trait system actually isn’t in line with their vision of the game and finally, finally do something about it.

If the LS is going to continue (apparently they are capable of developing both simultaneously) then I’m much more in favour of it. A lot of the hate for Living Story came because we didn’t know if we could expect more than it. If ANet are happy to give us free LS content and then take money for expansions I’m very happy

Yeah Still definitely need the traits system sorted before I would say I was “happy”, but this was a massive, massive boost. Really awesome, thank you

Okay, firstly, the HoT stuff has made me a happy customer, so this isn’t a complaint. However, I would really love to make a new character to prep for it, so if we could PLEEEEAAAASE get the traits fixed I will buy a slot immediately!

Meglobob.8620:

Hopefully someone else can release a timeline but I have been playing from day 1, here’s my impression:-

Day 1 : GW2 is released and its AWESOME, everyone agrees, players, reviews, everyone…wow we may have a hit here….

Day 2 – 59’ish : Anet temp/perma ban 1,000’s of players for various things but largely exploits that could ruin there economy.

Day 60’ish : First (or 2nd I forget live event) the Karka invasion anyway. The plan all GW2 players log in at the same time (!!!) to fight the evil Karka. Guess what happens? Yep everyone disconnects/massive lag, utter disaster really…lots of goodwill lost.

Day 61+ish : New tier of equipment released, (Ascended) players outraged, more goodwill lost.

Day 120’ish-present day : New content delivered via Living Story updates (loads of them really), some good, some utter garbage. Players love or hate them. Loads of temporary content means GW2 changes very little compared to other MMO’s and nothing new to do for returning players. Really we the players are just henchmen for Anet’s fav. characters.

Day… something… April: ANet release SAB, it’s great.

Day… something… September: ANet release SAB 2, it’s less great, but still good, they charge real world money for an item that lets you play SAB “infinitely”.

Day… something… following April: People expect SAB, ANet instead breaks the trait system.

Day… something… Summer: People riot over SAB. ANet agrees that communication is a good thing.

Day… something… Following September: Few people expect SAB. ANet breaks the levelling maps and personal story.

Day… something… October: ANet reveals its big plan for repeated holiday content. They’re going to literally repeat it.

Day… something… December: ANet, in a break from tradition, follow up on their earlier plan.

Obviously that’s overly negative. They’ve given us EotM, the wardrobe, and lots of nice stuff (unfortunately they don’t really get a point for fractals because they heroically undid their own good work there). But yeah, they’ve really put some effort into alienating people over the years (I haven’t even mentioned precursors…)

They should at least refund the people who bought infinite continue coins, many with real money. Selling people a product as reusable, for real money, and then making it unusable for the following sixteen months (and counting) is just not okay.

I’m not a big GW1 player, but to me there are two big differences:

1) The low level cap meant that skill hunting was part of an extended growing process that starts very early on. GW2’s 80 levels are different, and aren’t really enjoyable without the traits (especially with the NPE).

2) GW1 builds had maybe one elite skill, not a required seven. If we only had to go out and hunt one single trait per build, then it might not feel as much of a grind. (though, as ever, account unlocks would still be much, much, better)

I think the difference between this and previous disappointments is that this is going to be seen more as “this is it”. Other, smaller and less hyped updates weren’t “the big thing in the background”, and they weren’t actually thought to possibly be expansions.

Whatever comes on Saturday, it’s very possibly going to define what it is that GW2 will be for the forseeable future. Expansions, LS, or other. If it’s bad, then there isn’t anything to be optimistic about any more because the cards will actually be on the table for once. The people who are still around because “there might be something good around the corner” simply won’t have that motivation any more.

I’m not expecting expansion, but I’m expecting better than Living Story.

I just had Zott refuse to do anything with the third treb, and was stunned to find that this is a two year old problem :S

I think raising the level cap would be the final blow given the community we have. Ascended was a push for a lot, traits and the NPE was a push for many of those remaining… raising the level cap would just give people a definitive excuse to go.

