Guild Wars 2

Asrat.2645:

Randomly selected video from Gw2 PvP years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-ena1DVU1E
Randomly selected video from current gw2 PvP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxuRdzl3Fdk

What I want you to look at are:
-Damage numbers
-Healing
-Visual noise
-AI

Now lets talk again about how there is no powercreep in gw2.

Not sure what those 2 videos are supposed to prove. No one is disputing powercreep.

Then again, maybe just for the sake of believable footage don’t:
- take a “pvp video” made 1 month after GW2 release from someone who is giving a general overview comparing it to
- a video made during a match for a game that has been out over 3.5 years with 1 expansion in (and you didn’t even bother to find a video 1 month after the expansion hit to at least pretend that the videos might be made under similar time conditions)
- leaving out all changes to itemisation (ascended items, removal of defensive amulets, etc.)
- leaving out all the changes made to sigils, trait and character builds etc.

Asrat.2645:

I wouldnt count myself to the rose-coloured glasses faction, actually I havent even been playing this game long enough to be nostalgic.
But it does feel like they could take a few steps back. Or better yet: take a few steps forward, but in a different direction.

Nope, you have not that is quite evident of your randomly selected video footage.

Danikat.8537:

Fun fact: at launch you couldn’t change the stats on a legendary, and they all came with soldier’s stats (power, toughness, vitality), meaning it was common practice for players to make one and then transmute the skin onto another level 80 exotic to get the stats they wanted. If you wanted to change the stats you had to get another exotic weapon and transmute it again.

This.

Legendarys are fine. They are best in slot items and were upgraded during their lifetime. Everybody asking for more is quite plain just greedy.

What most people love to forget (besides the economical effect) of removing the necessity for swaping sigils is the huge benefit players with legendarys would have. Build doesn’t work for the upcomming boss/enemys? No problem, let me just switch to condi build. The game would turn into a change your build every 15 seconds as required. Sure the same effect is doable with multiple sets of gear, but that is not expected of players (yet). Adding such a mechanic to legendarys would make them must have gear tier, especially once legendarys are available for ever slot.

Not only that, ever since the new wardrobe system legendary skins are all over the place. Wanted to dual wield Incinerator? To bad, had to make 2. Now all you need is a transmutation charge and a spare offhand.

The idea is also as old as stat changing on legendarys. It goes hand in hand with people asking for legendarys to get stat bumps over ascended items and other nonsense.

Lendruil.9061:

Why are you people actually still answering to those troll-posts?

This.

It’s to bad there is no rating system for forum accounts. People could immediately spot the trolls and not bother with answering.

Some posters in this thread have a very long standing reputation of seeing things differently than most other people with a strong entitled and communist(we are beyond socialist here) touch.

The video is old and has been discussed to death. The video you linked is primarily dealing with pve content. You didn’t even bother to apply or adjust its message to a pvp enviroment.

I’ll summerize for you what the result of most disscussions was in the past:

- powercreep is bad if not managed properly – check

- powercreep in GW2 is mild compared to other MMOs, that is not even considering the usual level increase which other MMOs have which is a significant factor

- powercreep based on itemisation is near 0 in GW2. The significant powercreep milestones can be summed up as: introduction of ascended items, new more efficient stat combinations.

- powercreep based on skill revamps while existant is far behind genre typical powercreep. Anyone thinking this is a major factor for balance issues in GW2 is drinking the wrong coolaid (especially for pvp).

Now formulate a proper opinion instead of randomly linking to videos that are ages old and maybe people can start a proper disscussion.

VoidNard.7206:

I’m getting a good laugh at the people who think this is a post about WoW, most people probably didn’t even bother reading through it. Hahaha…. that one guy who can’t take this seriously because he is a hardcore MMO pvper, laughed out loud at that one.

True, many probably just skimmed through your paragraphs of opinion or might not have read them at all. Then again, you are the one trying to get a message accross. If the intended message does not get accross properly, the problem is most often with the sender. In this case you. Remember, while pointing a finger at others you are pointing 4 back at yourself. Your title basically drowned any meaningful conversation about this topic and your repeated “you are all stupid lalalala” replies did the rest.

VoidNard.7206:

To be honest, you guys are acting like children. You read the title and that’s it. That or you guys are complete GW2 fanbooiiis who think the game is perfect. I invite you to read through it. I’m only trying to address GW2 problems. Saying that I enjoy WoW pvp more is irrelevant to the main topic and you should stop uselessly arguing about the title. Grow up, just because someone doesn’t have the same opinion as you, doesn’t mean you have to say garbage.

Again, your entire setup and run on “that is not my point” is just as childish. If on a message board, learn to produce productive posts and start productive arguments. Starting a topic on a pvp forum (inherintly more competative) of a different game with “Yup WoW pvp is more fun” will get you exactly the type of attention as seen in this thread.

That being said, you’ve effectively ignored most other constructive posts. Most people even if they did agree would by now have moved on since you are stuck in your “you are not getting my point” loop. Next time, organize your thoughts, take into account the audience you are trying to reach, then make a constructive thread with proper title.

Sylent.3165:

Ashen.2907:

“Does gw2 not want money??”

Of course they do. This is why they take the approach that they have. It increases the amount of money they make. If they followed your suggested approach it would reduce their income.

I suppose one could answer your question with a question:

Why do you want GW2 to make less money??

Right now if the belinda greatsword for example went into the gem shop they’d automatically $10 from me. If they wait another 3 months I’ll have the gold to convert to gems, or heck be playing another class that doesn’t fit the theme and simply not want it anymore

Marketing and promotion decisions are not based around what one individual wants. If you can buy the gems from gold and get the sword that way, great for you and great for every one who is selling gems since you are driving the price of gems up.

If they lose your business that is unfortunate but very likely covered a multiple of times by every customer they get who would otherwise not have bought the sword.

Steven.7534:

No, GW2 doesn’t want your money. It’s simple.

Grind out PVE for many hours and get some gold, convert into gems and spent $0 of real life money.
Why A-net went in this direction, baffles me. In GW1, if you want something from the “cash-shop” you …actually…have…to…spend …..(oh no)….Money!
There is no program or incentive for people that spend real life cash to get gold/gems. I mean, really, if I spend enough money getting pizza, I end up getting a free pizza once in a while at least.
So really, grind some PVE and convert worthless in-game gold into gems. A-Net doesn’t want your real life cash. They will just make it up in another “expansion”

Except that the gem-gold trade ratio is a reflection of how many people convert both. Without new gems from real money the price would keep rising until you’d have to grind thousands of hours for 100 gems. Thus the gems you aquire with gold were bought by someone else with real money, just not you.

