Guild Wars 2

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think it might be confusing to call someone “Commander” when there is the Commander rank in the game. It seems that the team chose more generic terms to avoid confusion with actual game-achieved attainments.

Personal opinion here. ‘Boss’ sounds really silly. Imho it’s better to avoid ‘names’ altogether, e.g. ‘hi there’ instead of ‘hi, boss’ or go with something different. After hearing ‘boss’ for the first time in a scene today I imagined ‘commander’ instead everytime I heard it and that was a lot better. Again, just my opinion.

edit: to clarify: the ‘boss’ sounds really shoehorned in because it’s obvious the npcs call me that since, obviously, the player name can’t be done in spoken dialogue.
Maybe have a look at how the ‘persona’ games handle that.

South starts with their boss. Their last wall should spawn without shield so they can start first. After the troll is dead, middle’s wall becomes vulnerable, making it possible to fight the trasher. Same again; last boss is the teragriff.

This is a bug and, yes, the episode as a whole is quite okay but god, I wish ANET did a tad more QA.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Details would be very helpful, please! Alternately, are you filing an in-game bug report?

There aren’t that many details necessary. Third wall to the south spawns with shield. It shouldn’t.

Vinewrath boss, third wall to the south spawns impenetrable, even though only middle and north should, on many maps, making it impossible to kill the boss and thus failing the whole event.

Fix ASAP, thanks!

Kreejaffa.3682:

Truly an awesome story thus far. I was crying when Caithe killed Wynne. When the story touches me enough to make me shed tears, I deem it a very good story.

Kind of had the opposite effect on me. I’m easily touched by scenes like that but the clunky animations and facial expressions were so cringworthy :/
Aside from that, good patch. A little short, but seeing as most LS releases only last for an hour, that’s to be expected.

Incredily well done. My only gripes are:
-characters with their mouth open like Eir in the fighting scene looks kind of silly.
-Trahearnes ‘fiyuuuu (fire)’ was very badly delivered.

Aside from that the cutscene was awesome, as always!

There’s an eraser icon in the dye tab. It erases dyes.

Very underwhelming. Looks like another 30 minutes of story with some additional vines in the open world and a marionette fight in the far west of silverwastes.
I’d love to be proven wrong though :/

I think the problem is that almost anything in this game can be achieved/aquired by grinding gold and not do fun/challenging content.
Diablo 3 had the same problem of abyssmal and unrewarding loot drops as a result of a TP philosophy where you have to grind gold in order to buy what you wanted from the AH instead of providing satisfying drops.
Blizzard ultimately wisened up and completely revamped the loot system prior to Reaper of Souls which made the game awesome and to this day I like to dip in and play a few hours here and there simply because it feels rewarding and it’s fun.

I think John Smith did a good job in salvaging this aweful design decision as best as he could. Inflation is almost non existent and item prices seem pretty fair for the most part, same with the TP tax.
But even the best economist can’t turn a bad system into a good one.

Galen Grey.4709:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

They have enough to keep many servers as “closed” to character creation to prevent overcrowding. I think the number 600-800 is lowballing it by quite a bit, though that’s more from what I would see on festival times.

. . . which as we all know from GW1, is when everyone logs in for the goodies. Even lapsed players.

actually its probably a bit too high. I did some research and it turns out dragon quest had over 300k subs as off march last year.
“In a 2014 interview, producer Yosuke Saito said, in Japan, Dragon Quest X has 300,000 active audiences per a day”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest_X

note thats active players per day not subs which is likely larger (though might have fallen since then)

on Reddit players dont complain about lack of players in FFXI either so there has to be a healthy population there as well.

That being said they’ve said plenty of times that FFXIV is their top earner so I imagine the number of subs is defintely above 500k. Which means probably 600k-800k isnt that off the mark just if Dragon Quest didnt drop in popularity in the last 9 months its probably closer to the 600k then it is to the 800k

Isn’t it kind of silly to argue about another game’s population on these forums? All I can say is that after playing both games, XIV feels very much alive, even without megaservers. The armory system assures a healthy population on even low level maps and dungeons. All major cities are bustling even in off-times and it’s always easy to find a PUG for stuff (granted i played pld/war so that might have helped).

Secondly those numbers are more then ourdated; from march 2014. More time has passed since then, than from release to this report. It misses the release on PS4, which boosted sub numbers tremendously, especially in the less PC centric JP market, and 3 major patches. Even if sub numbers were only 1k, as long as the world feels full (which it does) people won’t mind.

Besides, comparing these games is quite silly. They both target a different audience. GW2 is very casual and aims to make everything accessible to everyone. Dungeons and general PvE are not challenging and really good to relax after a hard days work.
XIV aims at a hardcore audience. Endgame dungeons and bossfights are incredibly punishing and require an insane amount of knowledge of ones class as well as team coordination.

Both have their place. Both seemingly do very well. I wouldn’t want to force stuff I liked in XIV on people over here because frankly, it’s the wrong audience but god, if only ANet released more content like Liadri or general PvE stuff were individual contribution mattered. The game is in my mind far too easy and allows for a ‘Imma spam #1 because even if I die, someone else will do my work for me’ mentality.

PS: though they should take a look at housing over there because it’s awesome! In my personal opnion the perfect way of doing housing and certainly the best in the industry by far. Well, that and the epic boss music.