There’d be a lot of people who stayed, but a heck of a lot would go. And they’d go LOUDLY.

Bring it back permanently, and if it isn’t back soon, refund the people who paid real world money for the infinite continue coin 15 months ago. Ideally, those refunds should have started going out several months ago.

+1

Daggos Skelito.2910:

I fear a few tweaks on the acquisition parts tho, and that will be it. Sure hope they do the right thing.

What scares me is that they’ll undo it (badly), but only for new characters. So any characters created in between April and (future patch of maybe) will be stuck in the current system forever.

Tobias, there is an important distinction between mindless vitriol, and vocal protest. I agree, absolutely, that a lot of the negativity on the forums falls into the former camp. However, this issue has also drawn much of the latter.

The problem is, and I realise that you might not agree with the solution, is that ANet have shown that they are willing to completely ignore their customers. Not just “won’t give us everything we want”, but as in “will take the game in whatever direction they want, regardless of community feedback, previous claims, or whether it is good for the game”. They’ll also do this having taken real world money for things (the lack of refunds on the SAB continue coin seriously irks me).

So, what choice does the portion of the community who genuinely cares about the game, and is not irrational, supposed to do? Polite suggestions don’t work. Short, impolite suggestions get written off as regular internet trolling. The only things that have done anything are shouting as loudly as possible for as long as possible until ANet actually does something (or, getting them bad press, which isn’t an option to the average player).

I realise that effectively throwing a tantrum is not an ideal and mature solution. But ANet has given us no other option, because anything else results in nothing happening.

I do, of course, suggest polite tantrumming. I also recognise, as have others, that Gaile is not the one at fault for this, nor likely are the devs. But unfortunately our only avenue to communicate with the people actually making decisions is either through here (and either we expect Gaile to shout at her bosses on our behalf, or we give her enough content in this thread that she can simply pass our anger on with a link without risking her job by doing it herself), or we can stop buying gems or recommending the game to others (which I stopped doing as a way of supporting the game months ago).

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t care if there are suggestions on how to make it better. The majority of the arguing going on here is a few people in particular talking back and forth over the same ground, with a close second of what amounts to “update plz”/“ANet don’t care” posts.

I’m sorry, I should be more accurate. I do care the suggestions are there – that shows people actually care about this topic and are still thinking about it and putting things here in the hopes they’ll get noticed rather than throwing their hands up and resorting to using the absent devs as a punching bag while apologizing to Gaile for their tone and assuring her it’s not at her in particular.

But there’s a big problem with the suggestions, and it’s so simple it’s going to make me cringe when there is some movement on this issue. There’s so many suggestions beyond “just revert it” that I know there’s going to be tons of people still ticked off THEIR favorite suggestion wasn’t used, or if none of them are.

There’s a sort of sickened fascination going on in me waiting to see that day when there is a blog post about the attempt to try fixing this problem . . . and clocking the time until the massive fireball erupts from the forum server room.

It’s going to happen. I just wonder how big it’s going to be.

The thing is, whatever they do, there will probably be a fireball. But that’s not something people in this thread can be blamed for now. There would, at any time, have been irrational complaints. But nine months later (plus however many to come), that fire has been stoked with rational complaints.

If ANet fully revert – this was too long to leave that.
If they account bind- this was too long to leave that.
If they make a minor change – this was too long to mess us around.
If they do nothing – this was too long to mess us around and also to not recognise how much damage this change did/does/will do.

It isn’t that “people are never satisfied”, it’s that ANet have spent nine months brewing dissatisfaction, and the BEST case scenario is that this nine months was a waste of time that put lots of people off the game completely. Even with a complete revert, this nine months still happened.

If they had fixed it after a couple of months, or kept us updated throughout about problems and reasons for delays, then that fire wouldn’t be as big, nor as justified. But they didn’t do that.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I totally understand the skepticism that you’re expressing. It has been a long time. But I know and trust the team, and I’ve heard enough details of the plans to give me confidence that progress and improvements are actively being made.