Never assume just because YOU are unwilling/unable to spend leisure cash on a game that others are in the same boat. Every person has his own limit at which he deicides how valuable his time is. If you decide that grinding 10-15 hours for those 200 gold is a wise time investment, many others might consider rather giving up 1 hour of their wage.

That’s why things like these keep showing up:
EVE player uses $28,000 of skill injectors to create max character
http://massivelyop.com/2016/02/15/eve-player-uses-28000-of-skill-injectors-to-create-max-character/

Back on topic: scarcity creates demand. In this case it creates enough demand for Arenanet to offer certain items only during limited time periods. A secondary effect is that is also makes people access the Black Lion Store to aquire these limited available items and who knows, maybe something else gets bought while at the store. That’s all there is to it.

On the bright side, it keeps players who have unstable internet out of games. While I understand it’s frustrating for someone to get dishonor and not be able to queue, there is a minimum of 4 other people whos game enjoyment gets hampered by 1 players bad internet connection (worst case 9 if both sides were hoping for a fun fight).

As was mentioned, dishonor doesn’t start at 15 minutes. If dishonor lockout become an issue, you are already in the sphere of having negatively impacted over 10+ players thanks to constant disconnects.

I see a very simple solution to this problem of understanding.

1.) arenanet ups the suspension to 1 month or even permaban
2.) we let some time pass
3.) a certain amount of people get to leave the game they are not interested in actively playing
4.) …
5.) the community profits

I’ve never seen this much of nonsense about afk farming in a MMO ever. Literally every single MMO I’ve played has been very clear on afk farming with no active inputs from the player to be against TOS (even if the TOS were more vague than here). Only GW2 players once again need an extra piece of cake.

Thaddeus.4891:

Valik Shin.9027:

If you are failing to enrage then the problem is not the mechanics of the fight

Not sure I understand what you mean. If you are failing to reach enrage then the problem is obviously the mechanics. Or do you mean if you are failing in enrage?

I think what he means is that if the entire raid gets to wipe with 10 man at the enrage timer, they have the mechanics down but are lacking in a different area (to defensive, lack of dps, etc.).

I guess that could be true, but as others have said 99% of the time it’s not the enrage timer that is the problem. Losing 1-10 people before getting there is the usual problem.

Here is a hint: get the entire group to the enrage timer without losing anyone, then work off of that, getting the dps needed is the easy bit. My bet is you’ll not get even that far since it requires for players to be able to deal with all the mechanics of the fight first.

Firefly.5982:

But yeah I kind of knew most people would tell me that I am just not working hard enough.

I just skimmed through most replies to make sure I didn’t miss something.
Literally the only thing most people did NOT say was you should work harder.

The fact that you interpreted most replies as telling you exactly the opposite of what people wrote says quite a lot about you.

That being said, no one can change your mind or keep you from blaming others for not achieveing your goal. It hasn’t worked so far, doubtful it will in the future.

Let me help you out a little. As many have pointed out there are very big differences between real life and game, there are some similarities though which I’ll gladly point out (I’ll format this so it makes more sense trying not to change the meaning of what you said):

Firefly.5982:

I am not lazy. I am actually working hard for my gold in GW2 (which is sad in itself).

If playing the game is turning to work, you are doing it wrong. Take a break or find something fun to do. There are enough things in GW2 wich generate money, no reason to “work”.

Okay, now some will complain “but I want item xyz asap so I have to farm the most efficient way and not have fun while doing so”. Unfortunately wanting things asap will usually always cost you more effort, gold, tears.

Firefly.5982:

But with this stuff going on it will be forever impossible for me (and 99% of players) to ever catch up.

Who are you exactly catching up to? People who have played this game for 3.5 years? Is this a contest I have not been made aware of? Arenanet has not increased gear requirements for over 2 years but instead added multiple ways to get max level gear(ascended) without grind and even more ways to get free or cheap exotic gear.

Maybe reevaluate your priorities and/or read up on how to achieve your goal without just buying things off the TP.

Firefly.5982:

I can never make enough gold because I can only do it slowly and by the time I get close to buying what I want it gets bought up and relisted at 2 or 3 times the price.

Guess what, most people who want instant gratification will always pay a steep price up. Not one of those 100k people you talk about got their gold magically over night or while buying everything they want immediately (well except those few who shell out thousands of dollars for gems, but suffice to say that is a minority).

Your problem is you buy things you want, not things you need. Instead, maybe reinvest the gold you made farming to work the trading post or hold on to it for when prices are reasonable. This is actually the same as in real life, many people spending their gold immediately versus some who use time and savings to their advantage. This can be as basic as buying materials at different times of day to save gold which can make a difference of over 20-30%.

Firefly.5982:

Something needs to be done about this. It’s so unbelievably sad that the economy in this game is just the same as in real life. The poor will always stay poor and the rich will forever get richer. Why is this allowed to happen? Why is there no system in place to keep things fairly priced?

The economy reflects real life to a certain extent since people behave the same way as in real life. The major difference is that most activities ingame are quite close in terms of gold generation with only high value TP speculation being out of reach (but even here casual players with minor selfcontrol can benefit from better prices or make money). Suffice to say, 99% of the goods on the TP are so fast moving that major market manipulation is hard or impossible to do so losing money here is all your own fault.

TheSouL.1098:

So ele does the highest dps… But if we just consider the burst (First 3-5 seconds), his dmg is not that op.
Maybe the guard or power engi have the highest?

Ele wins in any competition about straight up damage no matter what arbitrary rules you setup.

Engi gets played as condi, guardian dps is mediocre at best.

Not sure what you mean with burst:

1.) we should only consider the first 3-5 seconds? Not sure what good that bwould be but fine, ele does need some rampup to get boons going, so do other classes. Past that Ele has hard enough hitting attacks that can hold their own against any other class.

2.) we should consider long fights omiting burst? Ele wins hands down again, that’s why the class has the highest dps in just about every benchmark.

Also about the benchmark Swagger has now posted 3 times. True you did ask about pure unsupported dps of classes, but if you take 1 moment to think about how classes benefit you’d soon come to realise that Ele is one of the classes which draws the biggest benefit of removing all outside help.

