I wrote a large reaction on this, but then I realized it’s not even worth it. This is just searching for arguments to back up the need of an expansion.
I think the game is no longer being designed for us in the West. The game is dying here, (in spite of being the best “at launch” MMO of the last decade, they found a way to squander it), but it’s very successful in China. I’m sure localizations for other Eastern nations will be the next top priority.
Designing for the East is very different than designing for the West. Expect more difficulty, more grind and a decidedly less benevolent cash shop moving forward.
People still playing here are likely seen as die-hards who will surely swallow anything, thus the risks of alienating the remaining Western player-base must be seen as very insignificant vs. the potential gains from targeting the game for Eastern audiences.
The game’s once incredible potential will never be realized. If it was a “dime a dozen” MMO, no one would care, but it was a once in a million opportunity missed by a mile. It’s about the saddest outcome this fifteen year MMO veteran can imagine.
Boo…hiss…boo…
So, was it really necessary to post the same complaint in 3 topics? But seriously, it’s all the same again. The game is dying in your opinion, I still see a lot of people in game. People with constructive criticism, enthusiastic people, people who can appreciate the way the game is going. Of course, there is also the other side of the spectrum, I’m not going to deny that. That category is most likely even the most active here on the forum, what can give a distorted view of things.
Calling all the people who still play in the west die-hards is somewhat amusing. We have a lot of die-hards then, nice to know. But they will not swallow anything, that is over exaggerating. Your post seems to be a bit affected by your own rage about missing content, what you can get fairly easy without even using real live money. Sure, not everyone will be pleased with that, but there is some flexibility. Missing a chapter is also very easy to avoid.
I have no problem with constructive criticism, I mostly like to read long posts here on the forum with that kind of criticism. Although I’m a somewhat casual “I’m-fine-with-what-I-get.” kind of person, some people bring up some great ideas or really know to nail down issues. What does irritate me are people who complain on everything, just for the sake of complaining. Or people who feel the need to tell everyone that “they couldn’t care less, because it will suck anyway.”
Disagreement though is no reason to request those people to stop posting on the forums.
Its still NCSoft that decides where to spend the manpower. And its obvious that its not being spent on GW2.
No it isn’t.
It is NCSoft that decides where to put money. Sure they can tell ArenaNet that they must put all their 300 employees at this specific issues or else they will lose their funding, but they can’t order ArenaNet employees to work on non-ArenaNet projects. They are hired by ArenaNet, not NCSoft.
It doesnt really matter what other thing they’re working on, the game I mentioned was just an example. Point is, it’s not GW2 or we would have heard something by now.
Your making things up to fit the views you have at this point.
That goes for everything everyone sais about everything minus official announcements by anet.
It’s just an assumption, but there obviously are reasons which lead to making that assumption.
But your making a BIG leap and not even trying to justify why your making that leap. Its the same level of logic of “If i have this pin and there are no tigers in the room then this pin must be keeping the tigers away and or out of this room.” Do you have any thing backing up what your saying?
Not seeing anything from the other 300 developers for 2 years, despite having a working content pipeline is what i based what i said on. If that is not a valid observation in your book then you can ignore me.
What do you watch them go to work or something and not seen them or are you watching there houses and no one come in or out for 2 years (you may want to call the cops if that true) beyond that you have no ideal what your talking about and have no way to back up any thing your saying. If any thing you would think they are “Working” that why they are not saying any thing to your seemingly godly post that cant be ignored.
In what way does my comment imply any of that..
By “Not seeing anything from the other 300 developers for 2 years” I mean there haven’t been any major announcements other than living world (which is said to be done by 25 man).
So your conclusion is that these other 275 people don’t work at the game, because they haven’t announced that they work on anything. Now that’s some funny logic.
Yes pretty much, 2 years is an awkward long time.
Prophecies: April 28 2005
Factions: April 28 2006
Nightfall: October 27 2006
EotN: August 31 2007
And each of those were announced like a month before release atleast iirc.
2 years isnt that long for development of a new game, but for an expansion of an existing game using an existing engine / content pipeline it is.
You should realize two things here. First: Gw and Gw2 are not exactly the same games, the first is a CORPG and the second a proper MMO. All the content out of towns and outpost were instanced and pretty linear in GW, it was actually somewhat easier to create and there were less things that could break or mess things up. In Gw2, with all the open work content, there are a lot more things that could go wrong and take more time. Heck, for some people they should even take more things to release things, because of bugs, sloppy story telling, etc etc. But let’s not go that (boring) way again. Now, I understand that this isn’t an all explanatory point, but that brings me to point two.