And thanks, from me to you, for not being nasty about it, or throwing a golem-sized boulder in my direction. I know that what I posted isn’t the substantive information you’d like to have. I can say that from all I hear it shouldn’t betoo long before there is some info we can share. I’m not saying “this week” but I’m definitely not pointing at Q2 2015!

Hi Gaile, thank you for the posts.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to admit that I’m on the skeptical side. I’ve also reached a point that the length of silence on this (and to a lesser extent SAB) has been so long that simply fixing this won’t undo the damage. It’ll be a good thing when it comes, but this is now 9+ months that ANet broke their own game and ignored their customers. I won’t be leading any parades when it’s finally reversed (or whatever minor fix is fed to us).

I don’t say this to be harsh, but to give you honest feedback. It’s great that you’ve come in, and I don’t envy you at all having to be the one to do this, so genuinely thank you. But this debacle has been allowed to continue way beyond reasonable.

Carighan.6758:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

See, I just don’t buy this. Not the cold logic, that makes sense, but that this model is more profitable than providing an actually good service.

I dunno, I can get behind that when I consider the publisher perspective. Committing to a specific game means you invest a huge amount of money, money that is at risk if the game flops.

If you release X games over time Y, you can then compare, given expected success rate, whether it is more profitable to commit fully to each game, or to keep-it-basic for each. And I suspect even given the increased income from the games that succeed, that the money you waste on the ones which falter after you commit makes up for it.

That’s a very cold-hearted perspective ofc, but that’s how I imagine publishers think about this. Games don’t matter, individual dev teams don’t matter, projected profits vs money-at-risk is what matters, as that’s what the shareholders want.

Oh I’m sure cutting corners saves money. But it isn’t that they’re cutting corners, it’s that they’re investing in pointless or negative updates. The NPE won’t pull in players, because they’ve never heard of it. Breaking the trait system will actively repel players, because vet players won’t recommend it. Turning off SAB, well as I said, the last time I actually managed to convince someone to buy GW2, it was with SAB.

Heck, even the LS, they’ve now made harder to sell with the gem pricing. Even someone who genuinely likes the LS, when speaking to a potential buyer would eventually get around to the awkward part where they have to explain that actually all of this “free” content won’t be free for them. So unless they want to wait till season 3, they’re not going to have a clue what’s going on. Then they’ll have to log in regularly (which given GW2 operates on B2P where feeling forced to regularly log in directly opposed to your selling point is kind of a big deal) to actually get the new LS if and when it comes out.

If ANet were lazy, I’d understand. If ANet were making decisions that screwed loyal players to attract new ones, I’d understand. What ANet has done for the last year or so, I don’t understand.

Devildoc.6721:

We didn’t ask for traits to be on the last step of an event chain in an almost empty zone that never gets used and frequently gets stuck

We didn’t ask for 100%’ing zones to unlock a trait.

If anyone asked for hunting like skill hunting, we were expecting them to just be on champions/veterans in the zones, or world bosses that are on a schedule that people regularly do anyway, not things that are broken.

Also, GW1 gave you at least basic skills. Even translating “GW1 style skills” to “traits” (which you shouldn’t, they’re different), you can easily get world completion without even being able to put a trait into every slot. Locking Grandmaster traits, or introducing new traits, fair enough. But this if we use the GW1 skills analogy, this would be like removing every single skill on your bar.

KyreneZA.8617:

They didn’t squander anything. They are still raking in money hand-over-fist or would have been out of business long ago. The ‘fact’ that they kitten d the good name of GW1 (if reports are to be believed; I never personally played it) and buried The Manifest in a shallow grave next to “Play as you want” does not mean they didn’t make (and continue to make) money out of the (uneducated/gullible) masses. Who needs one veteran player, when you can fool three NPEs into parting with the (deluxe edition) box fee and a couple of gem purchases before they invariable move on in disgust.