Noticible damage buffs:
- boons – Ele can selfapply
- vuln – Ele can selfapply
- fury – Ele can selfapply
- alacrity – mesmer only, by far the weakest damage class so can be omited
- banners – warrior only, okay with selfmight and fury warrior might be a contender, let’s see how far appart Ele and warrior dps is… okay moving on
- etc.

While the benchmark might not have given you the exact answer to your question, some logical deduction would have provided you with sufficient resolution nonetheless.

Ashen.2907:

He did not claim that other options are available. “Opinions,” and, “options,” are not synonymous.

True, I did missread that. Not going to edit my other post since it would cause confusion.

sorudo.9054:

Cyninja.2954:

sorudo.9054:

steam is a useless software that gives nothing more then problems and a little bit of convenience, anything steam offers exist outside steam without being forced to use a third party software.

Without wanting to get into to much of a discussion, you need to look beyond the obvious functions which steam provides but instead think about what the service as a whole provides.

Without steam (or other digital distribution platforms) the entire gaming industry would be in a very different spot than it is now (anyone remember Starforce CD/DVD protections in its early stages?).

yeah, it would be DRM free, that’s what kind of spot it would be right now.
i have never seen a majority of ppl saying they love DRM, better yet, they hate it like hell on earth.
any DRM, not just steam, is just a horrible thing to have.

If I had to chose between steam as DRM as it is now versus some DRM methods of the past, I’d chose steam hands down every single time.

People who hate on steam DRM have never had a CD/DVD drive shot by intrusive DRM like Starforce or similar popular DRM from the past. We are talking so intrusive, they in somecases shot your entire PC and not just the software.

That is not even getting into the benefits of digital distribution which you completely failed to address.

Khisanth.2948:

Cyninja.2954:

Without steam (or other digital distribution platforms) the entire gaming industry would be in a very different spot than it is now (anyone remember Starforce CD/DVD protections in its early stages?).

Steam allows small developers to release without having to slave for a publisher (see the entire indie game industry) for example. It cuts release costs and allows for easy purchase.

None of that is relevant to GW2. ANet itself is already owned by a big publisher. GW2 exists without steam so all the other infrastructure need to exist regardless. ANet staff has to monitor and enforce stuff related to cheating anyway so the protection thing isn’t relevant either.

Ah very limited view.

No, GW2 does not profit from steam directly, nor do other publishers or developers who are not on steam. They do profit off of the growing and very live gaming industry to which steam contributes significantly. Ignoring that fact is like ignoring advances in medicin which increase overall funding even though they might be unrelated to your specific illness.

Also I was responding to the ignorant steam hate (which as it turns out is just that, mindless hate). Never did I state that GW2 was directly profiting off of steam.

Then again, if you (or anyone with this argumentation) feel this threatened by services collecting your information and data, may I recommend you stop using any and all electronic devices, financial services and basically anything which records any type of information. There are far more evil data collecting agents out there than steam which get way less flack than they deserve.

Rasimir.6239:

To be honest, the longevity of the added ESO maps comes mostly from grinding out the new crafting materials for better weapons and armor. It’s a direct product of the traditional gear-based system where every update invalidates your former best in slot equipment and forces you to farm/grind the new content to keep your characters relevant.

This.

I think many people underestimate how big the move towards a non-degrading gear system is for GW2. It removes all the easy possibilities for the developer to simply “add on top”. Most traditional MMOs keep firing up the gear treadmil, usually combined with some minor new gameplay additions to not make it to obvious, to keep players happy and farming. In GW2 this approach does not work.

This also shines a very interesting light on the entire reward behavior versus fun mentality of gamers, but let’s not get into that.

Suffice to say, for GW2 since there is no gear degradation the available approaches arenanet has for item reward mechanics are limited to:

- alternative methods of aquisition (ideally without making older ones obsolete). See ascended items via achievements, alternative currencies, event rewards etc.
- new stat combinations and makeup (see 4 stat combos added with HoT and new suffixes)
- content specific lockouts (see agony and fractals)

It’s a lot harder to keep that player scratching that itch once material gain has subsided, and we are back at reward mechanics.

sorudo.9054:

steam is a useless software that gives nothing more then problems and a little bit of convenience, anything steam offers exist outside steam without being forced to use a third party software.

Without wanting to get into to much of a discussion, you need to look beyond the obvious functions which steam provides but instead think about what the service as a whole provides.

Without steam (or other digital distribution platforms) the entire gaming industry would be in a very different spot than it is now (anyone remember Starforce CD/DVD protections in its early stages?).

Steam allows small developers to release without having to slave for a publisher (see the entire indie game industry) for example. It cuts release costs and allows for easy purchase.

This entire “oh it’s evil because you have to have it run in the background… they collect data… they rob your baby at night” is so 1990. Steam ressource requirement is miniscule, it does save you from having to run very intrusive CD/DVD protection software though which would likely take way more ressources. Welcome to 2016.

GW1 was put on steam way after its lifecycle had ended. It was in pure maintanance mode long before that.

As is, while I love steam, it’s not the way to go for arenanet or GW2 yet.

Definately achievements. Best is to go for ones that will end with you having quite a bit of gold.

Bioluminescence for example requires quite a bit of farming events in Silverwastes and the reqard is an ascended chest piece (most expensive armor part). Once done you’ll have farmed enough gold for 1-2 more pieces.

Otherwise farming gold will get you there, but you might burnout if you try to rush an entire set.

Finally running fractals has a low chance to net you a chest before you get to high level fractals (for better chance at chests). Might as well start climbing the fractal reward ladder while at it.

Dyze.1580:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Name one game in which expansion content isn’t better than core.

That is a slightly stupid argument, since every expansion in an MMO also comes with a level increase.
This is the problem with these HoT specs. It’s lv90 players fighting lv80 players in an environment that’s suppose to be leveled and balanced without any gear advantage.

Untrue. Have you ever fought a player 10 levels disadvantaged in any other MMO? The difference is vastly greater than the slight power creep the elite specialisations bring (and not even for every class). To even suggest this is an insult.

Dyze.1580:

I can’t think of a single MMO with this same situation. Every MMO divides it’s core and expansion players with levels and different pvp brackets, simply because the expansion players have a huge gear and stat advantage.