Even without announcements for anything, doesn’t mean those other 275 people aren’t working on something. It’s (in my humble opinion) more likely that they are working on something (big), but there were just no announcements so far. I can think of some reasons why they keep quiet.
Its still NCSoft that decides where to spend the manpower. And its obvious that its not being spent on GW2.
No it isn’t.
It is NCSoft that decides where to put money. Sure they can tell ArenaNet that they must put all their 300 employees at this specific issues or else they will lose their funding, but they can’t order ArenaNet employees to work on non-ArenaNet projects. They are hired by ArenaNet, not NCSoft.
It doesnt really matter what other thing they’re working on, the game I mentioned was just an example. Point is, it’s not GW2 or we would have heard something by now.
Your making things up to fit the views you have at this point.
That goes for everything everyone sais about everything minus official announcements by anet.
It’s just an assumption, but there obviously are reasons which lead to making that assumption.
But your making a BIG leap and not even trying to justify why your making that leap. Its the same level of logic of “If i have this pin and there are no tigers in the room then this pin must be keeping the tigers away and or out of this room.” Do you have any thing backing up what your saying?
Not seeing anything from the other 300 developers for 2 years, despite having a working content pipeline is what i based what i said on. If that is not a valid observation in your book then you can ignore me.
What do you watch them go to work or something and not seen them or are you watching there houses and no one come in or out for 2 years (you may want to call the cops if that true) beyond that you have no ideal what your talking about and have no way to back up any thing your saying. If any thing you would think they are “Working” that why they are not saying any thing to your seemingly godly post that cant be ignored.
In what way does my comment imply any of that..
By “Not seeing anything from the other 300 developers for 2 years” I mean there haven’t been any major announcements other than living world (which is said to be done by 25 man).
So your conclusion is that these other 275 people don’t work at the game, because they haven’t announced that they work on anything. Now that’s some funny logic.
Now I almost want a scene of political drama in the next episode. If everyone on the summit will agree on everything instantly, I’ll be a bit disappointed.
Back to the OP’s original comment on the stale presentation of lore. I think there is so much that could be done to help present the lore in a more meaningful manner. For example, points of interest—so many of these are just strewn around the map without any real backstory behind them. I guess the backstory on some of the PoIs is supposed to be assumed from the events going on in the map, but I feel like it would be much more worthwhile and interesting to find a PoI if the devs provided some sort of short written caption about it. Remember how all the towns and outposts in GW had a caption that related back to the lore in GW? That was one of the reasons I loved mapping in that game because I could discover new outposts and read the lore about their history that the devs had provided. I feel like this would add another level of reward to mapping, especially to some of us lore nerds because we get a deeper insight into the history of tyria from all the work we put into getting to the PoI.
This is something I really like to see, I also really liked the descriptions for outposts in the original GuildWars.
I did it on two characters so far and took my time. I’m not that good with keyboard controls, so my dodging isn’t always accurate. Still, I liked this fight, I guess I need between 10 and 15 minutes to do it, but I’m perfectly fine with that. Only had some good frustrations at the start.
(As in shouting “What the hell is happening? Why are those things exploding in MY face? Kitten!” to my monitor…)
I was a GW1 founder since beta. I honestly have never been more disappointed in a game, going from GW1 to GW2 The armor and weapons in Guild Wars 1 looked beautiful and awesome. I’ve looked at every piece of armor and weapon in GW2 and it is 99.99% ugly, purely quantity over quality. I dare any of you to log into GW1 and take a look at what people are still wearing in the cities, I haven’t wanted to play GW2 in around a year since doing so.
It’s almost funny, because I recently noticed a game called Vindictus, that came out before GW2 and immediately recognized that GW2 had been developed trying to copy Vindictus. The thing is Vindictus looks a million times better not to mention the skills used in fighting which make it actually tactical and fun, unlike GW2. I started playing a character named Hurk and you have to time many of your attacks to the moment you’re going to be hit, which counterattacks and gains health. This sort of reflex-based, hand-eye coordination stuff is what GW2 is sorely lacking because they dumbed down the game in order to allow everyone to play it, the skills and armor are really garbage.
So, how is the second part of your text relevant if we talk about weapon and armor diversity? Let’s not make this a general Gw2-is-lacking-a-lot-more thread.
I get the feeling the Pale Tree is up to something.