ArenaNet did not do anything wrong. If I were a shareholder right now, I’d be laughing all the way…

See, I just don’t buy this. Not the cold logic, that makes sense, but that this model is more profitable than providing an actually good service.

GW2 is barely advertised that I see. Given the age and nature of the game, word of mouth is a very strong tool. But I know the last time I convinced someone to buy the game was when SAB first came out. Since the traits change, I’m actually usually hesitant to even suggest it. I’m not alone in this.

Moreover, who is buying the game due to the NPE who wouldn’t have bought it anyway? What market knows enough about GW2 to know what it is, hasn’t bought the game already, and will be attracted by what they’ve heard? China?

Finally, the game is an MMO. Part of the appeal of an MMO is the MM bit. As vets leave, one of the major aspects of the game goes with them.

I understand the logic of screwing over your loyal customers to make a fast buck. But screwing over your loyal customers in a way that will actively cut off a major source of advertisement and product appeal?

Sariel V.7024:

Reminds me of what Harry said to Ron when the latter complained about the pace of finding horcruxes.

The dragons have been around for, in some case, centuries. I don’t know that they’re going to be simply run down like a checklist.

Even among hardcore fans, that section of the book is regarded as tedious. It’s also the seventh book in the series, not most people’s first encounter with the narrative.

I’m not saying that we should have killed an ED by now, but currently the personal story is broken and still ends on an anti-climax, and the Living Story is just… bleh.

A hidden issue with the system is that I actually levelled up a couple of characters after the trait change, but apart from one (who I got full world completion on and still only has one build available because I specifically hunted for it) they’re all parked at the end of JPs or in LA. It isn’t just that levelling is bad, it’s that there’s no fun in experimenting with builds because you can’t try them out. I don’t want to gear anyone up because I don’t know what I want them to be.

But yeah, despise the system to the point that it makes me not want to play, and has stopped me buying gems and character slots more than once.

Haha, before I read the OP or comments, my first thought was “everything prior to launch”, and then “and then I guess the wardrobe”.

Basically ANet started with absolute gold, and have been steadily painting it with silver and ahem brown. It’s still gold underneath, but it’s getting really hard to see it sometimes.

Soinetwa.5193:

well… there is
revive orb transmutation charges etcetc
u have used them and theyre gone..
surely the infinite coin is still left in our inventory waiting to be used again..
but anet can argue that we got to use the coin.. so surely some used the coin more than others..
like the copper fed salvomatic.. all pay the price some salvage more others less..
but we all did use it.. (probably)

but leaving this aside.. id love to see the SAB opening again (even if it only lets us get into the previous worlds)

There’s reasonable expectation. If you buy a pizza, you don’t complain to the store that it was only usable once. If you buy a car, you do.

We had reasonable expectation that an “infinite” continue coin would be reusable. Players at this stage can barely expected to still be playing 15 months later, let alone happily waiting to reuse an item they bought in September 2013.

While I’m sure that ANet are within their legal rights to do it. I find it incredibly disrespectful to customers to take their real world money and basically walk off with it.

Behellagh.1468:

You read the lack of a formal reply as being ignored. I’m sure they are well aware of it but simply aren’t in a position to do anything about it in the short term. That is they can’t simply revert it back. To many changes in too many places in common code to unscramble the egg so to speak.

Which is fine, but they haven’t said that. They said, at one point, that they might make minor changes, and asked for a tl;dr version of the months of feedback. Then they repeated this a few months later.

We still don’t know why the changes are there, or what they’re supposed to achieve (it obviously isn’t for the build diversity that the marketing suggested it was, as it achieves the exact opposite).

If they’d just account bind unlocks, this would have been done with months ago. But as it is they’ve left a fundamentally broken core system, that is actively repelling players, in place for nine months.

Pretty reasonable list. I definitely agree with (1) and (2).