Wanze.8410:

dkspins.4670:

Google “gw2 skill points to gold” – there’s a website link in the reddit thread listed on Google that will let you know the promoting costs to reward per skill point – quite useful.

if its egg barons spreadsheet, it doesnt include common tier 1 to t2 promotion, which is usually the most lucrative promotion per skillpoint.

But for lazy people that cant be kittened to do some basic calculations by themselves, its quite useful, i guess.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0As-wCpIszrT9dFB3YjVUVFhfenlDUUpXTVBIdm5qWmc#gid=13

It’s this one http://gw2sp2g.herokuapp.com/

Deamhan.9538:

The Skinner Box. They got it down quite well. I’d say one of the best at it.

Yeah, the daily log-in stuff was the final nail in the coffin for me, at least as far as gem purchases are concerned.
That being said the base game is still amazing and provides fun and enterntainment for well over ~a year. If only we had more stuff added. Not saying expansion, just a tad more of everything, not just the bare minimum to keep players logging in.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I get the feeling I’m reading hyperbole, but okay. Twenty times the content it is. In fact, one of their patches (of the 13) has more than a quarter of three months of patches (of the thirty) than Guild Wars 2.

I’m also getting the impression FF 14 can change water to wine too, but I might have a looksee about this miraculous game and get back with you later.

Thank you for your . . . um . . . unbiased opinion.

I love both games. One is, as it stands, just better at producing additional content than the other. And no, the 20x was meant literally. You counted 2.0 as a patch. I compared the size of 2.0 to what ANet released as patches, just as you suggested yourself.
Besides, I was talking about the 3monthly big content patches i.e. 2.1-2.4 and not the little ones with bug fixes and features. Pretty sure I said that already.

Suggesting you go play the game and see for yourself is silly but just take it from someone who loves GW2, rushed to the store to get the preorder to play the betas and loved every minute of it, played upon release and even without TP and horrible laggs loved the game to death.
GW2 is great, but they kind of lost track of what they originally set out to do in my opnion.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Crovax.7854:

Now take a close look at the individual patches. Having actually played the game I can guarantee you, two of those cover about the same amount of content we got in the past 2 years (since release). And that from a game that’s just over one year old.

I was under the impression that the first ‘version’ of this game crashed and burned, and they had to reboot it. Correct? So is it not more than a little disingenuous to say one game’s patch was buggy when the other game in the comparison needed a reboot? Because of bugs and the like? Again, my knowledge about this is limited. So, calling it just one year old is somewhat misleading, wouldn’t you say?

No, if you want to call it two years old and count all the content that was added with 2.0, they it was quite literally 20x the amount of content that GW2 did.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Also, given that it’s a subscription game, how often are these patches released? Wouldn’t this be like saying if Guild Wars released all their content every three months, instead of the bi-weekly as before, there would be ‘more’ content as well?

Or at least, give that appearance?

The patches are released every three months. Even if you packed the LS released into 3month bundles, it wouldn’t even be a quarter of those patches. Besides, the 2 week thing is pretty old and not quite true. We had 3 months between season 1 and 2. 3 month mid season break and only rehashed content and feature packs with bugs fixes and ‘features’ in between, which are, according to ANet, not counted as content.
So uh, yeah. 2 months of their 2 week promise and then 6 weeks. Don’t know about you but ‘consitency’ looks different.

I honestly don’t know if FF 14 does have more content given the circumstances. It might. But the evidence I’m finding tells me the opposite. Yet, to be fair again, I don’t have first-hand experience.

So it may be true. But, again, the evidence I’m finding is showing me otherwise.

You are entitled to your opinion but I honestly don’t know what you are basing it on. Seeign as you haven’t played both games and can’t compare them I thinks it’s only natural that you have a wrong impression.

nGumball.1283:

Well, I would agree with the point of view that Anet is taking the easy path to get profit if they aren’t going to announce an expansion in the future as I don’t personally think that LS is close to enough compared to the quality content that we got with GW2’s release.

If an expansion comes with the quality that we once got at release, then I have no dout that GW2 will dominate the industry again for at least 1-2 more years as the most impressing MMO title aside from WoW (which seems to be the MMO behemoth that none will ever beat). That assuming no new titles will take its’ spot.

Yes, the core game isincredible and the mechanics work quite well. The actual quality of content is also high, bugs aside however, there is too little added to this amazing foundation to keep many players interested. Glad we can agree on that one.

nGumball.1283:

Crovax.7854:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Filaha.1678:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Please tell us what other MMO adds as much content within a year that doesn’t add it all after two years with a $40.00 or more in an expansion you must wait a year or more to see?

Final Fantasy 14.

I’ve researched what I can, but I’m grossly unfamiliar with this FF 14. May I ask if these are all the content patches?

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/patchnote_log/

I was going to ask more, especially since it a subscription game with a gem store, but I see others have asked my concerns. I’ll stick to point.

Now take a close look at the individual patches. Having actually played the game I can guarantee you, two of those cover about the same amount of content we got in the past 2 years (since release). And that from a game that’s just over one year old.
And unlike for exapmle the thaumanove patch it isn’t a buggy mess upon release.