She refuses to give straight answers and she insists on gathering all of the major leaders on her home-turf.
I do agree with this. After the little talk with mother tree I was certain that she didn’t want to tell me everything, for reasons unknown. It felt uncomfortable to talk with her. On the other hand, I was surprised to see some references to our past accomplishments, that was actually really nice to experience.
It took some time, but I really felt the awkwardness between Eir and Braham. It made me chuckle a bit, and I hope it will take some more time before all is well between those two. The events to get Norn support were a bit of a mismatch, but it didn’t bother me much. That’s just what you get on the first crowded days. I think it will feel palpitating with less people around.
That Rytlock didn’t know about the veins in Iron Marches was awkward, and somewhat troublesome for me to digest. The final cut scene however gave me a little grasp, like omg what is happening now?!
The things I have to complain about is the way you help Eir and Rytlock
Starting with Eir; you are supposed to take care of Son of Svanir and their totems, alone. But this instead got pushed into a world event with loads of other players, really making all of it uninteresting. Zerg content is always boring, uninteresting, this is no different.
Helping Rytlock to find the crown pieces; so anticliamtic. This legendary, special, mystical crown, just being scattered around like nothing. All I did was following the green star, search some rubbles and repeat. That was so uninteresting and gave me the biggest ’’meh’’ feeling I’m sure even ArenaNet could feel a cold breeze in their neck.
I get your first point, although I was wondering how it will work out in a couple of days later on, when it’s less crowded. Same for the events in Iron Marches.
There’s like 500+ skins in the wardrobe… that’s not enough choice for you?
Have you even looked at them? 90% of the skins in this game are horrible! For all my characters and classes i have not found anything better than tier 3 armor, i have that for my heavies, light, and medium armors just tier 3, why you ask? Because all the other armor has had no effort put into it! Oh mix armors you say? How about dealing with the poor dye design from Anet where you mix armors and the dyes dont match! I put abyss on some armors and they turn out grey! Ever since this game came out there have not been any serious sets of armor put into the game, the wurm armor is awful, and they just add shoulders or gloves here and there but never a full set of actually good looking armor, even ascended is a complete joke! Come on 500 armor sets and i still cant find something i like and i have over 5k hours on this game, very disappointing for players who actually want to play hardcore and earn nice armors.
Now read your post again. Quantity versus personal taste. What’s the problem here?
You keep saying it’s not fair because of this and that and blah and bluh, but at the moment it doesn’t matter how many characters you have, you just need a kit for these exclusive hairstyles and colors. It’s the same thing for everyone. How isn’t that fair exactly?
So you don’t mind starting from scratch with a brand new character and NOT have these new options available to you?
You pay 800 gems to get a new slot, but then you are forced purchase a kit for 350 gems or use one you have in your bank or inventory to get the full character creation experience from the start for a totally brand new character?
At the moment I have 16 characters, and I guess I remodeled halve of them with a kit. I don’t mind, because of the ahum exclusive conception of the whole system. And again, at the moment it’s the same for everyone, if you want an exclusive face, hairstyle or color you need to buy a kit for it. All the same for a starting player and a veteran player with 30 characters.
You keep saying it’s not fair because of this and that and blah and bluh, but at the moment it doesn’t matter how many characters you have, you just need a kit for these exclusive hairstyles and colors. It’s the same thing for everyone. How isn’t that fair exactly?
Everyone will want to change the character’s appearance constantly, but its not fair that these new option are only available there. New characters, made with new slots, should have them available to them as well.
Everyone? No. You shouldn’t be talking for everyone, mainly because the opinion of everyone will differ per individual. Constantly? What? No. I found an excellent look for my main character, exactly as I pictured it. The chance that I’ll change it again is very small. I can imagine there will be more people who think like this.
But, most important: they want to keep these new hairstyles and colors exclusive. Now, if they make it easier for players to get them, they will be less exclusive. Is this unfair? No.
I’ve played Cabal, Aion and Tera before Gw2, so i might not be such a pro as u. But i do know, that when u get to endgame, u should get some armor that sets u appart from the “noobs”. If i walk into a town, i can see lower levels, with the same kind of looks as someone who got full ascended gear, and just skinned it.
Maybe it’s just my taste as someone mentioned, but i kinda like the glow on some parts :/
Ah, so the real problem for you is that you aren’t able to show how awesome you are in your progression. If you see a low level character with the same looks as someone with ascended gear, keep in mind that this means that player did craft it on another character to get it. For legendary weapons it’s likewise, or someone slammed a lot of gold on the table to get it.