The issue with the Living Story is that they didn’t actually make it living. Season one, “living” meant “temporary”. Meaning that the world didn’t actually feel like it changed, it just occasionally meandered. The changes that they did make, rather than add to the feel of the game, just kind of moved things a bit. Season 2, “living” means “we hand you some instances or a map now and then”. It’s more permanent but, amazingly, less alive feeling.

I think the big thing for me is the lack of things to do. Since the beginning we’ve had activities put on rotation. Little things like golem chess taken away. SAB turned off for some unknown amount of time (having taken real money from players who wanted to play it). Then things like precursor hunts, new PvP modes etc. have all been sidelined for the Living Story which, as discussed, was largely temporary. This has resulted in a world that, whether or not it actually has less to do than at launch, feels like it has.

It depends. Currently, no. If ANet keep going on the current track, maybe.

You aren’t in a much better or worse position than the rest of us (apart from the fact you won’t have traits), so you can definitely have fun. If the game changes (or finds) direction soon, then it could go on for years. If it doesn’t… well you haven’t lost any money

As my previous thread got closed. I’m still curious as to at what stage people would agree that refusing refunds on the infinite continue coin is not okay.

How long can ANet keep real world money for a service that they aren’t providing? It’s been over a year now. Will it not be okay after two years? Three? Six months ago?

There have been ups and downs generally, but pretty much all of it overshadowed by the trait changes for me. It’s really hard to be positive about the good things when one of the most fundamental aspects of the game has been so messed up for so long.

I’ll just throw in that I like Sanctum Sprint, but stopped playing it when it went on rotation because it rarely seemed to be available when I was actually in the mood for it, and I just lost interest.

SAB is even worse. Try buying a coin with real money that let’s you play Snowball Mayhem as much as you want, but then they don’t even bring it back every Winter.

The ratio of effort-spent-on-developing-things-to-do versus actual-things-you-can-do-when-you-log-in is depressing.

So it’s been well over a year since people paid real money for an item that has no use whatsoever. Defenders of this have cited the fact that SAB is supposedly going to return at some point.

I’m curious, to both defenders of ANet, and to the less supportive. Where is the line where refusing to give refunds on the infinite continue coin isn’t okay? 18 months? Three years? Six months ago?

When offering a product, it seems that there are reasonable lines you can infer as to when that product will be provided. Not necessarily from a legal standpoint, but just a respect for your customer one. We weren’t told when SAB would be back, just that it would be. But surely there is some point where we as customers can reasonably expect the service we paid for to be provided?

To the people who shoot these threads down, what would you prefer people do? Leave, give ANet no indication as to why, and let the game gradually lose players while ANet takes wild stabs in the dark at how to maintain users?

If a person has left, and has given information as to why, they have provided a service to the rest of us who might benefits from future game improvements because of it (unless we operate on the assumption that ANet completely ignores the reasons people leave).

Revert the trait system. In fact I would have bought at least two new character slots last time they were on sale (Black Friday I think it was) if it hadn’t been for that.

It isn’t just a problem for power levellers. I have a level 80 with world completion, who I kill world bosses with and have done EotM with, and I still have only a fraction of the traits unlocked, and not even my full build.

I know a lot of people are comfortable with the trait system, but as someone who likes alts, and used to like levelling, I find it close to game-breaking.

I might some day buy gems if I really want something, but I stopped buying them to support the game a couple of months back. The trait changes were the reason for me as well.

Kuldebar.1897:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Where did this quote come from?

A lot of the things being mentioned happened because we the players asked for it…

No, not really.

ANet’s established method of communicating its intentions along with their general reluctance to understand that killing the goose is no way to secure the supply of golden eggs is reflected in the changes that ANet has brought about:

Ascended Tier:

Players widely expressed concerns of a dearth of end-game progression opportunities, so instead of ANet implementing (let’s say) a fully fleshed bevy of “Elite Traits” and a engaging system of acquisition to the game; they gave us instead a dungeon treadmill (Fractals) and the poorly realized Ascended Tier.

Fractal Level +30 Reset:

Fractals became the new corridor of progression and plenty of players lined up and started grinding them out in the understandable confidence that ANet had adequately planned out the path ahead. Unfortunately, it had not.