I’m glad there are people who genuinely think we get enough content but coming from another game, it’s laughable how little ANet releases.
Besides, I really don’t understand why a person can only play one game at a time.
I’m here because I think there is still hope for this game. Maybe there really is an expansion in the works. Maybe we still get meaningful content at some point.
Until then I log in one minute each day for laurles while waiting for them to get their kitten together. However that doesn’t mean I and people who are in the same situation can’t play a game that is in my/our opinion far superior in many regards.

I have also played the game and believing that two of these cover everything that Anet have released means that you haven’t played 90% of the content that GW2 has offered.

Also, FF14 is a newer game if we are talking about ‘’release date’’ howver the game is a re-release and the devs have had a far longer period to develope the game and revamp their ideas. Not to mention the fact that FF14 is a top-notch game that mostly uses well-known systms in the industry and therefore the developement cycle doesn’t include much experiment.

I know. I’ve been playing that game since 1.0 released. Same with GW2; been playing the betas and 3 day headstart. I’m not talking about content at release however, but about everything that came after the initial release (of 2.0 for that matter) and as far as I know time passes at the same rate in japan for Squenix as it das in the US for ANet.
They release literally 3-4x the content in the same time as ANet does. Their content isn’t plagued by progress blocking bugs either (though not every LS release had that problem admittedly).
I did all the content there is to do in GW2 and what was released in LS updates and I stand by what I wrote 100%. Amount of content is laughable. Not only that;
The way they design content is to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Everyone has to be able to do everything.

It’s a lazy way to reach the most amount of people with the least effort possible
instead of multiple things to do for multiple kinds of players. Explorers, hardcore dungeoneers, casuals, soloist, achievement hunters (not talking about the grindy mess that most achievements are).
All those get the same stuff instead of content that is individually tailored to each playstyle, because that’s how the competition does things and quite frankly, the way the game is run at the moment makes it look like they are just doing the bare minimum to keep the highest amount of players logging in (without necessarily enjoying the game thanks to login rewards and rehashed content for over a month to tide players over to january).
Consumer goodwill is important and it’s certainly not achieved by treating us like numbers instead of actual people.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Filaha.1678:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Please tell us what other MMO adds as much content within a year that doesn’t add it all after two years with a $40.00 or more in an expansion you must wait a year or more to see?

Final Fantasy 14.

I’ve researched what I can, but I’m grossly unfamiliar with this FF 14. May I ask if these are all the content patches?

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/patchnote_log/

I was going to ask more, especially since it a subscription game with a gem store, but I see others have asked my concerns. I’ll stick to point.

Now take a close look at the individual patches. Having actually played the game I can guarantee you, two of those cover about the same amount of content we got in the past 2 years (since release). And that from a game that’s just over one year old.
And unlike for exapmle the thaumanove patch it isn’t a buggy mess upon release.

I’m glad there are people who genuinely think we get enough content but coming from another game, it’s laughable how little ANet releases.
Besides, I really don’t understand why a person can only play one game at a time.
I’m here because I think there is still hope for this game. Maybe there really is an expansion in the works. Maybe we still get meaningful content at some point.
Until then I log in one minute each day for laurles while waiting for them to get their kitten together. However that doesn’t mean I and people who are in the same situation can’t play a game that is in my/our opinion far superior in many regards.

Fernling.1729:

nGumball.1283:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Tentonhammer does still exist?

Well, what is their method of measuring this “best”?

Established MMO #1: Regained 4.000.000 subscribers with a single expansion this year. Looks like success to me.

Established MMO #2: Expanded to China with very limited success (being kind here) while just trying to keep the status quo in the West. Sounds not as successful as MMO #1 to me.

Logic? Tentonhammer is not good at it.

Since when does any MMO ind the industry compete with MMO #1?

“We’re in it to win it this time,” said O’Brien. “We were number two to World of Warcraft with Guild Wars, now we want to beat them. We’ll be satisfied when the Guild Wars 2 is the most successful MMO."

-Mike O’brien

Well now they’re #3, which isn’t bad at all. #3 however isn’t #1.

Considering their heavy pro GW2 bias in prior pieces, this isn’t suprising. Most of their GW2 related stuff reads like ANet propaganda anyway.
Not saying the game is bad but there is a lot they could do better and it certainly doesn’t deserve best established MMO of 2014 :/

Wanze.8410:

Crovax.7854:

Azure.8670:

FF14 is actually doing better than GW2 AND its already added 2 classes and announced its expansion. So, if theyre waiting for something, its for someone to play something else.

…added 4 classes since 1.0 and announced an expansion with a new race and 3 more classes in half the time the game has been out compared to GW2. If ANet wanted to wait for the competition to make their move, they missed the window.

It also cost 4 times more (16 months sub + box price) to play it for half the time compared to GW2.

Hm I guess that explains why they put out literally 4 times the amount of content.
Though I don’t think ‘it doesn’t have a subscription’ should be used as an excuse to release so little content compared to the competition.

Azure.8670:

FF14 is actually doing better than GW2 AND its already added 2 classes and announced its expansion. So, if theyre waiting for something, its for someone to play something else.

…added 4 classes since 1.0 and announced an expansion with a new race and 3 more classes in half the time the game has been out compared to GW2. If ANet wanted to wait for the competition to make their move, they missed the window.