You can’t because there is none. Literally EVERY single other MMO puts a vast amount of more (the only exception being Eve Online):

- restrictions on content
- devaluation (up to the point of making items trash tier) of current equipment and new gear and tier grinds
- new skills, power creep, forced leveling

into their expansions. Yet here we are with people who even though none of that was added with this expansion are still unhappy. Now if that is not entitlement I don’t know what is. GW2 is by pure comparison the genre LEADER as far as fair and non-required expansions goes and people are still unhappy.

Dyze.1580:

Actually it is pay2win.

It’s pay to play expansion content. No matter how much you spin this, it won’t turn pay2win because of a 1 time purchase. Hell it even wouldn’t be pay2win if they released expansions anually.

Now if they added a new item slot which buffs all your damage by 10%, required regular real money purchases, then we can talk pay2win.

Dyze.1580:

“Pay2win, streamroll everyone who hasn’t bought the expansion yet”, should never be an incentive. That only brings toxic to the community, because we all know who flocks to these kinds of things, and catering to those kinds of toxic players is detrimental to bringing in new players. Especially in a game with a F2P option.

Agreed, it’s unfortunate that the elite specs are more powerful in some situations (though critics are vastly blowing the advantage out of proportion). Yet I’m sure even at absolutely equal power level there would have been people complaining about the more diverse playstyle and options the elite specs bring to the table.

Dyze.1580:

The only fair thing to do, is either lock HoT specs into only queuing with each other, or unlock it for everyone within sPvP.

Sure, it would kill the already dead spvp community even more. At least this way they will focus on only pve and wvw for the next expansion, maybe remove spvp completely. /sarcasm

Dyze.1580:

Keeping the current structure in sPvP is just a big middle finger from Anet to it’s f2p and core player base.

I doubt they are to concerned with the f2p playerbase. Their business model will be focused around getting as many f2p or b2p players to upgrade as possible. At the same time, the further down we go, the less of interest the buy2play players will become who are behind on expansions.

emma.5967:

Cyninja.2954:

No, that is the problem of your limited analogy. You omited the “unfun” parts to make it sound in favor of a point you were trying to make. I was simply pointing out the flaws and omited facts in it.

Analogys are limited most of the time. It’s in their nature. … I omited the server costs etc., because the game was sold without later costs.

You ommited more than just the server cost though, and that is all that I was pointing out. You left out significant aspects of arenanets business model and benefits players have who never spent more than the initial purchase price on the game. Thus the analogy was biased and faulty.

emma.5967:

Cyninja.2954:

Yes, if you payed for the game 4 years ago you are entitled to free future content, patches, expansions and basically slave labor off of the deveopement staff. Just how communist are you?

I found no one here who wants to be entitled for free content or expansions. I think nearly everybody here is fine with paying for new maps or story. But a paywall for existing content is like a subscription fee backdoor.
Slave labor the development staff? I don’t know the prices in Seattle, but software engineers are payed quite good most places.

All the while you left no room in your analogy for the oh so well payed software engineers (or how the toystore was supposed to pay for them). I suppose they get their kingly salary out of that onetime game purchase 4 years ago.

The things you say do not match the real world situations you describe. Software engineers only get payed well if the company they work for does not go belly up.

This entire thread is littered with people commenting on faulty pay2win arguments and people complaining about having to buy the expansion. Not sure how you did not notice this.

emma.5967:

Cyninja.2954:

Except that that analogy is faulty since it:
- does not account for the ball producing continued cost to the store (which GW2 does in form of developement, server cost, patches)
- the ball does not stop “working” if the store goes bankrupt

But that’s the problem of the toystore, because they chose this business model. The boy got told he just has to pay once.

No, that is the problem of your limited analogy. You omited the “unfun” parts to make it sound in favor of a point you were trying to make. I was simply pointing out the flaws and omited facts in it.

emma.5967:

Cyninja.2954:

- properly reflect the view of people who feel entitled to free stuff

If you paid for it, it is not free.

Yes, if you payed for the game 4 years ago you are entitled to free future content, patches, expansions and basically slave labor off of the deveopement staff. Just how communist are you?

high socks.7628:

emma.5967:

A fractured Tale

A little boy goes into a Toystore.

Boy: “Hello sir, I’d like to buy this red ball.”
Toystore Clerk: “Here you go little fella, that’d be 30 bucks.”

The boy pays the clerk and gets the ball. He plays ball with his friends a lot and is happy.
Some time has passed and the little boy still enjoys playing with his ball.
Suddenly the Toystore Guy appears.

T: “Hey little fella. We’re making updates on all our balls.”
B: “Umm. Ok, I guess?”

He hands out the ball to the toystore Guy. The toystore guy changes the color of the ball to green, deflates it a bit and hands it out to the little boy.

T: “Here you go, little fella.”
B: “Why is my ball missing air now?”
T: "Because now you can get the new full inflated Ball of Thorns which is all flashy ‘n stuff. That’d be 40 bucks. We have costs, you know … "
B: “40 bucks is a lot of money for me.”
WhiteKnightDude: “Hey just give him the 40 bucks. You already played hundreds of hours with your ball. Don’t you think it’s worth more? Don’t be a cheap kitten.”
B: “…”

Well said.

Except that that analogy is faulty since it:

- does not account for the ball producing continued cost to the store (which GW2 does in form of developement, server cost, patches)
- the ball does not stop “working” if the store goes bankrupt
- does not account for the ball breaking and eventually requiring a repurchase (don’t we all love these magical balls that do not wear and tear after years of use…)

The only thing the analogy does right is:

- compare the onetime purchse costs from a pure consumer side
- properly reflect the view of people who feel entitled to free stuff

Sartharina.3542:

Why would anyone want that waste of money and money?

This:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

…snip… convenience … snip …

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Sirendor.1394:

Vayne.8563:

ViperClaw.1590:

Cyninja.2954:

ViperClaw.1590:

Cyninja.2954:

ViperClaw.1590:

An Expansion as a whole isn’t pay to win. – Correct.

An Expansion that comes with a big power creep is, in fact, pay to win, because of this very aspect. Because if you don’t buy, you lose pretty often (in competetive modes that is).

It isn’t that hard to get. Especially if you look at the content additions to sPvP and WvW in total.

Edit: I’m totally fine with paying for Expasions. IF i’m okay with its content-prize value.
You do like to generalize, don`t you?