ANet revised the entire system, and changed the rules.

I never had a dog in this fight, but it was another “thrashing” dev change inflicted on players that could be categorized as “major”.

Trait Unlock:

Players, still hungry for progression opportunities, clamored for something that the original Guild Wars had offered: Elite Skill Hunting/Acquisition.

It was a great idea that would allow the players at 80 to have a full spectrum of new and varied challenging (perhaps, ever-growing number of) opportunities to acquire NEW “elite” Traits to top off the existing core Trait lines.

Tone deaf as always, ANet decided to rework the ENTIRE Trait system as well into the introduced system. This changed the game in a fundamental way, I won’t delve into if it was good or bad; but let’s agree it was a HUGE game changer.

NPE’s Level Gating:

In response to a “dire” need to retain new players that presumably were quitting due to the game’s complexity, ANet added further layers of progression complexity.

Where once, an elegant and intuitive system existed, a clunky, inconsistent and plodding progression curve was introduced.

Stepped and widely spaced attribute gains led to some serious peaks and valleys in what had used to be a smooth progression.

Skills and abilities were level gated in off-putting and non-complimentary ways. (Example Off-hand usage and Weapon Swap)

I’d add to this:

Turning off SAB

No clue on why this happened, so not even speculating, but you know, riots.

Making activities rotate

Rather than make activities more fun by adding leaderboards, or making them playable with guild/party members, they made them rotate. I don’t know about anyone else, but this made me stop playing them entirely because any time I was in the mood to play one, it was either inactive, or I couldn’t be bothered to go and find out if I was lucky enough for it to be active.

The game could have so many options for what to do when you log in. But they keep being blocked off in the interests of (I think) channelling people to play things together, whether that’s what they want to be doing or not.

While this is only based on personal observation, and obviously speculative, I think if ANet have been working on an expansion, then the lack of confirmation was a big mistake. A lot of players seem to have gone from “will literally throw money at ANet for content” to “kind of regret having given the money they have”.

Again, this is just my observation, I could be wrong.

I understand the logic of leaving off things that have (some, extremely negligible) attention, but a list of the most commonly discussed issues which doesn’t mention trait changes, Cantha, hobosacks or SAB seems a bit off…

I’m not impossible to satisfy, as the only two things I really want have already been in game:

1) A decent trait system.
2) SAB worlds 1 and 2.

While other things would be nice, I don’t ask for or demand them.

Gummy.4278:

So I guess no one really likes SAB after all? I thought a lot more people would have been down for this after all the “Occupy SAB” we had when Anet did not bring SAB back during the time frame it was originally released.

Lot’s of people like SAB. But as with many things in game, we’ve just lost the will to keep trying to reason with ANet.

While “the game is dying” posts often get leapt upon, and I won’t make any general claims or extrapolations, I have noticed a significant drop in enthusiasm and time played from people I know in game since about August.

Another vote for “just turn them off”, at the very least until the multiple teams can get together to do whatever complex task is deemed suitable. More players are impacted negatively by having them there than not having them there.

If the “e-sport” thing is a concern, then simply don’t turn them off if the generic look feature is activated in PvP. In any other circumstances, the sheer existence of minimum size Asura renders this discussion basically irrelevant.

Keysha.2815:

Add to this.
1. They must do it on a non-dev account.
2. They cannot ask their co-workers to fix bugged events, they have to do the bug report system, just like the rest of us.
3. They have to remain ‘unknown’ so they get just as much help as an average player for group events/dungeons. This INCLUDES not being in a guild to start, and not letting anyone know who they are, so they deal with the same stuff we all do.
4. They have to play exclusively to unlock traits, and get all of the traits unlocked.

Be fair, devs, do it like we do. Completely. Challenge issued!

The problem with this challenge is that it’s actually missing the biggest problem with traits. If they were account bound, the unlocking wouldn’t be that bad.