Mastermavrick.2439:

Roundabout.1752 I think part of the constant kittening about this mini game, is that you NEED to do it enough to get 500 correct notes for the meta.

Even with only ~60% accuracy that’s only 3 rounds. How is that too much?

Yeah wintersday stuff is incredibly useless. I asked people in my guild if it was just me but everyone seemed to be of the same opinion: loot from Xmas bags is utter trash.

Rest of the game is fine though imho.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Crovax.7854:

Gaile is male though.

No.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gaile_Gray

That’s so strange. I could swear I read that somewhere. Guess it’s not a good idea to believe everything the internet says :/

Toroxus.9256:

zoejo.2317:

Toroxus.9256:

Empanda.4617:

Toroxus.9256:

joshc.3129:

Toroxus.9256:

It’s broken and, according to Anet, will not be fixed this Wintersday. Please try again in 2015.

Where did you find Anet saying they won’t fix it? They aren’t going to add something that’s broken and walk away not fixing it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Toypocalypse-and-Parties/first#post4629767

Sorry, get over it. That’s all I can tell you because that’s all they tell us.

But, I do have an alternative: If you want to do Wintersday-esque activities with your friends, do the Infinirarium over and over, or play a different game.

That forum is about parties in toypocalypse not the actual game play of killing those adorable toy part. So no their not going to fix the fact you can’t get into the same group with your party, However they’ll probably try to fix the fact that it’s not activating. If they care enough….which they may or may not knowing anet.

What part of the following did you not understand?

according to the designers [the Toypocalypse] must remain in this state for this year’s release.

Regarding the subject of that thread. That’s how discussions work. Don’t assume he’s talking about a different unrelated problem that they’ve shown interest in correcting.

Gaile, a female by the way, is referring to the entire Toypocalypse instance-creation/grouping system, which encompasses all the problems Toypocalypse is having.

Thanks for all the info. Gaile is male though.
I agree with Filaha; no need to rush. If less people do it, the cahnces of creating a new instance is higher and you only need 5 people. I guess in all of EU/US there will be at least 5 people at all times who want to do the activity.

Hi guys,

Maybe it’s me but somehow Toypocalypse seems to be ‘not quite working’.
I’ve been playing since the beta but this is my first year trying this activity so I don’t really know what to expect but everytime I enter, it’s an instance in progress and nothing happens. No enemies spawn, but the timer still has 20 minutes on it so is this intended?

If the time between waves is around 10minutes, wouldn’t that be a bit long?

Ayrilana.1396:

Crovax.7854:

Ayrilana.1396:

Do the Wintersday dailies count towards your regular daily AP cap like the Halloween ones did?

No. They also don’t count towards the meta, which I welcome.

Now when you say meta, are you referring towards the daily completion where you need to complete 3 achievement for 10 AP or the pool of daily (temporary) AP which now has a cap of 15K? The latter was what I was referring to.

The ‘no’ was in regards to the regular daily. The second part meant, that unlike the halloween meta, the Xmas dailies also don’t count towards the Wintersday meta.

ghost.3208:

Andred.1087:

Are you people serious? You’re aware this game is made by people, right? Human beings, who have families, and commitments in their lives that they have to fulfill? Or perhaps you don’t know what that’s like?

Yes, like in every job out there. I certainly wish I also had a 1 month break, but well it’s not like I’m complaining at Anet for that.

I can see that ANet employees deserve a christmas break but I guess many people here don’t have an actual job because they are still students or whatever but in the western world it’s pretty much common practice that employees get the 24th, 25th and 26th off, together with the 31st and 1st of january. How this warrants a rather large break for LS, I don’t know since I can’t just tell my boss: ‘hey next week is christmas, so I won’t work until middle of january. kthxbye’.

Ayrilana.1396:

Do the Wintersday dailies count towards your regular daily AP cap like the Halloween ones did?

No. They also don’t count towards the meta, which I welcome.

What do you need to give him?
Can’t figure out what kind of spicey meal charr like :/

edit: nvm, just aad a look on dulfy. bummer.

Lillith.5724:

LOL thanks Gaile. I’m not very musically inclined nor do I do well at JP, but I do attempt them.
I appreciate the hints and tips guys.

It’s kinda late over here but if you really want the daily, PM me and i’ll try to run you through the JP (if you are on EU).

TheBlackLeech.9360:

….you actually did it?

TheBlackLeech.9360:

have fun spending hours of your life opening bags, documenting every single item as it comes out, clearing your inventory….

If you actually go through with this you will be a saint….

…but I highly doubt you make it through your first 4 stacks without giving up.

Heh, one of those rare time when OP actually delivers :P

Sirendor.1394:

How many weeks did you farm for 7,3k champ bags? xD

Are you still alive?

Since SW has come out. 2k where from the initial amber farm, the rest was slowly accumulated over the last 2 months of casual play. Maybe 1-2 hours daily, without specifically looking for chests. I think it just looks a lot because I never opened any bags and decided to wait for a giant loot explosion as opposed to many players who just open a bag when they get one.
This amount can be easily gotten, even with low effort and little play time per day, just be persistent.

Obtena.7952:

As for the data … I noticed a large inbalance between cloth, ore and leather. Must be intentional. That’s statistically significant.