Read up on what pay-to-win is. Better yet, go play some actual pay-to-win MMOs on the market. Then come back and appologise for the nonsense you were writing.

Thank you. But i know the definition of p2w. And Because it’s worse somewhere else is no excuse at all.

That’s like saying Hey, sorry you have lost yourt leg. But just imagine you would have lost both. Now just look up the definition of being handicaped and you will apologize for calling yourself handicaped now!

So. I’m standing to my opinion. Calling your statement nonsense. Aaaand we have pretty much a standoff situation. Funny isn’t lt?

Considering pay-to-win refers to required real cash purchases to stay competative on a recurring basis with no ingame way of circumventing them, I doubt you actually understand what pay-to-win is.

GW2 as most commonly agreed upon is pay-to-skip content or pay-for-convegnience.

So sure, we are at a standoff just like 2 people are at a standoff about what 2+2 is. My answer would be 4, yours is 5.

That’s not even getting into the entire concept of expansions. Now if we got started on that and compared every other MMO on the market and their approach to expansions compared to HoT…

Real money – check

to stay competetive – check

Just because you can’t buy single elite specs for real money but in a bundle with an expac doesn’t make it any better.

Argument closed. This becomes ridiculous.

Pay to win has a definition and that definition has NEVER included expansions. This is what happens when people try to take something literally that had a definition.

The original definition of pay to win was always buy power through microtransactions.

Sorry but that’s just a conceptual discussion at this point. You can circle around changing your definition infinitely if you like, it wont make anyone believe your definition is right and someone else’s isn’t.

P2W clear and simple is you pay for something with real money, which grants you more chance to win in a competitive PvP game (P2W does not really mean anything in PvE unless we’re talking speedclears). It does not matter one bit whether what you buy is an expansion, a microtransaction or anything else.

Are elite specs P2W? Yep.

So tell me what MMOs aren’t pay to win. That’s what I keep asking but no one seems to be able to answer this.

If all MMOs are pay to win then that’s the discussion even about? Why do we need the term at all?

MMOs where they separate expansion owners from non expansion owners. Take WoW for example. It’s been a while since I played it so I’ll take Lich king as an example: Wrath of the Lich King raised the level cap from 70 to 80, but you can’t get matched against level 80 folk if you didn’t get the expansion, not even level 71.

An expansion owner couldn’t get higher stats on a level 70 character to beat up those who don’t have expansion. He couldn’t get more skill ( If I remember correctly) . The competitive scene on level 70 stayed the same even with the addition of the expansion

Really? WoW?

Just to refresh your memory (or give a glimps on something your rose colored glasses omitted). Expansions in WoW are the epitome of power creep and making old content obsolete by:

1.) introducing new specialisations/classes/complete skill/class revamps all of which focused only on max level leaving things vastly unbalanced before that

2.) anything sub max level is dead content, even the regular pvp which at best gets populated by max geare twinks. That is not even mentioning arena availability which is only viable at max level

3.) constant currency revamp and increased leveling speed for low levels to keep the “time to max level” aproximately similar even with a new expansion. That is completely ignoring Blizzards instant max level or level xyz services available

4.) many more things like new trade hubs which are more convegnient than the old ones, extreme gold inflation due to higher enemies droping more and more reward, 2-3 month introduction of new max level gear to keep people mindlessly farming, etc.
All of this was already in place with Lich King (even with BC). You are just willfully forgetting or ignoring things. WoW Expansion are and always have been THE definition of “buy it or leave the game”.

tl;dr: Comparing the GW2 HoT expansion to WoW expansions under the aspect of pay-to-win is like comparing a minor cough to fullblown cancer, with aids, malaria and a severe stroke riding along side it. Take a guess as to which is which.

ViperClaw.1590:

Cyninja.2954:

Ah selective analysis approachs. Sure, if you just ommit part of the situation and just focus on half of the argument you can make just about anything work.

Fact is, the elite specialisations ARE part of an expansion. If they had been added as pure cash grabs, sure you might have had a point. Which brings us full circle to what I was saying about MMO expansions in general. Every other game on the market the playerbase accepts expansions for what they are. Only here do people feel so entitled that they imediately screem nonsense.

It’s not about entitlement. It’s about balancing a game properly. I’ve played MMOs before. I’ve bought expacs before. And i did never, ever liked power creeps. They are a cheep way to make you buy the x-pac. They have brought me to stop playing games very often in the past. And i’m sure i’m not the only one hating power creeps.

New possibilities and builds are fine. Power creeps behind paywalls aren`t. At least for me they aren`t. Maybe you like them. I don’t really care much.

Everything they did was to make the missing build diversity worse. Pay and rule with elite spec meta or lose.

Oh I agree, but the issue at hand was not power creep but pay-to-win.

Though even when looking at power creep, it’s been very mild compared to what industry standards are for MMO expansions.

emma.5967:

Cyninja.2954:

emma.5967:

No, because the toy store said, you can pay once, and play as long as we’re open.

Ah, okay. So arenanet eployees now work for free, the game servers will be running infinately without ever needing to get payed for and any Living Story content that gets developed falls out of the sky. Yeah, that works.

They marketed and SOLD it so. Game should pay through gemstore. It’s not the players fault if the business decision didn’t work out exactly as they liked it to be. And they’re making good money with the game. You shouldn’t be have to worry about the company actually.

Obviously the business approach got changed due to necessity. Now you not understanding that business plans change when they don’t work is not arenanets problem.

This also does not fix your red ball analogy though. Since you have nothing in there which covers how the store stays in business while the boys ball is constantly a financial drain on the store. Funny enough, we are back to a very selective point of view/approach (just like Viper). Seems to be a recurring theme with people getting upset.

ViperClaw.1590:

Just because you can’t buy the elite specs in the gem shop but in a bundle with an expac doesn’t makes it any better.

Ah selective analysis approachs. Sure, if you just ommit part of the situation and just focus on half of the argument you can make just about anything work.

Fact is, the elite specialisations ARE part of an expansion. If they had been added as pure cash grabs, sure you might have had a point. Which brings us full circle to what I was saying about MMO expansions in general. Every other game on the market the playerbase accepts expansions for what they are. Only here do people feel so entitled that they imediately screem nonsense.

ViperClaw.1590:

Cyninja.2954:

ViperClaw.1590:

An Expansion as a whole isn’t pay to win. – Correct.