In the end it’s all a matter of taste. Get over it.
If I remember correctly it’s also a human legend about breaking the curse. Rytlock (and many other Charr) have way too much pride to rely and fall back on “silly” human stories.
They started the war in a (ingame) human point of view, plus I don’t see how they are responsible for the Foefire. King Adelbern was a man who wasn’t really sane, even in Guild Wars: Beyond. Even in Prophecies, his judgement was clouded by his pride. Back then, with the Foefire, he chose to kill all of his own people together with the Charr in a huge area, and on top of that he’d chained them up (mentally) in a war, what will be ongoing for infinitive time in their mindset. That’s in my eyes evenly cruel as the Searing, what was mostly a Flame Legion plan. We all know their sanity wasn’t that well either.
It is state that Dragons do ‘typically’ fight with each other, as long as they don’t ‘tress pass’ on each other’s territory. Seeing that Mordi ‘has to’ pass through the Shiver Peaks, ‘we’ might get an unlikely ally in the fight Against Mordi, as Jormag might be fairly irritated about his presence in the Shiver Peaks… Obviously this ‘ally’ will strengthen it’s presence or will respond with stronger creatures, these would obviously also pose a new thread to the area and thus to us!
I was also thinking in that way, although I feel like it will not be a very positive change. It’s already visible that the dragons and their minions are not very mild for anything around them in their ways. I think it will be devastating if they start to fight each other, how are we going to handle so much raw destruction?
The attempted removal of the ghosts will fail, resulting in Adelburn gloating that only a member of his heritage can remove the curse. Thus Rytlock, very reluctantly, will admit he needs Queen Jenna to do it. Rytlock will reach out to Logan and the Queen, and the Queen will refuse, only for the PC to suddenly realize that she isn’t a descendant, possibly accidentally blurting it out loud. Logan and the Shining Blades will get kitteny and pull out their swords, only for you to reveal the existence of the locket that shows the true heir. At this point Jenna will admit she’s not of royal heritage, but her actions helping Kryta and humanity prove she doesn’t need to be. Next chapter after this will be the search for the member of the royal family.
It’s almost a soap opera in if you summarize it like this. =p
I am absolutely freaking out over this. How can they do this?
More than a year ago, in a lore discussion thread about Sohothin, i mentioned that Rytlock may be a candidate for Khan-Ur, if he is a descendant. And now it looks as if i may be right. Frankly, i am shocked.
ArenaNet, how can you once more trample onto GW1 lore in this way? How can you?
Sohothin does not belong into the hands of a Charr. I was waiting for a chance to take it away, by force if need be. But no, you turn that Charr into the one to lift the curse of Ascalon. Rytlock may be a candidate for Khan-Ur, but he is NOT the rightful heir to the kingdom of Ascalon. If anyone, that is Samuelsson. The human kingdom is gone, alright. But what you do here is justifying genocide and ecocide.
I was thinking that making the Charr into a playable race was for the sake of game balance, but now i see that it is obviously favouritism. You are going too far, ArenaNet. Enough is enough. You are favouring a race that caused a genocide of innocents and destroyed Ascalon completely. Many old GW1 players have not forgotten, and really do not like the Charr. I see now how much you care about those players, even less than i thought.
The ghosts deserve to be put to rest. The Charr do not deserve to be freed from a curse they caused by their actions. But that is just my opinion.
Treat your GW1 lore with more respect. Do not let a Charr casually lift the curse during a living story update like this. You could have made a great story out of it, one that stands on its own. You just casually throw it into an update whose focus is something completely different from the whole Ascalon story.
Recently you said that you do respect the lore of GW1, but now i see that you really don’t. And that you really do not care one bit about GW1 players. And yes, if what the trailer shows is really going to happen then i am done with this game.
Jumping to conclusions much? We don’t even know in details what is going on, and more improtant, if it even works. Because of the pressure of the elder dragon, it could be quite possible that they (!) try (!) to lift the curse, although it doesn’t follow the legends. They have to try something, maybe it will work.
I’m really glad that Anet is looking into what can be done about this. But throughout the past year+ of the Living Story there have been a large number of issues for which the question has been “why didn’t they consider this before implementing the Living Story and create a solution for it then”? And most of these questions seem very obvious.