I think they lowered leather drops because it’s already quite useless aside from just vendoring it. No idea why ore drops more than silk though. Maybe just my luck :/

I think it’s important to note that t6 ore drops at around 2,5x the rate of gossamer. I think that’s intentional, since orichalcum is worth quite a bit and used in a lot of stuff, whereas gossamer is not that highly sought after.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Crovax.7854:

7306 in total.
0 Precursors but a lot of named exotics.

43 exotic weapons (I’m sure not all of them named…)

3 of them were not named. The rest consisted of mainly the named drops found on the wiki here and here.
Additionally I had 1 Magmaton and 1 Imryldyen but that’s about it for diversity.
(plus 0 Phoenix Reborn from the seed pouch loot table)

The armor drops were 2 of the Devonas set (strength runes) and one with a mercy rune.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

johnnymiller.5968:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

No precursors?

Are you really surprised?

For the broader playerbase, I guess not.

But it’s a decent sample size though… you just never know with the RNG in this game.

On the plus side, it was more than enough to just buy the one I wanted but yes, having it dropped would ‘feel’ better. Kinda sad that the answer to many things in this game is: buy it off the TP.

SKATE.1394:

Is your cloth total including the silk/gossamer salvaged from masterwork armor? Or only the cloth dropped from the champ bags themselves?

Did you happen to track the percentage of light, medium, and heavy armor drops? My smaller trials have shown a 10-12% weight bias in favor of the profession opening the bags.

The cloth total on the spreadsheet is without the salvaged cloth from greens. I did not track the spread between heavy medium and light but from what I’ve seen it appears to be pretty even though I can’t say whether there’s a slight bias towards one of them.

Justine.6351:

cranked.3812:

Piratoz.8627:

The fact that charged lodestones are needed for so many recipes and the fact that they have a ridiculously low droprate is really not okay… I agree that it is a nightmare but Anet seems to be okay with ridiculous RNG in this game so I don’t think things will get any better in the near future.

It’s working as intended, or so they say. But, it’s a great gold sink for the game. So, it’s not likely to change anytime soon.

I’m not sure this is a goldsink for the game.

Low drop rate means you’ll have to buy most of the ones you need from the TP, thus taking away 15% of the price as taxes. FYI the TP is by far the biggest gold sink in this game.

7306 in total.
Thought i’d dump the info here so people know what to expect when farming SW for some time.
0 Precursors but a lot of named exotics.
I vendored greens and salvaged things that give silk. I did not sell t6 mats so that’s a big chunk of gold i didn’t make.
Aside from that the whole thing net me ~900g (not counting t6, as was said).

Kind regards, and if you’ll excuse me, i’m off buying a new mouse…

edit: coin drops avaraged out at 1s25c; a bag is worth around 15 silver.
edit2: forgot to add 1 ascended armor chest. I guess that confirms they do drops but the chance is abysmally low.

Thanks for the link. Made sure to vote for Squenix because of incredible transparacy and frequent content updates with an insane amount of stuff added for all kinds of players i.e. casuals as well as hardcoreraiders and solo’ers.

I hope Anet improves, so next year I can vote for them!

Dodge? If that doesn’t help, just burst them down. They have real low hp; takes me maybe 2-3 seconds to kill a lvl80 one.

munkiman.3068:

Be nice to get more clarifications on this stuff.

They won’t clarify anything. At best Gaile will praise some of the people in favor of the changes by saying how rational and good their feedback is while stating that there are also a lot of unreasonable opinions (i.e. critics), as is unfurtonately often the case. They don’t want to see anything other than praise and denounce critics as short sighted; there are already a lot of instances of that happening on these forums.

I’m not even saying it’s ‘the majority of players’ who are against it. Most people are likely to be in favor of the new system (me included, aside from the daily log-in reward). It’s just a shame they won’t even adress the concerns people have and take a chance to ‘convert’ them to supporters by adressing them.
Just like so many other times, they won’t say anything because people will forget. They always do. Remember when they pulled that giant F YOU against consumers with the new gem exchange? It took major games media outlets and a giant uproar from the playerbase for them to actually just give a statement and eventually change it when they saw the backlash was too big.
Shortly after they got praised by people for ‘listening’ whereas they just tried to scew us over a couple of days prior.
Moral of the story: stay silent and don’t communicate. People will forget. That’s how they operate in these cases.

Filaha.1678:

Crovax.7854:

Dailies required actual work to be done. This doesn’t. Simple as that.

Right, this response was so predictable that I already posted the rebuttal.

In comparison between daily achievements and daily login rewards, the daily achievements required some work to do, lengthening the amount of time you’d be in the game and making you more likely to hit up the gem store because you’re spending more time in the game.

If someone is logging in literally only for the free daily rewards just for logging in but the 10 minutes it would take to do the easiest dailies was too much effort and they didn’t have that kind of time to spend on the game, then that person is not going to spend money in the gem store, because why would they spend money in the gem store when they don’t even want to play it for 10 minutes? If they’re only logging in because they can get something free for being on for 10 seconds and then logging out because dailies are too much time, they clearly do not have enough interest in the game to warrant gem store purchases.

You can toss around buzzwords all you want, but that doesn’t lend your complaints any credence.