An Expansion that comes with a big power creep is, in fact, pay to win, because of this very aspect. Because if you don’t buy, you lose pretty often (in competetive modes that is).

It isn’t that hard to get. Especially if you look at the content additions to sPvP and WvW in total.

Edit: I’m totally fine with paying for Expasions. IF i’m okay with its content-prize value.
You do like to generalize, don`t you?

Read up on what pay-to-win is. Better yet, go play some actual pay-to-win MMOs on the market. Then come back and appologise for the nonsense you were writing.

Thank you. But i know the definition of p2w. And Because it’s worse somewhere else is no excuse at all.

That’s like saying Hey, sorry you have lost yourt leg. But just imagine you would have lost both. Now just look up the definition of being handicaped and you will apologize for calling yourself handicaped now!

So. I’m standing to my opinion. Calling your statement nonsense. Aaaand we have pretty much a standoff situation. Funny isn’t lt?

Considering pay-to-win refers to required real cash purchases to stay competative on a recurring basis with no ingame way of circumventing them, I doubt you actually understand what pay-to-win is.

GW2 as most commonly agreed upon is pay-to-skip content or pay-for-convegnience.

So sure, we are at a standoff just like 2 people are at a standoff about what 2+2 is. My answer would be 4, yours is 5.

That’s not even getting into the entire concept of expansions. Now if we got started on that and compared every other MMO on the market and their approach to expansions compared to HoT…

emma.5967:

No, because the toy store said, you can pay once, and play as long as we’re open.

Ah, okay. So arenanet eployees now work for free, the game servers will be running infinately without ever needing to get payed for and any Living Story content that gets developed falls out of the sky. Yeah, that works.

Just because you are not paying for something does not mean it’s free or that someone else doesn’t have to cover for you. As is, the expansion and gemstore purchases from other players cover for your continued use of that little ball.

emma.5967:

A fractured Tale

A little boy goes into a Toystore.

Boy: “Hello sir, I’d like to buy this red ball.”
Toystore Clerk: “Here you go little fella, that’d be 30 bucks.”

The boy pays the clerk and gets the ball. He plays ball with his friends a lot and is happy.
Some time has passed and the little boy still enjoys playing with his ball.
Suddenly the Toystore Guy appears.

T: “Hey little fella. We’re making updates on all our balls.”
B: “Umm. Ok, I guess?”

He hands out the ball to the toystore Guy. The toystore guy changes the color of the ball to green, deflates it a bit and hands it out to the little boy.

T: “Here you go, little fella.”
B: “Why is my ball missing air now?”
T: "Because now you can get the new full inflated Ball of Thorns which is all flashy ‘n stuff. That’d be 40 bucks. We have costs, you know … "
B: “40 bucks is a lot of money for me.”
WhiteKnightDude: “Hey just give him the 40 bucks. You already played hundreds of hours with your ball. Don’t you think it’s worth more? Don’t be a cheap kitten.”
B: “…”

Nice analogy.

Please point me to where the boy has in anyway contributed to the toy store staying in business over the last 3.5 years after his initial purchase. Oh right, the boy was dependant on others keeping the toystore open (in an imaginary world where his ball would have stoped working if the toy store had closed).

Maybe rework that analogy a bit don’t you think?

OtterPaws.2036:

Looks at the stacks of Tomes

I know right?

Everyone seems to be acting all bent out of shape. Face it, any semi veteran player who did not want to level a character to 80 “normaly” had hundreds of tomes at their disposal already (not that leveling takes that long anyway).

Now an argument could be made that the fact that arenanet now allows new players to essentially skip one of the most fun aspects of GW2 (leveling your first character) might be a bad idea down the road. All the other points though are answered simply by this:

“Stop being a kitten and let other players enjoy the game the way they want.”

high socks.7628:

I don’t invest in HoT because I already paid money buying this game originally. I don’t want to be pouring more money in this game, especially when I don’t know how much I love this game.

Don’t get me wrong I’ve been playing a long time but still, $50 is a lot of money to just throw around for some new skills

Love these arguments.

Here is what you need to do:

1.) Check your accounts total age (use /age).
2.) Now divide your initial 50$ (or what ever amount you spent) by those hours/days/months spent on this game.
3.) Now do the same with the addition of 50$ more for buying HoT
4.) Compare both values (very likely not more than a couple of cent per hour) to any other leisure activity you are engaging in (movies, going out for dinner, taking a girlfriend/boyfriend out, etc.)
5.) Now cut back on all the other leisure activities by about 20%, and save enough money to buy HoT within 2-3 days.

On topic, yes it is unfortunate that HoT specialisations are not available to non-upgraded accounts. Mostly because that way people can’t see how the builds work and counter them even without access to HoT specialisations.

Fracturing the pvp community (which is barely hanging by a thread as it is) is just about the worst idea possible though.

ViperClaw.1590:

An Expansion as a whole isn’t pay to win. – Correct.

An Expansion that comes with a big power creep is, in fact, pay to win, because of this very aspect. Because if you don’t buy, you lose pretty often (in competetive modes that is).

It isn’t that hard to get. Especially if you look at the content additions to sPvP and WvW in total.

Edit: I’m totally fine with paying for Expasions. IF i’m okay with its content-prize value.
You do like to generalize, don`t you?

Read up on what pay-to-win is. Better yet, go play some actual pay-to-win MMOs on the market. Then come back and appologise for the nonsense you were writing.

It’s the one thing most people arguing against GW2 being p2w bring up (myself included). Even with the relatively minor hassle of elite specialisations being locked behind 1 expansion update (which is unfortunate, agreed), the game is far from pay2win.

Everyone arguing the opposite is doing it out of:

1.) interest in getting a reaction from other players or using exageration to get a point accross

2.) have never actually played any pay2win games, especially MMO based ones

3.) both of the above

As of right now the three editions of GW2 could be ranked as follows:

F2P – very extensive trial. For people who enjoy the story aspects and lore it’s even enough to never buy the game. Just run through the story free of charge.

GW2vanilla – pure vanilla game with all the free content which was added over 3 years of the life cycle. Available multiple times for as low as 10$ which basically payed for itsself after 1-2 months of only login bonuses (compared to buying gems with those 10$)

GW2HoT – the new B2P base. Any new players will get this as the core game. Still does not require any real $ purchses besides the game to fully enjoy GW2.