This challenge has a definite goal, and each unlocked trait represents meaningful progress towards that goal.

The traits system, however, requires you to unlock the traits for every alt. There is no “completion” of the task, just one more tick in an (effectively) infinite list of ticks.

Moreover, the other big problem with the system is that it discourages experimentation and unlocking, both during levelling and at 80. Being “challenged” to complete the task, just once, eliminates the feeling of demotivation and disinterest that the system generates in regular play.

It’s like if someone dares you to stick a needle into your hand. You have incentive to do it. It might not even be that bad. You might even get satisfaction when its done, especially if you’re proving to someone you can. But that doesn’t make it a fun, rewarding, or painless experience that you’d want to do multiple times while playing a game.

Dyne Tianjin.8605:

“Time Gated Fun” seems silly.

Yeah, I think this is the big problem with the way ANet have approached content updates. They haven’t expanded a “living world” in a way that makes you think “Oh, that’s new and exciting and I’m interested in playing that.” They’ve instead decided that “It’s time for you to play this now.”

Sure some of the stuff they’ve told me it’s time to play has been fun, but it just feels forced and restrictive.

First time I fought a world boss, before knowing about them. Old style Tequatl, after hearing people in map talking about a “dragon”.

First Halloween.

First time I logged in.

First time I played SAB.

First time in WvW.

When I realised the traits thread was approaching 150,000 views.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

CrashTestAuto.9108:

To be honest I’d settle for 2D first. Not having a way to conveniently take screenshots of characters that you can easily cut out and make art with is a pain.

But yeah, for some reason GW2 is hugely lacking in merchandise.

Well, there are definitely ways to do that. BTW, awesome bumpmaps, yihaw!

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/169943/maldanexample.jpg

If that was done conveniently, I’d love to know how. I realise you can just manually cut out a character in Photoshop, but depending on lighting and colours that’s a bit of a pain.

To be honest I’d settle for 2D first. Not having a way to conveniently take screenshots of characters that you can easily cut out and make art with is a pain.

But yeah, for some reason GW2 is hugely lacking in merchandise.

What I’d have liked to have seen happen would have been for a new version to be released with different coloured (probably green) flames. That way everyone could get the skin, but the original would still be “special”.

Basically, what the Fervid Censer and Desert Rose should have been, and what I really hope the trib mode SAB skins continue to be.

Actually giving items a degree of significance and meaning is a good thing. Recolouring them allows you to preserve that while still giving everyone the chance to get an item of that type and quality.

I like the level up rewards. I don’t like the way they made the earlier maps less interesting, the way the weapon skills unlock, or the way the story missions unlock.

The NPE is okayish. The trait system is the bigger issue. That’s actually kind of ruined the whole alt thing for me.

Piogre.2164:

I would come very close to becoming one of the people on these forums to whom I refer as “speshul snowflakes,” having gotten my storm wizard weapons through sheer blood, sweat, and tears. Then I would take a step back, breath deeply, and be over it.

I’d only get upset in a lasting way if they make this pvp track without also bringing back SAB at the same time- that would be a slap in the face to those of us who really enjoyed it.

I wouldn’t mind others having it, so much as I’d mind the reward structure being ripped out of SAB. Currently, it’s fantastic. Trib mode would still be fun, but it would lose its sense of reward for your efforts, which is a really big part of it.

The current system is fantastic. Blue skins for everyone, so you can still get the “style” if you want it. Coloured skins of the exact same quality for people who take the time to get them. I’m hoping the PvP track gives blues, but not others.

I really hope this isn’t available outside trib mode. Currently SAB has a brilliant reward system. Anyone can get blues, which means that the skin type is available to all. Then, people who do trib get a weapon of equal quality, but with the kudos of only being available through trib mode.

It’s exactly what the Fervid Censer and Desert Rose should have been. One for “being there” and one for everyone, but both the same quality.

By all means, put the blue SAB weapons into PvP. But please don’t ruin the only non-RNG based but difficult to get items we have