Just because you ignore what i said don’t make your points any more valid either.
I can only repeat myself at this point as your question is already answered: It’s supposed to push people over the edge who are unsure whether to log in or not. This is not aimed at the majority. The ‘first’ reward is being given out for just logging in. Next stage would be ‘doing dailies’ for an hour or so and voila, you’r actively playing again, back from having not played at all. What this change does is divides the perceived ‘barrier of entry’ from ‘having to log in and do dailies, which can be viewed as a lengthy process into stages 1’ log in and cash in reward #1’ and 2 ‘play a bit and cash in reward #2’.

I’m sorry if I use words you perceive as buzzwords but trying to get a point across in a foreign language you aren’t really good at isn’t always easy as you can hopefully understand. Please be a bit more forgiving if what I write sounds unprofessional or childish; I’m really trying hard to get my point across as best as possible.

I think we have to agree to disagree here. It’s great that some people seem to like it and I myself really like the daily AP rework overall.

Filaha.1678:

Crovax.7854:

Filaha.1678:

Crovax.7854:

dsslive.8473:

Crovax.7854:

2) Being conditioned to log in every day makes you see all the new BL stuff you would have otherwise missed, had you not played, thus makes you more likely to spend money on the game.

Really? I didn’t know the gemstore tab automatically goes open upon login, must be something new.

Oh sorry. It increases the chance of you seeing the new items, whereas it previously was 0. If you had actually read my whole post, that’s adressed towards the bottom

Actually, you’re wrong. If you don’t manually open the gem store, your chance of seeing the new gem store items is still 0. Unbind your gem store key, and boom, even less chance!

Also, dailies served the exact same purpose – a reason for logging in each day. And even more so, it required you to take some time to complete them rather than logging in, getting a reward, and logging out, thereby extending the chance that your finger might slip and hit that gem store key!

Have you been complaining about dailies all this time too? If not, you’re too late.

The launcher and the website very often feature new items and discounts. Point is, they want to keep you playing. Someone who playes this game is more likely to spend money on the store than someone who doesn’t.

Crovax.7854:

As I said, this doesn’t force you to pay money, it incentivises, it aims to keep you playing actively, thus keeping you in the pool of potential gem buyers, but that’s how this kind of manipulation works. it’s subtle and not everybody will fall for it, just some but that’s enough to warrant this kind of sleazy behaviour for ANet it seems.

Here’s the part from my other post; I think you’ll maybe understand after reading it a second time.

You missed the part about how dailies have been been serving the exact same purpose of encouraging daily logins for a long time now. It’s okay, I’ll wait for you to read that part and try to rebut about how you’re complaining about something that has been a thing for a long time now.

Dailies are specifically to encourage people logging in every day. Daily log-in rewards do not serve any different degree of encouragement.

If people didn’t find even dailies to be worth logging in each day for, why would they find login rewards suddenly worth logging in for?

Dailies required actual work to be done. This doesn’t. Simple as that. Why reward this behaviour?
I know people from ANet read this, they read all of the forums and I know from another thread that ANet asks themselves before every update: would people quit over that?

I won’t quit, but I can promise you this, you won’t see any money from me ever again. This isn’t supposed to be dramatic or anything. People seem to like it as is their right but I don’t. I still stand by saying this cheap psychological tricks have no place in AAA development and for me personally, it’s enough to come to the conclusion that you don’t want my money. Dailies were fine because they were more than connecting a simple task (i.e. logging) in with rewards. They weren’t this basic; you had to go out into the world and do stuff. They were varied, (at least a bit) more than just a skinner box. This is the most basic form of conditioning.

You like free stuff, I get that, I just think the negatives outweigh the positives and we live in a world where not every decision can please everybody.

Filaha.1678:

Crovax.7854:

dsslive.8473:

Crovax.7854:

2) Being conditioned to log in every day makes you see all the new BL stuff you would have otherwise missed, had you not played, thus makes you more likely to spend money on the game.

Really? I didn’t know the gemstore tab automatically goes open upon login, must be something new.

Oh sorry. It increases the chance of you seeing the new items, whereas it previously was 0. If you had actually read my whole post, that’s adressed towards the bottom

Actually, you’re wrong. If you don’t manually open the gem store, your chance of seeing the new gem store items is still 0. Unbind your gem store key, and boom, even less chance!

Also, dailies served the exact same purpose – a reason for logging in each day. And even more so, it required you to take some time to complete them rather than logging in, getting a reward, and logging out, thereby extending the chance that your finger might slip and hit that gem store key!

Have you been complaining about dailies all this time too? If not, you’re too late.

The launcher and the website very often feature new items and discounts. Point is, they want to keep you playing. Someone who playes this game is more likely to spend money on the store than someone who doesn’t.

Crovax.7854:

As I said, this doesn’t force you to pay money, it incentivises, it aims to keep you playing actively, thus keeping you in the pool of potential gem buyers, but that’s how this kind of manipulation works. it’s subtle and not everybody will fall for it, just some but that’s enough to warrant this kind of sleazy behaviour for ANet it seems.

Here’s the part from my other post; I think you’ll maybe understand after reading it a second time.

Erinyes.3596:

You really assume that every person is completely feeble minded – just because I see something in a store doesn’t mean that I will buy it. Do you really think people have that little self control.

Even if they open the store every day – big deal – I actually welcome this – the other day I almost missed the sale on the storage expanders because I didn’t check the store. I’d be happy if they would show me the sales promotions because I constantly forget to check.