The chance that high volume transaction items can be manipulated in GW2 is very unlikely (if not near impossible without running a serious loss).

To believe that the item in question is ectos is straight up hilarious. Even should someone try to manipulate the market, they would soon be either broke or cutting their losses. The volume of trade per day is just way to high. Any market alteration would correct itsself within minutes, maximum hours if someone decided to waste hundred thousands of gold.

Now a short term demand spike due to whatever reasons, sure that can happen.

Ticky.5831:

Cyninja.2954:

To them I’ll say this: any where, where damage is so high that passive damage mitigation might be interesting, toughness will do diddly squat for your survival.

Wyverns. Multiple Mordrem snipers. Multiple anything with immobilize.

Any of those things you just mentioned are exactly things I was refering to. Toughness will at best give you 1 extra hit you can take, for a huge damage reduction trade off.

Anything from defensive skills, talents, situational awareness will bring more to the table than wasting gear on toughness. Especially if those mordrem snipers decide to focus you because you decided to have a higher toughness score than every one else around you.

I think most people covered the basics here. If you want to go by simple stat description and base your opinion off of that, sure toughness sounds useful.

On the otherhand, if you’ve spent more than a couple of minutes ingame and actually strive to improve your gameplay (and actually know what toughness does besides reduce damage in small increments), toughness is pure trash for pve (except for raid agro balance).

Now there will be the crowd going: " No no no, toughness reduces the damage you take and it helps." To them I’ll say this: any where, where damage is so high that passive damage mitigation might be interesting, toughness will do diddly squat for your survival. All the other places though, it will put you way up high in the enemy agro meter making you the prime target for all those npcs to focus down first.

It is kind of funny. There is this vicious cycle:

1.) bad player puts on toughness gear to make life easier ->
2.) bad player now does less damage making fights take longer ->
3.) paired with other players and upscaled enemys our bad player is now the prime target from most enemys around taking big chunks of damage ->
4.) bad player stacks even more toughness
5.) go back to step 1, rinse and repeat

If you want more survivability, rework your build and learn how to deal and which attacks to evade from enemys. Best thing you can do long term for your GW2 gameplay.

SkullProX.7083:

Please do something against these, sell SAB tm, sell dungeon, sell raid 5g 10g etc. things…
It’s disgusting, unfair, and it has a high chance of scam…

And before someone who knows everything comments, no I didn’t get scammed or anything, it’s just annoying to see all these in LFG…

As mentioned, this has and was always a part of guild wars. Now not sure what arenanets stance on SAB is, since it seems people are joining where they technically should not be able to join, but dungeons and other instances getting run is fine.

Please do elaborate how it’s unfair that someone compeltely unrelated to you:

- invests time into mastering an aspect of the game
- then sells this aspect to others willing to pay him for his time

Unless the selling person exploits or abuses some kind of shady pratice, what do you care? Stop worring about what and how others enjoy the game.

Some major differences between legendary armor and weapons though isn’t there?

1.) Legendary weapons, while not a complete 2nd set, have 1 first set to go to. Meaning you can get at least 1 legendary weapon per slot/type, in some cases 2.

2.) Decisions to cut content or change a direction are made way earlier than when the community is actually told about the decision. You have no idea how far they are with their design for legendary armor. Since we can assume that the first raid will get implemented as a whole, there is no reason to cut parts of its reward.

3.) The community reaction to cutting the remaining season 2 legendarys will likely lead to some reassessment as to how to split ressources on future-release-content. I doubt arenanet will go down the road of canceling even more content that people are waiting on (no matter how big the playerbase waiting on it).

4.) You are correct though from the perspective that legendary armor likely is in a similar spot as weapons that not a big fraction of the community will be working on getting it. Likely this will mean there won’t be comming an alternative way of aquiring it besides raids for quite a while.

“Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment.” – Librarian Isador Akios

We need more people versed in WH40k lore it seems.

Level scaling.

Yes I know, we have all gotten used to it but really, go have a look at some other MMOs and their 90%+ deserted zones. Level scaling makes the game about 8 times the size for end game characters.

Achiever: 47%
Explorer: 73%
Griefer: 20%
Socializer: 60%

Some of the questions I would have loved the option of going “both”. Still fun though.

The nice thing about comming late to these disscussion threads is (though I did watch WP video shortly after he put it up), I get to be really lazy since some smart person will usually already have said something I agree with saving me a lot of time typing.

Burtakus.1839:

The only thing that intrigued me about his video was at the end where he says “let’s not play the armchair game developer and pretend to know more than what an actual game developing company like ANet knows”. Which I wholeheartedly agree, we all love to talk out of our behinds while knowing absolutely nothing of the situation. Anyway, I just found it funny how he said that at then end after a 30 minute rant of him being exactly an armchair game dev.

This.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I don’t know where you guys get this whole “faithful supporter” thing with WP. I’ve seen him rant about bad things in GW2 countless times. He’s ranted about the story in HoT, he’s ranted about gear prefixes and designs (particularly his inadequacy as a healer with a healer spec), I even saw a compilation video where he complained about all of the small things that were added/done to the game. The reason why I watch WP’s videos is because he’s actually fairly level headed.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Valky.2574:

Don’t you mean possible LAST video for gw2 .. he is thinking of quiting now

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4c9r5d/wooden_potatoes_no_more_new_legendary_weapons_a/

3rd post or 2ed if you don’t count the topic

Eh, he said:

“I don’t like the sound of their future expansions at all if this is really where they think they should be, size wise. So in a world where that’s all they put out? For sure I’ll be moving on.”

He said something similar in the video, too. So, if Mo (and/or ArenaNet at large) come out and say “Yeah, we really do think HoT was the right size for a good expansion”, WP will be leaving the game. He didn’t say he’s leaving now or that this was his last video (or one of the last videos).

Problem is, Mike already did that.

Arenanet is an ideal driven company. You must not forget that. And as an ideal driven company, they’re all about the good feels and self esteem and non-judgemental attitudes. Dealing with the failings of HoT is hard because it makes you feel bad. So, to feel good about themselves, they’ll constantly reaffirm with each other that HoT was a good expansion, only talking about its good points. Everyone who disagrees is a hater, or a troll, or they’ll get over it. How can they not get over it, when HoT is such a good expansion?

So when Mike says he takes offense to the expansion not being complete, he’s not being disingenuous. He’s being sincere. Since he is sincere, that is the standard we can expect the next expansion to have. And the next one after that.