But the issue isn’t that it wasn’t considered, the issue is that they considered it and there is currently nothing they can do about it. Even if they considered it before destroying Lion’s Arch, what choice do they have? Either freeze Tyria in time and never change any map ever if it’s part of the Personal Story, or the path they went down? Personally I support the path they went down. I really hate that Lion’s Arch is rubble when I do Personal Story instances there – it makes no sense and I think it would be awesome if Lion’s Arch as it was stayed preserved by instances. I am really disappointed to hear they currently can’t change it (I suspected it was the case because they hadn’t done so by now) but if there is a reasonable solution to the problem, I’m sure they will implement it. Until then we just have to deal with it.
They should have considered it BEFORE implementing the ENTIRE Living Story.
So because they don’t have a solution yet, they would have postphoned the whole living story? Then how could they even be able to intergrate new content? I think it’s quite understandable that the player base would collapse if there was no new content for more then a year.
If I remember correctly there was some dialogue between Jory and the PC in episode 1 about this matter. It seems momma Delaqua has some serious issues with nobility.
The waypoint at Mirkrise has been smashed to pieces. It’s a sad day for all waypoints in the world.
Sure enough, smashed and being looked at.
It just doesn’t seem like it’s sapping power, it looks savage. If it was only draining power, you’d think it would fall into two pieces (the body and the square) harmlessly to the ground once it was of no longer any use. Vine is gone too.
I guess it’s a combination of both things. The magical energy gets sucked out, but those vines look like they have some muscle (plant) power too.
Talk to the Priory peeps at the outpost in Brisban where there’s an affected waypoint. They comment on the vines. So at least some of that is sprinkled around it seems.
You are right, there is at least a single NPC that comments on them. I feel a little happier now. Sadly she just says something like “yeah they are interesting, but leave me alone”.
I think it’s one of the males that says something about them being interesting, but he’s not particularly worried. Or there’s bigger things to worry about out there, something to that effect. So … two? lol. I intend to visit all of the affected waypoints before Part 2 comes out, maybe there are others.
That Charr sure is grumpy. Geez..
There is also another priory explorer (Lewin Frazar) who says that the tendril at the waypoint does have their attention.
I’m almost somewhat frightened to get in this discussion, as I’m not that deeply submerged in to the lore around GW and GW2, but I do feel like there are a lot loose ends at the moment which are making the lore (section) unstable. It would be nice if some of the devs could step in this and give some clearance on the more painful points, just that it is somewhat more understandable why some of the lore has changed.
How painful it might be, it seems that there are more and more signs that the second generation of Sylvari dates from around 1304. There could be reasons for this that are not yet known to the (lore) community, but there could be a greater picture. Question is how they could integrate this in all this and what the consequences will be.
I still think the waypoints and ley lines are connected somehow, although that would mean there are a lot of ley lines in the world, because of the huge amount of waypoints.
I agree with you to some extent, at the moment there are just too many waypoints. I don’t feel like it is necessary to remove them all though. Keep them on major locations, as a concession.
For example, in a map like Kessex Hills there could be waypoints at;
- Fort Salma
- Ireko Tradecamp
- Black Haven
Attached is the path. Some of them i notice are flickering, some aren’t but have vines and some have both the flicker and the vine.
Pretty much pointing to Lion’s Arch, where the Breachmaker disturbed the ley line. I wonder if the next map we get is the one between LA and Kessex hills, and not the rest of Dry Top.
Maybe now we’re able to see how the ley line continues, the vines seem to follow it.
Hmm… I’m not sure about that exactly. If it was following the ley line surge that the Breachmaker sent off, it would have went through Metrica Province, since the surge was clearly shown to go through the ley line intersection beneath the Thaumanova Reactor during the little cinematic.
Attached is the path. Some of them i notice are flickering, some aren’t but have vines and some have both the flicker and the vine.
Pretty much pointing to Lion’s Arch, where the Breachmaker disturbed the ley line. I wonder if the next map we get is the one between LA and Kessex hills, and not the rest of Dry Top.
Maybe now we’re able to see how the ley line continues, the vines seem to follow it.
These short stories are always great to read, and are a huge slap in the face for all the people who claim the writing around this game is poor.
Those that eat only water and oats are rarely suitable critics of other dishes.
Cliche and lacks an valid argument, do better next time.
Not sure whether your argument is whether the writing is good outside the game but needs more love IN the game . . . or that it’s still poor.
The writing inside and outside the game has potential, the depth is at the moment to be found outside the game. I agree it would be a lot better to experience it in-game.
Sadly she just says something like “yeah they are interesting, but leave me alone”.