Spending money on a game and by doing so rewarding the makers of the game is power for the course. Why in the world would you not want to support a game that you obviously play a lot?

This isn’t aimed at the avarage player but at the ‘whales’ who spend hundreds of dollars on the store. I’m actually pretty sure a large part of players will be unaffected by this. The fact that ANet preys on those with poor impulse control doesn’t make it any better.

I want the game to do well and I want to give them my money but why like this? I know they are a business and a business is built to make money but you can still do that while respecting your customers as human beings.

dsslive.8473:

Crovax.7854:

2) Being conditioned to log in every day makes you see all the new BL stuff you would have otherwise missed, had you not played, thus makes you more likely to spend money on the game.

Really? I didn’t know the gemstore tab automatically goes open upon login, must be something new.

Oh sorry. It increases the chance of you seeing the new items, whereas it previously was 0. If you had actually read my whole post, that’s adressed towards the bottom

Erinyes.3596:

Gotta love these backseat psychologists – I suppose we are all touched in the head.

If you don’t like it and feel it demeans you as a person – don’t log in anymore – problem solved.

There is so much stuff to really get upset over – this ain’t one of them.

I do feel it demeans me as a person. The thing is, I like the game, this just makes it very hard to respect ANet as a company. Not playing is certainly an option, but I think simply ‘not giving them any money and not converting gold-gems’ will also do.
If people like this change, good on them. I don’t and I still think it has no place in a AAA MMO which I had to pay for to begin with.

lordkrall.7241:

I also really don’t see how giving us stuff for free from simply logging in somehow turns to giving us stuff for free makes us give them money.

If don’t see that far, you might want to start thinking a bit more critically
1) By not logging in you lose out. Other get items with a monetary (gold) value. Your wealth actively decreases, all that in addition to the (admitedly very low) inflation.
2) Being conditioned to log in every day makes you see all the new BL stuff you would have otherwise missed, had you not played, thus makes you more likely to spend money on the game.
3) Other have said, LotR and Warframe do the same thing. Those are f2p games. GW2 is not. This has no place here. As I said, you want to be seen as a lab rat? More power to you – I don’t.

It’s a cheap trick, used by sleazy f2p companies. Getting daily rewards for at least some amount of investment like the dailies (until now) is fine. Flat out manipulating players through skinner boy techniques is disgusting and shouldn’t be encouraged.

dsslive.8473:

Crovax.7854:

I still don’t see how just logging in should be rewaded other than to serve as a tool to condition players into logging in frequently. Not long, just frequently; make it a part of their daily routine. That’s how exploitative games work and something I never thought ANet would incorporate in their game.

The daily change is nice, this is just downright insulting. If you want to be treated like a lab animal, that’s your choice. I however still have some pride left and don’t want to be seen as a walking moneybag, where the first priority is: ‘How can we pull the most money out of that sucker?’ instead of ‘How can we make the game the most fun so this player wants to give us his money?’

Pray tell, how is giving people some free stuff for logging in in any way related to the gemstore and them “wanting to give us our money”

Do you need a special gemstore item to get the item fro logging in? is there ANYTHING you’d need frm the gemstore to get this free stuff?

Answer, NO

It’s ridiculous that no matter how irrelevant it is, people will always try to make this into a thing that’s created solely to promote the gemstore.

It’s supposed to keep you playing through manipulation on a basic level. Rewards for little no effort. It’s mind boggling to see so many people here fail to grasp why this might be considered as unethical.

As I said, this doesn’t force you to pay money, it incentivises, it aims to keep you playing actively, thus keeping you in the pool of potential gem buyers, but that’s how this kind of manipulation works. it’s subtle and not everybody will fall for it, just some but that’s enough to warrant this kind of sleazy behaviour for ANet it seems. Why do you think so many f2p titles do it? Because it does work and because many people don’t even see how they are manipulated because ‘hey it’s free’.

I still don’t see how just logging in should be rewaded other than to serve as a tool to condition players into logging in frequently. Not long, just frequently; make it a part of their daily routine. That’s how exploitative games work and something I never thought ANet would incorporate in their game.

The daily change is nice, this is just downright insulting. If you want to be treated like a lab animal, that’s your choice. I however still have some pride left and don’t want to be seen as a walking moneybag, where the first priority is: ‘How can we pull the most money out of that sucker?’ instead of ‘How can we make the game the most fun so this player wants to give us his money?’

Konig Des Todes.2086:

lordkrall.7241:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

However, the Log-in Rewards scream “lazy desperation to increase statistics” to me. Like somewhere down the line of management promised a higher up ’we’ll increase log-in numbers’ and rather than going the proper route of making continuous playability enjoyable, they’re promoting log-in-once-and-leave mentality.

While that would indeed be the case if it was along the lines of many others which basically resets if you do not log-in one day the system they are implementing seems to be remembering your place, so even if you only log-in once a month you will still progress on the track.

It is rather unlikely that people that wouldn’t login anyway would log in every day just to get a reward that they will have no use for unless they actively play the game.

A lack of reset does not mean that the system’s purpose is to effectively falsify daily log-in numbers.