Though to be fair, I do think HoT catches a lot of flack where it shouldn’t. It isn’t as bad as people say. It has problems, but it isn’t as bad as people say.

and this.

This ofcorse won’t stop people going aps***t crazy over the April update if it doesn’t deliver. No matter that what ever goes into that update was decided weeks ago (things take time).

Personally I hope they start getting WvW right. Never been a big spvp person, but if they can make life a bit better for that crowd, go spvp. I don’t expect a lot of world breaking pve changes until mid or end of the year.

All that being said, it’s fine to take breaks. What I always loved about the GW games (both 1 and 2) was the ability to actually take a break, come back and enjoy the game to its fullest without having to worry about falling behind or having all my stuff go the way of the Dodo (hi there WoW with your new higher itemlevel gear every 2 months). As long as anet keeps the game within those parameters, I’m sure to keep playing, even if sporadically.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Read the lore.

This.

To make it even easier, go here: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Guild_Wars

AuroraW.7149:

Cyninja.2954:

(…)

Not true. For crafting the final Legendary, you have to max out all Maguuma Mastery Lines to be able to purchase Gift of the Itzl, Gift of the Nuhoch, Gift of the Exalted and Gift of Gliding to craft “Gift of Insights”. Which means you need almost all Maguuma Mastery Points (112 out of 139). Which means you have to do almost all adventures at least at Silver. Silver and Gold gives you a Mastery Point respectively. Bronze doesnt give you any Mastery Points.

Ah yes, I did miss that. Okay, that is a bigger requirement. I still don’t think it is unreasonable. At best one can fault the new legendarys to be very HoT heavy.

My point still stands. People complain about no content, then once content is required people complain about having to actually play the game.

My guess is arenanet might ease up on the mastery requirements to purchase the gifts. Makes the 3 new legendary that less epic, but hey. Legendarys for everyone.

Unless I missed something, the actual Astralaria crafting process requires:

Astralaria I: The Device
1.) Timeworn Forgotten Tablet – Attained from the Fallen Masks adventure in the Forgotten City of Auric Basin by reaching a rank of silver or better.

Astralaria III: The Mechanism
2.) Pact Airship Strut.png Pact Airship Strut – Gained by completing the Flying Circus adventure in Verdant Brink with a rank of silver or better.

Astralaria IV: The Cosmos
3.) Ley-Line Hub Energy.png Ley-Line Hub Energy – Energy gathered from earning a rank of silver or better in the Ley-Line Run adventure in Tangled Depths.

4.) Exalted Energy.png Exalted Energy - Energy gathered by earning silver or better in the On Wings of Gold adventure located inside Auric Basin.

A total of 4 adventures. 3 of which are among the easiest adventures in the game. A total required masteries of:

- Legendary Crafting 4
- Gliding rank 3 (for On Wings of Gold)
- Exalted Lore 2 (for Fallen Masks)

and optional masteries in form of:

- Itzel Lore 3 (for Blazing Musshrooms)

Yes, that is certainly a very unrealistic requirement for a legendary. It’s not as though most of those masteries are earned within the first few hours of playing HoT. Not even going to comment on the adventures.

Do people even still play this game or just buy everything off the TP expecting everything to fall in their lap?

NotOverlyCheesy.9427:

And then people cry out that GW2 is dying. If people weren’t so selfish and helped out others by teaching them mechanics we’d have a much nicer/larger community.

You do understand though that your comment can be read in multiple different ways right?

Possibility A:

- people should obsess less about lower level players joining their group and instead carry them and explain the game mechanics to them. Thus be less selfish as far as their own desired group composition goes

Possibility B:

- people should be less selfish in their demands to get carried by others. Instead they should have others explain the game mechanics to them (or educate themselves) so all are on the same page. After all, every one has a right to play with people he wants to play with and no one should be forced out of his comfort zone

Question is, who is the more selfish person?

Now the real question would be (I believe this is what Thaddeus was hinting at) why would you ever want to use +toughness stat infusions on your gear. If you are about to spend a ton of gold on near uselss stat upgrades, at least get some useful damage stat.

That being said, if you are about to waste so much gold anyway, why not go allout. Get the +5 ar +5 random stat, then instead of using 3×10 + 2×11 agony infusions in your rings and backpack upgrade those babys to 4×15 + 1×16 agony infusions. That should cover your 24 agony resistance loss and it’s even below 2k gold more. Worth it!

I’m going to go a different direction than most replies in this thread.

First off, why would you want to level via fractals especially on one of your first characters? You are essentially depriving yourself of:

- lore
- immersion into an awesome game world
- a lot of basics as far as map completion, event chains, etc.

It makes absolutely no sense to run fractals on sub 80 characters. Not to mention severly worse geared players compared to 80s. Yes, that is true even for the usual moron pub n00b who plays while being semi afk and having not loged into the game for over a year.

Now if this is a followup character and you absolutely must force rush to 80 (again, not advisable unless this is your 4th character or beyond), why fractals with pugs? Get some friends and have them rush you through some fractals, use cooking, crafting and levelup tomes to get to 80. There are tons of ways to get to 80 asap without having to rely on players you do not know to get to 80.

No one has to take you along, especially if they do not know you. No one has to waste their time giving you a fair chance when you enter their group if they are expecting at least a level 80.

Make life easier on yourself and instead of telling other players what to do or not to do, adapt. In this case, make some friends who know they can take you along on sub 80 characters in low level fractals for example.

I’m usually a very tolerant person when I make groups (no requirement for perfect runes, bare minimum ar for high level fractals, will take along just about any class) but I’d definately kick a sub 80 for fratals. I’d be polite about it, but I just wouldn’t want to waste my time.

Ashen.2907:

That said, giving an expansion away for free, with no effort to directly recoup multimillion dollar development costs, would require a very significant increase in gem purchases. I do not think that the gem sore, in its current, benign, state is likely to be able to support that kind of increase. I think we would have to see a paradigm shift in the gem store to a significantly more exploitive model. This seems likely to counter any possible benefit of using expansions as a loss leader in terms of retaining players who are willing to spend money on the game.

Or as I put it:

Cyninja.2954:

the alternative, a such massive money grab shift in the business model that no matter at what price the next expansion were to be sold, the game would be unplayable.

Thank you Ashen for spending a tad more time explaining.