They’re providing a reward that if you don’t log in you don’t get (as fast). It’s psychological conditioning at its finest. Do a simple action, get a reward; the action again, get a reward; rinse repeat. It’s a minor alteration of the skinner box (which almost all MMOs – as are all gambling are based off of in order to retain playerbase – and the creation of additional skinner boxes just means they’re getting more desperate for retaining their playerbase).

Exactly my point. I get excitement about AP changes but why some people seem so thrilled that ANet treats them like lab rats whose sole purpose is to be ‘monetized’ escapes me :/

Palador.2170:

Crovax.7854:

Problem #3: Again, personal opinion, but honestly; it’s player manipulation disguised as a change to benefit us, which is simply disgusting. Why would the spend resources on an area basically everybody seemed content with when they clearly stated their resources are limited and they will prioritize based on player feedback?

Where did they ever say that they would prioritize based on player feedback? I know they’ve said “we’re listening”, but I don’t recall them saying that they’d do anything about it.

Hey there. That was to my knowledge in some post back in summer after the controversial SAB interview. (guildmag ?) Unfortunately I can’t seem to find it since it’s buried under tons and tons of newer threads in the now reworked forums :S

Assuming I’m wrong, I’d still love to hear their reasoning on why they felt the need to change that particular aspect of the game, since I’ve never seen actual forum threads complaing in any way, shape or form and it just seems odd that they spend some of their precious resources on an aspect nobody (not literally, but there just wasn’t any feedback from people unsatisfied with it, so far all ANet knew, people seemed to like it) wanted changed to begin with.

It really doesn’t make sense in another way than desparately trying to ‘hook’ players in a way I personally find exploitative and make the game just slightly more like a skinner box.

Softspoken.2410:

Crovax.7854:

I personally think they had the option to
a) make the game more fun so people want to play by themselves
b) resort to psychological manipulation and take the easy way out to avoid spending resources on improving the game

They chose option b and it’s hard to respect a company that acts that way. However that’s just my personal opinion.

As much as I understand your concerns over manipulation, there’s basically no coercive element to this that I can see? There’s no new punishment if you stop / don’t log in, for example.

I won’t fall for it, you probably won’t either, but it’s designed to push people over the edge. The same way some pesky f2p games send you push notifications to get you to play again. Many f2p games don’t punish you either – they just incentivise playing again so you (best case scenario) spend money on the store.

Problem #2 is: where will it end? In my opinion this is something that is only seen in cheap and aggressively monetized f2p games. ANet has already tried a few times how far they can push it before player backlash gets too strong. This is -in my opnion- no different, only unlike last time (gem store exchange changes), less people seem to mind.

Problem #3: Again, personal opinion, but honestly; it’s player manipulation disguised as a change to benefit us, which is simply disgusting. Why would the spend resources on an area basically everybody seemed content with when they clearly stated their resources are limited and they will prioritize based on player feedback?

Again to clarfiy for anybody who might think I’m against this altogether: AP changes – cool, daily rewards – not so much

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Crovax.7854:

Neat changes but rewards for daily logins? Really? That is a psychological tactic for sleazy f2p games to get players to spend more money in their cash shop, not something for a supposedly respectable AAA MMO.

Overall good changes to dailies though, but still…

Even PSO 2 has a Daily Login reward system (a reward every 5 daily stamps and recycles after 50 days) I wanted something like this in forever on GW2. Maybe players will return and more RPers will come back from year one!

If this is what the game needs to retain people, so be it! Make more loyalty programs ANET! Good job Devs! The game is back on track!

I think they had the option to
a) make the game more fun so people want to play by themselves
b) resort to psychological manipulation and take the easy way out to avoid spending resources on improving the game

They chose option b and it’s hard to respect a company that acts that way. However that’s just my personal opinion.

Astralporing.1957:

Crovax.7854:

Neat changes but rewards for daily logins? Really? That is a psychological tactic for sleazy f2p games to get players to spend more money in their cash shop, not something for a supposedly respectable AAA MMO.

From the explanation it seems that (unlike in those cheap f2p web games) the daily login reward track will not reset if you miss a day. If you won’t log every day, you will just complete it at a slower rate.

It’s still is a cheap psychological trick and I thought ANet wouldn’t sink that low.
Instead of incentives that are designed to ‘irk’ you because you have the feeling you miss out if you don’t log in, the could tackle the underlying problem, which is making the game simply more fun so players want to log in daily, not feel like they have to.

edit: god, there was this really long, well written article about the psychology of f2p games, that mentions exactly this kind of manipulation. I’ll try to find it because it’s an awesome read and you may find it intersting.

Neat changes but rewards for daily logins? Really? That is a psychological tactic for sleazy f2p games to get players to spend more money in their cash shop, not something for a supposedly respectable AAA MMO.

Overall good changes to dailies though, but still…

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Here are some more:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jBx8Mm2fkm9qfJ9MY4RDuoM-Xv07IAVHvj66iyM3ryk/edit?pli=1#gid=0

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Champion_loot_bag#A_few_drop_rates

There was a thread, not too long ago, where someone posted his/her loot from opening many, many Loot Bags, but sadly, I can not find it, again.

Good luck.

Ah thanks, better than nothing I guess. Very Kind of you take your time and help me find what I was looking for! Guess I will be posting my result in a separate thread or somehow contact the people from the wiki when I’m done.

edit: Oh boy, 0.21 t6 per bag, legendary, here I come!